Hacker News Reader

Comment by mncharity | Hacker News Reader

> I think this is true in theoretical sense, but not in any practical sense.

I've no idea what current state is, but at one point the Wikimedia Foundation was seriously concerned about potential Wikipedia forks, such as by Facebook. And was working to make them more difficult.

Given that WP seems to have plateaued in a less-than-ideal place, with for instance, a lot of research programming languages considered non-notable, I had mixed feelings about that. A competitor with a different culture could be a good thing.

View on HN

> at one point the Wikimedia Foundation was seriously concerned about potential Wikipedia forks, such as by Facebook

Being concerned about a theoretical possibility of something happening is not the same as it actually happening and being a viable competitor.

> A competitor with a different culture could be a good thing.

Maybe. But I don't see any right now with even tiny amount of viability. Do you?

> right now

NN, as I understand it, is not so much about the current state of things, but about making sure that future "wikipedias" and "facebooks" get the same chances as the current ones. Right now there are no viable alternatives (that you and I know of, at least) - but what about this time next year?

You can't change what NN means on a whim, to account for whether each specific type of internet service has "viable alternatives" or not. And how do you even define what are viable alternatives? What's viable for me, might not be viable for others.

In the list of the hurdles you need to overcome to get viable competitor to Wikipedia, zero-rating in Iraq wouldn't be even in the top 20, I imagine.

> You can't change what NN means on a whim

I don't want to change what NN means. I want to emphasize that NN means that people in Iraq who now can have access to a snapshot of the world's knowledge absolutely free wouldn't have that option anymore. In service of some abstract idea of fairness that doesn't even apply to anything specific. I don't think it is a good idea.

> I want to emphasize that NN means that people in Iraq who now can have access to a snapshot of the world's knowledge absolutely free wouldn't have that option anymore.

Not free. The costs are being covered by increased pricing on the rest of their phone usage.

Is there any evidence to support that? Did the phone usage prices in Iraq really surge after introducing zero-rating for Wikipedia? How much did they surge?

My fuzzy recollection is Facebook was serving mirror of Wikipedia, with extensions. Perhaps community pages? https://creativecommons.org/2010/04/21/wikipedia-on-new-face... (2010) The Cooking example there no longer has a copy of the WP page. Perhaps the mirror no longer exists?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com