Comments for David Gerard

Comment on Open Street Map beats Google Maps for business use. by David Gerard

David Gerard — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:03:23 +0000

You’re paying Google to do the calculation, serve the tiles and so forth as a service. As Sebastian Delmont notes, they didn’t actually save any money – doing it themselves costs them engineering time and hosting. But they have complete control and can’t be gouged worse later, by anyone.

Comment on SOPA blackout post-mortem. by David Gerard

David Gerard — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:00:40 +0000

Yeah, like America ;-) I’ve had lots of good comments about the NPR piece too.

Comment on SOPA blackout post-mortem. by Jon Davies

Jon Davies — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:54:43 +0000

Phew! With a small team we did virtually the WHOLE of the UK media plus Russian and New Zealand and probably a few other places as well.

Comment on Open Street Map beats Google Maps for business use. by Kate

Kate — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:19:06 +0000

Wow. That is way, way more expensive than going to the source of Google’s data.

Comment on Open Street Map beats Google Maps for business use. by Steve Bennett

Steve Bennett — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:37:23 +0000

Yeah, I don’t really get why OSM is still so massively underfunded and undeveloped. It’s still where Wikipedia was in, oh, 2004? There are some real differences in the communities (partially, imho, because “map makers” and “encyclopaedia makers” have different personalities). And the community really hasn’t matured in the way Wikipedia’s did: there are *still* no policies, no guidelines, and a vehement belief that rules are bad, and lack of standardisation is a strength, not a weakness.

For all that, the OSM data is pretty good (in some parts of the world it’s truly excellent), and there are lots of good tools out there.

What other rent-seeking business models? Well, we’re basically talking about models that charge for access to large, slow-moving datasets. Business directories might be a good target – something OSM doesn’t do well, but some third party could.

Comment on Go try the new visual editor prototype. by techpractical

techpractical — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:26:27 +0000

Absolutely awesome. I love stuff that uses contenteditable and this seems to be fairly polished from my quick play. Excellent stuff.

Comment on Anyone who advocates advertising on Wikipedia is a drooling moron. by Feifumgotnn

Feifumgotnn — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:57:27 +0000

Why can’t Wikipedia sign contracts for very specific, extremely conservative ads on some pages that help defer some of the costs of running the site? Or, do some sexually explicit pages contaminate every page?

Comment on Jimmy Wales facts. by bennylin

bennylin — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:29:54 +0000

Glad you love it, Jimmy!

Comment on Chapters blog planet. by David Gerard

David Gerard — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 08:09:28 +0000

D’oh! Fixed :-)

Comment on Chapters blog planet. by Nemo

Nemo — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 06:18:16 +0000

The link to the new planet actually links this page.

Comment on Chapters blog planet. by Sam Wilson

Sam Wilson — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 23:44:22 +0000

The URL seems to be missing from that link. :-)

Comment on Jimmy Wales facts. by Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:36:21 +0000

Epic! :-)

Comment on Dave Bird, R.I.P. by George

George — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:24:04 +0000

another XYL checking in, my facebook found dave a few years too late, still remember him from Young Liberal daze days…

Comment on Dave Bird, R.I.P. by Kathy Smith

Kathy Smith — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:35:15 +0000

We have very fond memories of Dave from the days of the 1980′s Young Liberals (see Facebook), he was kind, funny, passionate about his politics and had an uncanny ability to totally disconcert David Steel (who was leader of the Liberal Party at the time) Rock on Dave wherever you are!

Comment on The FSF is still pushing the GFDL. Ignore them. by Kaldari

Kaldari — Tue, 31 May 2011 03:02:35 +0000

Couldn’t agree with you more. The fewer people use the GFDL the better. Please use CC-by-sa, CC-by or Public Domain/CC-zero.

Comment on The New York Times hands the first draft of history over to the BBC and Guardian. by David Gerard

David Gerard — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:55:50 +0000

If I’m wrong, then excellent! Where did you see these ones?

Comment on The New York Times hands the first draft of history over to the BBC and Guardian. by Lodewijk

Lodewijk — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:55:02 +0000

Hmm, what do you base the assumption on that media do not donate? Did you consider the possibility that they might donate (but not as much as you would like perhaps) but do not want to disclose that fact? I know at least of two media organizations that donated money last fundraiser – and I have only seen a fraction of the donations made to the Wikimedia Movement.

Comment on The New York Times hands the first draft of history over to the BBC and Guardian. by Peter da Silva

Peter da Silva — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:14:01 +0000

It’s not like reporters never re-use the content of each other’s articles without compensation. They don’t get ragged about it unless they “forget” to attribute it. And Wikipedia is downright grindstone about attribution.

Comment on The secret of motivating volunteers. by S.P.Zeidler

S.P.Zeidler — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:56:29 +0000

re getting women (or anybody else) to participate:
The two beginnings of an article I wrote (because there was a link into nowhere, and I knew about the topic and could produce some basic facts without lots of effort) both got deleted; the links point nowhere again. Someone explain to me why I should go to even that little effort again, seeing as my time is likely to be wasted?

Comment on The secret of motivating volunteers. by David Gerard

David Gerard — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 17:29:58 +0000

I actually found it in a six year old email I tripped over, which ended with a note “I might make this into a post” :-) I think it’s apposite given the recent concern over getting women to participate, and getting people in general to participate. Wishful thinking won’t make it happen – it needs to be approached with a testable theory in hand.