| > think this objectively makes it harder for projects in the same field to compete, even if just a tiny bit. I think this is true in theoretical sense, but not in any practical sense. Just as it's true that you breathing reduces amount of breathable oxygen around, but that's not a ground for me to sue you for air pollution and depriving me of vital oxygen ;) There are things so tiny as to consider them as if they weren't is to seriously distort the matter, and I think it's one of such things. To make it substantial, one needs to point out that a) there are viable competitors b) they are influenced by things like bandwidth costs and c) this difference is causing real and noticeable preference shift. I can believe it's true for mobile music streaming services, but I don't see it being true for Wikipedia. There's one more point - the argument against NN goes "it'd kill Wikipedia Zero". I don't think saying "well, so what, but it'd help Spotify" really a strong counter to it - if I had to choose between living without Wikipedia and living without Spotify, I'd choose Wikipedia without even pausing to think for a second. So NN proponents have to offer better answer than that, if they mean to go the utilitarian road. |
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.