[diskzero]

I read the paper and I didn't come to that conclusion. Can you explain why you think that?

Here is their stated purpose:

The primary objective of this work has been to bring forth the issue of the growing depletion of editors, especially the experienced editors in Wikipedia.

One may be able to take their data and then determine if certain editors are near the quitting threshold. The data may also reveal operational and environmental conditions that could be changed to limit the loss of experienced editor.

[cratermoon]

From the abstract:

> a major concern for not only the future of this platform but also for several industry-scale information retrieval systems such as Siri, Alexa which depend on Wikipedia as knowledge store.

That doesn't imply that the paper is advocating for it, but given that Apple and Amazon now have built products on top Wikipedia, their bottom line depends on it. It's entirely reasonable to wonder if they would prefer to have more influence and control over it. Whether or not it was ever a good idea for Alexa and Siri to have a dependency on Wikipedia is a moot point. They do now, and it wouldn't surprise me to see them wanting to take an active part in keeping Wikipedia fresh.

Of course, because their revenue depends on it, they probably would want more control. In the same way the Amazon is working to exercise more control over the Rust language, Apple or Amazon could decide that taking over Wikipedia is the right move to protect profits.

[geofft]

> Of course, because their revenue depends on it, they probably would want more control.

I don't think this follows. They could have all the control they wanted if they set up their own product, but their revenue doesn't depend on control, their revenue depends on the product being good. It would take a lot of work to make your own Wikipedia-alike; it would take a lot of work to even start with the current Wikipedia (which they legally can, since its license permits commercial use) and keep it up to date.

[cratermoon]

> their revenue depends on the product being good

Yes, and what happens when the content of Wikipedia, through neglect, gets out of date or (negligently or maliciously) wrong? Imagine the following:

User: "Siri, who is the president of North Macedonia?"

Siri: "Macedonia is a geographic and administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans"