this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Let me be the devil's advocate for this one.

These companies were already training their models on Wikipedia's wealth of information anyway. In this way Wikipedia is earning some revenue from the thing that was already happening, letting them put that money back into the non-profit.

[–] Sunspear@piefed.social 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah I mean Wikipedia has regular dump files where you can just... download its entire content, or parts of it if you so wish. Getting money instead for that bandwidth is immediately an improvement

[–] Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

They weren't using those dumps. They were scraping the main site, at incredible expense to Wikipedia.

[–] phaedrus@piefed.world 2 points 1 week ago

Wikipedia is also public knowledge. I personally think it's OK to use for training data.

However, there are other concerns about inaccuracies and some info on the site needs to be scrutinized and verified just because anyone can edit it, and the LLMs getting trained can't do that part.

What actually bothers me about this is that the companies training the LLMs are going to put them behind paywalls, removing the public knowledge part of this.

[–] dumbass@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Fuck, we really should have donated all those times.

[–] deHaga@feddit.uk 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I did donate and they still did this

[–] dumbass@piefed.social -2 points 1 week ago

I'd request a refund, fuck em.

[–] Skiluros@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

I would argue this is a good thing. The data is being used anyways, at least they get some money to keep the project going.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 0 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wikipedia has an owner? I thought it was all non profit ey or some shit.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Non-profits also have owners. It being a non-profit just means that the company's main priority isn't turning a profit, so excess revenue generally gets pumped back into the non-profit.

[–] Skiluros@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

The owner, Wikimedia Foundation, is a non-profit.