I stumbled on this weird Craigslist job posting for a Wikipedia RSS Feed Manager. I’ve pasted the contents below to safeguard the ad expiring.

A little investigation turned up something I hadn’t expected: Wikipedia doesn’t do RSS. Which isn’t precisely true, they offer a RSS Feed of their most recent changes, but that’s it. You can’t find out via RSS if the Phlogiston Theory suddenly becomes relevant, if Netarhat gets a new Starbucks, or if naming your child Arassuil could cause problems later in life.

So into this feature deficit steps a company that apparently is mirroring the entire Wikipedia (including Arassuil) for the purpose of providing RSS Feeds on each and every topic.

In light of the recent SocialText article on Wikipedia eating Google this raises a number of extremely thorny issues:

  • Is this a big PageRank ploy by BlinkBits?
    They don’t seem to have any advertising, but it’s only a line of code away to throw Adwords onto every page of the site. They also seem to have kept their Wikipedia directory separate from the main content of their site, which even odder seems to be a commercial low-rent version of Wikipedia itself.

  • Is RSS so bandwidth intensive that Wikipedia can’t support it?
    This would seem to be a reasonable assumption given that even the most optimistic of bandwidth guesstimates quickly pushes into the terabytes a day range.

  • Is this legal?
    Well, IANAL, but from looking at the GNU Free Documentation License it looks like it is ok to republish Wikipedia content. However, a good deal hinges on just what is a “document” in the legal and the Wikipedian sense of the term as the entirety of the license is certainly not on every page of BlinkBits.

    • You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies.

So in summation: rev up your spidering software, buy some big disk drives and you too can start mirroring Wikipedia for fun and profit.

Original Craigslist Job Posting

Wikipedia RSS Feed Manager

Reply to: see below
Date: 2005-10-05, 1:41PM EDT

BlinkBits, http://www.blinkbits.com, is now accepting resumes for a part-time correspondent interested in joining our early-stage start-up team to manage our 1.1 Million Wikipedia RSS Feeds.

Responsibilities:
- Ensure all Wikipedia RSS Feed previews render properly
- Ensure all new Wikipedia Topics are added in a timely manner
- Optimize caching of feeds minimize runtime ueries on Wikipedia
- Expand Wikifeeds to other languages

In summary, you are responsible for maintaining a professional Wikifeed center located at: http://www.blinkbits.com/wikifeeds.php

Reguirements:
- Bachelor’s degree preferred.
- One year online experience preferred.
- Must be proficient with computers, internet and word processing systems.
- Demonstrated news judgment, editorial and creative skills.
- Must be able to telecommute.
- You must be able to provide a high volume of brief stories with minimal editorial supervision.

Position: Blinkbits.com Feeds Manager
Start Date: November 10, 2005
Type: Part-time
Pay: $7.10 per hour plus incentives

For consideration you must submit: cover letter and resume and your salary history and compensation requirements to jobs@blinkbits.com. The subject line of your email must include WikiFeeds Manager.

About BlinkBits
Imagine the collective wisdom of all mankind being available in the Blink of an eye… That’s BlinkBits. BlinkBits was founded on the premise that if we provide people with the tools necessary to consolidate, read, edit, comment on, discuss and share information the resulting information will be superior. Blink Bits is where people Start Blinks on topics that are of interest to them to:
* Stay Informed with continuously updated content from millions of sources.
* Save time with News, Pics, Videos and more – ALL in 1 PLACE
* Discover hard to find info plus get expert analysis & multiple viewpoints.
* Express their views by openly adding, editing and discussing their Blink topic.
* Meet People Interested in their Blink topic.
* Get an RSS Feed on Any topic to share the topic with ANY Person and ANY Site.
* Get RSS Feeds from over 1.1 Million Wikipedia Topics with “WikiFeeds hosted by BlinkBits.”

Example Blink: Derek Jeter – http://www.blinkbits.com/blinks/Derek_Jeter