Opinion? Wikipedia appeal
 

An appeal from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales
Today, I am asking you to make a donation to support Wikipedia.

I started Wikipedia in 2001, and over the past eight years, I've been amazed and humbled to see hundreds of thousands of volunteers join with me to build the largest encyclopedia in human history.

Wikipedia isn't a commercial website. It's a community creation, entirely written and funded by people like you. More than 340 million people use Wikipedia every month - almost a third of the Internet-connected world. You are part of our community.

I believe in us. I believe that Wikipedia keeps getting better. That's the whole idea. One person writes something, somebody improves it a little, and it keeps getting better, over time. If you find it useful today, imagine how much we can achieve together in 5, 10, 20 years.

Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it. It's proof of our collective potential to change the world.

We need to protect the space where this important work happens. We need to protect Wikipedia. We want to keep it free of charge and free of advertising. We want to keep it open – you can use the information in Wikipedia any way you want. We want to keep it growing – spreading knowledge everywhere, and inviting participation from everyone.

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization I created in 2003 to operate, grow, nurture, and protect Wikipedia. For ten million US dollars a year and with a staff of fewer than 35 people, it runs the fifth most-read website in the entire world. I'm asking for your help so we can continue our work.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s where we’re headed. And with your help, we will get there.

Thank you for using Wikipedia. You're part of this story: please make a donation today.

Jimmy Wales

Founder, Wikipedia
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Appeal/en?utm_source=2009_Jimmy_Appeal3&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=fundraiser2009&target=Appeal

I think that very few people have figured out how to really build a successful internet business model. Other than google, they all seem to be struggling with how to actually get paid for eyeballs. Given their traffic, I'm surprised the wikipedia hasent gone to an add based model like google, they get plenty of hits. Other than that, maybe they should consider some type of freemium service?

I do use that service myself, yet have to take it with a grain of salt. I understand there is going to be a version that only qualified folks can post to it. I'm sure that would be a pay service and depending on how much, I'd be willing to pay for.

As a 501(C)(3) organization (non profit and tax exempt), the Wiki Foundation has restrictions on its for profit activities (Unrelated Business Income), which can be subject to income tax, including advertising revenue. The NCAA lost a case back in the early 90's (iirc) when the IRS challenged its ad revenue from its Final Four Program as being unrelated income. IRS won on appeal in the 10th Circuit. I'm just guessing, but I think Wiki doesn't want the tax hassles that would arise out of plastering their web pages with ads. Or it may be prohibited in their by-laws. Who knows.
All charities these days are facing declining contributions and investment returns. Hence, the personal appeal.

I personally think Wiki is a wonderful tool to get your hands around something or someone quickly.

I take what I see on Wikipedia very seriously. If it is not cited with a tiny [1] then the information is not accurate.

Back when I edited wikipedia for fun (oh man i am such a nerd) I would watch the "edit" page. Anything like, "MICHAEL JACKSON IS GAY" or "MERCS ROX" are easily caught and eliminated.

There are a ton of people like me on every day watching for abuse. Also if the abuse becomes rampant then the pages become locked. Edits are tracked by IP so even the anonymous people who abuse wikipedia for fun get warned.

I have fun into a fair share of skeptical people. Generally they don't understand the edit, citation, and revision process behind it. It's quite remarkable how effective it really is.

If an article isn't cited then take the information with a grain of salt. If there is a citation then it is true.

it's simple--run ads on wikipedia. they've got the traffic, so the next logical step would be to have banners around the edges or on one side. problem solved.

that's tantamount to saying 'anything anyone says that they don't attribute to someone else, is not accurate'. that's a problem though, becuase, while attributing or citing a comment to a known or published work legitimates it, it doesn't validate it. there are plenty of valid statements that just can't be cited because you might be the only person who knows it, or there might not be a published work that legitimates it

I've donated 10 bucks to them...that was like 3 weeks ago or something. Wikipedia has been quite useful to me as a student in finding a starting point for papers. Going to the bottom of articles for the references is almost always worth looking at.

do you really want my opinion,,,?


no... because its the truth.


All that stuff is written by anonymous sources which means ZERO credibility, which further means, you can not quote it in text, which further means it is useless.

if you are willing to pay for such a resource, it is merely for the sake of convenience.

You're incorrect. Article submissions have to be submitted by verified users, contain citations to published texts (online/ offline), and then withstand the barrage of extra edits.

The amount of errors in textbooks happens to also be full of errors, but I'm guessing you take that as golden truth right? The best part of wikipedia is the incredibly large base of people editing and reading.

Again if it's not cited then don't take it as truth.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/11/03/badbooks/

http://web.archive.org/web/20031003192130/http://www.psrc-online.org/curriculum/hubisz.htm

http://article.wn.com/view/2009/06/05/News_about_textbook_errors/

I wouldn't mind an ad or three...just so long as the ads LOAD AFTER the information you're looking for is loaded and displayed AND the ads are STATIC....none of this goofy "flying in from the left/right BS" or ads that move and sparkle...

Give me a simple page...static, like the material I'm looking for and that I can scroll through without WAITING for the rest of the ads to load...don't slow down the process of reading/viewing 'cause some tremendously huge amount of ad material has to load and display before I can work the page I need.

But, if the ads have to sing and dance before I can do anything with the page...fahgetaboutit...let it die the sweet death of empathy and ignorance.

.

I'm just as correct as you are, sir.

a random article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laramie-Poudre_Tunnel

the first thing that popped into my mind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarrow

The first thing I thought of that should be heavily cited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

...sure, they're cited... still, the very powerful element of unprofessional influence is involved.

and how many times have you heard the story about some frat guy who writes a Wiki page to dupe some bimbo? etc...

WHAT!!!
 

NEVER, tell us about it.
I don't understand how that would work. :confused:

actually, you're incorrect. Even if it is cited, it doesn't have to be true. But i guess whatever the masses 'feel' is true is the golden rule, right?

most texts are half-truths, thats the nature of interpretation and expression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true."

Wikipedia won't just let you make a page for anything. Also,you are correct in you cannot quote wikipedia in scholarly papers, but the sources/citations for almost any scholarly topic are considered credible. I would go and start making a list of the sources and then hit the library. It worked for undergrad where the work wasn't so obscure at least. In grad you're not trying to summarize past work as much as develop your own.