have you donated to wikipedia
Lately wikipedia is running a pretty full-on campaign to generate funds (on all their pages at the top stuff like "a message from founder of wikipedia" etc)...it's the only place I think I've ever felt guilty about not donating to when they asked (so now I have done) because of the massively useful resource they provide, ad-free...
anyone else given money? or do you think it should be free and they shouldn't ask..?
anyone else given money? or do you think it should be free and they shouldn't ask..?
Post edited by def chris on
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I think given how big wikipedia is, they shouldn't have to ask for donations. It's a bad business model that can't target adverts per page or search result.
let them shut down if they want.. the founder studied finance!! he should know how to deal with it..
in the past there has been some right BS posted on wiki, funny stuff but never the less BS.
your telling me he hasn't got a nice cushy wage /living out of it , far more than most of us probably ? so yer let him come around with the begging bowl..
disclaimer
*fictional first paragraph
It's like all these none executive directors in companies who get 30k+ for being on a board, who are just "there".. and they do it for multiple companies as well.. as a shareholder in a few , that annoys me also..nice little earner, we are in the wrong jobs :)
like fog said a lot of people used to put false stuff up but it seems very regulated now, anything false gets taken down quick it seems.
think it's their policy to have no ads though.. If that's what you mean
Don't think I've ever used it for anything more "serious" than that
Will I be? In short the answer is No!
So, that's a NO then?
Yes! :p
The Wiki Maths sections are terribly guilty of this. Often simple concepts are presented in such a complex way that they are incomprehensible by all but specialists in their given field of maths, who as specialists have no need for the article. This renders many pages redundant.
On many pages the most interesting part is the discussions section there the p!ssing match of pedantry or just plain incorrect-ness is played out.
So who's problem is that? If they wanted to raise funds then they would have adverts or some other sponsorship... they don't... not my problem ;)
:lol:
Re. this rather crass campaign, they had one of the developers personally appealing too the other day and now I just don't know which one of the two to give my money to.
Their ad agency probably has them trying a few different tacks and seeing what works best.
Unfortunately they've kind of painted themselves into a corner with the whole "we won't carry adverts" stance and I don't see how they'll be bringing money in to cover what must be quote substantial development and maintenance costs unless they change that.
So do I use Wikipedia - yes, sometimes. Will I donate - no, for the same reason I don't donate money to any other websites and don't subscribe to get past pay walls - the ethos that drove Internet growth was free access to content (initially pr0n).
Only exceptions as far as I am concerned are application developers (EG independent emulator and application authors, the guys who do manga scanlation or translate a Japanese-only GBA game for little to no gain) which I view as very different from some simple informational content. Now they are deserving of an appeal.
and yea that guy does have a weird stare :smile:
redtube?
I really don't like their approach to getting the funding. Like, first they want you to write content (I would say it is a donation already), and then they want you to pay to keep the content you wrote. And then they could easily delete most of it or other things as 'unsignificant' or something, despite it could be significant for you and many other people. It is a very broken way of doing things.
Also, their way to ask for money is simply annoying. I see it very often when I visit the wikipedia - there is a huge banner with a guy (who always looks like he had a great booze at the shooting day and then was photoshopped a bit in a failed attempt to hide that fact), and text like 'please-please, we have a very important message that you just have to read right now!'. And all the long text on the link basically tells one simple thing: 'please support us with money'. Why not say it as is, in the banner itself?
Wikipedia seemed to be a great idea when it first appeared. Unfortunately, now it is clear that the self-organizing and quality control mechanisms it employ simply don't work. Size grows while quality drops, and it does not seem that it has any possibility to improve in the future.
It would be OK for me if they had ads to get funding, by the way. There are wiki projects on the very same engine that have ads, and it is not a problem at all to have a small banner or text on a page. If they put an ad on the banner where they ask for donations, it probably would provide them equal money by itself.
I'm thinking they are gonna use it as an excuse to put adverts on then , simply because they didn't get the funding
Agree with all of this. People write Wikipedia for free and asking its user-base, many of who have sunk hours of their life working for free on the site, to pay for it is a reversal of how things ought to work.
And as a reliable encyclopedia it fails, even with the new safeguards they constantly try to bring-in, because there are too many subjects which too many internet "enthusiasts" have a strong, often-cranky take on and who will engage in vicious edit-wars over leaving many articles riddled with "there is an argument that..." and "it has not been proved that..." weasel words if not outright bias or even tedious, lecturing tracts. I stopped editing the site precisely because I got tired of this kind of nonsense. Encyclopedias should be written by people with no ideological axe to grind and who care about objective truth and those are rare on the internet.
interesting you post that chart, it's by david mccandless who used to write reviews for Your Sinclair. there's a youtube of his ideas about representing information with graphics which is interesting.
I think you're all surprisingly negative about wikipedia tbh. can't see any problem with it staying ad free and politely asking for donations
Thing is wikipedia is essentially free, its up them how they raise funds. They use a grape shot approach, not many people will repsond, bu those who do may donate thousands.
If they don't ask they won't get.
Will I donate, no.
But I appreciate their actions.
C'mon, who isn't? ;)
not at all, in the scale of things it's not as important as other things and thats the crups of it.
it's a bit like some folk who earn a mint working in a charity... the excuse being you need to pay the best to get the best people.. much like the mayor of london who earns ?400k+thru his various jobs.. and still had the bare faced cheek to moan about lack of money (sooner they get rid the better)