Wikipedia Plea For Donations

In My Humble Opinion
21

My opinion hasn’t changed since I posted this thread. Wikipedia is still wrong about most things, still badly written, still unorganized, still inconsistent, and still encouraging students not to do any real research. Take the article about Albert Memmi, for example. If you read it, you’ll know that he was born in Tunisia but latter moved to France, that he published a book called The Colonizer and the Colonized, and that this book is often read in conjunction with one by Franz Fannon. But you won’t know jack about who Albert Memmi was, what he believed, and who he influenced. If compare that to a real article about Memmi, the Wikipedia article looks laughable. It is useless to say that Wikipedia should only be a starting point for further research. Most students will not use it that way.

Few things would make me happier than learning that Wikipedia has gone belly-up, though I’d doubt the human race will be that lucky.

22

To ITR Champion :Wikipedia is no different from the rest of the internet.

If students are using it for an only source, then teachers should be coming down hard on them for doing so.

23

This thread reminded me of a funny BJ Novak stand-up bit I just recently saw called “Wikipedia Brown.” I found it pretty amusing. Just thought I’d drop in to share.

24

It’s a good starting point. It’s accuracy is not sufficiently different from other Encyclopedias to make it matter all that much, and there are error correcting mechanisms involved in the community. It’s a tool, and sometimes it’s the right tool for the job. If you get ALL of your knowledge from it then you’re a numpty. But that’s different from it not being useful.

I would like to donate to Wikipedia at some point, we’ll see how my money looks later.

25

In addition to what was already said, I can add the view of some academics I worked with (well, more for actually :p).

I sat in on a few plagiarism reviews when I worked in a university and of course Wikipedia was mentioned. The lecturers didn’t bemoan the lack of information on Wikipedia, quite the opposite. There were historical articles that gave a pretty good overview of topics, they didn’t like students using it because the work on extracting information had already been done for them.

26

Well, my ignorance has been fought and vanquished; my opinion of Wikipedia has now changed.

I am still unable to donate but I will in the future, I hope.

Thanks for all the informative answers, including the ones that hurt my feelings.

27

I know plenty of nerds who consider themselves The Internet Police, and even my friends and acquaintances aren’t nearly as hardcore as some others. And The Internet Police are far more vigilant and unforgiving than the few who find amusement in vandalizing or spreading misinformation in the likes of Wikipedia. That’s one of the reasons I put faith in Wikipedia and donate to its existence.

Furthermore, it’s not difficult to detect nonsense or even cross-reference when in doubt.

Finally, I don’t think anybody hangs their hopes and dreams on Wikipedia. There’s a reason there is no Wikipedia page on “How To Perform Open Heart Surgery At Home.” If and when a person is misinformed on Wikipedia, it is likely about a tertiary cast member of some 1970’s sitcom, not the legal validity of a marriage license.

28

A read a poem recently about a historical figure I’d never heard of previously. So I looked up the figure on Wikipedia, and I read a fairly lengthy article about him. I now feel I have a basic understanding of who he was. In no way do I consider myself to be any sort of authority on his life. But Wikipedia was an excellent starting point, and if I want to learn more, I have plenty of ideas about where to go look. Wikipedia is a fantastic tool in this manner.

It’s really disappointing to hear so many people bemoan Wikipedia because lazy students rely on it, or because there are vandals out there. There have been, and will continue to be, lots of innovations that get misused by some subset of people. I don’t see how that makes the innovation an inherently bad thing. There are lots of folks out there who don’t misuse it, and who hope to continue to utilize it as a source (not THE source) of a lot of good information. I don’t get the hatred at all.

29

I consider Wikipedia sort of a last resort, it’s very hit and miss for me. Many things I look up simply have stub articles. And I can’t “fix it myself!” because I don’t know anything about the subject.

It seems very strong on pop culture subjects, like comics and popular bands.

It’s strangest flaw is that it’s incredibly slow on dial-up. Many pages I try to access have no photos, yet still take longer to load than any other internet site.

As for the real question, though, I can’t see donating. I don’t think a project like this can survive on donations.

30

Too many pedants and other irritating non-contributing types on the editing side to reward with money.

Having said that, it is very good for focused info (reliability issues pending) on a particular subject. On many occasions, no need to google, just pedia first.

31

Do what you should be doing on every fancy website on dialup: use the mobile version.

The main website has an incredibly slow response rate, even on broadband. I think this is because they don’t have fast enough servers for their software. Remember, everything that has ever been put on Wikipedia is still there, unless it has been explicitly deleted.

32

You’ve read and checked most of Wikipedia, then?

Because when I’m using it in areas I’m familiar with, its reliability seems quite good. And if you really need to be accurate, you can follow the links.

33

But it is surviving on donations. In fact, it’s surviving very well. The foundation’s assets increased by $3,000,000 in its last fiscal year. The “Wikipedia will die without your donation” tone of this annual plea is disingenuous.

34

Isn’t that more of a problem with the students than with wikipedia?

35

Also, who cares about students? Beer and reruns of Arrested Development aren’t particularly good for students either, but I like that they continue to exist.

36

You hold Wikipedia to odd standards. I don’t think most users of the site are students trying to carry out research for papers. Nor that most students would use it over other sources, such as their own school/college library.

37

I actually like the commercials. They’re pretty hip, for…1980? 1990? What is the date of those video clips again?

38

I agree. What I hate is the “editors” who reverse every single change made by a contributor who isn’t signed in. I can’t sign in from work, but I have tried about a half-dozen edits- including purely typographical errors and even vandalism. *Every single one *was reversed by some “editor”. Even when I went to the “talk” page and explained the error, some “editor” reversed it.:mad:

39

I love Wikipedia and believe that there is great future in this sort of collaborative method of writing texts on useful topics. I think that Jimbo Wales deserves every manner of respect for setting it up.

BUT!

I don’t believe that giving them more money is the right thing to do. As you can read here About – Wikimedia Foundation , in their own words, the money does NOT go to keep the servers chugging along. The cost of that, while real, is trivial compared to the amount of money they are raising.

Here is one of the things they are doing (quoting from above link):

=== creating learning and training resources to recruit more contributors: teachers, professors, students, photographers, filmmakers, scientists, librarians, archivists, curators, hobbyists, and many others. We’re working with a growing network of 27 grass-roots Wikimedia chapter organizations around the world to reach out to these people, and encourage them to help us make Wikipedia better. More information can be found on the project website. ===

Here is another:

== consulting with our global community of editors as well as experts, volunteers and thinkers around the world to develop innovative strategies for reaching more people, with higher quality resources, and for increasing the number of volunteers. More information about our five-year strategy project can be found on the project website. ==

And, to be sure there are more technical ones mentioned as well, although I don’t believe that the programming work inherent in technical ones costs millions (people often do these things for free…)

As you can see from these above two quotes, what they are doing is taking your money and spending it on making Wikipedia LESS of a “user edited free encyclopedia”. I love Wikipedia because it encourages people like me go there and edit it for free, out of love for the activity of editing. I DON’T love it for “innovative strategies”, “growing networks”, “thinkers”, “teachers” and anything else of that nature that apparently just cannot materialize without spending a few million bucks. If anything, I think the more “innovative strategies” and self-appointed “thinkers” get into this business, the less free-wheeling and more oppressive/PC/stiffled environment it will become.

In short, think long and hard what you do and do not want to support. Wikipedia as a great expression of Western principle of freedom, no-frills efficiency, cooperation and respect for the dignity of the individual (where else do they respect people without a PhD nowadays? :slight_smile: ) is a most admirable thing. While I don’t financially support it (because it has more than enough money, IMHO), I do edit it quite regularly. As for the Wikimedia Foundation and the current political interests of its leader Jimbo Wales, not so much. If he wants to do some “strategies” to change Wikipedia to be less what I want and more what HE wants, let him raise money somewhere else.

40

And, after going back and reading that thread, I think you were wrong, as many posters to the thread suggested, and offered reasons why you were wrong.