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I had some friends, Mario Marathon, just recently raise $29,000 in 96 hours playing 7 Mario Brothers games. They raised money for Child's Play. Last year they raised $12,000.

The single smartest thing I think they did was to off-load the broadcast of the event to ustream.tv.

Some amazing amounts of money ($70,000 in 5 days) has been raised by such marathons.

Very cool.

Thousands? Try MILLIONS! http://childsplaycharity.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child's_Play_(charity) To date they have raised over 4 Million.

What about people that do searches for their relatives? Or their pets?

My amazon recommendations have never been the same since I ordered "Freya the Friday Fairy" and "Hello Kitty Roller Rescue" for PA's "Child's play" charity...

This isn't the first and only charity or charity-like cause. I'll use hundreds conservatively, but I believe thousands is not inappropriate. Add to that a shear number of people you are able to give money too at any time to - for instance you can give to the my lunch fund right now. They handle a lot of giving - off the top of my head Child's Play - http://www.childsplaycharity.com/ . And, they handle a whole lot of transactions relatively cheaply for many a merchant. So, yes, Paypal has a relative halo atop their com.

No, I do not work for Paypal, but I do frequently do business with them.

Why would a community collaborative project such as Wikipedia even need sponsorship, other than bandwidth fees? (And they don't go through $750K a year in bandwidth fees). There should be little or no administrative overhead, and I've never seen an advertisement for Wikipedia (and don't know a reason why I should expect to).

While freedom of information is a great goal, it's on of the few that I feel doesn't require large monetary contributions, but rather large intellectual contributions.

I'll keep giving my money to Child's Play, The Red Cross, and Doctors without Borders.

This year I gave to Childs Play from Penny Arcade, Through my parish, and to a charity dance (I think toys for tots distributed the gifts). Basically I give through organizations that represent me; as a gamer, as religious, and as a social dancer =).

"the first is usually a paean to that pure democracy which is the project's noble fundament."

My, sounds like someone doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

Tycho seems to have a grudge left over from the whole Epic Legends Of The Hierarchs episode. I'm sorry Tycho, but He-man and Pokemon are a part of popular culture, and therefore belong in Wikipedia. Legends of the Hierarchs does not.

"I am almost certain that - while they prune their deep mine of trivia - they believe themselves to be engaged in the unfolding of humanity's Greatest Working. "

Well, not quite that, but we do feel that providing a Free (as in speech) encyclopedia to the world is a Good Thing (tm). We're pretty proud of what we've accomplished so far. Just as you should be for organising your Child's Play Charity.

"If I don't like it, why don't I go edit it myself? To which I reply: because I don't have time to babysit the Internet. Hardly anyone does. If they do, it isn't exactly a compliment. "

See: Altruism.

"The second response is: the collaborative nature of the apparatus means that the right data tends to emerge, ultimately, even if there is turmoil temporarily as dichotomous viewpoints violently intersect. To which I reply: that does not inspire confidence. In fact, it makes the whole effort even more ridiculous. What you've proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information."

Is someone pointing a gun to your head forcing you to use Wikipedia? Don't use it if you don't want to. But please quit bashing for no apparent reason.