Wikipedia On the Brink? Or Crying Wolf?

netbuzz writes "Might Wikipedia 'disappear' three or four months from now absent a major infusion of cash donations? The suggestion has been made by Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation. And while her spokesperson has since backpedaled off that dire prediction, there can be little doubt that the encyclopedia anyone can edit could use a few more benefactors to go along with all those editors."

Comments

Re:I really doubt it.

[ZachPruckowski]

Downloads of all the Wikimedia Projects. You need to do a lot of DB work (XML -> SQL conversion, importing, rebuilding tables, etc.)

The issue is simply that massive servers are not cheap. Wikimedia is already at 100+ servers, and they are barely getting by. They could spend half a million on servers and still have a wish-list. And bandwidth isn't cheap. They get a charity discount, and a bulk discount, but it's still gigabytes and gigabytes a day.

Re:Google will fund them if nec.

[heroofhyr]

Why don't you save yourself some time and just get a Wikipedia search bar for your browser? I used to do the same thing, but got tired of going through a Google search just to wind up clicking on the Wikipedia entry link anyway. Might as well spare yourself the extra steps and have a direct Wikipedia search in the corner of your browser window.

For Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/search-engines.php

For Opera:
http://widgets.opera.com/search/?search=wikipedia& x=0&y=0&scope=all

For Internet Explorer:
http://www.google.com/search?q=help+me+i'm+still+u sing+internet+explorer&btnG=Google+Search

Re:Google once offered to host Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the offer wasn't quite "no strings". It is not that I am 100% there were actually any strings - but rather google wouldn't or couldn't guarantee a few things.

Yahoo offered servers as part of the asia cluster and said "have them - you can use them as you wish" and the wikimedia foundation said thanks - and they are happily in use. So the precedent of using such help as been set - I presume that google weren't offering something quite as simple.

The wikimedia foundation were being wined and dined by a few tech suitors a year or so ago - but I think the heat has went out of any relationships due to the very uncompromising stance (e.g. china situation) that wikimedia takes (compared to all the $$ merchants who happily censor their Chinese content as the PRC desires) - no content compromises, no independence compromises and no advertising compromises - that is not what the tech companies want to hear.

Hardware, people, bandwidth.

[Short Circuit]

I found a copy of their 2005 Q4 budget. Multiply that by four, and you have a rough approximation of how much it costs to run Wikimedia.

It looks like hardware is their single largest expense, at $190,000. Personnel takes a distant second place at $33,000. Bandwidth (well, hosting) takes third, at $24,000.

Also, a note at the bottom:

So far this is little more than a minimal budget, meaning a budget designed to pretty much just keep the foundation going. What is not included are special projects (content and/or software). Please include ideas for that on the talk page. --Daniel Mayer 22:39, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Re:I really doubt it.

[truthsearch]

Bandwidth is cheap as dirt.

So you have experience with very popular web sites, do you? When you need high performance consistent bandwidth it is not cheap. I worked on a popular site whose bill was in the tens of thousands of dollars a month. Wikipedia is extremely fast so you can bet they're paying top dollar.

Re:Google will fund them if nec.

[Falesh]

Alternativly for Opera you could go to Wikipedia, right click inside the search box then select "create search". Once you have done that if you want to search Wikipedia simply enter "w" then the search terms into the address bar.