Wikipedia Gets State Funding in Germany

tmk writes "How can Wikipedia be improved? The German government started a project today to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundred articles about renewable resources in the Internet encyclopedia. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts. 'The challenge will be to motivate experts who have done good work in other projects to get involved in the community lexicon. As project director Florian Gerlach told heise online, "Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"

Comments

Just don't

[Timesprout]

mention the war!

Re:Could be good but..

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem will be when the US government funds a secret energy task force to write entries about oil being the energy source for the foreseeable future. I predict a revert war between the US and Germany.

Re:So this is where that extra 3% VAT is going to

[jollyreaper]

Germany started World War II under the leadership of a party that is banned in Germany today, and Germany did not start WWI--to tell the truth, the gears of war were prepped up long before even Gavrilo Princip shot the Austrian archduke. Comparing modern Germany to Nazi Germany is much, much worse than comparing modern Germany to the modern US. Great, so you just had to leave the opening for comparing the modern US to Nazi Germany. They're nothing alike. For one thing, the German uniforms were far snappier. That digital cammo stuff the US Army uses looks like ass. Second, Hitler actually served his country in time of war. Third, our war footage is in color now. So there!

The U.S. following in

[BitterKraut]

Rumor has it George W. is going to fund a rewrite of the entry on evolution.

For this interlingual fishgift we grateful are

[mrogers]

I assume the articles in German will be written. But to the invention of web language digester Babelfish giving thanks, entire Worldsurface from this gift benefit can. Among others I wish our new machine translated feudal barons to welcome!