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

Uh...

[Wellington Grey]

For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in Wikipedia.

Paying people to edit wikipedia does not count as donating money. Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?

-Grey

Accountability

[athloi]

This will fundamentally change the wiki model, which grew rapidly because it did not require its writers to be accountable to existing standards. That made it popular, but also error-prone. Academia and government are going to take over wikipedia from within, by this model, and while this violates the fundamental ideal of wikipedia, it will improve the content vastly. Maybe there's something to learn here about the wisdom of accountability and peer-review standards that, while imperfect, evolved over time for a reason. It's a very generous move by the Germans, and one I hope others follow.

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[TerranFury]

Ayn Rand wrote:

Have you ever wondered about the mentality of those who advocate government financing of intellectual and artistic pursuits, in the name of intellectual independence and creative freedom?

Actually, I'm quite sane Ms. Rand; thanks.

I wrote (#19300097):

There are some things that monopolies, like governments, can better provide than many smaller competing companies; infrastructure and technology research are two of the most important ones. The simple reason for this is that monopolies can be relatively sure that they will be around in many years' time to reap the benefits of their investments, whereas in a hypercompetitive market, risk is higher and the "rational" investor will focus on smaller, shorter-term investments; this maximizes his expected return.

You see: if government doesn't fund research, who will? Gone are the days of Bell Labs.

Also, Ms. Rand, you forget: The absence of civic government does not imply the existence of individual freedom. Quite the contrary: Civic government is a necessary check on corporate government.

You mention...

Ayn Rand wrote:

the fear, the intrigues, the rigid censorship, and the abject bootlicking in which and with which the recipients of governmental favors have to live moment by precarious moment. Are you so naive, Ms. Rand, to think that politics is unique to organizations run by the State?

Anarcho-capitalist "libertarianism" is no recipe for freedom.

Ayn Rand wrote:

How can today's intellectuals fail to know it? ...which -- funny thing, this -- is also my question, exactly.