Wikipedia Almost Reaches $6 Million Target

An anonymous reader noted a story discussing the aftermath of the Wikipedia fundraiser and says "The writer suggests that Wikipedia can earn $50-100 million a month by a simple text ad. He also suggests that contributors should be financially rewarded and that the lack of financial reward is the reason why 98.3% of registered Wikipedia users are inactive. What do you think? Should Wikimedia Foundation put ads on Wikipedia? Should contributors be financially rewarded? What compensation structure would be best?" Personally I think the independence of Wikipedia is great, and any advertising would not only compromise that integrity, but give contributors a sense of entitlement that the site is better off without.

Comments

Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[elrous0]

It really comes down to what Jimmy Whales and the foundation think (and can manage). Sure, me personally, I would be happy to have EVERYTHING advertiser-free (including the street full of annoying billboards near my house, all my favorite TV shows, etc.). But it really comes down to the question of whether Wikipedia can sustain itself on donations and goodwill alone. If they can, then great, more power to them! If not, I couldn't, in all fairness, fault them for allowing advertising or paying particularly useful contributors.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[AmiMoJo]

I think a lot more people would donate both time and money to Wikipedia if they just sorted out a few of their policies.

The fact that a lot of good articles are getting deleted at the moment due to "not being notable enough" prevented me from giving them a penny.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[cavtroop]

Yes, the 'notability' guidelines are for crap, really. Its completely arbitrary as to what the mod of the day thinks is 'notable' or not.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[DTemp]

Man everyone assumes malice and being able to be influenced by advertisers. You can be both ad sponsored AND not have an agenda. Newspapers do this by having a separate ad/biz department and news department... even the Editor In Chief at a newspaper has no say on the ads content. Wikipedia could produce a similar policy.

They shouldn't pay contributors though, and they should only accept enough money to handle operations.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[JoeMerchant]

I don't see how putting a little Google display ad at the top of every Wikipedia page would make the site in any way influenced by Google or anyone else. Yeah, it would be nice if there was an alternative to Google, and maybe the ads could be split (1/3 of pages get a Google ad, the other 2/3s split amongst the next 3 or 4 largest suppliers of display ads).

What I do see as a problem is that if Wikipedia stopped running on a shoestring and started having $100M per year in revenue, it would change the controlling culture drastically, and that could be a big problem. Volunteers are there for the sharing of information, paid staffers are there for the paycheck, and (modern American) executives are there for the massive perks.

I think a good compromise plan would be to establish a projected required operating budget (maybe $10M / year, growing at 10% per year until reaching $100M / year), and put up the display ads, rake in the cash far faster than they need it, set the excess aside in an endowment (hopefully invested wisely, whatever that means), and when the endowment can fund future operations from interest alone, kill the display ads.

The big unknown in such a plan is whether the administrators could really be trusted to respect the terms of the endowment disbursement.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[Uber Banker]

Wikipedia, in this most testing of Economic times, belt-tightening, and a period when many are worrying about their financial and career future, has reached it's target. So why the talk of ads? It has it's funding and doesn't need further. IMHO it's a great thing that they've raised their target and will be able to provide services for the coming year, and lay foundations further into the future.

Wikipedia, and Wikimedia, are non-profits with a well defined remit. They've achieved target funding, far better than many non-profits do, they can pay for a core staff and bandwidth. Great. Shouldn't this story be about giving them a pat on the back instead of waving a $100million/month!!!! carrot in front of their face?

I certainly wouldn't contribute there if they received that much, because they don't need that much. Wikipedia needs a core staff and a community of interested contributors. I do not want it turned into the equivalent of a paid blog site.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[omega_dk]

They passed a law like 6 years ago to get a database of all signs to determine which billboards are illegal. Wanna know how much headway that's made? If you answered 'slim' to 'none,' you win!

If you ask me, they should make it illegal to have a sign that's not registered, and tear down any that remain unregistered a month later. They've had six years to get their ducks in a row, so I have no sympathy if they can't get it done in a month. There needs to be an economic disincentive to not registering them in addition to registering them or it'll never get done.

Check out http://illegalsigns.ca/ for a toronto-based movement that's had a surprising amount of success in eliminating illegal billboards.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[AmiMoJo]

The basic problem seems to be that the deletionists would rather delete a poor quality or "minority interest" articles. Poor articles can be improved, and since Wikipedia has unlimited storage capacity there is no reason to delete even borderline notable articles.

A good example is the article on the Zenburn colour scheme. It's clearly quite a popular one, having been ported to many different editors, IDEs and even desktops. The problem is a lack of citable articles about it, making it fail the notability test. Sure, we don't want every person on the planet to have their own personal Wikipedia entry, but why not have articles on minor software projects if they provide useful information, history and links to related topics?

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[truthsearch]

Why? Why should a large group of random people over the internet fight to keep pages up on Wikipedia? I've browsed a number of talk pages and any disputes over policy come down to a single person's complaint and a bunch of WP regulars pounding on him/her for being wrong.

So if the community most involved in WP doesn't want the articles, and the foundation running the site doesn't want to change their policies, then why should a group gather with pitchforks and fight? The site is obviously not interested, so go elsewhere. (Developers, for example, can follow the link in my sig.)

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[Oink]

I think that idea is a little naive. If a newspaper's biggest advertiser is getting poor press (or perhaps poor reviews of its products), you better bet they're going to try and flex that leverage. If they can't go to the editor, they'll go to the investors with threats of pulling their ad money. The fact that there is that fear that money will disappear is always going to be a useful bargaining tool. A little less for a non-profit, but still..

Also, it needn't be overt.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[Just Some Guy]

Yet without them everyone and their dog would have an article.

And that would be bad why? It wouldn't. So Wikipedia would have to rank search results based on something like PageRank (if they don't already), and maybe bias the output of Special:Random similarly.

Storage certainly isn't a problem. This page you're reading right now? The whole thing, HTML and all, comes out to 121KB at this particular moment in time. If it were pasted en bloc as a Wikipedia article, a single terabyte drive could store 9 million uncompressed copies of it. For perspective, there are currently about 2.2 million English Wikipedia pages.

So maybe a page about my dog isn't noteworthy, but would it actually harm anything? No. So why not err on the side of caution and retain articles that at least a few authors are willing to maintain?

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[Just Some Guy]

I think a good compromise plan would be to establish a projected required operating budget (maybe $10M / year, growing at 10% per year until reaching $100M / year), and put up the display ads, rake in the cash far faster than they need it [...]

Stop there. Why raise it faster than necessary? Surely Wikipedia could display ads on only a percentage of page views, tweaking the number as needed to maintain a neutral revenue.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[psm321]

Agreed here too. I use Wikipedia plenty, but I refuse to donate as long as I keep seeing useful information deleted from articles and useful articles deleted.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[dubl-u]

Newspapers do this by having a separate ad/biz department and news department... even the Editor In Chief at a newspaper has no say on the ads content. Wikipedia could produce a similar policy.

You say this like somebody who has never worked for a magazine or a newspaper. In practice, the effectiveness of keeping ads as a separate department varies from place to place.

Even in the places where it's strongest, the advertising is still a consideration. A journalist writing a major negative story on a major advertiser will know it. Their editor will know it too. Even if nobody says a word about it, there is still a conflict of interest, and conflicts of interest are incredibly hard to manage.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[TheRaven64]

In The Man Who Sold the Moon, the character first approaches Coca Cola to have their logo displayed over the entire visible surface of the moon. He then raises far more money by getting people to pay him not to do it. Why not sell advertising space on Wikipedia that you could choose not to use. i.e. allow companies to buy a million ad-free page views and then say in their other adverts 'helps keep Wikipedia ad-free'.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[ArsonSmith]

Sure, we don't want every person on the planet to have their own personal Wikipedia entry,

Why not? Just curious. Especially if Wikipedia develops into something everlasting it will be a way to document that you were here. I may not give a damn about you, but why not have the information there in an autobiography type layout.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[ArsonSmith]

Perhaps instead of deleting non-noteworth pages they could be marked as unsearched.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[arotenbe]

Sigh... every time any article on Slashdot mentions Wikipedia, there's always a flood of people saying "oh, no, I don't dare write anything lest my poor little article get deleted". Yes, there are cases of admins abusing power and deleting articles that never should be deleted. However, these cases are few and far between compared to the number of articles that are deleted for the legitimate reason that no one except the author would ever want to read about the topic.

Have you actually even read WP:N? The third sentence of the page begins "Notability is distinct from 'fame,' 'importance,' or 'popularity'...". For the most part, there is a very simple rule for deciding what is notable: if someone independent of the specific community of people related to the topic has written about the topic, it is notable; otherwise, it is not notable. Many stubs can automatically be saved from deletion by spending five minutes Googling for references.

In short: the few unusual cases of articles being deleted improperly has caused everyone to believe that there are no solid criteria for deletion. There are. Read them. And, of course, there's always Deletion Review.

Finally, I refer you to one of my previous comments.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[JoeMerchant]

I think a good compromise plan would be to establish a projected required operating budget (maybe $10M / year, growing at 10% per year until reaching $100M / year), and put up the display ads, rake in the cash far faster than they need it [...]

Stop there. Why raise it faster than necessary? Surely Wikipedia could display ads on only a percentage of page views, tweaking the number as needed to maintain a neutral revenue.

I think a simple: "Why?" is in order... If you've got a cash generating machine and the ability to set up your own perpetual endowment, why would you throttle your income and risk financial hardship in the future?

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[smagruder]

Correct. When things that are critiqued by those who refuse to learn and understand what they are critiquing, there is something wrong with _them_.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[nametaken]

That's a business response to a business problem.

His was an ethical response to an ethical/quality problem.

You both have good points.

Re:Doesn't really matter what *WE* think, does it?

[sailingmishap]

And next you'll tell us that of course it just so happens all criticism of wikipedia is based on misunderstanding, thus making it invalid. Round and round we go.

The "there is no such thing as legitimate criticism of wikipedia" crowd is something else that always pops up in these discussions.

There is legitimate criticism of Wikipedia. A shitload of it. I'll be the first to say that some aspects of Wikipedia are absolutely horrendous.

But I almost never see that legitimate criticism in these threads. All I see is:

1. "Its completely arbitrary as to what the mod of the day thinks is 'notable' or not."
   No, it's quite consistent. There's a discussion where people list reasons (read: do not vote) why the article should be kept or deleted. If the discussion clearly shows why the article should be deleted, in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy (namely, Wikipedia's notability guideline, which editors are told to read before writing the article), then and only then* is the article deleted by an admin. If the discussion does not reach a clear conclusion, the article is not deleted. The above comment is clearly based on misunderstanding of how the deletion decisions are made.
2. "How can you be sure there's a general rule deciding which is notable and which is not?"
   Well, it's easy to be sure. Click here. Now you can be sure. In fact, if you read any deletion discussion, someone will link to the rule, because that's what those discussions are about. When you create a page, there's a boldface link to it. Every major page on Wikipedia's guidelines links to it. The above comment is clearly based on misunderstanding of whether there's a rule or not.
3. "It's all up to the individual reader. For 90% people an article explaining compiler design is of no notability."
   (Really? 600 million people are interested in compiler design? But that's beside the point.) Wikipedia's definition of "notability" is different from the colloquial definition of "notability", just as the electrical definition of "potential" is different from the colloquial definition of "potential". All fields have jargon, Wikipedia has its own. Reading the above guideline would make this clear.
4. "...it leads to Eastern European weightlifters being deleted because pimply-faced American 'admins' haven't heard of them, but that every single Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon card ever created has its own separate page."
   Actually, articles are not deleted because admins have not heard of them,* but because of the above process that I mentioned. The case would've been better stated with a link to said weightlifter's discussion, but few in these threads can be bothered with supporting facts (remarkably, it's those same people who keep getting their articles deleted! what a weird coincidence!) Furthermore, not one of the 9000+ Magic cards or the 5000+ Pokemon cards has a page, so this comment was not only based on misunderstanding, but on the commenter being a person who enjoys making up complete bullshit.
5. "Unfortunately, "I think this is silly" is the unspoken reason that a lot of articles get deleted."
   That doesn't explain why so many silly articles are not deleted, or why so many articles that get deleted are completely mundane.
6. "What the Wikipedia administrators should realize is that an online encyclopedia doesn't have to fit into a given shelf space."
   The problem is 1) assuming Wikipedia admins don't understand basic physical facts, and 2) responding to an arg

Sure do it, if it keeps it free

[renelicious]

I have no problem with this at all. Many people choose to not "pay" for TV but in exchange they have to watch advertisements.

I would rather put up with ads and still get to use the wikipedia free of charge than to loose it all together (or have to start paying for it.) I do the same thing here at Slashdot. ;)

Re:Sure do it, if it keeps it free

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with an advertising model is that it could all too easily compromise Wikipedia's neutrality. It's a well-known problem, for example, that product reviews published in magazines can be unreliable due to pressure from advertisers. If Wikipedia became dependent on advertising, how could it resist such pressure?

Re:Sure do it, if it keeps it free

[binarylarry]

True, however wikipedia has a lot more oversight.

The magazine article is finalized when its published. Wikipedia can be changed at any time.

Wikipedia is more like a discussion forum than a traditional encylopedia... which is what makes it more useful and typically more current and topical.

Re:Sure do it, if it keeps it free

[daniduclos]

Many people choose to not "pay" for TV but in exchange they have to watch advertisements.

That's why I get pissed off by advertisements on cable TV (in BR, at least, that happens all the time): I pay for TV AND have to watch comercials. Worst of two worlds :(

Monetary Reward : Bad Idea

[Davemania]

Maybe its my cynicism but using monetary rewards to encourage contribution (however it may be regulated) will only encourage users to find ways to exploit the system.

Re:Monetary Reward : Bad Idea

[yincrash]

I think the only way it would be doable would be to have hired staff, rather than an incentive for normal users.

Re:Monetary Reward : Bad Idea

[Merusdraconis]

The little I know of economic theory suggests that replacing intrinsic rewards - like the warm fuzzy feeling you get from contributing - with a small cash reward means that people will value contributing to Wikipedia at the price of the small cash reward. This is invariably less than the dollar amount they'd attach to an act of charity that also spreads knowledge.

tl;dr: don't offer cash rewards for people doing things for fuzzy emotional reasons. It doesn't work.

Re:Monetary Reward : Bad Idea

[mollymoo]

Absolutely. It changes the mindset from a social norm to a market norm. Not only do you get a lot more out of people in social relationships than with a small cash reward, but it's extremely difficult to go back to a social norm once you have tried a market norm. If anybody ever gets paid to write for Wikipedia it will either require going the whole professional Britannica route, or Wikipedia will die. They couldn't afford to pay people what it would be worth, in cash terms in a market mindset, to do the work they currently do for free. If you pay someone a dollar, you get a dollar's worth of effort from them, which generally isn't very much. If they volunteer and you pay them nothing, you get their best effort. Here is a decent research article on the subject. Well worth a read if you like knowing how people tick, as are the other articles and papers. You can buy the book too, I suspect it's at least as interesting as the articles.

Re:Monetary Reward : Bad Idea

[dubl-u]

Yes! That is exactly it.

For those who want to read a whole book on the topic, see Punished By Rewards. It makes a very persuasive case that for a great swathe of human activity, reward systems look very appealing but actually undermine or wreck the behaviors you're trying to encourage.

Re:Monetary Reward : Bad Idea

[oncehour]

What you're referring to is known as the "Overjustification Effect". Essentially, when you offer a reward or payment for something that a person was originally willing to do for free, you shift their motivations completely.

Rather than sticking with the intrinsic reasons such as providing knowledge for the good of mankind, making sure everything is up to date and correct, or imparting wisdom upon their "lessers", you've now forced them to focus their motivations on the extrinsic reason which is the reward. This has two very fatal flaws:

1) Quality - Laugh if you will, but there are reputable people still contributing to Wikipedia. Doctors, Lawyers, Mathematicians, Scientists, etc. These people are highly paid within their field and donating time because they find it interesting or noble. Start offering them money and it'll just be a pathetically miniscule sum compared to their salaries and likely turn them off from the whole deal.

2) Quantity - If you think NPOV is bad enough as it is, just wait until Wikipedia actually has to PAY for each article addition. Suddenly every single article choice will be scrutinized. "What's this 'Naruto', why would anyone care about it?" This sort of scrutinization and heavy handed interference is likely to kill off plenty of good articles before they even get started and the obscure wealth of articles on Wikipedia are what make it valuable.


tl;dr: OP is right.

I agree with the author

[Techmeology]

One of Wikipedia's greatest strengths is it's non-commercialistic nature. As soon as advertisements are brought in, and money paid for contributors, the focus is lifted from the community, and brought back to money. I'd hate to see that happen. As a scientist, I find the drive to money to be a source of great impurity.

Financial Reward (TM)

[junglee_iitk]

"He also suggests that contributors should be financially rewarded and that the lack of financial reward is the reason why 98.3% of registered Wikipedia users are inactive."

Oh! The writer couldn't be farther from truth. 98.3% of users are inactive because rest of the 1.7% users have formed a self-serving "community", and most people who are contributing in their spare time don't have the energy and will to fight their way inside this community.

On a side note, I heard that most content is generated by anonymous users. So why so stress on registered users?

I would not be surprised if such a suggestion is accepted. Community needs care! :)

Re:Financial Reward (TM)

[tjonnyc999]

Agree wholeheartedly. It's not the lack of financial incentive that causes the vast majority of reg. users to be inactive, it's fighting against the clique of "core users", the experienced and invested "Wiki Wizards", who treat the site as if it was their own private domain.
And no, this isn't just a hunch. I've been contributing to WP almost since its inception, mostly in the form of making minor edits on grammar/spelling/translation (I'm fluent in 3 languages and proficient in 2 more) as I'm browsing through articles. However, I've also written several articles, and contributed some hard-to-find industry-insider info, so it's not all "grammar nazi" work.
You would not believe how much effort you have to put in, in order to defend your contributions. There are SO many ways that the "clique users" and "page watchers" can annoy the hell out of a contributor... let me enumerate just a few:

1. Seemingly random reverts, without any explanation, of course.
2. Reverts that do not consider previous additions, i.e. your contrib + someone else's later questionable contrib get reverted EN MASSE.
3. Contrib removed with an "explanation" that is contrary to the article purpose, making it apparent that the "page watcher" has a personal stake in what's displayed.
4. Researched, cited, referenced, and well-written content replaced with mass-copy-paste, including a link to a commercial website. Crude, blatant, easy to detect, but nonetheless annoying as hell.

There are a lot more, but I think I've made my point. It's not the lack of financial reward, it's the continued frustration of having to monitor your contributions, and explain (sometimes over quite a few iterations) why the content is relevant, why it should be kept, etc.

Too many assumptions..

[onion2k]

The article makes a perilous, and all too common, assumption - that the addition of adverts will make no difference to the way users respond to the site. It's getting 10 billion hits now, but would "a simple text advert" drive any of them elsewhere? Would the text advert drive away contributors who are basically what Wikipedia is selling? Would someone else fork wikipedia and set up an ad-free rival?

It's easy to think that massive traffic now equates to massive traffic forever, and you can monetize that traffic without upsetting people, but you can't. It's that simple. Introducing big changes (and it would be a BIG change) would have far-reaching consequences that I don't believe the article writer has fully considered.

Integrity?

[girlintraining]

Why does everyone think as soon as you start to throw up billboards and advertisements that the organization in question has become unethical? Wiki provides a service to the community. Do you think those services are free? The internet has many services that are free except for advertising, simply because publishing information is very cheap (but not free). Even this website you're reading this comment on is supported by advertising. I don't think wikipedia should be any different from a million other websites that are supported by advertisements.

There are only a few other options here;

Micro-payments. Hahahaha! lolz. Great idea, but where's the infrastructure? In other news, where are those fleets of alternative-fuel cars? Oh yeah... On the drawing board, waiting for the infrastructure to be built.

Fee-based. Sure, charge maybe $12 a year for access to wikipedia... aaaaand 95% of their userbase says "Oh screw that" and the site tanks. This is pretty much committing suicide online to attempt this; Very few websites have survived the transition.

Subsidized. You know, like the BBC. Quality content, paid for by your tax dollars. Ah, wait... This is the United States and we ere hates dem dar communist bullshiat.

Clearly, advertisements is the best way to go for wiki.

Re:Integrity?

[Mr. Slippery]

Why does everyone think as soon as you start to throw up billboards and advertisements that the organization in question has become unethical?

When a publisher gets paid by advertisers, those advertisers have tremendous influence over what gets published. When the evening news is "brought to you by Amalgamated Profits, Inc.!", don't expect to see any coverage of that company's shady dealings.

If the Encyclopedia Britannica had ads for Pepsi on the endpapers of each volume, would you trust its entry on Coca-Cola?

There are only a few other options here...

And then there's the one that they're using, and that is working: asking for donations.

fees

[jasonhamilton]

good idea. 1 cent for them, 40 cents for the transaction fee. You really need to jump to $5+ to make it worthwhile. So how long do you think it will take an average user to hit 500 wikipedia searches? I don't know if I've ever visited that many pages.

Re:fees

[vlm]

good idea. 1 cent for them, 40 cents for the transaction fee. You really need to jump to $5+ to make it worthwhile.

Ironically, you posted this on a site that "solved" the micropayment transaction cost problem by allowing large donations and then deducting pennies from the balance for each pageview. I was a slashdot subscriber in the early 2000s, and that's how it worked at that time. I also got interesting bonuses like seeing stories "earlier". Maybe I could pay to get access to a wikipedia thats not been savaged by those deletionist idiots?

The bigger problem for wikipedia is allowing the legal system to weasel in via the money channel. So, I paid $10 to join, how come I can't post blatant propaganda wherever I please, or if the current admins randomly delete stuff people think is important why can't I, whom paid $10, get to delete the holocaust entry when and if I want? And you better let me or return my money and/or get sued for breach of contract. It would be a huge legal minefield.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

An imagined problem.

[Vellmont]

So some guy with a blog makes a post claiming that Wikipedia needs to change. I missed the part where there was a problem.

The facts are that the goal is within spitting distance. They're 97% of the way their. So what's the problem with this model?

As for the 98% dormant figure, it's irrelevant. Isn't what we care about if Wikipedia is expanding its coverage, increasing it's quality, and serving more people? The percentage of active people could be 1%, it could or it could be 50% and that wouldn't necessarily impact quality, scope, or number served.

(I'm also fairly sure quality, scope, and number served are increasing, but I have no evidence to support that).

The "community" will kill Wikipedia

[Aqualung812]

Your point is dead-on. I liked Wikipedia before the "community" took over. I remember when Wikipedia was compared to the "Hitchhikers Guide" and it was great.
Now, they try to be a "real" encyclopedia. The problem is, it will never be a real encyclopedia. Quoting Wikipedia will not be considered a valid source.
Quit worrying about content that isn't encyclopedia quality, and then maybe normal people will contribute again.

Re:The "community" will kill Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoting any encyclopedia is not "considered a valid source" in any scholarly work.

An encyclopedia is where you get the basic ideas and the pointers to the real sources.

Re:98.3% of registered users inactive

[jank1887]

and many of us drive-by'ers feel no need to register just to correct a few things. so the registred user number is really a meaningless piece of data.

*I* stopped contributing to Wikipedia,

[Jane Q. Public]

and have come to seriously question its veracity of late, because just in the last couple of years, nearly every article to which I tried to contribute had a band of "campers" hanging around it, who were much more interested in maintaining their own version of the truth via the preferential enforcement of technicalities in Wikipedia's rules, than they were in the truth content of said articles.

If you want to insist that I cite examples, then use the example of the article on naked short selling in the stock market. If you are not familiar with that case, look it up. It is hardly an isolated case.

Wikipedia was a good idea, but it has been seriously corrupted by people like these, and the foundation has not done anything to address the problem. On the contrary, it has, in some cases, supported people who have worked hard to keep certain articles inaccurate.

They don't get any of my money until they take serious measures to address this problem. Unless they do, Wikipedia will continue to go downhill... just as it would deserve.

Re:*I* stopped contributing to Wikipedia,

[staeiou]

Offline, we have to deal with caged monkeys throwing feces all the time. From political organizations of all ideologies to middle management, groups of people get angry or power-hungry or self-righteous and do things they shouldn't. Sometimes it is someone in power like police officer or a doctor, other times it is a group of teenagers who are just hellbent on stirring things up. But regardless, it is a fact of life that troublemakers exist in numbers and screw things up. We don't always win against those who we perceive as jerks in the wrong, but we don't expect to.

People talk about their experiences with Wikipedia and treat it as if it were somehow different from every other institution on the planet. They expect some utopian harmony where people are calmly and coolly working together for a common goal. And most of the time, it is like that. Yet like everything else, it isn't perfect, people break rules, there are jerks, bad things happen to good people, and so on. What gets me is that for some reason, people just give up on Wikipedia when they would normally defend any their involvement in other civic, non-profit, for-profit, governmental, or educational organization.

Re:*I* stopped contributing to Wikipedia,

[Jane Q. Public]

Actually, in the most recent case (for me), I was trying to clarify the kind of action on a particular kind of gun. The "camper" did not want the issue clarified, and did not accept Wikipedia's own article on the subject as sufficient authority. He went so far as to edit the discussion page (not the article page, the discussion page), to remove my comments about the issue.

He was not interested in whether I was correct, but only whether his version of the Wikipedia "rules" were followed, but only of course the rules he wanted to enforce, when he wanted to enforce them.

But that is only one example, involving myself. I have seen other blatant examples, and some have been on the news.

Re:*I* stopped contributing to Wikipedia,

[gnarlyhotep]

Excepting that the naked short sellign issue is being taken up by a considerably varied group of financial people here, not just the "Crackpots" you describe.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122885715615592401.html for one example.

While it's far from total mainstream acceptance, the current state of wikipedia articles is abysmally onesided and biased toward the NSS=ok viewpoint, with all other viewpoints supressed, and anyone attempting to add such information banned as a sock of a certain user. And no, I am not that user, and have never edited such articles, despite being appalled by their complete lack of objectivity.

Re: Quoting

[TaoPhoenix]

However, we don't do scholarly work here. Slashdot is a reasonably intelligent discussion forum, and a Wiki link to get the rawest of raw basics of something is more accurate than complete non-information we had to start with.

98.3%

[TorKlingberg]

98.3% of registered users are inactive because they created an account edited something and forgot all about it. What percentage of registered Slashdot accounts are active?

About advertising, some people seem to thing of it as money for nothing. It's not, you are selling something. In Wikipedia's case its integrity.

The fundraiser seems to have met its goal, and if that is ever a problem there is some fat to cut from the foundation expenses before ads are necessary.

Re:Right.

[XanC]

It's publicly funded, so they don't care who they piss off.

...Except for the hand that feeds them. I'd rather have my news media unafraid to challenge the government, thanks.

Re:Let's set some ground rules

[Dun Malg]

Very similar to how Public Broadcast System in the US used to work.

ie: "Sunkist Raisins proudly supports PBS programming and the development of young minds through proper nutrition"

Neutral and relevant to the theme of PBS and still gets advert message across.

I've never much cared for that stuff. "Sponsorship" where the advertiser still gets mentioned by name and function is just advertising to a different type of audience. In the early days of television and radio, the above is exactly how regular advertising was done.

Notability Requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I'm now an "inactive" editor on Wikipedia has nothing to do with money - it's because of their BS notability rules.

These rules seem to get passed when most editors aren't looking, and then notability Nazis swoop in and delete entire articles that many people spent many hours working on over the years.

When people complain, even when it's held to a vote and the vast majority of users want the article to stay, it winds up deleted anyway due to these notability rules.

That's a silly metric.

[Grendel Drago]

People arrive and leave. Even if the number of stable users stays static, or grows at a rate slower than that of new people arriving, the proportion of active users will drop. Hell, look at Slashdot--total contribution volume by commenters is larger than it was, but the vast majority of accounts are dead.

You may as well say that the percentage of dead projects on SourceForge and Freshmeat mean that nobody's contributing to those sites.

If you took all editors of an article over all time, there would be a completely different consensus than the momentary ones that occur when a single dissenter arrives.

Well, yes. That's what consensus means. People who join Wikipedia and intend to "fix" an article that they see as unfairly slanted are invariably disappointed, as I think you were.