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Facebook Donates $1 Million To Support Wikipedia (venturebeat.com)
Technology giants rely heavily on Wikipedia's extensive database to source information for their platforms. So it's only fair that they show interest in the long-term sustainability of the online encyclopedia. This week, Facebook made its support official. From a report: The Wikimedia Foundation announced late Thursday that Facebook has contributed $1 million to Wikimedia Endowment, a fund to financially support the online encyclopedia and other Wikimedia projects. "We are grateful to Facebook for this support, and hope this marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration to support Wikipedia's future," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said in a statement.
In an opinion piece published in June, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Katherine Maher urged companies to better support the service. "As companies draw on Wikipedia for knowledge -- and as a bulwark against bad information -- we believe they too have an opportunity to be generous," she wrote. "At Wikimedia, we already love and deeply appreciate the millions of people around the world who make generous charitable contributions because they believe in our values. But we also believe that we deserve lasting, commensurate support from the organisations that derive significant and sustained financial value from our work." Further reading: Wikimedia Endowment Gets New $1 Million Backing From Amazon.
In an opinion piece published in June, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Katherine Maher urged companies to better support the service. "As companies draw on Wikipedia for knowledge -- and as a bulwark against bad information -- we believe they too have an opportunity to be generous," she wrote. "At Wikimedia, we already love and deeply appreciate the millions of people around the world who make generous charitable contributions because they believe in our values. But we also believe that we deserve lasting, commensurate support from the organisations that derive significant and sustained financial value from our work." Further reading: Wikimedia Endowment Gets New $1 Million Backing From Amazon.
Zuckerberg got tired of seeing that pop-up?
#DeleteChrome
I also donated an infinitesimally small portion of my revenue to Wikipedia, where's my article?
Hey, props where props are due.
Not everything that a bad entity does is bad. This is a good thing.
Hell yes. Wikipedia forever. That's the shining city on the hill project that truly shows the best elements of the Internet. Openness, collaboration, non-greediness, and a respect for truth and knowledge.
Citing Wikipedia is a no-no. However, Wikipedia does point to links, otherwise one will find the page reverted [1] with a [[Citation Needed]] as the reason. What you then do is visit the pages cited, and use those (if relevant), and use the citations from those pages. Wikipedia is a good place to find authoritative works on a topic.
[1]: Assuming you don't find the page reverted anyway.
Back in the old days before Wikipedia we had a collection of 20-26 books called an Encyclopedia. Even back in 7th grade I was taught we couldn't use these Encyclopedias for citation. But as a source to give us general information to help guide us to sources, that we can cite, because they will give us more detailed information.
For many of these Encyclopedias we only had a paragraph or two on most of the topics. While Wikipedia often has far more information it isn't classified as a source for research, but a way to get general knowledge on the topic, thus why a citation from Wikipedia will probably give a failing mark on your paper, because you didn't go to the source material, you just went to an abbreviated summary on the topic.
Also, why should we automatically shy away or discredit an article that has some agenda. We should be smart enough to catch that, and realized that the writer may have a point that is being expressed, and if you disagree with it, then you need to confront the points do your research to show they are invalid or wrong. Not just go in a huff "This information goes against my Uninformed beliefs, so it is wrong!"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Why do all good deeds need to be an altruistic sacrifice?
That is a very puritanical view on charity. Give until it hurts then give some more, suffering is the only pathway to God.
This is like dropping our spare change in the salvation army bin, we are not going to suffer or go bankrupt from it. But it is still helping a cause.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Citing Wikipedia is a no-no.
Citing any encyclopedia is a no-no. Citations should be to original sources, not to secondary compilations.
So where do you find link to the original sources? At the bottom of the Wiki page, of course.
Look up an editor named "Essjay" and realize most of the articles he fucked with are still tilted. And basically everyone he banned and lied about is still banned because despite everything they let his abuses stand.
Not unlikely... if you look at a typical day's log of articles for deletion they're overwhelmingly bios and/or their creative works trying to make themselves "notable". But if you look at pages like deletionpedia you can find things like Main Belt asteroids with a subpage for each one that got mass wiped. For a wikipedia with room a page for every London tube station and a list of all the Pokemon characters, you may say these tiny little rocks aren't significant in any way. But they're factual, not self-promoting and somebody put a lot of effort into creating it. Then somebody said meh insignificant and *poof* it was gone. I have no problem in believing there's a lot of editors that legitimately got pissed and left.
I've had corrections auto-reverted by bots even though they were properly documented and cited. Some, if not many pages are effectively owned by a small number of edit Nazis who will revert anything you do making the "anyone can edit" into hollow words. There are ways to complain but 99% will just give up and walk away rather than become wiki-lawyers just to correct a damn web page. To be fair, they also have a big problem with vandalism so I understand why some are very possessive, but the practical effect for anyone not into that war is that you buy into the slogans, do something good and they piss on it.
Also you don't really get any positive feedback when you contribute, it's not obvious how many read anything you added and would like to give you a thumbs up. All you really get is the occasional frosty piss, it's for the most part very thankless work. Which may have its effect on who stay on and how they behave, this is their way to power trip and own their little snippet of Wikpedia... *insert Gollum meme here*. I did contribute a bit in the early days when there was a lot of obviously important stuff that wasn't on WP and it was more like "let's just expand and throw shit at the wall and see what sticks", once it became more like this I got out. I mean I understand the page on Hitler is controversial... but I don't want to be in wiki-court about main belt asteroids.
P.S. No, that's wasn't mine if you think that...
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