Top 10 Reasons Not to Donate to Wikipedia

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1. Your donation will fund Wikia, Inc., which is not a charity.

Your non-profit donation will ultimately line the for-profit pockets of Jimmy Wales, Amazon, Google, the Bessemer Partners, and other corporate beneficiaries. How? Wikipedia is a commercial traffic engine. As of December 2009, there are over 21,300 external links from Wikipedia to Wales' Wikia.com sites, which are funded by Google AdSense revenues. These links are being added at the rate of over 500 per month. Did you know that Amazon invested $10,000,000 in the for-profit Wikia venture? It's therefore rather interesting that Wikipedia tolerates over 52,750 links to Amazon's retail site from the supposedly non-profit, no-advertising, anti-spam Wikipedia site. Isn't it? Meanwhile, did you know that the popular movie site IMDB.com is owned by Amazon, and you can buy Amazon products directly from IMDB pages? Well, surprise surprise -- there are over 217,600 links to Amazon's IMDB site from Wikipedia. No wonder Amazon particularly wished to invest in Wikia, Inc. Its co-founder makes sure that the external linking environment on Wikipedia is hospitable for the Amazon link spamming machine!

Now here is the really fascinating thing. If you go to Jimmy Wales' "talk page" on Wikipedia, and you ask him whether he feels that this obscene number of links to his for-profit site and those of his investors might be a conflict of interest or self-dealing, Jimbo won't even have time to respond. One or two of his sycophants will fairly promptly dismiss or erase your message; and if you try one more time to ask this question, you're likely to get blocked from editing Wikipedia altogether. Go ahead, try it!

If these facts are not enough to convince you that money makes its way through the back door to Wikia, Inc., then perhaps a look at the front door is in order. The Wikimedia Foundation announced in January 2009 that it will begin paying rent to Wikia, Inc. on a monthly basis, using tax-advantaged funds from the Ruth and Frank Stanton Fund.

In August 2009, Matt Halprin, Partner of the Omidyar Network, was asked to join the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. Halprin is charged with an Omidyar team that "pursues investments in Social Media", and Omidyar invested part of $4 million into Wikia, Inc. in 2006. So, he's almost undoubtedly on top of the Wikia return on investment. It looks very fishy to have a new WMF board member who's a partner at a firm that invested some portion of $4 million into the $14-million privately-held firm of the "Emeritus Chair" of the WMF. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to explain how this is just a "coincidence", being that there were probably more than a thousand other equally-qualified stars of social media who could have been selected, who have not a single tie back to funding Wikia, Inc. What are the odds?

2. Wikipedia has too much power.

Wikipedia smothers out more authoritative, but less-linked-to sites in Google and other search engine rankings. Microsoft closed down Encarta, mainly due to the Wikipedia effect. Wikipedia has garnered an ability to set the 'truth' in mainstream media and blogs that consult it every day, without digging deeper to verify facts from independent sources. Controversial Wikipedia pages suffer from "ownership" by content bullies who drive off independent editors, all supported by administrator cabals who follow one another around, supporting reverted edits and editor blocks and bans.

3. The Wikimedia Foundation's leadership may be corrupt and inept.

Jimbo Wales (hiring a liar "Essjay", then telling the press he "didn't really have a problem with it", not to mention other transgressions); Florence Devouard (now retired from the WMF, but noted for the infamous babysitting stipend she demanded); Angela Beesley (routinely edits the Wikipedia article about her company, Wikia, and adds external links to Wikia, all against Wikipedia community guidelines); Mike Godwin (edits Wikipedia anonymously, again against community guidelines that discourage self-promotion).

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4. Wikimedia Foundation finances are suspect.

The Wikimedia Foundation has a history of unclear, tardy, and misleading financial statements. The early Form 990's filed by the Foundation stated that there was "no business relationship" between any of the Board members, even though 60% of the Board were employed by the for-profit enterprise Wikia, Inc.! Early on, the Wikimedia Foundation asked an attorney to design the organization as a membership body, but after his work was nearly complete, they scrapped the idea, realizing that a majority vote of members could unseat a corrupt Board of Trustees and demand line-by-line financial accountability. They didn't want that possibility to threaten them. Multiple top staff and former officers have privately expressed concern over financial wrongdoing by certain board members. The former Chief Operating Officer of the Foundation (Carolyn Doran) was a wanted felon. The former executive director and head legal counsel resigned due to problems the organization had with him. The Foundation lacks a Board of Trustees with a wide base of civic and social stakeholders. They are all cronies and insiders who were incubated within Wikipedia. The Foundation is by design narrow and weak, reflecting only the interests of a dysfunctional social networking community.

The current Executive Director and Deputy Director have a reported compensation budget of $472,000, which is excessive for an organization of this size. Publicly-funded KUHT-TV in Houston has 71 employees, revenue of $11.5 million, and CEO John Hesse makes $158,628 in salary, benefits, and compensation. Wikipediots might protest, "But, but, but Houston has such a lower cost of living than San Francisco!" Okay, let's look at San Francisco.

Earth Island Institute has revenue of about $6.5 million, 15 employees, (practically the same size as the Wikimedia Foundation, and headquarters in the very same San Francisco) but the CEO makes only $67,423. The Northern California chapter of the Arthritis Foundation has revenue of $5.1 million, but the CEO makes only $45,050. Child Family Health International in San Francisco has revenue of $4.0 million, it appears to have 11 employees, but the CEO makes only $82,000. All of this information comes from Charity Navigator. Embarrassingly, the Wikimedia Foundation receives only 2 stars out of a possible four in Charity Navigator's Organizational Efficiency category.

Ask yourself, how is Wikipedia inherently different now than it was in 2005? Honestly, there has been no major transformation there at the site. Just some server volume growth -- a terribly cheap commodity to manage. So, why have the gross receipts gone from $361,000 to over $6 million?

Answer: Compensation for people not really doing anything besides watch the servers, enjoy global jet-setting, and run damage control for Jimbo's dalliances.

5. Wikipedia is more a roleplaying game than an encyclopedia.

While Wikipedia is disguised as an encyclopedia, it is actually nothing more than a fluid forum where ultimate editorial control belongs to a corps of administrators, most of whom act without real-world accountability because they don't reveal their real names, locations, and potential conflicts of interest -- even though they will not hesitate, through "complex investigations", to "out" the real names, locations, and perceived conflicts of interest of other, non-administrative editors. Why give your real-world dollars to a virtual-world multi-player forum? Have you made your donation to Second Life, too?

6. Why not donate to Citizendium instead? They insist on real-world credentials.

Citizendium is a new encyclopedia project founded by a co-founder of Wikipedia. There, the editors do disclose who they are in real life. You probably donated to Wikipedia last year, so why not spread the wealth to new projects like Citizendium this year?

7. They don't get the jobs done

There have been a number of Wikipedia projects or initiatives that have been launched with at least some fanfare and/or promise that they are important and that they will be carried out.

But then they fail.

Some examples:

  • The [Greenspun illustration grant http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/213/reflections-on-pgip-phase-1] was received, but less than 5% of it was disbursed properly.
  • We are still waiting for Flagged Revisions implementation on English Wikipedia (a dream since August 2007, a suggestion since January 2009, a Foundation-level proposal since January 2009, and a call to raise hell if not implemented by September 25, 2009).
  • Release of Episode 45 on Wikivoices is permanently suppressed. (So volatile an issue, we are forbidden to even discuss it on Wikipedia.
  • WMF staff member Rand Montoya's 2009 Fundraising Survey never launched in 2009. Repeated asks for status updates went ignored for several months. Even a Foundation-level inquiry has been met with silence.
  • A quality, not quantity drive in 2006, as well as the post-Essjay "Credentials Verification" boondoggle of 2007 were announced to great fanfare in the tech media, but once Jimbo Wales and his crew got the public relations boost they wanted, the initiatives themselves just vanished.
  • A WikiProject of topic lists has existed since November 2007, but it is still half unfinished.

8. Wikipedia pollutes the minds of children.

Jimmy Wales trying to extract another donation

Perhaps you're philosophically opposed to censorship and think this is a daft point. Can you be sure that your shareholders and customers feel the same way? Wikipedia contains graphic material that might be morally contemptible in many countries -- even in the West. This includes images and articles depicting nipple piercings, anilingus, labia piercings, child pornography modeling (erotic), frenum rings, strappado bondage, erotic spanking, incest pornography, smotherboxes, and Courtney Cummz and her directorial debut 'Face Invaders'[1].

Imagine notifying a permanent board member of an organization that he founded with the following message:

[We have learned...] that wiki administrators under the age of 18 are taking routine administrative actions in respect of images which could reasonably be described as pornography (in this case, the administrator Julian C. is a self identified minor, and the image (which will appear if you click the link) is of a woman masturbating -- the file is called 'Masturbating Amy'. I'd like to see some external advice sought on this matter, and I'd like to see [[Wikipedia:Child protection]] grow to contain some meaningful ideas for consideration.

Then, imagine the founder of the non-profit, tax-advantaged organization responding:

Hi privatemusings, yes, I'm aware of discussions in this area.--Jimbo Wales 18:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation doesn't care about doing the least thing to protect children. That's the responsibility of parents! Imagine dropping off your young teenager to volunteer with some friends at the soup kitchen one morning, then one of the homeless men starts showing the youngster centerfolds from Hustler, then when you discover this you go to the kitchen's director, and he says, "Yes, I'm aware of problems in this area," and then his lawyer says, "I think if parents want to restrict children's access to adult material, that's fine... [but don't] infringe on either adults' rights or minors' rights."

So, if you wish to support young boys administering pornography on a non-profit website, get out your checkbook and send $69 to the Wikimedia Foundation. Hey, what do you expect from an organization that hired as its Deputy Director a young man who promoted the notion during a scandalized lecture about child pornography that in the context of children, non-violent porn does no harm ("Gewaltfreie Pornographie schadet nicht")?

9. Wikipedia is in a legally precarious position.

Section 230 was designed to protect Internet service providers from libelous content generated by customers and re-distributed by the ISP. The Wikimedia Foundation has hidden behind this protection by claiming that it, too, is an "interactive computer service". We all know it's not, and one day, libel published on Wikipedia is going to lead to a courtroom test. Unaccountable administrators are given the "Oversight" capability to make problematic content literally "disappear", and the Foundation hopes that the warrant of these administrators is never traced back to their offices. For more on the history of noteworthy libel against innocent parties on Wikipedia, please look up the cases of John Seigenthaler, of Taner Akcam, and of Fuzzy Zoeller.

10. Wikipedia is unpredictable, inaccurate, and unmanageable.

Wikipedians have leaned on a so-called study by Nature magazine that supposedly proved Wikipedia's accuracy rivaled that of Encyclopedia Britannica. Even though the study was faulty to the core, it still showed if you look only at scientific topics, and if you ignore the structure and clarity of the writing, and if you treat all inaccuracies as equivalent, then you would still conclude that Wikipedia is about 32% less accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.

In other research, the 100 articles about the hundred United States Senators have been shown to render erroneous, if not libelous, information about 6.8% of the time. The Wikipedia leadership have been promising for over two years that a systematic fix for this kind of garbage (called "flagged revisions") is always just around the corner. It is time to call the Wikipedia leadership on their obfuscation.

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External Links

Notes

  1. ^ Cf Worst of Wikipedia
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