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Top 10 Reasons Not to Donate to Wikipedia (view source)
Revision as of 02:28, 24 March 2010
, 02:28, 24 March 2010→They don't get the job done: Adding extremely insightful commentary, paraphrased from "Cock-up-over-conspiracy" of the Wikipedia Review.
* A [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2902 quality, not quantity] drive in 2006, as well as the post-Essjay "[http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=7090 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 [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2902 quality, not quantity] drive in 2006, as well as the post-Essjay "[http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=7090 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 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Lists_of_topics topic lists] has existed since November 2007, but it is still half unfinished.
* A WikiProject of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Lists_of_topics topic lists] has existed since November 2007, but it is still half unfinished.
Indeed, in a way, all those big donations that overly generous donors gave have missed the target completely. To paraphrase [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=28967&view=findpost&p=227814 one insightful observer], '''it is not the Wikimedia Foundation that makes the Wikipedia, it is the editors'''. Giving money to the WMF is like leaving a gratuity for a cotton plantation owner because you like the quality of work the slaves are doing. Giving the slave owners an even bigger carrot to dangle over the heads of the worker donkeys who are ultimately going to get the stick, not the carrot. It's irresponsible use of money; unethical.
Where the money needs to go is exactly where the Foundation will not put it -- into quality copy-writing tutoring and services, as well as expert content adjudicators. Not to mention a healthy dose of political lobbying "on wiki" to rein in the more radical of the "free culture" zealots who think absolutely nothing of blocking tens of thousands of British users of the site, just to be able to proclaim as "art" [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/12/wikipedia-block/ exploitative nude child photography] used in service of a mediocre metal rock band.
Surely, even the largest donors have never actually thought this through and never examined Wikipedia closely enough. They probably don't realise that the Wikimedia Foundation has nothing to do with the creation of content, that the content happens ''despite'' their involvement, not because of it. No, many fat donors simply received a fat and glossy public relations briefing with lot of fat statistics that seduced them into making their fat donation to the Wikimedia Foundation, who will simply stuff 50 cents of every donated dollar into a very fat bank account.
The money doesn't help Wikipedia improve. At all.
==Wikipedia pollutes the minds of children.==
==Wikipedia pollutes the minds of children.==