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Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

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Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#61

Post by corin_ »

kmfrk wrote: post #20
d2viant wrote: post #18

I've always thought Google should just buy them. If you're going to index the worlds information, this is a good start. Google has the resources and power to make sure it remains alive and well.

Are you sure the owners would accept the offer? This allows Wikipedia to be truly free.

For the various reasons other people have commented, I can't see anyone ever trying to buy Wikipedia.

However, in reply to your question: In many (I'd argue most) cases, people have a price. Hell, I'd bet that with enough billions you could bribe a hell of a lot of married couples to split up, yet alone someone to abandon their community spirit and sell a volunteer-run organisation.

(Second paraphrase doesn't, however, top the first.)

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#62

Post by ghshephard »

tptacek wrote: post #37
StavrosK wrote: post #3

Great, now how much more money do they need to buy the disk space necessary to stop deletionism?

There are tens of great arguments you could have made against deletionism, why make a bullshit one? You know it's not about the disk space --- though presumably not all of the 16 people who modded you up know that as well.

I'm guessing at _least_ 15 out of those 16 people knew that deletionism has nothing to do with the cost of disk space. It was more a vote of frustration over the overreaching that occurs when seminal figures like _why have their Wikipedia Page deleted. There are _shades_ of notability, and I agree that someone has to make a call:

  Not:     o How many times have I sneezed today. 
  Barely:  o The Ties of my Local Anchorman
  Notable: o Pokemon Characters, _why, Canada
Unfortunately, the deletionists have moved from "Not" to "Barely" and in some cases have started yanking out very clearly notable pages. The upvote, above, is, I suspect, people expressing that frustration.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#63

Post by tptacek »

ghshephard wrote: post #62
tptacek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tens of great arguments you could have made against deletionism, why make a bullshit one? You know it's not about the disk space --- though presumably not all of the 16 people who modded you up know that as well.

I'm guessing at _least_ 15 out of those 16 people knew that deletionism has nothing to do with the cost of disk space. It was more a vote of frustration over the overreaching that occurs when seminal figures like _why have their Wikipedia Page deleted. There are _shades_ of notability, and I agree that someone has to make a call: Not: o How many times have I sneezed today. Barely: o The Ties of my Local Anchorman Not…

Your anti-deletionism argument is insufficiently doctrinaire: it acknowledges that there may exist some true statements that might merit deletion from Wikipedia. Many inclusionists find that idea repellant.

For whatever it's worth: _why has a page. Nobody ever tried to delete Canada. Pokemon characters have pages because they are easily verified.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#64

Post by klipt »

kens wrote: post #33
slig wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the editing history is archived, right?

No, normal users cannot see deleted articles or their edit histories (which I think is crazy). Only Wikipedia administrators can see this information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Acces... says: Because many deleted articles are found to contain defamatory or other legally suspect material, deleted pages are not permitted to be generally viewed. However, they remain in the database (at least…

> Because many deleted articles are found to contain defamatory or other legally suspect material, deleted pages are not permitted to be generally viewed.

But if defamatory material is added to a popular article and reverted away, doesn't it remain in the edit history forever?

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#65

Post by clemesha »

Why are people so consistently negative about Wikipedia?

Just looking at the top comments here, and other places around the internet - I think it's far too common.

Let's be more positive. Wikipedia is amazing - congrats to them for successfully achieving their fund-raising goals.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#66

Post by nazgulnarsil »

redthrowaway wrote: post #56
tokenadult wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The express purpose is to remain neutral and to avoid conflicts of interest. How well do you think Wikipedia is doing at that? (I ask as a new Wikipedian, registered and actively editing only for about a half year, who has seen many very controversial articles that are anything but neutral in point of view, ads or no ads.)

I've been editing for a couple years now. The vast majority of articles beyond stub class are great. The ones that get brought up on AN/I or ArbCom or MedCab are generally on subjects that people hold very strong opinions on. For example, the first article I became very involved with was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Ar... . When I came to that article, it was in the middle of an edit war…

well, that and vast swathes of historical sections and articles are whig history echo chambers.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#67

Post by philwelch »

tptacek wrote: post #53
philwelch wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The project can't verify content for non-notable subjects. If that was the case, there would be no need for notability policy, merely the current verifiability standards. Unfortunately, there are many verifiable subjects of legitimate interest to people (startups, English Premier League reserve goalkeepers, fashion models who have only appeared on six magazine covers in their career, Iranian power plants) that deleti…

WP people don't want the encyclopedia to "forget about" those topics; they are bickering about whether they deserve entire pages to themselves. ... which again gives lie to the idea that the issue is "disk space". I'm not trying to get sucked into this "deletionism" vs "inclusionism" argument, since those labels suck all the oxygen out of the discussion ("what, you're siding with people who think _why doesn't belong…

Virtually no deletion arguments conclude with a merge, though. Typically the information is completely lost, no matter how well cited it is. Which makes the verifiability argument bankrupt as well, at least as a defense of what actually happens on Wikipedia.

If the verifiability argument were sufficient, the notability policies would all be scrapped and deletion policy would round down to "delete articles which don't have any verifiable statements in them, merge articles which are less than two or three full paragraphs long". Which, incidentally, was more or less the radical inclusionist platform back when I wasted time on Wikipedia.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#68

Post by celoyd »

tptacek wrote: post #63
ghshephard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing at _least_ 15 out of those 16 people knew that deletionism has nothing to do with the cost of disk space. It was more a vote of frustration over the overreaching that occurs when seminal figures like _why have their Wikipedia Page deleted. There are _shades_ of notability, and I agree that someone has to make a call: Not: o How many times have I sneezed today. Barely: o The Ties of my Local Anchorman Not…

Your anti-deletionism argument is insufficiently doctrinaire: it acknowledges that there may exist some true statements that might merit deletion from Wikipedia. Many inclusionists find that idea repellant. For whatever it's worth: _why has a page. Nobody ever tried to delete Canada. Pokemon characters have pages because they are easily verified.

Your anti-deletionism argument is insufficiently doctrinaire

Having just appreciated your criticism of a sarcastic and unhelpful comment, I hope you’re not turning to easy point-scoring yourself.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#69

Post by tokenadult »

redthrowaway wrote: post #56
tokenadult wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The express purpose is to remain neutral and to avoid conflicts of interest. How well do you think Wikipedia is doing at that? (I ask as a new Wikipedian, registered and actively editing only for about a half year, who has seen many very controversial articles that are anything but neutral in point of view, ads or no ads.)

I've been editing for a couple years now. The vast majority of articles beyond stub class are great. The ones that get brought up on AN/I or ArbCom or MedCab are generally on subjects that people hold very strong opinions on. For example, the first article I became very involved with was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Ar... . When I came to that article, it was in the middle of an edit war…

We will never make Wikipedia perfect, although I have some ideas for making it more so.

I'd love to hear ideas about making Wikipedia better. I'd especially like ideas about how to encourage new editors with good sources (that is, access to libraries or better specialized databases) on technical but controversial subjects to participate more. I left this thread for a few hours, following links to the annual reports and also doing some of my own Wikipedia editing, and I'm also very curious about how to reduce the decline in the number of active administrators.

Re: Wikipedia Raises $16 Million to Remain Ad-Free

#70

Post by coderdude »

gojomo wrote: post #52
coderdude wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you deserved the many downvotes you received. It's not like you were trolling. People here just downvote things they disagree with. Personally, I think Google should donate a decent amount to WP because Freebase relies on it. Without WP, Freebase would have been useless. (Disclaimer: I have no idea if Google actually donated.)

Google donated $2 million in early 2010: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia...

Thanks for the link and the info. It would seem Google is on top of this situation. :)
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