I agree, that everything has some inherent bias, the problem I see is that Wikipedia is often taken as the "gospel", from both western and a lot of non-western residents, and because of it's status as a "world-wide, collaborative, encyclopedia" it's assumed that it is unbiased --while people treat other sources with more caution.
Funny, I seem to run into people everywhere saying you can't trust Wikipedia. Where are all these people who take it as Gospel?
For everyone telling you "not to trust Wikipedia", there are 100 out there citing it for their blog post/article/school paper/personal research...
I HATE non-commercialism. It's like saying that a charitable hospital can ask for money, but can't run a cake-stall to raise it. Charities end up spending a huge amount of money soliciting donations. Wikipedia's lucky, because they can nag everyone on the internet for essentially no fee, and even partly deny service (by offering a gimped service). The Red Cross can't give disaster victims a nag message before helping…
There are plenty of non-profits that have some commercial-ish operations. E.g. hospital gift shop profits often go to the hospital, and plenty of museums sell related stuff. But generally it's a terrible idea. Business is hard, and it's a different kind of hard than charities normally deal with. Being good at 2 things is more than twice as hard at being good at one thing, so I think charities are wise to generally st…
There are also psychological reasons why this is difficult-humans tend to view transactions as either social or commercial, but not both. One famous anecdote is how a daycare was struggling with parents constantly arriving late to pick up their children. The daycare started charging a penalty fee, and late pickups actually went up-because previously, the parents had viewed it as a social obligation, which was more of a motivator for them.
There is another issue here as well that isn't being considered. If you look at the 2010 Financial Report that lists contributors there are a few foundations that give wikimedia more than 1 million. And there are 6 that give between 100,000 and 999,999. And then even more that give other varying amounts. As well as obviously individuals. That's money that isn't going to other non-profits and potentially non-profits t…
Wow, so Wikipedia is being greedy by not putting ads on their pages?
I wouldn't say greedy is the right word. But they are disadvantaging another charity simply because they like the look and feel of their community being free from advertising. Maybe selfish is a better way to put it.