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74 Comments
- wphj, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10595% of the time the best result on Google is a Wikipedia article.
- LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -4/+37Google, Microsoft, or Apple should rise to the occasion and help out. It's doubtful that Apple will. Microsoft's a maybe, but I'd be surprised if Google just stood by and let Wikipedia go down. That's assuming Wikipedia ever gets in that situation, which the article show, it isn't, at least not for now.
I use Wikipedia EVERY DAY for one thing or another. The importance of that project cannot be underestimated. - ElMoselYEE, on 10/12/2007, -5/+32use spell-check, because i doubt it let that one slip through.
not to mention, i have absolutely no clue what effect you were trying to achieve by holding down the keys for 1 second longer than you are supposed to.
lastly, AFAIK it is phonetically impossible to hold out the sound of a 'g' for the duration of 3 letters (seriously, try it), much less the silent e's on the end of both of those words. - meatmcguffin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24Thanks for making me sound like an idiot while i said gooooggglleeee about eight times in public
- jstevewhite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22@shawnanigans -
Wow. There are many brands that are just as tasty without the caffeine content. lordskywalker mentioned THREE companies, and Apple as NUMBER THREE. He didnt' say anything about "Apple hosting wikipedia", he said, 'Help out" - which I interpreted as "donate cash" ( because Apple is fond of innovative products, but it was unlikely because Apple likes to PURCHASE innovative products, and Wikipedia isn't for sale ); he mentioned Microsoft as a maybe because Bill and Melinda Gates are well known for contributing to non-profits and charities in HUGE quantities; he mentioned Google because, as another pointed out, a large percentage of the time the top (and most valuable) hit on a Google search is at Wikipedia.
I like Apple, and use OSX, but frankly, from a 'corporate worship' standpoint, I like Google more. So maybe you can call me a Google fanboy piece of *****, if it will make you feel better. And perhaps I can then, casually, refer to you as that "***** idiot Windows fanboi piece of *****", if you don't mind (of course that's an assumption - I've just never met anyone but Windows fanboys that *hate* Apple that much). - xsecretfiles, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20We have uncyclopedia as a backup no worry guys!
- crgnetworks, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising#Please_help_us_by_donating_today.21
there you go. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13@shawnanigans, you seem to have some emotional problems. Digg probably isn't the place for you. Perhaps you should try somewhere else - a padded cell for example.
And no i am not an Apple fanboy, or a MS fanboy, but i am rather fond of Wikipedia, hence clicking on this article. Why the ***** did you bother? - loof, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13googlepedia beta FTW!
- JacNet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Anyone can afford to keep Digging!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Not to forget encyclopaedia dramatica.
- JurneyAhed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I'm surprised you didn't mentioned Yahoo!, since they've donated hosting and servers to Wikipedia in the past.
- kalleanka, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10There is no way Wikipedia disapears within the near future.
One way or another they stay alive. Either by more donations, or by start serving ads. Whatever it is, they won't go away. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Stop crying for a change, shawnanigans.
- khag7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Google will pick that up in 2 seconds if they're really going down.
- scotticus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9blitzenn: Wow... you're opinionated.
You do realize that whenever a human writes something down, it has a certain bias affiliated with it, right? I literally use Wikipedia everyday, and I think it's a great "quick and dirty" resource to keep you moving if you don't know what something is. I don't know who these people are who spend all day writing articles, but they deserve our deepest thanks. I think the fact that anyone can edit the articles actually helps prevent defamatory speech to a certain degree... vandalism is always going to be an issue, but as long as these internet angels keep contributing and keeping watch, it should be kept to a minimum. It takes a special kind of idiot to be reactionary to news headlines, and not learn more for yourself (like, say... by actually using wikipedia). It's by no means a perfect resource: no encyclopedia is. It's meant to be a cursory introduction into whatever topic you look up.
On top of all that, Wikipedia has a number of sub-communities which greatly increase the breadth of information in there. There are a ton of specialized articles that pertains to science which you would never find in a typical encyclopedia.
Re: references -- it's user generated content. If you want more references, you can add them. Or you can request that the article get more references. I don't recall ever seeing a well-referenced article in an encyclopedia anyway. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9ffs, in the article yourself submitted, the wikipedia guy tries to say the previous news were all alarmist, and you make yet another alarmist title.
some people want the attention regardless of the damage that may cause. no wonder tv and papers' popularity go to hell. - Kles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Yeah. There is no way in hell Wikipedia would go down. Even if it did run out of money, a large web company (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc) would likely pick it up.
- strabes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@shawn: there's plenty of great torrent clients for linux...how about azureus?
- uttles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Wikipedia needs to make revenue some other way than asking for money. For example, they should have text ads somewhere on the page. Sorry if they don't want to, but you gotta pay the bills.
- misterjangles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4A lot of companies are perpetually about 4-6 months away from going out of business. That is, assuming they don't bring in any revenue during that time. Alternatively you could phrase it that they have a 4-6 month of operating expenses in the war chest.
The scary thing is that tons of businesses are exactly like this - especially smaller businesses. Once you become an executive at a company and actually see the financials, it is a bit scary at first, but that's just the way business works. You have to go on faith that the money will keep coming in and you just try to build the buffer as large as you can. - TonyCubed, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Wikipedia is great, I can see Google helping out if things really go bad.
- jcs_goog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Google could very easily help out, it's called Google Adsense. Saying Wikipedia has exhausted its financial resources is lke saying a diamond mine can't afford to keep digging. I mean, come on....
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5here we go again giving up wikipedia to a corporation spamming the internet with ads.
mr marketing boys, please make your own wikipedia. you are clueless. - DeepFreezed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4wiki is the best thing to happened to internet in the past few years.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It seems to me that wikipedia is in this case, as in so many others, completely hamstrung by bureaucracy. If they would think outside the box a little I'm certain they could slash their hosting fees. Instead they come out with these scare mongering non-messages every now and then to get money to run wiki they way they feel like running it.
I like the project but honestly I'm not going to do more than edit (IOW, not coming up "out the pocket"). The "free web" runs on ads and wiki has enough eyeballs that they can structure pretty much any agreement they want. They can set it up such that the ads are totally unrelated to content. If they just simply can't handle that then there are more creative ways to host that have been discussed to death. This project is starting to remind me of public radio in that it has become one constant and neverending fund-drive run by ideologues. It would not surprise me to start seeing a "donate to wikipedia" link on every single page. In the end a small text ad is, on balance, less annoying and intrusive. - beijingdave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Who ever hosts it will have to deal with the government a particularly powerful country (use my name as a clue). It's blocked here because of one sentence in the entry about a former president.
- rehanyarkhan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it really is shocking that an important global project like Wikipedia continues to keep itself at the mercy of donations. They need to generate revenue through adwords or the like.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Hi there shawnanigans, welcome to BLOCK!
- markdr123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In terms of Calacanis' (rather good) idea of having 'opt-out' ads, I would definitely choose to display them on Wikipedia to keep it alive, in the same way that I disable Adblock for all the sites that run solely on advertising money and couldn't exist without it. (digg, youtube, etc).
- Tlogmer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm on the Wikipedia fundraising committee, and I can tell you that Wikipedia spends proportionately far, far less on expenses like salaries and travel than most other nonprofits -- and also far less on hosting (an order of magnitude, maybe) than any other site with comparable traffic.
There certainly might be ways to reduce costs further, though I'd like to see more spent on making the interface better, which can only happen if all the money isn't being spent just keeping the site alive -- see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Ideal for some ideas. For example, it would be great to be able to see flash-based history animations, or to color-code the text based on how long it's survived on the page (or based on who wrote it). - Latka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Money doesn't help people, people helps people.
Wikipedia helps a lot more than it's money alone. - Tlogmer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1WP supports moneybrokers, too; I think their fees are a little lower.
- Negyxo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Didn't they just serve 2 million ip's in the last 2 mins?
- supermanred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sell advertising, make money, beg for money and get some from donors or die.
Sick of hearing about wikipedia's troubles. Anyone with half a brain couldve translated THAT MUCH TRAFFIC into a ton of money right now. They couldve donated the left over to charity or wiped their ass with it at wikipedia headquarters, but instead they are crying they have no money.
I would have no money either if I had no income. DUH! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Protip: Jokes aren't always funny.
- Tlogmer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wales helped found Wikipedia, but WP's no longer tied to him financially, nor does he have more than symbolic power in its beaurocracy; and he's never meddled much in WP affairs. On the rare occasions that he tries to, nothing guarantees that he'll get his way (Larry Sanger's wikipedia article, for example, still describes Sanger as a Wikipedia co-founder).
- m00dy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1about*
- jeremy66158, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I do understand lordskywalker statement and he may think this would be a good solution for a corporation to take up the financial slack. I have to disagree. The thing that insures wikipedia's information is independent is its independence. Ownership by a major corporation is the opposite of what wikipedia needs. I wonder if there is a way that wikipedia could depend on the computing power of of its users. Some variation of the setiathome.berkeley.edu/ project. Can someone write some software that could run on our computers when when we are not using them and use our Internet connections to make wiki have less costs to run?
- budlight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with this comment by anglemo on http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/02/wikipedias_cash.php
"Hosting by a for-profit company would be a much more honest approach. Instead of presenting the project as "undoubtably (sic) good” as Jimbo Wales presents wikipedia, it could be presented as would be any other enterprise -- an effort of its principles to advance their social standing (profit) while advancing their individual ideals (in Wales' case, libertarian objectivism of the Ann Rand variety)."
Right now wikipedia is tainted by its founder. I can't see myself actively participating in a nonprofit-organization in which the founder thinks he is above the rules he helped to create. see http://wikitruth.info/index.php?title=The_Case_of_the_Disappearing_Diff or http://wikitruth.info/index.php?title=Jimbo_Fired_Up or http://wikitruth.info/index.php?title=The_Magic_Formula . This guy is clearly some kind of sociopath, with all his "I suggest we do this" or "Perhaps you could" remarks that are really nothing short of orders. Wikipedia is just an exploitation of the public's innate support for anything "open" (following in the trend of open source software). - GhostFreeman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Didn't they just get 2 million in donations?!?!!
What the *****!? - flarn2006, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Phew! I use Wikipedia SO MUCH!
- Blitzenn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Apparently you haven't opened too many encyclodepia's my friend. I am sorry you take such offense to my opinion. You are welcome to yours however.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1PayPal made over $50k in fees from them last year. I'd say that scum sucking organization needs to give something back rather than the "take take take" "ripoff ripoff ripoff" they normally do.
- psbpv3o, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3There is no way that the internetz are going to let wikipedia go down. Wikipedia makes my life so much easier and I'm sure it does the same for thousands if not millions of people. So no, wikipedia is not in danger. They just need some ads....
- m00dy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1how aobut wikipedia issue some shares in the stock market?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yeah and of those 2 million, the wiki founder gets ***** 1 mil in salary, and others suck ass. I pulled these stats out of my ass right now. But they're accurate if you check the IRS filings.
- shawnanigans, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I remember when I first joined digg, I thought it was this great forum for discussing technology and important subjects. I have benefited enormously from it. Yet I can't help but get a little angry when the members of what may be the most intelligent community on the Internet descend into company cheerleaders. Go Apple. Go AMD. Go Nintendo. Go Linux... I'm not trying to be over-serious, I get a laugh out of a good Russian Reversal as much as the next guy. It seems a waste to me. Sorry if what I say seems harsh but it just seems a shame to me to see it.
- Latka, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2None of you are funny.
- 7952, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I couldn't agree more. Even if they had to be turned on by the user. I'm sure a lot of people would be prepared to opt into seeing adverts to help support them. Maybe there needs to be an ad supported version that is financially separate to wikipedia, but that donates all revenue to the foundation. Although wikipedia is essential in creating the content there is absolutely no reason why we have to consume that content from them. There are plenty of sites that mirror the exact same content.
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