The Wikimedia Foundation, which controls Wikipedia and other popular MediaWiki projects, has met its "December sprint" fundraising target:
This week the Wikimedia Foundation smashed through the $25m target it had set for its "December sprint" – with a full 15 days of the month left. On December 3, Wiki's globetrotting figurehead Jimmy Wales promised that as soon as the Wikimedia Foundation met the target it had set for its traditional year-end fundraising drive, it would cease making the intrusive appeals. "We would still stop the fundraiser if enough money were raised in shorter than the planned time," Jimmy Wales promised on December 2. But there's no sign of the Foundation doing that, yet.
The WMF has now raised $25,530,943.01 in December, and $51,182,044.37 this year. That means it's on course to smash 2015's fundraising record of $53,756,012.58. [...] "It's important here to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation has nothing to do with writing or checking the content of Wikipedia. All that is done by unpaid volunteers," writes former Wikipedia Signpost co-editor Andreas Kolbe in a detailed analysis of the WMF finances.
Although the fundraising appeal states alarmingly that your cash is urgently required to "keep Wikipedia online", this is not the full picture. (As a WMF staff member admitted in 2014: "The urgency and alarm of the copy is not commensurate with my [admittedly limited] understanding of our financial situation".) Each year, the Foundation raises far more than it costs to operate the site, estimated at $3m a year. The clue comes in the full quote from the WMF, that cash is needed to "keep Wikipedia online and growing". The Foundation's own reports reveal what exactly it is that's growing.
That is one rich beggar.
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:47PM
Wikipedia is done, the editors are being driven out be a small cabal of obsessive rulebook lawyers who have essentially taken over. Wikipedia had no defenses against SJW entryism because Jimmy is an SJW himself. Their tech is obsolete. Time to move future efforts over to the fork at Infogalactic: the Planetary Knowledge Core [infogalactic.com]. They are still a new and growing project so contributors should find a much more receptive hearing for pitching in and helping it surpass Wikipedia.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Sunday December 18 2016, @06:51AM
How is that one more resilient against entryism, astroturfers, and shills?
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday December 18 2016, @04:56PM
First off, game designers are designing it. if anyone understands what players can do to the best thought out rule systems....
Second they admit the problem up front. They also realize that simply changing the faction in control is no solution. Read their design documents, they have some good ideas cooking to deal with a problem Jimmy won't even admit exists.
Third they reject the premise behind the 'no original content' rule, where everything on Wikipedia is, in theory at least, sourced, footnoted and backed up by some legacy media source. But if the legacy media is part of the problem that doesn't work.
The bottom line rule for Infogalactic is facts must in fact be factual, opinion and analysis marked as such and the plan is to provide multiple perspectives on the same facts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:09PM
onion address can haz?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday December 18 2016, @11:34AM
Thanks for that link, I hadn't heard of infogalactic.
I would not donate to Wikipedia because they were pissing me off with their "deleted for not being notable" bullshit. Looking up obscure stuff is what an encyclopaedia is for, and it's not like they would save much money by deleting a bunch of text files.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by Wong McGregor on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:46AM
... just another rationalization for censorship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @11:35PM
Check out conservapedia.com, no SJWs ever.