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back to article Wikipedia scores $3m donation

Wikipedia, the people's encylopedia, has trousered a $3m donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to be paid in equal chunks over three years. Which is nice. Even nicer, the money hails from a charity, and not from philanthropic venture capitalists, who may or may not have commercial designs upon Wikipedia's ads-unsullied …

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  1. Geoff Mackenzie

    Short of good news?

    Only on the Reg. Don't get me wrong, I love the Vulture, but I have been a little surprised at the amount of WP bashing going on lately.

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  2. tim
    Thumb Up

    Wikipedia is great

    I have to agree with Geoff. I think the register is great, but it does seem to have it in for WP.

    I think WP is an amazing resource; i really want to see it do well.

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  3. Gleb
    Coat

    3 million

    3 million over 3 years isn't 3 million at all, it's a bit less. But I guess it's good news. I'm a little miffed why wikipedia is in a financial rot, since so many people are constantly donating...

    At any rate, I'd love my taxes to go for paying wikipedias bandwidth service and not some second grade kids education, which they can get from wiki for free anyway.

    I'm not not serious, I'm just drunk.

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  4. Andy
    Unhappy

    Forgive me for seeming a bit thick

    ...but what do they actually need all this money for again?

    $3M buys a hell of a lot of server time.

    They say that they need the money to raise money with? Does that strike anyone as a little recursive, not to mention obtuse?

    I love WP as much as the next guy, but it exists because of free contributions, not because the people behind it managed to raise a bunch of money.

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  5. darsyx

    @gleb

    "why wikipedia is in a financial rot (sic)"

    well, a $1 million per year will only pay 25 people an average of $40k a year, which I personally wouldn't get out of bed for. And that's not counting their hosting/bandwidth costs etc.

    --

    d.

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  6. TeeCee Gold badge

    Misquote?

    Surely that should read: "......<cough> withoutcommercialorotherbias <cough>.....".

    It is a great resource, true. But an unqualified statement that it's without bias is, as we all know, a barefaced lie. The amount of bias is slight (given the vast amount of content on show) and limited to specific areas where certain people have a vested interest, but it's there.

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  7. Ian Chard
    Alert

    Wikipedia IS great, but

    it's not an encyclopaedia. It's an agglomeration of the opinions of a very large number of people, only some of whom are right. It can be a useful resource, but it can never be considered an authority on any subject.

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  8. Kane
    Paris Hilton

    Eh?

    "...and distributing free knowledge to people without Internet connectivity."

    So...i'll be able to go down to my nearest bookshop and pickup (for free) the most recent hardback edition of Wikipedia? Or will they be posting me a weekly pamphlet? "This weeks article is....Miletographa drumila". What happens if the online version of that article is edited? Do they then re-post me the updated article?

    Please, someone help me, wikipedia PR speak hurts.....

    Paris, because if she could, she would be making herself freely available to people everywhere.....

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  9. djs

    "Wikipedia represents a quantum leap in collecting human knowledge"

    Isn't a "quantum leap" a jump of the smallest possible non-zero increment? Sounds like real value for money to me...

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wikipedia is great

    Yes here and there it is tainted by opinion as many people like to point out - but they always fail to guide me to where the real source of free, diverse and unbiased information is.

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  11. Steve

    I wonder....

    I wonder how many pages they had to edit for that amount!

    I'm not sure if I'm joking.

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  12. Pete
    Boffin

    re:costs

    Costs and budgets are available at

    http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Planned_Spending_Distribution_2007-2008

    Make of that what you will...

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @ Gleb

    "3 million over 3 years isn't 3 million at all, it's a bit less."

    Huh?

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  14. Funky Dennis
    Thumb Down

    One of the problems

    with Wikipedia is that Jimbo and Co. have done Jack Shit to curtail vandalism. If they just raised the bar slightly so that you had to be logged in to edit articles, most vandals wouldn't bother. (And to register you'd have to provide a valid email address and click on the link that they'd send you. All very standard stuff.)

    Jimbo is doing very nicely out of his minions, but treating them like chumps.

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  15. Gav
    Happy

    An Encyclopedia

    "It's an agglomeration of the opinions of a very large number of people, only some of whom are right."

    Isn't that what all sources of information are? Everywhere?

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wikipedia is not that useful

    I use to think it was okay for computer stuff, but recently that has been wholly inaccurate on the pages I have visited. Wikipedia is really more of a problem for the web than a blessing. Personally I would prefer all the contributors to just create their own web pages, the various search engines are good enough to find them, and it would the make the articles a little bit more interesting.

    Really the wikipedia has dumbed down the web, not enlightened it, people just post company links, or pay for articles to be written for them - often there will only be the slightest form of correlation, on the whole it is just a marketing exercise.

    See, the wikipedia did not enable people to post knowledge, it just jumped in and made it easier for people to post rubbish, The web would be a better place without the wikipedia, but hey it is up to people if they wish to post there or just post on their own sites.

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  17. b166er

    Gav

    well observed

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  18. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    WP bashing?

    @Geoff, Tim:

    If Wikipedia falls short of the standards it has set for itself, it's not the job of The Reg boys to buy them a box of chocolates, is it?

    (Paris: because she is a very precious flower too).

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