Wikipedia asking for donations...
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Long time lurker, first time poster.
Wanted to check what was the copyright dispute concerning Rocksmith about and that's what I saw on polish Wikipedia:
I get it, they want donations, but isn't it a bit excessive?
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Oh. Ok, didn't notice that. I guess i should have lurked harder :)
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I get it, they want donations
Well, I would use the word "need", but I guess you could say "want" if you believe that they have no good reason to exist. It's your choice.
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"Need" also implies that you believe donations are the only viable way for them to continue to exist.
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Well they could monetize their content, but that defeats the entire purpose of free knowledge. Unless there's another way I am not aware of?
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They have boatloads of money IIRC. Enough for 20 years or so...
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I don't know why they have to make big campaigns like this, instead of something like a small counter or progress bar on the side that said "Hosting has cost us $15,438 so far this year. We only made $8,300 in donations. Pls gib monies or no more wikipedia for you."
As an aside, I always wondered if it would be viable to make a website that automatically shut down whenever the hosting costs exceeded the donations (with some extra safety margin maybe), and started back up when you donated enough. Maybe it could have a timer constantly ticking down "Wikipedia will shut down in 3 hours 26 minutes! Every dollar donated adds an extra minute"
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Wanted to check what was the copyright dispute concerning Rocksmith about and that's what I saw on polish Wikipedia:
Why on Earth are you expecting to find any sensible information on Polish Wikipedia?
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I don't know why they have to make big campaigns like this, instead of something like a small counter or progress bar on the side that said "Hosting has cost us $15,438 so far this year. We only made $8,300 in donations. Pls gib monies or no more wikipedia for you."
Still less annoying than the campaigns run by public radio and television.
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Long time lurker, first time poster.
Siema!
Why on Earth are you expecting to find any sensible information on Polish Wikipedia?
Why on Earth are you expecting to find any reliable information on Wikipedia?
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Why on Earth are you expecting to find any reliable information on Wikipedia?
Eh, English Wikipedia is generally quite reliable, at least as far as technology subjects are concerned. Polish is much more of a stub-ridden mess written in terrible style.
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Polish is much more of a stub-ridden mess written in terrible style.
Hey, you leave those high school kids that seem to have written a lot of articles for Polish Wikipedia alone! They're doing their best. It's not their fault it's so hard to color a lumberjack!
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Well, I would use the word "need", but I guess you could say "want" if you believe that they have no good reason to exist. It's your choice.
They don't need donations. They need to stop wasting money on conferences, salary and unlimited free travel for executives. Oh, and spending tons of money on software improvements which then fail utterly.
They have plenty of money.
That's what makes this begging so offensive. It all goes straight into their execs' pockets.
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They don't need donations. They need to stop wasting money on conferences, salary and unlimited free travel for executives. Oh, and spending tons of money on software improvements which then fail utterly.
Yeah! Enough with those freeloaders... all they've done is play golf, travel, and that healthcare.gov fiasco... the sooner he's gone, the better. Wait, who are we talking about again?
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If I had to run MediaWiki on that scale I'd want a lot of money, too.
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How about seeking sponsors?
I believe a lot of free / opensource projects are kept alive this way.
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If I had to run
MediaWiki on that scaleanything written in PHP I'd want a lot of money, too.FTFY
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Could always do what FB did and build your own PHP
compiler slash virtual machine thing.
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I don't know why they have to make big campaigns like this, instead of something like a small counter or progress bar on the side that said "Hosting has cost us $15,438 so far this year. We only made $8,300 in donations. Pls gib monies or no more wikipedia for you."
Probably because if they did, and they were accurate about it, it would be more like
Hosting has cost us $12,345 so far this year. We only made $123,456 in donations. We only have $51m in reserves.
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They are, just that in that way Wikipedia no longer need to put donation request on their pages.
Although you can argue that they'll lose neutrality position at the same time.
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I've got to think that this could be easily solved if WIkimedia Foundation would only do the right thing:
- Put up a paywall
- Put a properly restrictive copyright on all articles
- Require article authors to obtain proper certification and then pay them
- Require article authors to relinquish all rights to their submissions
- Become a for-profit corporation
Then they could do whatever they want without complaints like this.
Right?
Addendum: I forgot advertising. They need to put lots of advertising on each page.
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That point where the [entity] says they are only noble and just, and not evil like those other guys.
How about seeking sponsors?
Because that guy on the side of the road begging makes 5 times as much as I do, tax free.
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This post is deleted!
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Eh, English Wikipedia is generally quite reliable, at least as far as technology subjects are concerned. Polish is much more of a stub-ridden mess written in terrible style.
Easy solution: just write a bot that pumps English Wikipedia through Google translate and save the result on Polish Wikipedia!
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Continuing the discussion from Wikipedia asking for donations...:
Long time lurker, first time poster.
Wanted to check what was the copyright dispute concerning Rocksmith about and that's what I saw on polish Wikipedia:
I get it, they want donations, but isn't it a bit excessive?
We get it, you don't want to donate. But don't pretend the size of the ad, drove you to it. Your money is finite, and you don't want to pay. That's ok, me neither. You don't have to make up a pathetic excuse.
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Wikimedia Foundation director resigns after uproar over “Knowledge Engine”
It's damage-control time at the world's biggest encyclopedia.
While Wikipedia's begging you for money, they just got a $250,000 grant.
Also the editors (the assholes who delete all your content) are having a little war with the Foundation (the assholes who use a non-profit's funds to fly all over the world on 20 vacations a year). So there's that.
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Poe's law.
That shit took up the whole content.
You have to scroll just to view the page.
For a group that is anti-ad, theirs is the worst offending ad I've ever seen.
Slapping "do no evil" on your name doesn't make it true.
If it was a sponsored ad, and it took up that much room, people would probably stop using Wikipedia.
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I'm not pretending the size of ad drove me to anything. Well, except say wtf.
I didn't want to donate before seeing the ad, and i don't want to donate after. The only difference is seeing that ad made me annoyed and caused me to have to scroll down to see the actual article.
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Could always do what FB did and build your own PHP
compiler slash virtual machine thing.Just because Facebook does it, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
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Do Facebook have legitimately good ideas?
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Open hardware? Efficient too? Building data centres in cold regions of the world
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Just because Facebook does it, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
Facebook = bad idea, therefore doesn't anything facebook do = bad idea?
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Facebook = bad idea, therefore doesn't anything facebook do = bad idea?
Here, I think you dropped this:
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ah. wondered where that was.
now to figure out which young whippersnapper stole my cane.... i know it was one of them who keep walking on me grass!
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@accalia said:
young whippersnapper
It's so cute when people under 40 pretend to act old.
It's depressing that i work in a field where being 30 practically makes you an oldtimer.
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Facebook = bad idea, therefore doesn't anything facebook do = bad idea?
That doesn't contradict my original assertion that writing your own PHP compiler isn't a good idea...
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@tar said:
Just because Facebook does it, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
Facebook = bad idea, therefore doesn't anything facebook do = bad idea?
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hello drax.
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Isn't that argument also an argument?
Wrongception!
Inception - Sound from Trailer - "BWONG!" – 00:05
— brytons
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It's depressing that i work in a field where being 30 practically makes you an oldtimer.
25 is the new 30, and 30 is the new 60. It's like math that way.
Do Mathematicians Peak In Their Mid 20’s?
A famous mathematician, G. H. Hardy, wrote in his 1940 memoir, A Mathematician’s Apology, “No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art…
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@tar said:
Just because Facebook does it, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
Facebook = bad idea, therefore doesn't anything facebook do = bad idea?
The guy who became filthy stinking rich off it would probably beg to differ.
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that's the thing about opinion, any two people are going to have at minimum two different opinions on any given subject.
Wikipedia won't stop BEGGING for cash - despite sitting on $60m
Thanks.
