Yes! My friend donated through Kiva. She said it was cool experience to follow someone progress.
The cynic in me says that it’s only a matter of time before Wikipedia starts selling ads, so no, I haven’t donated.
Also, I’d be more willing to donate if Wikipedia made more of an effort to be more academic in certain respects.
They don’t even need to put up ads to make money.
Throw a “search the web” search box on the site, point it at Google or Bing, and they’d make far more than their current yearly budget.
Wikipedia does not need our money, and that site takes from the web and its netizens just as much as it gives back.
There are much better places to donate.
I use Wikipedia and “donate” time editing it. However, there are far better places to give charity to. (i.e. American Cancer Society)
Based on these facts from Wikipedia’s last financial statement, I see no need to donate to them (numbers in million USD):
Total income: 8,7
Total expenses: 5,6
Cash holdings: 6,2
Total assets: 8,6
If Wikipedia can explain to my why it is so vital that I donate money to them, when they have enough cash to operate for a full year without any income whatsoever, I might reconsider.
Just received email from AdWords containing this link:
Well honestly I don’t use wikipedia that often…
Firstly, I very rarely use Wikipedia. I’m an old-fashioned book person. I have over 600 books. I use them when I want to know something.
I don’t much trust Wikipedia. For trivial stuff it may be alright. For everything else I’ll use my good ol’ trustworthy books.
Secondly, I can think of at least a dozen projects I’d rather leave my money than Wikipedia.
So no, I don’t feel bad.
No I never donated to Wikipedia and I think it is okay. It’s a personal choice.
They are really doing a great help for the world. We really should support them.
I also take gripe with the fact that wikipedia seems to rank for every other keyword on the planet, which takes gigantic amounts of traffic from other websites. Yet wikipedia is only a compilation of information. All that traffic would have otherwise gone to the sources, the same ones used by wikipedia.
To be honest, I often go through the resources listed at the bottom of an article. Anyone referenced on Wikipedia can get traffic from Wikipedia.
And whenever I’m looking up something I don’t even know quite what it is, I like having the Wikipedia link coming first in the search engine, because I expect a succinct summary of the Thing in the first paragraph. This isn’t always true but often enough. When I wanted to know who glenngould was named after, I used Wikipedia : )
It also peeves me a bit that Wikipedia so massively benefits from how often people link to them, but they nofollow all of their links so they pass no recognition back to the sites they cite as sources.
But that’s understandable, as if they weren’t nofollow, the place would become awash with spam.
I disagree. Link spam is already quickly removed when it is there, and adding a function which would only allow dofollow links from users who have made X contributions of Y length would be quite easy.
got no credit card and paypal aint supported in my country so coudnt
And less politically biased. I’m more inclined to use the socialists’ own tactics against them, i.e., utilize their resources while not contributing.
That aside, you shouldn’t feel guilty for not donating. Nobody is forcing them at gunpoint to produce content that they can’t monetize.
And most of their content is stolen, not produced anyway.
No one is more deserving of my money than I am.
The links were not marked nofollow for many years, and Wikipedia grew and prospered during that period moreso than it does now. There was never a significant spam problem, no moreso than other communities (like this forum) handle with volunteers.
I use Wikipedia, but did not donate and don’t plan on donating. I agree that there are much better places to donate money where it would do a lot of good.