[kwlug disc.] floss fund

[Chris Bruner]

The article you linked to was critisizing wikipedia for deleting content 
they thought was not wikipedia worthy. I can see that. They are paying 
for the servers and storage. They should be able to have some input as 
to what is put on there. In the article it says "If we include every 
article that anyone wants to write, then the encyclopedia becomes 
useless because nobody can find the actual needle of worthwhile 
information on a topic hidden in that hay stack of trivia." Sounds 
reasonable to me.

The http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/ which is a self professed critic of 
wikipedia says

This site examines the phenomenon of Wikipedia. We are interested in 
them because they have a massive, unearned influence on what passes for 
reliable information. Search engines rank their pages near the top. 
While Wikipedia itself does not run ads, they are the most-scraped site 
on the web. Scrapers need content — any content will do — in order to 
carry ads from Google and other advertisers. This entire effect is 
turning Wikipedia into a generator of spam. It is primarily Google's 
fault, since Wikipedia might find it difficult to address the issue of 
scraping even if they wanted to. Google doesn't care*;* their ad money 
comes right off the top.


So even they are saying that it's not Wikipedia's fault that people are 
using their content to generate spam.

The bbc tested it for reliabiltiy and found that it rivalled the 
Encylopedia Britannica
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm

I think every wildly successful project will have it's critics and I 
expect that some of these critics are critics because wikipedia is 
biting into their sales.

Insurance Squared Inc. wrote:
> As a counterpoint, wikipedia isn't as clean as many people would think 
> on first inspection. It's got a seedy underbelly that's receiving very 
> harsh critisism from many quarters. And I'm very suspicious about the 
> motives over there these days. The project might be opensource, but 
> the site itself has a tinge of potential commercialism to it IMO. 
> That's not bad, unless you're masquerading as a community/opensource 
> initiative.
>
> Personally I've had multiple, very negative experiences at wikipedia; 
> about 6 months or so ago I went in and reversed any contributions I'd 
> ever made there and removed any of my sites that were referenced. And 
> as I noted, there's criticism from many other places. Here's one 
> another mention:
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Comments:Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_community's_frustration_with_Wikipedia_guidelines 
>
>
> There's plenty of others as well for a bit of googling.
>
> g.
>
>
> Chris Bruner wrote:
>> I would like to propose a couple of canditates to the floss fund.
>> The first is wikipedia which I (and I'm sure others) use all the time.
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
>>
>> The second is not as well known, but I think worthwhile.
>> wxwidgets. It's one of these behind the scenes opensource projects, 
>> that I don't think gets much support, but is very useful.
>> It is a cross platform widget maker that is in use in several 
>> applications. 
>> http://www.wxcommunity.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownload&cid=5 
>>
>> The donation link is on the main page. http://www.wxwidgets.org/
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>