Wikimedia

Revision as of 04:04, 28 April 2004 by Jukeboksi (talk | contribs) (removed some old untrue-corrected pairs. Removing accusations of bomis.com doing something else then a generous contribution of bandwidth AFAIK.)

Wikimedia Foundation is a private tax-exempt corporation (IRS 501) in the US founded by Jim Wales aka Jimbo.

It has no an independent board as required by law

Wikimedia spends most of it's money it receives as donations on providing hardware for MediaWiki sites such as Wikipedias and Wiktionaries.

Some claims have been made that part of the funds it raises is used to support development of the mediawiki software (which Consumerium R&D wiki is running on). According to Mediawiki developers these claims are not true and they are receiving no money from Wikimedia.

Many longstanding participants in the Wikipedia project have serious problems with the people and processes employed by the Foundation. As a volunteer organization, it probably has growing pains, and it's unclear if it will outgrow these. Most of the criticisms have to do with wiki management problems on which there is little well-understood practice.

Specific issues which have raised concerns amond some people:

  • Refusing to release Most Clicked Links information on any Wikipedia, even the small ones, where tracking this information would be quite simple, and would assist authors in supporting real end user interests.
They are in no way obliged to reveal this information. If you have a problem with this go create a fork of Wikipedia. Some have tried it.
  • Releasing only very limited page visit information - maybe due to the performance cost it adds
But the interwiki links point to the page in another language
  • Banning, harassing, attempting to "out" and permitting (if not deliberately attempting) framing users who point out any of the above. This sometimes reaches the bizarre extreme of echo chamber assertions being cited in Wikipedia articles as if they were true.

It is a classic insider culture. It is not a good model for Consumerium Governance Organization or any other nonprofit entity that is actually trying to serve users and disadvantaged people and other living things.