Wikimedia: Difference between revisions

Wikimedia is funded by donors, and spends most money it receives as donations on providing hardware for [[MediaWiki]] sites such as [[Wikipedia]]s and [[Wiktionary|Wiktionaries]].  There are no salaried employees at the present time, and no immediate plans to have any at present levels of funding.  Some believe that an [[independent board]] is a necessity to increase funding to a point where such employment would be possible.

Some claim 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.

Supporters of the Wikimedia foundation claim that most longstanding participants in the [[Wikipedia]] project have greeted the formation of the nonprofit with great enthusiasm, and plans are in the work to set up nonprofit organizations in European countries to complement the global foundation.  Wales has given all rights and ownership in the Wikipedia name(s) and websites, as well as some hardware, freely and permanently.   

Many dispute Wales' contribution and neutrality.  As recently reported at [[w:Talk:Fallujah]]:  "His work under the title "God King" for several years encouraged new Wikipedia leaders to use cult-like language that discouraged opposition to his views, and to disparage those who offer counterveiling policies.  Bomis's owner Jim Wales set the direction away from a peer-reviewed encyclopedia, and presents as a primary pundit against the feasibility of reviewed encyclopedias in numerous interviews."  This much is factual and verifiable.  Less clear is the impact of this policy, which "driven by Bomis' desire for rapid development, made Wikipedia more available to those who present election-time and war-time misinformation."  Obviously this has become an issue in a US election year when there is an ongoing war in [[Iraq]].   

Wikimedia supporters cite as one of the greatest difficulties that Wikipedia has faced maintaining an open and welcoming culture in the face of repeated attacks from vicious [[trolls]], such as the ones that they view as beginning to plague Consumerium - conveniently, they ignore the fact that these so-called trolls actually authored the majority of useful material here.  [[Wiki management]] issues are complex and difficult, and there are many lessons yet to be learned.  However, to invent a pet label for "heretic" or "dissident" and use that to compel or enforce an existing [[community point of view]] violates every principle of an open project.  Wikimedia may be a crime against openness.

In contrast, supporters point to the "incredible success of Wikipedia" as an excellent model for any community organization.  Wikipedia faces far greater challenges than any single-purpose community such as consumerium, because by design, it draws from a very broad range of ideological backgrounds, and must be welcoming to them all.  Consumerium, or other narrow-purpose projects, will likely find a more homogeneous user base, thus making [[governance]] decisions much easier.  Detractors point out Wikipedia's consistent refusal to accept any end-user-driven quality criteria, lack of [[vocabulary]] control, relative slow growth of its [[Simple English]] project, which has been sabotaged to the point of being useless for [[translation]], leaving translators defaulting to complex full English, which necessarily carries a degree of serious English [[culture bias]] - sometimes called [[EPOV]].  The people responsible for these policies (they were not decided but rather defaulted) have this bias in the extreme.

Many participants in the [[Wikipedia]] and other [[GFDL corpus]] projects have raised concerns with the people and processes employed by the "foundation". They claim that it has structural problems and that is unlikely to ever outgrow these.  Most of the criticisms have to do with [[wiki management]] problems: