Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Three million dollar Wikipedia

Jay Walsh of the Wikimedia foundation writes
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – October 5, 2011 – The Wikimedia Foundation announced today it has been awarded the largest-ever grant in its history: $3.6 million from the Stanton Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects, in order to successfully serve their growing readership. The Wikimedia projects currently reach more than 422 million unique visitors around the world every month (comScore, August 2011), making Wikipedia the fifth most-popular website in the world. The grant will fund development of a new editing interface that will make it possible for people to easily edit Wikipedia without needing to learn special wiki syntax. It will also support development of new technical features to make Wikimedia a friendlier and more understandable environment for new editors.
Goodness.  Nearly four million dollars, but how is that going to solve the problem of people being scared off by a site that coddles vandals and trolls, insults experts, and is generally run by pricks?

3 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

No-one outside wiki understands the governance issues; and I don't suppose they go out of their way to make them visible to potential funders.

William M. Connolley said...

You might enjoy this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Purpose&diff=456052587&oldid=456051200

Edward Ockham said...

Very funny.