Wikipedia is very well funded, but not, as this video might make you believe, by large donations from the likes of Google and Amazon. While these donate the occasional million, most of the Wikimedia Foundation's $160 million revenue comes from small donations.
Moreover, it's not a question of "keeping Wikipedia running" – the Wikimedia Foundation is taking more than enough money for that. Revenue has increased every year of the Wikimedia Foundation's existence, and it had (including endowment growth) a total surplus of nearly $90 million in its 2020/21 financial year, as well as hundreds of millions in reserves:
In fact, the success of Wikipedia fundraising is such that by now, many Wikipedia volunteers feel that fundraising emails asking people to donate money "to keep Wikipedia online", "ad-free", or "independent", are grossly misleading and unethical:
:) I know that because I've read the Foundation's tax returns and audited financial statements that the figures and discussions in Wikipedia are based on.
And I think the copyleft nature of Wikipedia is important when talking about monopolies.
The recommendation of books is good, but Wikipedia does often link to books, and has various schemes in place to give access to the book content so that citations can be checked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia
Finally, despite what was claiming in the video, about wikipedia hiding the demographics of it's editors, Wikipedia itself is probably the best place to find people discussing that data and making attempts to expand it.
A valid concern is that everybody copies the same information. This invariably leads to cases where errors in Wikipedia are repeated in so many places that people everywhere think they are fact.
One recent example was that everyone from Google to the BBC now believes that an "Alan MacMasters" invented the electric toaster. In fact, this was a hoax perpetrated on Wikipedia 10 years ago:
The archive of the article they point to seems much longer and detailed than the version linked to by the Wiipedians discussing removing it.
Is there any way to see the full history of deleted articles? Maybe one of those completionist mirrors?
There's lots of "comedy edits" that only really exist for long enough to take a screenshot (sometimes not even that long as the screenshot can be easily faked).
Is this guy sitting on a bouncy ball or pogo stick or something? I tried to listen but found his constant bouncing around in frame incredibly distracting, which made me curious.
The biggest category of things on Wikipedia not to trust is anything which is controversial and involves people on the Internet, either as participants or as reporters (which means a lot of recent material that's not just about bare facts). The contents of the article are going to depend on which faction of people on the Internet is better able to muster the editors to make the article show what they want while still literally following Wikipedia rules.
Plain hoaxes like the inventor of the toaster are actually less harmful because if someone does eventually catch them, they can get fixed.
But hoaxes that last a decade are harmful. If something is not fixed in a lot of people's lifetime, it is little consolation to them if someone may fix it later ...
Moreover, even when hoaxes are discovered and deleted on Wikipedia, they last elsewhere. The toaster hoax for example has now entered over a dozen books. The BBC articles that featured it have not been corrected:
>Wikipedia is quick, easy, and good enough [from the video]
No one can be an expert, or take the time for deep dive, on every topic, so I love the fact that most of the time I can do a quick sanity check on an alleged fact, or learn the gist of some new (to me) concept or theory, using Wikipedia. In my own personal areas of expertise, I almost never rely on Wikipedia even for an overview, and I suspect that is true for others. Even this speaker acknowledges that he doesn't know of many alternate sources for topics outside his specialty like math, science, etc., so why not love Wikipedia for lighting at least a candle in those areas where your current vision is most limited by darkness?
His main complaint boils down to Wikipedia does too good of a job of collecting a lot of generally reliable information about a topic in one place, without the benefit of someone like him to interpret, explain, and distill it for us.
Well, he likens it to McDonalds. He has a point. (I say that as a long-time Wikipedian, who has had quite a lot of Egg McMuffins for breakfast, against my better knowledge.)
I would argue that Wikipedia's process does a decent job of maintaining topics on matters that are not contested; when matters that really matter become topics, they end up being locked down because the process does not support the kinds of civil conversation which can tame otherwise wicked issues. I'd like to think that's a fixable issue.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 46.2 ms ] threadhttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2020-21_Report
Moreover, it's not a question of "keeping Wikipedia running" – the Wikimedia Foundation is taking more than enough money for that. Revenue has increased every year of the Wikimedia Foundation's existence, and it had (including endowment growth) a total surplus of nearly $90 million in its 2020/21 financial year, as well as hundreds of millions in reserves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...
In fact, the success of Wikipedia fundraising is such that by now, many Wikipedia volunteers feel that fundraising emails asking people to donate money "to keep Wikipedia online", "ad-free", or "independent", are grossly misleading and unethical:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28prop...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32713978
See also:
https://washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/...
https://dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/
The Foundation has 5 times as much money today as it did at the time of the Washington Post report.
The youtuber may be interesting in the Simple English Wikipedia:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Harper
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver
And I think the copyleft nature of Wikipedia is important when talking about monopolies.
The recommendation of books is good, but Wikipedia does often link to books, and has various schemes in place to give access to the book content so that citations can be checked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia Finally, despite what was claiming in the video, about wikipedia hiding the demographics of it's editors, Wikipedia itself is probably the best place to find people discussing that data and making attempts to expand it.
One recent example was that everyone from Google to the BBC now believes that an "Alan MacMasters" invented the electric toaster. In fact, this was a hoax perpetrated on Wikipedia 10 years ago:
https://wikipediocracy.com/2022/08/11/wikipedias-credibility...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
More examples here:
https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday...
Is there any way to see the full history of deleted articles? Maybe one of those completionist mirrors?
There's lots of "comedy edits" that only really exist for long enough to take a screenshot (sometimes not even that long as the screenshot can be easily faked).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...
This retains the editor history but hasn't happened in this case (yet; I'll ask for it to be done).
Meanwhile, some older versions of the article can be seen here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20151128131452/https://en.wikipe...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi...
This has the entire edit history, going back to 2013:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:List_of...
Plain hoaxes like the inventor of the toaster are actually less harmful because if someone does eventually catch them, they can get fixed.
But hoaxes that last a decade are harmful. If something is not fixed in a lot of people's lifetime, it is little consolation to them if someone may fix it later ...
Moreover, even when hoaxes are discovered and deleted on Wikipedia, they last elsewhere. The toaster hoax for example has now entered over a dozen books. The BBC articles that featured it have not been corrected:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1D0xzxYf9ykH9gcYp9...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130405-a-trim-toaster-f...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/56192812
The historical record has been permanently corrupted.
No one can be an expert, or take the time for deep dive, on every topic, so I love the fact that most of the time I can do a quick sanity check on an alleged fact, or learn the gist of some new (to me) concept or theory, using Wikipedia. In my own personal areas of expertise, I almost never rely on Wikipedia even for an overview, and I suspect that is true for others. Even this speaker acknowledges that he doesn't know of many alternate sources for topics outside his specialty like math, science, etc., so why not love Wikipedia for lighting at least a candle in those areas where your current vision is most limited by darkness?
His main complaint boils down to Wikipedia does too good of a job of collecting a lot of generally reliable information about a topic in one place, without the benefit of someone like him to interpret, explain, and distill it for us.
* Books (non-fiction, credible publisher)
* Interviews with authors (CSPAN Booknotes+ and Q&A, New Books Network)
* News orgs with ample reporting resources (New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, The Atlantic)
* Obituaries in above news orgs
* Encylopedia Britannica, Biography.com, History.com
https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html