[Web4lib] Wikipedia problems?

[Lars Aronsson]

B.G. Sloan wrote:

>   A Wikipedia spokesperson has since said that the statement was 
>   taken out of context and that Devouard "was attempting to 

The hard lesson for spokespeople of the Wikimedia Foundation is 
that what they say *will* be taken out of context and construed in 
all kinds of directions.  They're not a small project any more.

>   The interesting point we should take from all of this is that 
>   while we tend to take Wikipedia for granted as a 
>   volunteer-based operation, it does require about $5 million a 
>   year to keep the infrastructure going (e.g., they have 350 
>   servers). As a non-profit organization Wikipedia has to be in 
>   a fund-raising mode constantly.

In my opinion, they could easily get some big university or 
hardware manufacturer to help in this without sacrificing their 
neutral stance.  Something like the old SunSite program.  But the 
foundation has elected to run their own servers, and so far that 
works out just fine.  What's possibly at risk here is not the 
contents, the articles in the encyclopedia (= the product), but 
the machinery and process to build that content (= the factory).

In a typical month [1], there are 4000 different users who 
contribute more than 100 edits each, and 40,000 that contribute at 
least 5 edits each.  Every contributor not only does this without 
pay, but also pays (in person or through their school, employer or 
library) for their own computer and probably some kind of 
broadband Internet connection.  That's where the big money is, not 
in the central servers.

[1] These numbers are from October 2006,
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se