Wikipedia is Going Broke Again
All that's missing from Wikipedia is a banner reading "Going Out of Business Once More!"
The world's source of cut-and-paste text for high school term papers now presents this green box hassling visitors for a gift. Wikipedia is more desperate for money than a Republican running for President.
Pumping up the drama is an accompanying message from programmer Brandon Harris saying, "I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary." Oh, the pathos! Oh the humanity!
Then he goes over the top saying, "We’re not just building an encyclopedia, we’re working to make people free." Oh, please. All the over-controlling mothers of America will applaud this cloying guilt trip.
I'd feel more concerned but I remember that Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales demanded donations at exactly the same time last year. If the content is worthwhile, why doesn't he charge for it?
Gee whiz, if Wikipedia is such a great idea, why hasn't a venture capitalist drowned it in cash? Perhaps Wikipedia should come up with a business model to replace its strategy of begging. Or they could adopt a new tagline, "Will create content for food."
Why doesn't he open it up to advertising? Pretty easy to target your audience when you know people reading about cooking will probably click on advertisements for cooking tools or cookbooks.
While Wikipedia might be oppose to ads because it may cheapen the encyclopedia or contributors are oppose to the idea, it won't matter in the long term if Wikipedia ceases to exisit.
Perhaps they just take a cue from the original encyclopedia companies and just start going door-to-door to sell their product.
So you are complaining about what you read after having to click on a link in order to read it? Suggestion: don't click on the link. You act like you are being victimized. In case you haven't noticed, many non-profit organizations derive their income from donations (which means you are cheap and don't donate anything back to society). It's a much nicer model that forced donations, called "taxes".