[Foundation-l] 300 Euro for excellent Articles: an experiment

Wed Aug 17 23:25:39 UTC 2005

Summary: 

I would like to offer 300 EURO (de:100, it:100, en:100 Euro) for the first 
featured article (exzellenter Artikel/bella prosa) with ref. to South Tyrol.

1) Are there good reasons not to do it?
2) Could the fondation act as trustee?
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Hi Jimbo, dear fondations en/de/it, 

On my to-do list is an item: "Write at least one excellent article about South 
Tyrol". As you maybe know, my wife is not very happy that I spend too much 
time with Wikipedia...
... so I think I have good reason to give someone some money if in exchange I 
can delete an item from my to-do list and make my wife happy by that.

There where some really shocked replies when Achim proposed on de to give a 
prize for good Wikipedia articles. Currently the state on de is something 
like "prizes are ok, but not money":
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Auftragsarbeiten

But I think I have good reasons to give money for a excellent article about my 
home land. It's my home. And it's for my wife. 

	Some critics said, the article will be influenced by the money-giver.

To prevent this, I thought about the fondation to act as trustee:
- I give 300 Euro to the fondation (de?)
- The Wikipedians decide who are the winners of the contest
- If there is a winner, the fondation gives the money to him
- If there is no winner, the money is just a donation to the fondation ;-)

Are there reasons not to do this? I look forward to read your opinions, 
Fantasy :-)

PS: Maybe this can be seen similar to the classical musicians who worked under 
the patronage system (Mäzenatentum/mecenante), instead of "this starts the 
selling out of the Wikipedia idea..." 

PPS: Ah, I nearly forgot: why 3x100 Euro?
Wikipedia is a multilingual project. South Tyrol has officially 3 languages. 
de/it/ladin. There is no ladin Wikipedia, therefore only de/it. But adding en 
would increase visibility and cross-checking.
More details about the contest will follow, if I can go on with it...