[Wikipedia-l] Money, money...

Mon Oct 13 01:42:52 UTC 2003

SV wrote:
>Just catching up--- I agree with Andrew that these 
>notions of paying academics for their knowlege is 
>anti-wiki 

So Jimbo wasted his money paying Larry to lead the Wikipedia project its first 
year? IMO, that is one of the main reasons why the whole enterprise took off. 
Larry did a hell of a lot of work publicizing Wikipedia, recruiting 
contributors, creating/shaping policy (such as NPOV) and resolving disputes. 

We now have a strong enough community and already written polices and a sense 
of ourselves that that is not really needed for already established wikis. 
But at the same time many of the smaller Wikipedias could use somebody to 
perform the major, not so fun (and lonely at first), basic organizing and 
promotion that Larry did for the English Wikipedia. That will dramatically 
decrease the amount of time needed for a project to become viable on its own. 
Having no useful wiki in certain languages is far more anti-wiki to me. 

>With every typical boon come the various ideas for 
>how to spend it. Were talking about a few thousand 
>dollars here.  Even if Bill and Melinda Gates came 
>down and gave a million bucks to wikipedia, it still 
>would not warrant the hiring of expensive academics--- 

A few hundred bucks a month to kick start a new Wikipedia version would be 
money well-spent if we had a million bucks (part timers on limited term 
contracts would be best). But any blood money from Bill and Melinda would 
probably have strings attached so I don't think we would accept it. 

>many of whom actuall do 'get it" and already contribute 
>to WP. 

Yes, but they do what they want, not necessarily what is most needed. I'm not 
convinced that hiring any academic for currently active wikis would do much 
good. I'm concerned about kick-starting smaller wikis and optimizing 
MediaWiki. The developers already have said that they either do not have time 
for that or the knowledge to do it right. So let's pay an expert to do it. 

>Its beyond silly-- 

I think it is beyond silly that the Hindi and Arabic Wikipedias are still so 
small. I also think it is tragic that many languages around the world are 
dying and that Wikipedia could be used to help save them by hooking the 
younger speakers into writting articles in their language. 

If that takes having to fork over some cash to kick-start a wiki, then so be 
it. If it can be done without it, then that is even better. But I doubt it 
can be done as quickly. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) 