While I was poking around online for
stuff to write a post about, I searched the web for current social media topics
to discuss as I usually do. When I come up with something interesting, I tend
to reference Wikipedia to cite any clever quip I tend to come up with. When I
made my way to the Wikipedia page, a large yellow
banner hovered on the top of my screen. This banner read:
“Dear Wikipedia readers: We are the
small non-profit that runs the #5 website in the world. We have only 150 staff
but serve 450 million users, and have costs like any other top site: servers, power, rent, programs, staff and legal help. Wikipedia is something
special. It is like a library or a public
park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all
go to think and learn. To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads. We
take no government funds. We
run on donations averaging about $30. If everyone reading this gave the price
of a cup of coffee, our fundraiser
would be done within an hour. If Wikipedia is useful to you, take one minute to
keep it online another year. Please help us forget fundraising and get back to
Wikipedia. Thank you.”
With Encyclopedia Britannica
closing production now that the Internet is a vast vortex of information,
having a credible source of information can be difficult to come by. While some
of us will take a trip to the
library, most of us want the library as an extension of our palms. Have we been
duped into believing that Wikipedia is the only source of information out
there? Should we make donations to a site that everyone and their mother can
make a contribution to, which leads to information that is somewhat disputable?
Though every college professor in the
world will probably tell you never to cite Wikipedia and that the information
provided there is not considered source material, the site is still a source of
information. When you think of the most social
sites in the world, you probably think of Facebook and Twitter.
Wikipedia is a site that countless people visit and contribute to. Most
historians will tell you that the history of mankind is the collaboration of
average people sorted out by the greatest minds in the world. There’s no doubt
that Wikipedia is a social site. The question is, should people make donations
to Wikipedia? Like the quote
above says, Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public
park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think,
to learn, to share our
knowledge with others.
“When I founded Wikipedia, I could
have made it into a for-profit company with advertising
banners, but I decided to do something different. Commerce is fine. Advertising
is not evil. But it doesn’t belong here. Not in Wikipedia.” — Wikipedia Founder,
Jimmy Wales
I am a lover of books, and I do
frequent Wikipedia, which is why I say yes, I will probably donate. If
donations are not made to a site like this, it is only a matter of time before
a big fish like Google or Facebook will gobble it up and start waving banner
ads and suffocate us with social media marketing. What do you think? Do you
think you will donate? An education is not hard to come by nowadays, and to let
a site like Wikipedia fall to
the wayside is just plain ignorant. However. I do propose that stronger
contribution regulations be incorporated into the site’s database. Though we
are a race of beings that desire to leave our epitaph for our future children
and galactic beings, we should definitely act on keeping the facts as
straightforward and accurate as possible.
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