"Wikipedia Forever" - fundraising campaign, or non-stop laff riot? Options

[Newsfeed]

<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />[b]Wikipedia seeks to raise $7.5M in 'Wikipedia Forever' campaign[/b]
VentureBeat
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that manages Wikipedia, is passing the hat around in its annual fundraising campaign. ...



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[EricBarbour]

Here's a version of the WSJ article that avoids the paywall.

This part really cracked me up, partly because I donated money to Paley to help her get her "Sita Sings The Blues" cartoon finished.

Nina Paley, a New York cartoonist who calls herself an "information radical," had no luck when she tried to post her syndicated comic strips from the '90s. She does not copyright their artwork but instead makes money on ancillary products and services, making her perfect for Wikipedia's free-content culture.
It took her a few days to decipher Wikipedia's software."I figured out how to do it with this really weird, ugly code," she says. "I went to bed feeling so proud of myself, and I woke up and found it had been deleted because it was 'out of scope.'"
A Wikipedia editor had decided that Ms. Paley's comics didn't meet the criteria for educational art. Another editor weighed in with questions about whether she had copyright permission for the photo of herself that she uploaded. She did.
Ultimately, it was decided that Ms. Paley's comics were suitable for the site. Samuel Klein, a veteran Wikipedian who serves on the board of trustees, intervened and restored her contributions. Mr. Klein says experiences like Ms. Paley's happen too often. Mr. Klein says that the Wikipedia community needs to rein in so-called deletionists -- editors who shoot first and ask questions later.

Nice work, assholes. You just chased away Nina Paley--just the kind of creative person your nutso-pedia needs more of. Congrats on the "weird, ugly code" too.