Google to donate $2M to WMF, .. apparently Options

[thekohser]

Who among you is with me on this, for 15 minutes of your time?

One of the executive chefs at Google seemed like a nice enough guy. Called back and everything. Too bad his company helped an unethical organization with a tax-advantaged donation that could have gone to Haiti, or toward neo-natal health, or even climate research.

[NotARepublican55]

I just got the news from Jimbo's FailBook feed ....

EDIT: http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/9215187878 - I have the sneaking suspicion he jumped the gun on this one and blabbed before WMF could get a formal statement out. Oops!

I guess the Goog <-> Wiki linkage has now been truly formalized. I wonder how WMF is going to reciprocate on this deal. Either way, I guess this really seals WP's fate with Daniel now that they've officially joined with the Great Satan™

Hmm that sounds almost like the equivalent of making Wikipedia a for-profit website, just unofficially. I'm sure Google didn't donate that money just because they were feeling generous that day. They had to have been getting something out of it (ex. maybe an admin had to do a re-write of Google's article). So it looks like Jimbo found a creative way to make money off the project without officially declaring it a for-profit site and getting the community in a buzz (I wouldn't be surprised if other companies start making big donations in the near future now).

But to be honest, I'm not sure that this is totally a bad thing. Maybe it'll lead to an increase in content standards on the site since businesses might not want to be associated with it if more incidents like Fuzzy Zoeller, etc occur.

This post has been edited by NotARepublican55: Thu 18th February 2010, 1:19am

[NotARepublican55]

I just got the news from Jimbo's FailBook feed ....

EDIT: http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/9215187878 - I have the sneaking suspicion he jumped the gun on this one and blabbed before WMF could get a formal statement out. Oops!

I guess the Goog <-> Wiki linkage has now been truly formalized. I wonder how WMF is going to reciprocate on this deal. Either way, I guess this really seals WP's fate with Daniel now that they've officially joined with the Great Satan™

Hmm that sounds almost like the equivalent of making Wikipedia a for-profit website, just unofficially. I'm sure Google didn't donate that money just because they were feeling generous that day. They had to have been getting something out of it (ex. maybe an admin had to do a re-write of Google's article). So it looks like Jimbo found a creative way to make money off the project without officially declaring it a for-profit site and getting the community in a buzz (I wouldn't be surprised if other companies start making big donations in the near future now).

But to be honest, I'm not sure that this is totally a bad thing. Maybe it'll lead to an increase in content standards on the site since businesses might not want to be associated with it if more incidents like Fuzzy Zoeller, etc occur.

Bumping this post back up since it got lost in the derailment.

[thekohser]

I just found this snippet about the Tides Foundation:

The Tides Foundation, a “charity” established in 1976 by antiwar leftist activist Drummond Pike, distributes millions of dollars in grants every year to political organizations advocating far-Left causes. The Tides Foundation and its closely allied Tides Center, which was spun off from the Foundation in 1996 but run by Drummond Pike, distributed nearly $66 million in grants in 2002 alone. In all, Tides has distributed more than $300 million for the Left. These funds went to rabid antiwar demonstrators, anti-trade demonstrators, domestic Islamist organizations, pro-terrorists legal groups, environmentalists, abortion partisans, extremist homosexual activists and open borders advocates.

...

Tides allows donors to anonymously contribute money to a host of causes; the donor simply makes the check out to Tides and instructs the Foundation where to forward the money. Tides does so. The Tides Center will even manage a left-wing project, for a nominal fee. Drummond Pike told The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with.”

While you certainly have to consider the agenda of the site that published it, I am nonetheless not surprised to understand that the Wikimedia Foundation has aligned itself with a left-leaning organization that helps people with money be held less accountable to public disclosure.

[EricBarbour]

While you certainly have to consider the agenda of the site that published it.......

You certainly do. Front Page Mag is run by the notorious off-the-deep-end, paranoid right-wing Jewish ranter David Horowitz. A former Marxist who went bananas some years ago....

His site links to crackpot bloggers like Phyllis Chesler and Debbie Schlussel -- together, these people are among the worst anti-Muslim conservatives in the country.

There's also this article, which connects Tides to various old-money philanthropies, then takes the David Icke position that this makes Tides a New World Order/Brotherhood front group. Reptile aliens and all that.

Tides is just a left-leaning version of conservative funding groups like Castle Rock, Bradley or Olin--if asked, they will cheerfully cover up the original source of the funding.

Ask Horowitz where the money for his group comes from......

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Thu 18th February 2010, 4:39am

[NotARepublican55]

While you certainly have to consider the agenda of the site that published it.......

You certainly do. Front Page Mag is run by the notorious off-the-deep-end, paranoid right-wing Jewish ranter David Horowitz. A former Marxist who went bananas some years ago....

His site links to crackpot bloggers like Phyllis Chesler and Debbie Schlussel -- together, these people are among the worst anti-Muslim conservatives in the country.

There's also this article, which connects Tides to various old-money philanthropies, then takes the David Icke position that this makes Tides a New World Order/Brotherhood front group. Reptile aliens and all that.

Tides is just a left-leaning version of conservative funding groups like Castle Rock, Bradley or Olin--if asked, they will cheerfully cover up the original source of the funding.

Ask Horowitz where the money for his group comes from......

I think Michael Savage also used to be "more liberal" when he was in college. Is this a Jewish thing?

[gomi]

[Moderator's note: various player-versus-player BS, random paranoid conspiracy theorizing, and other off-topic cruft has been moved to threads in the Tar Pit and Politics forums.]

[A User]

If wikipedia generates revenue for Google, why doesn't Google simply buy out Wikipedia? Knol has been an abject failure. I'm sure Google has more than enough money to acquire WP.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/blogs/co...yeing-Wikipedia

[Jon Awbrey]

If Wikipedia generates revenue for Google, why doesn't Google simply buy out Wikipedia? Knol has been an abject failure. I'm sure Google has more than enough money to acquire WP.

www.stuff.co.nz/technology/blogs/connector/3342636/Google-eyeing-Wikipedia

Why buy the cow when you can milk it for free? — Well, $2M is just wiki-peanuts to Google, and they'll probably get a board seat out of that.

Jon

[Cla68]

I've been hoping for a couple of years now that Google would take over Wikipedia. Fine with me if they do and start posting advertisements on it. If they do, however, I hope they clean some house. If they'll give me any heed I'll provide them a suggested list of admins and editors they should send packing.

This post has been edited by Cla68: Fri 26th February 2010, 12:32pm

[CharlotteWebb]

I've been hoping for a couple of years now that Google would take over Wikipedia. Fine with me if they do and start posting advertisements on it. If they do, however, I hope they clean some house. If they'll give me any heed I'll provide them a suggested list of admins and editors they should send packing.

The only people they'd send packing are those who contributed to Criticism of Google and related, which they'd permanently delete.

Then they'd obfuscate all the source code and re-write the MW parser using brainfuck and disable discrete page-linking (and indeed viewing, if javascript is not turned all the way on).

They'd also find new ways to circumvent ABP, and appoint Sceptre to arbcom.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

If wikipedia generates revenue for Google, why doesn't Google simply buy out Wikipedia?

a) You cannot buy a 510 © registered not-for-profit.
b) What is there is buy?

I still don't know what they need all this money for and I wonder what they are going to use it for.

Since the Pee-dia has seemingly hit the main artery of public and trust funding and, remember, that is not something that remains forever, perhaps it is time for other groups to put together 501 registered task forces and apply for some funding for specific purposes, e.g. straight editorial, de-pornification, child protection and so on?

"OK, you want to donate to the cause? This is what we will specifically do with it".

[CharlotteWebb]

a) You cannot buy a 510 © registered not-for-profit.

Suppose Google buys—for the time being—enough mis-managerial influence that the IR$ revokes the WMF's status for (deliberate and pre-meditated) failure to comply with [whatever], then could they buy it out?

[EricBarbour]

a) You cannot buy a 510 © registered not-for-profit.
b) What is there is buy?

I've said as much many times before. Wikipedia, for its reach (thanks mainly to Google giving them preferential link treatment), is a DIRT CHEAP operation. $2 million is chickenfeed to Google. And they don't have to deal with the operation of the madhouse, because it's an "independent" NPO, with 99% of the work being done by foolish, sometimes crazy, unpaid volunteers.

Bonus! WP can do what Yelp is doing, and hide behind Section 230! "It's not our fault! We're just a service provider!"

A perfect deal for Google, and a nightmare for the rest of the world.

(Why do you think Daniel Brandt opposed WP in the first place? Because they are Google's undetected cancerous polyp--joined to them, and poisoned by them. Google has other cancers, but Wikipedia is a unique, special case. It isn't a for-profit advertising conduit, so it can claim the "moral high ground". )

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Fri 26th February 2010, 8:46pm

[CharlotteWebb]

I've said as much many times before. Wikipedia, for its reach (thanks mainly to Google giving them preferential link treatment), is a DIRT CHEAP operation. $2 million is chickenfeed to Google. And they don't have to deal with the operation of the madhouse, because it's an "independent" NPO, with 99% of the work being done by foolish, sometimes crazy, unpaid volunteers.

Bonus! WP can do what Yelp is doing, and hide behind Section 230! "It's not our fault! We're just a service provider!"

One might wonder whether acknowledging the capacity to selectively remove content in exchange for money would threaten that immunity.

This vaguely reminds me of those "stalk find anyone!" directory sites, one of which I contacted, asking them to de-list my name and address and shit, but they wanted money, plus personal information beyond that displayed on the page (in order to verify the authenticity of my request), but I knew better than that.

Elsewhere there is genealogy data which I'd also like to see disappear. They said I'd have to talk to the lady who posted it, but I happen to know she is deceased (as she was my great-aunt, though I never met her).

Yelp recently walked away from discussions with Google to buy the company for about $550 million.

Pretty steep for a site I've never heard of.