The Hypocrisy Weblog

Wikipedia, a free wiki-based (everyone can add / edit information) encyclopedia / news-site is now asking it’s users to donate a couple of dollars in order to keep the site free and floating. When this is written, The Wikipedia Foundation is 20.000$ from their objective.

Full press release below;

Knowledge is power. Help keep it free.

You may have noticed recent slowdowns, and periods of downtime, for Wikipedia and her sister sites. We are working to make our system more efficient, but traffic on the Wikimedia servers is doubling every four months. Wikipedia.org is already one of the top 200 most popular websites on the Internet and will likely be in the top 100 before the end of the year.

This growth has been very exciting but has been a challenge to cope with. Just to keep up we will need to spend $55,000 (USD) on new hardware this quarter alone (compared to $30,000 last quarter). But we also want to build reserve capacity and an infrastructure for deploying server clusters around the world. Hosting partners could then help us share our exponentially growing traffic load, reducing constant increases in our expenses. Other costs, however, continue to increase, such as the operation of the servers in our colocation facility, administration and maintenance work, and critical changes to our software.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Lounsbery Foundation, we can cover our budget without raising substantially more funds than in the last quarter. In all, we will need $75,000 in donations to reach our goals this quarter. You helped us raise over $50,000 in our last fund drive. Every little bit helps – most donations we receive are the equivalent of $20 or less.¹

You have the power to help keep these free resources growing. Thank you for your generosity.

– The Wikimedia Team

If you use the site, give them a buck – will ya?!

Blogger and SVT employee (swedish television) Per Gudmundson had a blog over at http://gudmundson.blogspot.com , though he got directives from the heads of SVT to stop continue updating his blog, as it was in conflict with the directives of SVT to remain objective.

Now, the tables are turned – as the people of SVT have been watching what BBC have been up to, and as written on http://www.broadbandblog.com/archives/2005/02/24/london-blogging-2/, BBC has deployed a blooming blog, wiki and social network-system (iCan) and now SVT wants to copy BBC.

My comment;

Isn’t public service supposed to be both objective, but also take the pulse of the time and adapt themselves to the current media climate?!

A good thing, for SVT, is that the general public, aka SVT’s customers, don’t know about the misstakes being made behind the scene. Though, the ones of us that blog and is following the swedish blogsphere knows that SVT made a huge blunder. But then again, it is never too late to make penance!!