Yes, perhaps I'm suggesting a bit of a radical approach to funding and economics isn't my strong point, but just take a moment to really think about how certain web-oriented companies would survive without Wikipedia...
From: "Peter Mackay" peter.mackay@bigpond.com
Much as I appreciate and admire your principles, what you are proposing makes little sense if you go to the other side of the boardroom table. You might as well ask "Why don't individuals benefiting from Wikipedia contribute?", because a company is just a group of individuals, namely the shareholders. You are surely not suggesting that we have a log on screen so that anybody who might get a benefit from WP enter their credit card details before being granted access.
No I'm not suggesting that, Peter. I'm suggesting that, if Wikipedia was genuinely threatened with collapse because of money issues, donations, both corporate and personal would naturally flow in because they know how important it is.
If, as you say, some large companies derive a commercial benefit from WP and
should fund us, then what is to stop them from downloading MediaWiki, hiring some professionals, and building their own encyclopaedia, perhaps as a joint effort with Google along with toolbars and popups and so on? That way, they'd get the same benefits as well as control over the operation and a more focused product.
These companies have a vested interest in keeping the content in one format and one space. While it's impractical to assume there will never be special-interest web encyclopaedias, Wikipedia is clearly a very large and well-read resource with possibly more contributors than any other collaborative web space. As one of the "big players", Wikipedia, without any commercial loyalties, will be favoured over other collaborative encyclopaedias by both individual contributors and corporate donors.
Lisa