[Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[George Herbert]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Your comment about "Reason" carries with it at least two premises:
>
> (1) That the Wikimedia Foundation's "impact" is a favorable one.  (Many
> would disagree, at least according to Andrew Keen, the staff of Encyclopedia
> Britannica and World Book, and just about every high school teacher I've
> ever talked to about Wikipedia.)

I have had a number of excellent deep discussions with high school,
college, grade school teachers about Wikipedia and the ones who pay
more attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry as an essay"
generally have a more nuanced and productive view of things.  They are
aware we aren't a primary source, and the risks of any secondary
source... Such as Britannica and World Book, too.

I know EB and World Book contributors who are very upset about
Wikipedia's rise, and many who see it as a godsend to information
propogation around the world, on the order of the rise of the Web and
of Google.  There are lost jobs at EB and WB - but the Post Office has
lost jobs due to email and skype and cellphones.  Technology has an
evolving effect on the world.  My grandfather owned and operated the
last cooperage in San Francisco in the era between the world wars -
and sold it off, seeing the rise of the steel barrel as being a
world-ending event for that industry as they became more commonly
available.  The new owners thought he was a fool for selling, and were
out of business a few years later.  The industry my college degree is
in (Naval Architecture, and the shipbuilding industry) is for the most
part dead in the United States compared to when I graduated - I saw
the writing on the wall and learned computers too, and that's what's
paid the bills.

This is part of life.  Either you learn to live with change or it runs
you over eventually.  Companies that don't die; people that don't end
up unemployed or working in much less skilled jobs eventually.  This
isn't Wikipedia's fault - it's the pace of change, over the last 200
years at least.

> (2) That Alexa rankings reflect "impact in the world".  If you've got
> 300,000 living persons checking their biography every day for defamation,
> I'm sure the Alexa rankings are going to notice that.

Greg, your glass is perpetually half empty.  This makes you a not so
useful critic.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com