[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Peter Damian]

Putting this in context.  If I were to donate, say £1,500 of gross income to 
WMF, it would be reasonable to ask what this money was for: how it was 
helping. The WMF goal is to "collect and developing educational content and 
to disseminate it effectively and globally".  Wikipedia is the main engine 
of this project, and is the reason I imagine most people want to donate 
money.  Would I donate such a sum of money if I thought that it was not 
actually helping develop educational content?  Hence my question: has 
Wikipedia actually changed since 2005?  Has any educational content been 
added (I am not including porn star bios as educational content, clearly).

I had three answers:

1.  The first that this was seriously off-topic.  I don't understand why 
not.

2.  The second compared Wikipedia to going to the barbers, getting a nice 
trim, and then the hair getting all messy again.  That is clearly not a 
reason for donating money, quite the reverse.  How is the money actually 
going to help, if it all is going to be a mess again in 6 months?  I 
appreciate a lot of it goes to support the servers and IT and things, but 
wouldn't it be more efficient simply to stop people editing, clear up some 
of the mess, and lock Wikipedia down?  That would be much cheaper.  And I 
would be willing to fund a clean-up effort.

3.  I wasn't quite sure of Phil Nash's objection, I think he was trying to 
say that there is no evidence of Wikipedia failing to develop or grow.  To 
that, I say that if I am going to donate money, I would like clear evidence 
that Wikipedia is progressing in the direction I would hope.

I would like to point out I do support a number of charities.  I help the 
Warburg institute with its library acquisition fund.  This makes hard-to-get 
books available to students.  I don't support WMF, and I won't until there 
is clear evidence the money would be used for a good purpose.  What do 
others think?  Why do people donate to WMF?

Peter