[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia struggles, Mozilla set for life?

[David Gerard]

On 24/10/2007, Phoenix wiki <phoenix.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/24/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 10/23/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 2007.10.23 19:12:56 -0400, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
> > scribbled 0 lines:

> > > > Wikimedia could also not maintain 501(c)3 status that way.

> > > Last I heard, the Mozilla Foundation was still a 501(c)3 charity despite
> > > their Google deal. Has it since been removed?

> > The Mozilla Foundation set up a wholly-owned taxable subsidiary
> > corporation, the Mozilla Corporation, in order to remain a 501(c)(3).

> What about a Wikimedia Corporation? That'd work


CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, St. Petersburg, Florida (UNN) — The Wikimedia
Foundation(R), the nonprofit behind Wikipedia(R), the Free Cheap
Encyclopedia™, will be introducing paid editing to all projects
through the new Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation joint venture with
Richard Branson.

A standard paid account will start at US$25 (€20 or £0.05) per month
per user, with a discount of US$5 (€16 or £0.04) per month for users
with over 2000 edits. The paid editing initiative was announced during
the Foundation's Winter 2006/Q4 funding drive.

Wikipedia(R) is the number 10 website in the world, and the only
website in the Alexa Top 20 run by a nonprofit. Despite its low
overheads, with only six paid staff, the Foundation has had tremendous
difficulty in keeping up with the ever-increasing demand for server
hardware, not to mention the bandwidth bill for serving an average 150
megabytes per second, doubling every six months. Slow page loading and
frequent downtime remain perennial problems.

"Advertising on Wikimedia(R) has been roundly rejected by the
community," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikimedia(R), "even though
we're missing out on about *sixty thousand goddamn dollars each and
every frickin' day* by not having two Google text ads. But we got away
with proving mathematically that the Virgin Unite logo in the
fundraising banner was technically sponsorship and not 'advertising'
per se, and as a bonus it shook off a couple of the most troublesome
whiners from the Dutch and Italian Wikipedias(R). And hey, we
outlasted Enciclopedia Libre nicely. *We got the brand name*, suckas.

"We were so desperate for cash that we'd initially considered a rental
scheme for volunteers, but Rob Church is still under twenty-one so
can't legally work any street corner other than Piccadilly Circus, and
Greg Maxwell got a little too excitable with his first rough trade
customer once the ketamine wore off. Brion had to resort to the cattle
prod. Very enthusiastic volunteer, though, Greg. Totally dedicated.
But rest assured, we still hold out hope of finding a Wikipedian™
who's actually attractive to anyone anywhere. Danny already bought the
wide-brimmed purple fedora and the cane."

The new account levels are:

* WikiFree™: You can get a free account by completing offers or
reffering freinds to do the same. For an initial setup fee of five
dollars (€4 or £0.01), you get ten article edits a month, six picture
userboxes and one vanity article.
* Sponsored Plus™: The new Sponsored Plus™ level gives free users more
options, paid for by "PUNCH THE MONKEY!" adverti sponsorship messages
on pages, images and the 'Save page' button. After your five dollar
setup fee, you get 100 edits a month, twelve picture userboxes and two
vanity articles, one for yourself and one for your garage band.
* WikiPaid™: The WikiPaid™ account, at twenty dollars a month, offers
unlimited monthly edits, thirty picture userboxes, twenty edits per
month in the Wikipedia(R): page space, a vanity article each month and
sponsorship messages only in the sitenotice banner.
* WikiAdministrator™: WikiAdministrator™ powers are given to the most
highly respected editors on Wikipedia(R). For one hundred dollars a
month (€80 or £0.20), you get all the paid user benefits, unlimited
edits in the Wikipedia(R): page space, smaller sponsorship messages in
the sitenotice banner, immunity to CheckUser and droit de banstick in
any edit war with a lesser editor.

Sponsored Plus™, WikiPaid™ and WikiAdministrator™ users can also
create their own Wikistress meters and move adversaries' articles to
Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense.

The new Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation is a for-profit joint venture
between the Wikimedia Foundation(R) and Richard Branson's Virgin
Group. The Foundation owns the trademarks and licenses them to the
Corporation, and Virgin engineers run the server network and sell
adverti market sponsorship. Wikipedia(R) remains free content under
the GNU Free Documentation License, but use of the logo, the puzzle
globe, the font or the word "Wikipedia"(R) attracts a 25¢ per use
license fee. (Please deposit coin in CD drive before continuing
reading.)

The Wikimedia(R) Foundation's profits go to furthering their
charitable goals, which remain "to empower and engage people around
the world to collect and develop educational content under a free
license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and
globally." The Foundation's new financial muscle is used to facilitate
the hard work of its dedicated employees and independent consultants,
most of the latter being recruited from the most experienced
Foundation volunteers. "We feel we have a duty — a duty to all of
humanity, really — to use the Foundation's new resources wisely and
effectively," said James Forrester from on board the Arbitration
Committee™ yacht.

Richard Stallman surprised many with his enthusiastic support for the
creation of Wikimedia(R)'s for-profit arm. "In particular, I strongly
hope the Foundation sticks it to Debian the way Mozilla did over
Firefox. Call my GFDL 'non-free,' will they. Assholes."

"We think there's tremendous scope for synergy here. Jimmy and I have
been discussing this deal since we met on Bono's private Caribbean
island last year," said Sir Richard. "We think Wikimedia(R) will fit
right in with the way our other recent Internet acquisition,
NTL-Telewest, works. Particularly their excellence in customer
service."

"We work well together," said Wales. "It's a beard thing."

The Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation has been listed on NASDAQ (VWMC
0.000002↓). The initial public offering raised almost seventy dollars
by the close of trading yesterday.


- d.