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Comment by sigi45 | Hacker News Reader

Wikisomething gave me so much information.

The price i'm paying with my few donations i made over the years, are donations i don't bother to check what they are doing with it.

Why? I'm not part of it. I'm just here, reading stuff on wikipedia.

I don't know what they wanna try out. I don't know who or why so many people are part of it. I haven't written a single article. I fixed stuff but thats it. Perhaps they need it to build the community around.

They got my trust.

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But you aren't paying for the editors and only a fraction of the donation goes to covering server costs. The Wikipedia project does not need your money and the foundation has enough money to survive indefinitely if they'd cut costs.

They already have costs vastly below other projects of their size

Yes, but a lot of it is bloat that does not contribute to Wikipedia itself.

I know and my argument is that your argument, doesn't matter to me. I also wrote why it doesn't.

I also donate each year and don't care what they are doing with my donation, because the value I got from wikipedia overshadowed my donation greatly and that's a great deal already.

Your trust is misplaced. Wikipedia editors (unpaid) generate their income from other things than money, be it a sense of accomplishment, altruism or agenda setting. Most articles on everything except science is tainted by bias. Wikipedia is no replacement for the classic lexicon in terms of redactional quality.

I'm really confused by this comment. Of course Wikipedia isn't a replacement for a dictionary. It's not supposed to be. And I don't see why you view "Wikipedia editors are motivated by things other than money, such as altruism" as an inherent negative either.

Soooo first of: I have not said that Wikipedia editors get money. But i'm assuming that my donation goes into something which motivates people to take part.

Easier editing for example. Or education about how to edit.

I don't have any lexika in my house. Everyone i know which has some form of it, its old.

I also don't think that a redactional lexicon is much better than the wikipedia. Why should it be? Bias perhaps but gathering facts is hardly a bias thing.

Wikipedia is free, i can freely distribute it, i can clone it, i can edit it. This is the most comprehensive datacollection with public access i know.

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