Wikipedia Gets State Funding in Germany

tmk writes "How can Wikipedia be improved? The German government started a project today to train experts to contribute to Wikipedia. The goal is to write or improve several hundred articles about renewable resources in the Internet encyclopedia. The project is funded by the German Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection. The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Wikipedian to coordinate the efforts. 'The challenge will be to motivate experts who have done good work in other projects to get involved in the community lexicon. As project director Florian Gerlach told heise online, "Such expert reports are usually written, edited, and published in the normal newspapers or even on other websites. But Wikipedia is radically different: articles there continually grow with input from numerous authors, who often remain anonymous. The end product is constantly changing, and third parties can publish their own texts or even change yours." The future authors will therefore receive some training to help them work with Wikipedia.'"

Uh...

[Wellington Grey]

For the first time, the German edition of the open Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia will be receiving state funding. Germany will be setting aside part of its budget to improve information about renewable resources in Wikipedia.

Paying people to edit wikipedia does not count as donating money. Would we say wikipedia is 'receiving funding from Microsoft' if MS was paying employees to write about MS products?

-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

Accountability

[athloi]

This will fundamentally change the wiki model, which grew rapidly because it did not require its writers to be accountable to existing standards. That made it popular, but also error-prone. Academia and government are going to take over wikipedia from within, by this model, and while this violates the fundamental ideal of wikipedia, it will improve the content vastly. Maybe there's something to learn here about the wisdom of accountability and peer-review standards that, while imperfect, evolved over time for a reason. It's a very generous move by the Germans, and one I hope others follow.

Re:Uh...

[Wellington Grey]

There's a difference. If microsoft funded people to write about microsoft products on wikipedia, it would be to help microsoft. Germany is funding people to write about things that would benefit the government of Germany.

There, I fixed it. Now you are correct.

-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

Re:Accountability

[kebes]

You paint a stark picture of "anonymous random contributors" versus "academia and government"--but I think that is a false dichotomy. Wikipedia has always benefiting from the contributions of random individuals, as well as from expert academics. Whether or not those academics were told by their host institutes to contribute is actually immaterial (unless you think the academic holds different expertise/opinions in the two cases...).

To have governments actively allocate funding for people to contribute to Wikipedia in no way prevents or invalidates the tireless work of the rest of the community. Both groups should be contributing, and both groups should be checking each other's facts. There is no need (nor any ability) for governments to "take over wikipedia from within".

What we are seeing is a consolidation of efforts, and I hope other governments follow this lead. Government workers (who are inherently being paid from public funds) should not waste effort generating duplicate material. Rather than creating their own factoid-websites, they can do more good by extending and improving the vast material on Wikipedia (which, of course, is freely available to all).

absolutely terrible development

[circletimessquare]

wikipedia is of course full of smears, propaganda, lies, errors, partisanship, etc. but at least it's a democratic model of such, so you can expect it from all sides: a random cacophony of background noise. your average person's healthy critically minded bullshit meter can weed the useful from the unuseful

but by linking the government, any government, to wikipedia, now your cacophony has a louder strain of establishment rhetoric and bureaucratic agenda. instead of your bullshit meter going off here and there, now your bullshit meter is on orange alert all the time: those with an agenda aren't random riff raff, now they have dug themselves deeper into the lifeblood of the entire site

there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased source of information. but a site unhinged from corporate ownership or governmental oversight or funding accountability is pretty much as close as you are going to get. involving any outside entity with an agenda, no matter how innocuous the agenda nor how limited the scope of the involvement nor what the model of involvement is, it taints everything about how you must perceive the site if you have a healthy bullshit meter

a shame, just a bloody awful development because i love wikipedia, but now i love it a little less ;-(

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[jollyreaper]

Germany funding Wikipedia? Oh great.

The obligatory Ayn Rand quote that I feel is applicable here:

One of these words does not belong with the rest.

Re:Uh...

[Darundal]

Out of curiosity, can anyone explain to me how the German government paying people to edit and to write wikipedia pages about a certain topic (in this case, renewable resources) does not constitute propaganda?

Re:Obligatory Rand quote

[TerranFury]

Ayn Rand wrote:

Have you ever wondered about the mentality of those who advocate government financing of intellectual and artistic pursuits, in the name of intellectual independence and creative freedom?

Actually, I'm quite sane Ms. Rand; thanks.

I wrote (#19300097 [slashdot.org]):

There are some things that monopolies, like governments, can better provide than many smaller competing companies; infrastructure and technology research are two of the most important ones. The simple reason for this is that monopolies can be relatively sure that they will be around in many years' time to reap the benefits of their investments, whereas in a hypercompetitive market, risk is higher and the "rational" investor will focus on smaller, shorter-term investments; this maximizes his expected return.

You see: if government doesn't fund research, who will? Gone are the days of Bell Labs.

Also, Ms. Rand, you forget: The absence of civic government does not imply the existence of individual freedom. Quite the contrary: Civic government is a necessary check on corporate government.

You mention...

Ayn Rand wrote:

the fear, the intrigues, the rigid censorship, and the abject bootlicking in which and with which the recipients of governmental favors have to live moment by precarious moment.

Are you so naive, Ms. Rand, to think that politics is unique to organizations run by the State?

Anarcho-capitalist "libertarianism" is no recipe for freedom.

Ayn Rand wrote:

How can today's intellectuals fail to know it?

...which -- funny thing, this -- is also my question, exactly.

Re:Just don't

[CowardX10]

They thought they'd be greeted as liberators.

Re:Citizendium

[Alphager]

nope. This is about publicity; the aim is to educate as much citizens as possible. As long as Users_of_wikipedia > users_of_citizendum use wikipedia.

Please mod parent up!

[fedxone-v86]

I know the parent is off-topic but so are all those uninformed comparisons to Germany's past.

Maybe you should remind yourself from time to time that there was more to the war than just who won it and who lost it.
Germany's past is not a fscking joke. It should be a lesson to everyone.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Vintermann]

Well, we know government already has tried to manipulate wikipedia (the white house edits controversy), and you can bet that large corporations have as well. I think they are even more distorting, because they pursue one goal (profit) while government pursues dozens of conflicting goals. Simply put, governments in general probably have more to gain from accuracy.
But as long as the German government is completely transparent with this, it shouldn't worry you anyway. You can just find out who those editors are, and keep an eye on them.

Re:absolutely terrible development

[Clovert Agent]

Why? If a paid contributor posts something you feel is overly biased, just change it, or flag it for deletion, or flag the poster for suspension. Wikipedia is self-correcting, and while that doesn't always work as fast or as effectively as some would like, it _does_ work.

If you don't like it, fix it. Don't bitch about it.