Malvika's Ramblings

Wikinomics

Did you notice there are no advertisements on Wikipedia? Now is that a temptation for Wikipedia founders or what! The founder is Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (actually it’s controversial and he is called the co-founder). Jimbo was born in 1966. He is a little over 40 now. Nice to create something like this in one’s a lifetime huh? He did something called Bomis first, a pseudo-porn site, and financed Wikipedia from that.

They say Wikipedia runs on donations. Now personally I don’t have much faith in donations; something like a customer who tips as per his mood, isn’t it? So, what is the economics of it?

And do they have secret sifters sitting somewhere? Because apparently everyone can contribute to Wikipedia and that way, without sifters, one would expect the credibility of Wikipedia to be much lower than it actually is. Wales said when Wikipedia started as an open source platform, he used to wake up in the middle of the night fearing vandalism all over it. So, how do they take care of it?

Brings me to the fact that either it's huge donations or Wikipedia isn't that expensive to run. But how can that be? Actually just how much does it cost to run Wikipedia ever day or week?

Bottom line: If Wiki can, I sure can survive on donations! Anyone?