Siteadmin, Check users, oversight, Administrators
350,920
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 17:
Line 17: + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
→Origins
[[Image:Wpp.png|thumb|right|200px|Multilingual Wikipedia Home Page]]
[[Image:Wpp.png|thumb|right|200px|Multilingual Wikipedia Home Page]]
Initially, Wikipedia was hosted on servers operated by Bomis, Inc., a company that also sold pornographic pictures.<ref>Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts, "WIKIPEDIA," The Independent (London) p. 12 (Feb 13, 2006)</ref> In 2003, Jimbo Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation to oversee the day-to-day operations of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides support for Wikipedia and other similar projects,<ref>[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home Wikimedia Foundation] accessed April 7, 2007</ref> and also the free MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia and Conservapedia.<ref>[http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki home] accessed April 7, 2007</ref>
Initially, Wikipedia was hosted on servers operated by Bomis, Inc., a company that also sold pornographic pictures.<ref>Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts, "WIKIPEDIA," The Independent (London) p. 12 (Feb 13, 2006)</ref> In 2003, Jimbo Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation to oversee the day-to-day operations of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides support for Wikipedia and other similar projects,<ref>[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home Wikimedia Foundation] accessed April 7, 2007</ref> and also the free MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia and Conservapedia.<ref>[http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki home] accessed April 7, 2007</ref>
== Leftist, Utopian ethos ==
David Swindle writes at [[FrontPage Magazine]]:
{{cquote|There was not a single ideological vision driving Wikipedia’s founders and core contributors as they launched the project. Jimmy Wales, who would become the face of the project and its “benevolent dictator,” according to Andrew Lih’s ''The Wikipedia Revolution'', is a libertarian and Ayn Randian Objectivist. Also important in shaping Wikipedia was the so-called “hacker ethos,” the culture that has developed amongst computer programmers over the last 40 years and been shaped by the Left, the counterculture, popular culture, and [[anarchism|anarchist]] thought.
What binds together these ideologies is a utopian ideal that human beings are more prone to [[altruism]] rather than self-interest. In Wikipedia Revolution Wales is quoted as saying, “Generally we find most people out there on the internet are good… It’s one of the wonderful humanitarian discoveries in Wikipeda, that most people only want to help us and build this free nonprofit, charitable resource.” Ward Cunningham was the programmer who created the wiki concept and software. According to Lih, he believed in the Wiki because “People are generally good.”
Lih explains how this philosophy is embedded within Wikipedia’s rules:
A core idea Wikipedia embraced.. was to assume good faith when interacting with others. The guideline promoted optimistic production rather than pessimistic nay-saying, and reads, “Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it; avoid accusing others of harmful motives without particularly strong evidence.
But as it worked out, Wikipedia in practice has strayed from these utopian ideas because of the ease with which political and social bias trumps altruism.
After almost a decade of rapid growth and free-wheeling experimentation the situation at the site by the Summer of 2009 was chaos. Political operatives would sabotage one another in electoral contests by vandalizing pages. More malicious misinformation filtered in freely, with living historical figures accused of involvement in conspiratorial plots.<ref>http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/23/how-the-left-conquered-wikipedia-part-1/</ref>}}
==Economics==
==Economics==