Much of the project's budget goes towards keeping that history alive: vast as Wikipedia is, it would be only fractionally as expensive to maintain if its history was allowed to dissolve into the ether. Which is why, if Wikipedia ever does lurch towards collapse, we had better be ready to show up with the money necessary to keep it -- all of it -- alive.

This article is so clueless that I hardly know where to start. The author might begin to get a few clues at The Wikipedia Review, especially in the Meta*Discussion Forum that I moderate:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showforum=62

Jonny Cache, 16 Jan 2011

Dropping the assumption that the WikiMedia Foundation's appeals for funds are legitimate and necessary, [the author's] concluding statement were better adjusted thus:

“If Wikipedia ever does lurch towards collapse, then the WMF had better be ready to show up with the surplus funds it squirreled away all the preceding years to keep it — all of it — alive.”

Jonny Cache, 17 Jan 2011

News Worth Discussing
Items from Wikipedia in the Media that generate more than one reply are moved here for further analysis.

Alan,

At the very minimum, you owe it to yourself and your readers to become acquainted with the issues of “oversight”, “oversight lite”, and all the other more insidious ways that Wikipedia power mongers censor, distort, and falsify the historical record to suit their agenda. The remarks that you make here may have applied to the early days of the original wiki-wiki collaborative software paradigm, but they no longer apply to the way that Wikipedia has perverted that philosophy. Wikipedia is not your Grandpa's Akashic Record, not by a long shot.

Jon Awbrey, 18 Jan 2011

Andreas C. Schou
So, I thought: it seems odd that someone would have a tremendous grudge against Wikipedia. And then I thought: why, there's a search engine available! I should check to see who this person is.

It turns out that it's a crank who thought that vandalizing Wikipedia for a living might be nice. That's true. It might, in fact, be nice. But it's also against the TOS. Which is why, I suppose, Greg's not making a living doing it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Gregory Kohs
in reply to Andreas C. Schou

So, I thought: it seems odd that someone would have a tremendous urge to check on someone who's against Wikipedia's current governors, but would think that this means that person's "against Wikipedia". And then I thought: why, there's a search engine available! I should check to see who this person is.

It turns out that it's a guy in Idaho with very little published accomplishments, other than completing a Facebook page, who thought it appropriate to pillory someone who founded a website that's among the 1% most popular, who holds a director-level position with a Fortune 100 firm, and who founded a non-profit organization that was intended to help keep watch on ethical practices on the Internet. Schou also thought that writing suitable content for Wikipedia (such as the article about Arch Coal) was "vandalizing" Wikipedia for a living, and that this was against a Terms of Service that doesn't exist (Wikipedia has no Terms of Service agreement with its users). Which is why, I suppose, Andreas is trolling The Atlantic comments page.

Alan Jacobs wrote, “I believe the most important component of Wikipedia is not its commitment to collaborative and ongoing creation, commendable though that is, but its attitude towards its own history”.

It is true that the ability to review its own history — with a critical eye — is one of the most important capacities that a candidate learning organization needs to have, and this applies as much or even more to the history of its policies and practices as it does to the record of its products.

But anyone who thinks that Wikipedia Culture is favorable to the critical review of Wikipedia History has probably allowed himself to become seriously misinformed, no doubt in large part by Wikipedia Mythology.

As it happens, a concrete example of Wikipedia's “attitude towards its own history” has just arisen in the context of an ongoing discussion at The Wikipedia Review, so I'll pass on a link to that for whatever enlightenment it may bring.

This Is Your Education On Wikipedia : Discussion

Jon Awbrey, 22 Jan 2011

This would have worked better as a metaphor, had it not tempted me (and just about everybody else who isn't New Age or Hindu) to look up Akashic records on Wikipedia …

Alan Jacobs is attempting to raise an important issue, but one that went belly-up too long ago, from the day Wikipediots privateered the wiki paradigm and discovered that their real agenda is easier served by hiding and rewriting history than preserving and learning from it.