[url="http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNE4oltwZKB_zhZX55ULcN12nXNA6g&url=http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/02/05/despite-record-donations-half-of-wikipedia-users-dont-know-its-not-for-profit/"][img]http://nt2.ggpht.com/news/tbn/noR-t4i5QqQqrM/6.jpg[/img]
The Next Web (blog)[/url]
<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />Despite record donations, half of [b]Wikipedia users don't know it's not-for-profit[/b]
The Next Web (blog)
At the DLD Conference in Munich last month, Pavel Durov – creator of Russian social network Vkontakte — pledged his support to Wikipedia live on stage, announcing he would donate a cool $1 million dollars to the online encyclopaedia, representing one ...



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More incompetence from the Wikimedia Foundation. Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on Communications and "Storyteller" job functions in San Francisco, not only do they fail to communicate to their readers that they are a non-profit, they can't even correctly set up the survey properly to measure that.



Even though the introduction to the survey said, "The survey is being conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia..." (Most people would be tipped off by the word "Foundation", suggesting non-profit status.)

Even though earlier in the questionnaire, a possible answer to "C4b. What is the main reason you choose Wikipedia over other sources of online information?" is the response: "You don't cover the page with distracting adverts", which is something a non-profit might do.

Even though earlier in the questionnaire, respondents who don't register a user account on Wikipedia were asked if "I thought it cost money to become a registered user" was a reason. Again, this would tip off that Wikipedia does not charge money to register, which is something a non-profit would do.

It suggests to me that the WMF's problem of 56% of American users not knowing it's run by a non-profit is even worse than measured.