Showing posts with label wikipedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wikipedia. Show all posts

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Wikipedia's National Presence?

I'm sure everybody who reads this blog uses Wikipedia a great deal. For the most part, I find it a valuable resource and yes, I have edited a few entries here and there. In some books I've read lately (e.g. Remix by Lawrence Lessig), the point is made that Wikipedia is leaving about $100 million US on the table by not running ads. Arguably, the non-commercial nature of Wikipedia partly explains its great success. Anyhow, I started to think about contributing financially to support the project (something small as I am still a graduate student, but something all the same).

Sadly, I found that there is no chapter of the Wikimedia foundation in Canada. There are some efforts afoot to start such a chapter, but that project has not yet been registered formally as a charity. I'm embarassed to see that such discussion apparently did not formally start until January 2008. In contrast, many other countries founded Wikimedia chapters already: the United States, United Kingdom (Feb 2006), Russia (established May 2008), Austria (Feb 2008), France (Oct 2004), and Germany (June 2004).

The question I have is this: Why has it taken so long for Wikipedia to establish a Canadian presence organizationally?