Since the past few months, netizens in India have been confused by the red, and sometimes blue box heading the Wikipedia site with a request to donate a minimum of Rs 150 to protect and sustain the organization. This has risen more than a few eyebrows about the state of the all-free knowledge hub. Is the 60 million dollar really in need of some emergency assistance? Is everyone’s first step to easy and free information, crumbling? Well, the situation is not really what it seems.
January 15, 2001 marked the date of the launching of Wikipedia by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The multilingual, open encyclopedia was created with a dream of imparting free knowledge to everyone who had the luxury of owning a decent internet connection (the world was still learning about the ingenuity of the internet). What emerged from the endeavor was an online dictionary where everyone was free to write a piece of the information on whichever topic they wanted. Now, the site sees traffic of about 1.5 billion users per month and a database of more than 54 million articles. Over all these years, the open door policy adopted by the website has been equally praised and lambasted by critics. While it is the first click for anyone who wants to research a topic, it has also been criticized for being unreliable and manipulative. Its free and open initiative was a crucial in the impartment of information, but it also made its content welcome to changes which are dominated by biased, and sometimes falsehood. Though the website is mired by a lot of such problems, the world cannot be thankless to the creators and the curators of the encyclopedia which is testament of a vision through which education can really be provided equitably to masses without any counsel fee.
It was all happy and fine until the red box of urgency began to appear in the beginning of the every Wikipedia article. People were caught puzzled as they couldn’t understand why a non-profit organization would be in such requirement of donations from its readers. In fact, this is not the first time that Wikipedia has issued such messages for the donation. Wikipedia in the past had asked its readers to donate to keep the non-profit site functioning. The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization which owns and protects the site, has written in a 2015 blog that they have to pay their editors and staff. They also need funds to keep the server going which make Wikipedia and its sister sites secure, fast and easily accessible.
“We’re a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online and thriving, but 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a little, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come. The price of a cup of coffee is all we ask,” writes Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, in an open letter. “Wikipedia is a place to learn, not a place for advertising. The heart and soul of Wikipedia is a community of people working to bring you unlimited access to reliable, neutral information.”
Yet in the past few months a development was witnessed as a few groups ran a campaign against the foundation for asking donations. The Wikipedia article on the recent North-East Delhi riots has vexed several right wing groups for reportedly documenting the unfortunate series of incidents in a ‘biased and anti-Hindu’ format. Moreover, the piece on ‘Jai Shree Ram’ describes it as a war cry and has been ‘employed for the perpetuation of communal violence’. All of this has lead to boycott of the website by a few right wing groups and individuals.
Wikipedia has shown how the dispersion of knowledge can be conducted without the need of any mandatory fees or constant regulation. The site has stood as an emblem for attempting to get the world together on the basis of education and teaching. Though the open policy can be a treat for many, it has also led to making the platform more prone to fake news and prejudices of today. However, it has taught us many and one of them is a selfless dispensation of education without borders and why it is important to keep it that way. Also, it makes us obligated to assist the foundation, which is running on the notion of free and fair access of information and news for all.
Written by- Abhay Majhi
Source- The Indian Express, Livemint, Inventia