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Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikipedia, contacted me to make some corrections on the “Wikipedia Next on the Auction Block?” story from last week:

I am the sole founder of Wikipedia . . . The whole story (about an alleged cash crunch) is ridiculous, and I can’t believe that sharp bloggers were sucked in by the mainstream media on this story. -jimbo

 

That’s not to say they don’t appreciate and depend on the chartable donations they receive. They do. It’s just that discussions about the Wikipedia going under in the next 4 months due to cash problems are “ridiculous”.

Tagged: wikipedia |

Via Nick Carr, we have a report that the wikipedia is strapped for cash:

At this point, Wikipedia has the financial ressources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”. The warning by Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation was certainly dire, and Lift07 was as good a venue to make an appeal. But it is another illustration of how difficult it is to find the proper business model in the digital age, and more precisely in this case in what Florence called the “gift economy”.

 

With the server costs piling up, it begs the questions:

1. Will Wikipedia be Next on the Auction Block?

2. Who would buy it? and

3. How much would this uber authority site sell for?

I predict that the wikipedia will not be sold in the next 24 months.

However, if it were to change hands, I can’t see it selling for less than $1 Billion. The obvious suiters are GAMEY (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Ebay, Yahoo), but it would be a good play for others like NewsCorp, New York Times Company, or just about anyone that wants an instant online presence. Would it be worth it for a company like lendingtree to buy the wikipedia just to harvest mortgage leads? The Harvard University Endowment is about $30 Billion - might they or another university look at buying this online monster?

What’s interesting is that almost any major company or organization could benefit from owning this online monster; so there’s no reason to think that it would sell for less than $1 billion: but could a company that continues to hemeridge money pull in $5 Billion, $10 Billion or more on the auction Block?

Whip out your crystal balls - do you think the wikipedia will be sold in the next 2 years? Who is most likely to buy it? What is it worth?

Update: Wikipedia NOT in a cash crunch.

Tagged: wikipedia |

The following dumps are avalible:

special | wikibooks | wikinews | wikipedia | wikiquote | wiktionary | images

At the root of each Wikimedia project dump, you will find a listing of languages and the md5 sum for all files available in the tree. Each language directory contains these XML dumps:

pages_current.xml.gz - Link to the lastest current pages dump
all_titles_in_ns0.gz - All titles in the main namespace
pages_full.xml.gz - Link to the lastest full pages dump

 

Now what could a search engine spammer possiably do with these dumps and the markov chain?

Well, with the language feed and markov, you can now spam the search engines in tongues you don’t even speak. With markov, keep in mind that you need about 300+% imput to output ratio for optimal articles.

Tagged: wikipedia |