Bitcoin Forum

Hi there,

I am interested in making a donation to wikipedia, but I cannot afford a large donation.

If I send you a small donation via paypal, etc., a sizeable percentage will be eaten up in fees, and I want to donate to wikipedia, not paypal, visa or mastercard.

I would like to make the donation via bitcoin, so that wikipedia will receive the entire amount, but I do not see a bitcoin donation address anywhere on your site.

Can you please let me know what bitcoin address I can use to send a donation to?

Highest Regards,
Jeremy West

I've sent something like 5 emails to different people from the WikiMedia organization. They are not interested in bitcoin donations. I know several people even promised a couple hundred or thousand dollars worth in BTC if they put up an address. I think Wikipedia doesn't want to be associated with something that has been used by Wikileaks...

That sounds so immature to not accept Bitcoin because Wikileaks has, if that is the case.

They never said it directly, but it got pretty irritating.

I know they have rejected bitcoin several times, I was just adding one more request to the pile because I was on wikipedia and saw their huge banner begging for donations. :D

Looks good, I wrote once already. I don't remember to which address, what's best to write to to actually get read and maybe a response?

I will NEVER give wiki ANY bitcoin EVER, they do not deserve it!

one day they WILL post a bitcoin address. everyone on this forum should vow to never give them bitcoin either.

+1 Wikipedia has become an active member of the status quo propaganda squad.

 Their "lmoderators" are state-sponsored or bank-sponsored "experts", mostly from academia, i.e with plenty of time on their hands to exert censorship on anything even remotely likely to disturb the establishment.

Perhaps someone here should come up with a competitor to wikipedia. :)

A competitor to WikiLeaks? You've been dippin' into Atlas's medication?  ;D

Fixed. :)

Providing all the knowledge in the world for free to everyone?

"Status quo propaganda".

Of course wikipedia is not gonna accept/endorse Bitcoins when the only current precedents by lawmakers have been negative. Wikipedia is a big fucking deal, at present its much more important than Bitcoin. It's a bit like Ron Paul not accepting Bitcoin directly, and noone blames him for that.

I have read several threads like this, and was wonder if people should start putting in different currencies.  For instance, if I want to pay in Philippine peso rather than USD, will they take it?  What about North Korean, Congo wherever?  Some of those currencies are less tradable than bitcoin.  (Their arguments about maintaining charity status are pretty silly.)

Maybe we should really piss them off and say we want to donate gold and diamonds.

Edit: sent them an email with the above sentiment.  Hope they have a happy christmas getting addresses from people at their street appeal if anonymous donations are such a problem for them as a charity.

meh, wikipedia is really cool. but they are being very uncool when it comes to bitcoin. and with no good reason.

simply put they aren't will to take a tiny risk by Validating Bitcoin. they must believe bitcoin is Dirt, and not worth while....

would you donate to someone that thinks like this?

I see what you've done there.

Jeremy fixed it, right after taking Atlas's medication.

Here was my latest thoughts on the Wikipedia issue: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50158.msg653388#msg653388

~Bruno~

Fairly standard reply.  Glad I'm not relying on cashing in my euro or USD with a government.  I wonder what they would get if they turned up to the federal reserve and said, "here, I'm cashing in my $100".

___________________________________________________________________________

Dear Patrick,

The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. This has been interpreted to mean that we do not accept "artificial" currencies - that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change. In the meantime, you may wish to view alternative methods of donation at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give
Sincerely,
Heather
Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising

I wonder if Heather had help with Wikipedia in the penning of this reply? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary

Furthermore, Wikipedia didn't back down from the FBI, yet has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/08/03/fbi.seal.wikipedia/index.html

To those suggesting they are bitcoin haters or in favor of maintaining the status quo:

Give them a fucking break. It is their right to decide if and when they will accept bitcoins. "Watching with interest" is more than their duty. They, like anyone rational, will start accepting them in a heartbeat when they decide it is in their best interest to do so.

"... those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government."

You think they will accept my trillion Zimbabwe dollars?  Eh, their justification is bogus.  I'll take as much SCoin or Ixcoin as anyone will give me.  Right away I'll convert it to BTC of course.

But yeah; if they don't want my support, it is fully their right not to get it.  Wikileaks did.  Wikipedia won't.

Bitcoin is still pretty small potatoes. Giving them to big charities is kinda like tipping with loose change. Save your Bitcoin for the unique things for which it was designed. Bitcoin will have its day and naysayers will one day regret not accepting them sooner.

After reading the two posts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system), quoted above, I say we move on. The energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence%E2%80%93Energies_distinction) used to try to revive a dead Bactrian camel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactrian_Camel) would be better served on other Bitcoin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin) related issues at hand.

Your are right: I was a bit too harsh on them.

I guess my feelings towards wikipedia relate to some bad experience I had trying to propose an article and discovering I was dealing with a kind of anonymous, headless bureaucracy. However I will not assume it is always the case as most articles are very well edited.

They are up to a task that is not simple and they do provide a very useful service.

But what if there were a campaign, of sorts, to donate exactly 1 BTC (valued up to $10 USD) to every one of the currently one million plus unpaid editors who desire Bitcoin? How disruptive would that be?

Currently unpaid for your volunteering efforts? Don't have to be--Bitcoin!

~Bruno~

That would be pretty disruptive to Bitcoin, that's for sure... though perhaps in a positive way (price going up).  It would also be a disruption I think Wikipedia would find unwelcome.

Wikipedia would frown on it for the same reason they are against advertising.  It's already against the rules to accept paid engagements for writing or editing Wikipedia.  I think Wikipedia would consider it non-kosher to even have editors put bitcoin addresses on their user pages.  That's because there's a reasonable fear that someone who suddenly started editing with a bias might see anonymous donations for doing so.  Every corporation would, instead of editing their own wikipedia article, would start donating anonymously to everyone who made edits in their favor in order to encourage more of it.  That would be real damage to Wikipedia, not worth a few extra donations.

A very informative post, casascius. Makes it pretty damn hard for me to punch holes in your logic, so I won't even attempt to try such. Thank you kindly for supplying this relative information to the community.

~Bruno~