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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Wikipedia is trying to charge me for using wikipedia? And want to charge you too?

It's not an actual paywall, it's just asking for donations. They seem to do a donation drive two or three times a year, and so do several other major wikis.



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It will keep on asking you for money. Just ignore and keep on reading. You dont need to donate at all to use it.
I used to donate some good money to them every year but they changed too much in the last few years so I stopped donating.
But hey, if you like it, why not drop some dollars for them each year?



It's still free. It'll likely always be free. As stated, they're just asking for donations. It's not uncommon. It likely does cost money to operate and they don't run ads so I can understand where they're coming from. I actually tried to donate earlier this year but the browser I was using wasn't my usual browser and it didn't have my credit card info installed.



SegaHeart said:
OlfinBedwere said:

It's not an actual paywall, it's just asking for donations. They seem to do a donation drive two or three times a year, and so do several other major wikis.

Ok , because it warned me 5th time?

It's not a warning, it'll always show up until they reached their donation goal. There's a bar and a number that they're trying to reach. You can just click on the X in the corner and continue reading.



EnricoPallazzo said:

It will keep on asking you for money. Just ignore and keep on reading. You dont need to donate at all to use it.
I used to donate some good money to them every year but they changed too much in the last few years so I stopped donating.
But hey, if you like it, why not drop some dollars for them each year?

I'm in the same boat, been donating for the past 7 years, not going to continue. I feel the content is not objective anymore.



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anonymunchy said:
EnricoPallazzo said:

It will keep on asking you for money. Just ignore and keep on reading. You dont need to donate at all to use it.
I used to donate some good money to them every year but they changed too much in the last few years so I stopped donating.
But hey, if you like it, why not drop some dollars for them each year?

I'm in the same boat, been donating for the past 7 years, not going to continue. I feel the content is not objective anymore.

Yes. I think Wikipedia is one of those sad stories on the internet. What it could have been and what it has become.

Despite that it is still very good for mundane stuff, band discographies, movies, etc.



Machina said:
EnricoPallazzo said:

Yes. I think Wikipedia is one of those sad stories on the internet. What it could have been and what it has become.

Despite that it is still very good for mundane stuff, band discographies, movies, etc.

I feel similar. I use it frequently for music discographies, to keep track of upcoming seasons for TV shows I enjoy, a little bit for video games, and sometimes looking up unusual or niche subjects I happen to suddenly be curious about (most recent example: I saw a story elsewhere on the internet about a British naval officer who escaped Germany in the 1940s in full British naval dress uniform, by confidently pretending to be a Bulgarian officer called 'I. Bagerov' (i.e. 'I Bugger Off'). It sounded so outlandish that it could well be true. So I looked it up on Wikipedia. Sure enough, it's true - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_James_(British_MP) ).

But for anything political, social, topical, or controversial I avoid it, or read it with incredible scepticism - it's too open to manipulation and long-time contributors abusing their knowledge of the editing system to retain their own personal biases on the live pages(s). Its own contributors have sadly moved it ever so slightly but nonetheless noticeably away from being a neutral and objective source of information, to adopting the mores of ascendant dogmas.

Agree. I think it's one of those classic cases of normal people having a little bit of taste of power, like reddit mods.

People from all genres, classes, countries etc are the same, give them a little bit of power and they will do everything they can to not let go of it, even if it is for something irrelevant.