Wikipedia contributors get paid for efforts

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 5 Dec 2007 at 08:46

Wikipedia contributors are to be paid for creating illustrations, under a new scheme managed by the Wikimedia Foundation.

The money for the project has been provided by donor Phillip Greenspun. Greenspun noticed that many key articles do not have high quality illustrations, and so donated $20,000 to improve the standard.

The money will be managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, but payments will officially come from Greenspun himself.

"The Wikimedia Foundation is not actually paying people to do the illustrations themselves," says Wikimedia spokesperson, David Gerard.

The scheme is set to begin in January 2008, and will pay contributors around $40 per illustration. Initially 50 images will be commissioned, and the results of this trial will be used to refine the process for the remaining illustrations.

"The Foundation wants a "hands-off" minimal administration role with the bulk of the work of organising the project and creating the content to be completed by members of our community," says a Wikimedia Foundation statement.

"Since this is the first time we've done this, we're not sure how it will go."

This is not the first time that contributors to the site have been paid for their efforts, though. The German government has previously provided a grant to fund the creation of articles on sustainable development.

"The foundation has paid for stuff in the past, for tiny, tiny languages, where translators have been paid to get articles started," says Gerard.