As you can tell from the homepage, it’s a sad, trying day for the internet. Many of our favorite sites like Reddit and Wikipedia have gone dark, leaving only an argument against SOPA on their homepages in lieu of cat gifs and knowledge. All in all, it will shape up to be an incredibly boring day in the name of justice. Because to be honest, SOPA is unconstitutional in the way it’ll be enforced, and means rarely if ever justify the ends.

I drone on because I’m about to hook you up with access to Wikipedia, and I want to make sure you still understand what it will mean to our internet if SOPA passes. However, I’m sure plenty of you have papers due tomorrow or simply want to learn more about SOPA, which you should, and so we wanted to give you a circumvention for the Wiki blackout.

It’s actually quite simple, according to CK Sample II:

Just tap the escape button as soon as you begin to load a link to Wikipedia. I find that if you hold the button down, the page stops loading. If you press it too late, you’ll be redirected. It’s an acquired skill but should only take a few tries tops. Otherwise, you’re doing it wrong.

If you can’t seem to get the jist of it, you can always check out Wikipedia on your phone. We’re seeing reports here and there that the mobile version of the site does not redirect, and my iPhone 4S confirms.

Again, we here at TechCrunch oppose SOPA and are proud of the sites willing to take a hit in order to show the world what a life without Reddit or Wikipedia is like. I think we can all agree that it sucks.

Wow, and it’s only 9am.

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales wanted to send a “big message” to the U.S. government regarding the two heinous internet censorship bills currently being considered, and after a brief period of debate the world’s encyclopedia will soon do just that.

The Wikipedia founder announced on Twitter today that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version of the world’s encyclopedia will go dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA. With their commitment confirmed, Wikipedia will be joining a slew of websites and companies that will suspend their operations for one day in an effort raise awareness around the two bills.

Meant to curb IP theft and piracy, the (imaginatively named) Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act have raised eyebrows recently due to their decidedly scorched-earth approach to handling suspected offenders. Websites found to offer pirated content, along with the services that they use, could be hidden from US internet users by being delisted on search engines and potentially on DNS servers themselves.

Rather than let users access Wikipedia’s vast stores of English-language information on the 18th, Wales mentioned that the Wikipedia landing page will instead be populated with a letter of protest and a call to action that urges readers to get involved with the issue. It doesn’t appear as though the new landing page has been finalized, but one of the community’s prototypes can be seen above.

The news comes after a lengthy debate as to the particulars of such a grand gesture — whether or not the site should participate at all, which versions of the site would be affected, and how exactly the blackout would go down were all on the table for the community to discuss. Ultimately, the consensus pointed to a full blackout as a the proper way to make their collective displeasure known. There’s no official word on how other parts of the site will handle the event, although Wales has mentioned that the German language version of the site will be displaying a banner in support.

Meanwhile, some of SOPA’s supporters are already reacting to the very public backlash against the bill. Ars Technica reports that Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) would be pulling his DNS-blocking provisions from the bill after having consulted with “industry groups across the country.” What’s more, the White House has responded to two petitions about SOPA and PIPA on the official White House blog stating that they will not “support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Wales notes on Twitter that while SOPA has been “crippled,” buts its counterpart in the Senate is still very much alive and very dangerous. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently popped up on Meet The Press claiming his continued support for PIPA even though it “could create some problems.”

Though the event is meant to raise public awareness over two critical pieces of legislation, Wales still took a moment to offer a bit of sage advice for students heading back to school:

Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday! #sopa—
Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) January 16, 2012

Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia and other sites, this morning announced that they’ve raised $20 million from more than a million donors, shattering a record once again. The organization says donations have risen every year since its global fundraising campaigns began in 2003.

Wikimedia Foundation claims its sites now serve more than 470 million people every month. Wikipedia, which will celebrate its 11th anniversary in about two weeks, now boasts over 20 million articles in 282 languages.

The organization says more than 100,000 volunteers work on Wikipedia and sister projects.

The foundation employs approximately 80 people full-time.

From the press release:

The annual fundraiser is how the Wikimedia Foundation pays its bills. Funds raised in this campaign will be used to buy and install servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers.

The Wikimedia Foundation’s total 2011-12 planned spending is 28.3 million USD. The bulk of that is raised during the annual campaign, and the remainder comes throughout the year in the form of grants from institutions such as the Sloan Foundation, and many other small donations year round.

If you’d like to learn more about the organization’s annual plan for 2011-2012, start here.

Also read:

A Personal Appeal TO Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia Programmer: We Do The Funny Portrait Placement Thing Because It Works

You know, I’m becoming something of a fan of Brandon Harris (the latest face of Wikipedia’s fundraising efforts, which you should absolutely donate to.)

First, he’s a programmer on Wikipedia, which is pretty much the most world-bettering programming gig you could ever have. Second, he stopped in for hugs even as we were sort of poking fun at him. Third, he’s taken the time to answer the question we’ve been asking for over a week now: what’s up with the crazy confusing/hilarious donation plea portrait placement?*

The answer: They do it intentionally. Because it works.

Harris answers the question (and a ton of others) in a rather wonderful reddit AMA (Ask-Me-Anything):

Were your and Jimmy’s portraits placed like that (directly above the article subject) intentionally?

It’s intentional, but I don’t believe it was actually designed that way from the start. There have been many experiments over time as to the optimal position of the photos, and it just so happens that the left side is where it’s got to be.

The folks at Wikipedia are kings of A/B testing, and it turns out that this positioning just works best. While it may cause an eye twitch for the UX designers of the world — and everyone who likes to pretend that they’re UX designers (i.e. the entire Internet) — it means more cash for Wikipedia in the end.

Plus: intentionally or not, it’s had an awesomely viral effect for the whole campaign (hence this post.) Now go donate.

* And finally, just look at that hair.

The good news is that Wikipedia has finally switched up that image of Jimmy Wales begging for money on its homepage. The bad news is that they’ve replaced it with another unfortunately left-aligned image of some random guy (Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris to be precise) who, according to my email inbox, looks like everything from Jesus, to Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger to a member of the Hell’s Angels.

And because Harris’ image is left aligned, the weird article title/image juxtaposition thing still stands; The last straw was when I was Wikipedia-ing actress Diane Keaton last night and up he came, inadvertently wearing the same outfit and in the same pose as the Annie Hall star.

Here is a particularly hilarious conversation I had about it with somebody on IM.

Person: damn some idiot biker is screaming at me to give me money today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra
Person: refresh the page
Person: he should ride in on a harley
Person: and then jack me with a switchblade
Me: Snort
Person: cut my face if i don’t drop some funds on wikipedia
Me: Should I do another post?
Person: I’ve heard Jesus
Me: seems necessary
Person: Is wikipedia run by a biker gang?
Person: Will they slit your tires if you don’t donate?
Person: i like how he has two different pics
Person: there’s the soft outside guy silently judging you and the intimidating dude who will jack your ass

“I donated to get Brandon Harris’ picture off the top. I didn’t mind Jimmy Wales’ piercing gaze but Brandon was just disturbing,” notes interaction designer Xianhang Zhang on Quora. Until Wikipedia finally figures it out, Jimmy Wales himself offers an alternative to donating (and complaining) for those of you still creeped out,”You can also just click the little ‘x’.”

To donate money to Wikipedia, WHICH YOU TOTALLY SHOULD IN CASE IT’S NOT CLEAR, follow this link.

Dearest Jimmy Wales,

So we meet again Wales … Yes I know, another holiday season, another reason to poke fun at your silly, scopophobia-inducing banner ads belying the very noble cause of raising $29.5 million for an unlimited supply of constantly updated knowledge — FOR WHICH WE ARE ALL VERY THANKFUL JIMMY, I PROMISE.

But, for whatever reason Jimmy, this year you’ve chosen to left align your traditional banner ad portrait asking for Wikimedia Foundation donations, which means that your mug ends up being the accompanying image for whatever I end up looking up on Wikipedia.

And thus hilarity ensues (See above, and below and below and below and well you get the picture).

My — granted unsolicited — advice is that next year you take some of the donation money, especially the 20 bucks I’m about to throw at you out of guilt for writing this post, and hire a professional graphic designer so you’re not creeping people out or (worse) making them laugh unintentionally.

Best (and Happy Holidays!),

Alexia Tsotsis

Suggestion for @jimmy_wales: consider right-aligning your headshot in the "personal appeal" banner: http://t.co/49e2vaL8—
Gabe Rivera (@gaberivera) November 12, 2011

I find it very unsettling to see that photo of Jimmy Wales at the top of Wikipedia. I keep thinking I'm in the wrong entry.—
Gretchen Rubin (@gretchenrubin) November 18, 2011

Why does every single person you look up on Wikipedia resemble Jimmy Wales?—
  (@geneweingarten) November 20, 2011

Each time I go to Wikipedia, I see a photo of Jimmy Wales. It's as if he's watching over all of us en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Be… it's the wikiopticon—
Andrew Keen (@ajkeen) November 21, 2011

Sometimes, when I go to Wikipedia, I think I've actually accidentally stumbled onto Jimmy Wales's Facebook page.—
Kashmir Hill (@kashhill) November 17, 2011

In the true spirit of online activism, the entire Italian Wikipedia website has voluntarily taken itself down in order to protest a bill being proposed to Parliament. The law (“DDL intercettazioni,” roughly translated as Wiretapping Act) would require every website to publish within 48 hours a correction or comment relating to any content an applicant has deemed “detrimental to their image,” as they put it. If that sounds vague, broad, and onerous, that’s because it is.

If this law were passed, Wikipedia and other websites would have to post unedited and unsolicited “corrections” to any content deemed objectionable by any person. This content would have to be displayed without any review of the offending content or the “correction.” It doesn’t take an expert to see that this law is contrary to the principles of truth and openness.

In case it isn’t clear, let me just sketch out an example. Say a government official was facing charges of soliciting a prostitute. If this were to be reported on a news website, or written into his page on Wikipedia, he or someone representing him would be able to submit a “correction” that would be required by law to be displayed alongside that information within 48 hours, regardless of what it says or the truthfulness of the allegations.

There are already slander and defamation protection laws on the books, and this part of the law (which seems to have very little to do with wiretapping) seems to simply be a present to the highly visible and frequently-criticized class of people comprising politicians, celebrities, and so on.

To be specific (without getting too deep into it; I am not versed in the subtleties of Italian politics), the law is seen as a tool for people like Italy’s infamously newsworthy Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The many salacious charges against him would be required by law to be paired with any official commentary from the PM, his office, or his lawyers. If the

Wikipedia is careful to point out that the whole point of their service is to provide a free, comprehensive, and neutral encyclopedia that is open to input from all parties. This law would eliminate the neutrality of the resource they have worked to create, and so the users of Wikipedia.it have opted to remove it entirely:

Dear reader,

at this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced to actually delete it.

Wikipedia is, of course, actually based here in the US and foreign versions and communities are managed locally to some extent. The takedown of the Italian Wikipedia was not suggested or carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation, but they have written a short blog post in support of the effort:

The Wikimedia Foundation stands with our volunteers in Italy who are challenging the recently drafted “DDL intercettazioni” (or Wiretapping Bill) bill in Italy. This bill would hinder the work of projects like Wikipedia: open, volunteer-driven, and collaborative spaces dedicated to sharing high-quality knowledge, not to mention the ability for all users of the internet to engage in democratic, free speech opportunities.

I hope that the Wikipedians, as they are apparently called, here in the US would be able to take the same step, though I also hope it will never prove necessary. Personally I support this peaceful yet forceful demonstration of internet activism, and I’m sure many of our readers do as well.

Update: It seems the law has been amended to apply only to “official” press outlets. A dubious distinction. Also, the fine would reportedly be an outrageous 12,000 euros.

Personal search engine Greplin is announcing the launch of its Wikipedia Search Design Contest today, with the ultimate objective of conceptualizing a better way to search Wikipedia.

Greplin founder Daniel Gross tells me that Wikipedia search is “broken” in the sense that most people use Google to search Wikipedia, typing in something like “Beatles White Album Wiki” to get to this page of results. He re-imagines a world were people could use Wikipedia search for that functionality and in addition get beautifully visualized layout of links and images, essentially a more visually appealing way to learn from searches.

He says,

“I don’t think there is something specific about Wikipedia search that is specifically bad, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be infinitely better. If a good designer sunk deep thought into a search interface specifically for Wikipedia they would be able to build something that would make people shocked.”

Entrants can send in static comps as .jpeg .png or .pdf files or actually build out a product, by the deadline of August 18th. While the winning entry won’t necessarily be built out by Wikipedia (which isn’t affiliated with the contest), the winner will receive some pretty amazing prizes including the placement of their Twitter handle — in Helvetica Neue Bold of course – on a billboard in SOMA and a trip along with the runner-up to see a talk by data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte. Winners will own their own work and can give Wikipedia the option to use it under the Creative Commons licence.

What’s most impressive is the coterie of judges Greplin has brought on to moderate the entries, design luminaries like Google lead search designer Jon Wiley, Milk design lead Daniel Burka, Dribbble founder Dan Cederholm, Milk founder Kevin Rose, former Twitter product manager Kevin Cheng, Sidebar director of user experience Dan Rubin and Khan Academy design lead Jason Rosoff.

“I’m excited to see the myriad of approaches that people might take,” judge Daniel Burka said regarding what exactly he was looking for. “I think a few of the big opportunities in the search might be around more visual browsing of search results, incremental searching, and improved display of related content after a direct search (e.g. I search for Titanic and go to the Titanic page with the ability to navigate sideways through related results).”

On a base level, if you’re interested in getting Burka or any of the people above to see your work you should enter this (I would if I were a designer), but the grander idea is that why shouldn’t designers contribute to the design of Wikipedia the way laymen contribute to its over 3.5 million articles? “There’s a ton of unrealized potential,” Gross says.

The systems are over three years old, but have at least 3GB of RAM, 2.5GHz dual core CPUs, and at least an 80GB hard drive. The official posting notes that some servers have up to 32GB of RAM and 320GB hard drives. Wikipedia just wants the servers to find a cozy home at a deserving non-profit. Unfortunately due to shipping costs, taxes and exportation regulations, Wikipedia is limiting the giveaway to USA-based organizations.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Hunter Walk who spends way too much time researching 1980s hair metal bands on Wikipedia. His obsession with Wikipedia is unrelated to his day job leading the consumer product team at YouTube.

Wikipedia is the world’s 5th largest website, runs no ads and, depressingly, seems to be perpetually on the fringe of solvency. Google for “Jimmy Wales personal appeal” (Wales is Wikipedia’s founder) and you’ll see that there are 32,000+ results, which gives you a sense of the fundraising requirements for this user-generated encyclopedia. The question of whether they’ll ever run ads in order to break this cycle is an ongoing debate. In fact there’s a Wikipedia page devoted to this topic with discussion about ads, opt-in ads, search ads, etc.

At 400+ million users worldwide, any of these options could certainly raise considerable funds used to support the technical and philosophical mission of this non-profit. But to date, Wales has been reluctant to introduce any advertising. So where do we end up? After hitting its 10 year anniversary this January, the question is: can Wikipedia sustain itself for another 10 years without a significant change to its business model?

In my mind there’s a simple solution previously unexplored which would cover their fundraising goals of $16 million annually without any visible change to the site or behavior of its authors and users: simply insert affiliate codes into relevant links on Wikipedia. When I’m reading about the film Twilight, give me a link to buy the video at Amazon and Wikipedia will collect up to 8.5% of any transactions as an Amazon Associate. Or from the Hawaii page, a simple Orbitz affiliate link will produce $3 for each plane ticket sold, 3-5% for a hotel reservation, and so on.

How much money could Wikipedia make from this small change? How about $16,422,000 annually from just their US traffic, roughly 2.7 billion monthly pageviews (25 percent of Wikipedia’s total pageviews). Multiplying those pageviews by a .50 revenue per 1,000 page views yields a total which amazingly just exceeds the $16 million target. [note: the .50 eCPM is an estimate gathered from web experts in affiliate monetization. Oliver Roup, CEO of Viglink, a technology which helps web publishers monetize their site in the manner I suggest for Wikipedia, told me they see some eCPMs up to $5 within their network but suggests a more conservative estimate like mine  for Wikipedia.]

Three simple steps can make this happen and preserve Wikipedia as a vibrant, free service:

1) Jimmy Wales needs to say “yes!”

Although I’ve heard Jimmy talk about his views on advertising, I haven’t located any comments regarding affiliate programs. Unlike ads, affiliate links require no change to the site or conflict of interest. However today Wikipedia maintains strict policies on outbound links which forbid affiliate programs. Accordingly, Wikipedia would need to relax their policies on outside linking.

2) An Affiliate Marketing Partner needs to be selected

Viglink and Skimlinks are two of the leaders in the affiliate monetization space. Although specifics would need to be worked out, Roup offered Viglink’s support: “We’ve helped thousands of publishers monetize their content, including a few of comparable scale and we’re proud of the meaningful role VigLink revenue now plays for them. We’d be honored to similarly assist Wikipedia in continued pursuit of their mission.” That sounds like a deal waiting to happen!

3) Participating Merchants need to honor Wikipedia affiliate clicks

Affiliate programs exist to generate incremental sales and merchants reserve the right to limit payment to partners based on a variety of conditions. This is why you don’t see Twitter just append their own affiliate code to all Amazon links shared via their site — Amazon would likely say “bug off.” However, in this case, given Wikipedia’s non-profit status and the massive amount of traffic this would help unlock for participating merchants, merchants would likely welcome the affiliation. And those who don’t? Well, there’s always another merchant who will or how about a people-powered boycott by the Wikipedia community?

By embracing a smart affiliate program technology, Wikipedia could readily remove the questions around their solvency and redirect all that fundraising energy to activities more directly productive to the wikipedia corpus. So c’mon Jimmy, what do you think?

Disclaimer: I work for YouTube, which is owned by Google, which has a group called Google Ventures which made an investment in Viglink, however I’ve got no agenda here other than Wikipedia’s future.

Wikipedia just celebrated its tenth birthday. As a self-proclaimed fan of the site, I wanted to share with you this video, made for the occasion as Wikipedia enters its second decade.

The ‘State Of Wikipedia’ video is part of the ‘State Of’ series made by interactive agency from JESS3, and is narrated by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Today, the English Wikipedia now stands at 3.5+ million articles (up from roughly 500,000 in March 2005), and more than 17 million across all languages.

No matter what you think about Wales, the foundation or the site, that’s an impressive feat.

(Source: press release)

Click the image below for a larger infographic:

It’s the last day of the year, according to the Gregorian calendar at least, which prompted me to do some research on how well Wikipedia’s fundraising efforts for 2010 were going. As you may have heard, the Wikimedia Foundation is trying to scrape together $16 million from user and supporter donations to fund its strategic plans for 2011 (PDF).

The contribution campaign, starring Wikipedia founder Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Wales in a prominent role, was kicked off around November 13, 2010, and has so far brought in $15 million according to the banner that appears on top of Wikipedia articles these days.

Or has it?

Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia (and other free knowledge projects), is keeping a nice public Fundraiser Statistics page, which shows the cumulative total raised to date is actually just north of $13 million. We’re not sure where the discrepancy lies, but according to the Wikipedia Twitter account there was $2 million left to raise on December 29, so we suspect the stats tool provides an inaccurate estimate.

(click image for larger version)

Either way, Wikimedia’s fundraising goal hasn’t been reached yet, although we should note that this is by far the most money the organization has ever raised from contributors – they netted just over $6 million in 2009 (according to Wikipedia, ha).

We should also note that the goal wasn’t necessarily to bring in $16 million by the end of the year, but to raise that amount in two months, which means there’s still two weeks left.

So why did I donate?

Quite simply because I love Wikipedia, and frequent the site regularly, both on my desktop computer and from my mobile phone. I realize that I’m hardly the only one visiting Wikipedia and appreciating it for being both exhaustive and free, but what prompted me to donate to keep it gratis is also because I actually enjoy Wikipedia. It’s not only a source of knowledge for me, but also a form of entertainment of some sorts.

I’ve spent countless hours on the site this year clicking from one article to the next, and I genuinely love getting lost in there.

My latest revelation: actor Josh James Brolin (No Country For Old Men, American Gangster, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) was actually the guy who played the older brother character in the 80′s-classic flick The Goonies (whoa – I had no idea).

Is Wikipedia perfect? By all means, no, but that’s not the point. I couldn’t imagine a world without it, and having an answer to the majority of my questions a mere click away.

All that – and, I confess, Wales’ begging eyes – is what made me donate to Wikimedia, and why you should at the very least consider doing it too.

Behold, the Nativity of Jesus 2.0, featuring Internet sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay and yes, iPhone text messages.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go #worshipthebaby.

Thanks to @Orli for the tip – video made by Excentric.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, Christmas has come early again this season with the launch of Jimmy Wales’ annual appeal for Wikimedia Foundation donations. Wales’ ubiquitous banner ad is now in its seventh year and the company is shooting for $16 million dollars to keep their impressive collaborative encyclopedia afloat ad free.

And while Wikipedia tested out different banners for the 2010 launch, none came close to the effectiveness (a 3% click through rate!) of the unintentionally hilarious image of Wikipedia founder Wales gazing at you intently. The image is so beloved that someone actually created a Google Chrome extension that allows you to take the Wales banner with you wherever you go online. And so we did.

You can download the extension here.

Thanks: Zorgloob

There is definitely some bad blood between Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Wikileaks, the controversial organization which posted thousands of pages of classified Iraqi War documents. On the Charlie Rose last night, towards the end of his interview, Wales says, “If I had some information, the last thing I would ever do with it is send it to Wiikileaks.”

He prefaced that remark by noting that he has “mixed feelings about Wikileaks.” People with information about wrongdoing in open societies should have the opportunity to make that information public. His concern is the way that Wikileaks chose to do that without regard for the safety of people “who are not the wrongdoers.” ” I think they should be slower in releasing things,” he says.

So what would Wales do with that information? He would send it to the New York Times or some “responsible” journalistic enterprise. The relevant segment is in the video above, or you can watch the entire interview here.

Wales has criticized Wikileaks before. Some of this bad blood stems from the fear that some people might associate Wikileaks with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia foundation. Wales gets into that as well with Rose, noting that he has traded emails with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange “about the domain name.” He describes a dispute there, with the Wikimedia Foundation registering defensive domains and then transferring them, which seems to be in the process of being resolved.

More Wiki- news for your afternoon. It seems the FBI now has a problem with Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, specifically the site’s “unauthorised reproduction of the FBI Seal [that is] prohibited by US law.” That is, the FBI does not like the fact that its logo is available on Wikipedia. The world has run out of things to complain about, I’m thinking.

The FBI says that the presence of its seal on the site is “particularly problematic, because it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting violations of restrictions by Wikipedia users.”

Restrictions? Wikipedia’s counsel recognizes that there are restrictions in place regarding the display of the seal, but that “the enactment of [these laws] was intended to protect the public against the use of a recognisable assertion of authority with intent to deceive.”

And if you think Wikipedia is trying to deceive to deceive the public with the presence of a seal in an encyclopedic article, I don’t know what to tell you.

The one thing that I may see some wiggle room: the high resolution of the seal. You can get the seal in sizes of up to 2000px, so maybe Wikipedia can tell the Feds, “Look, we’re keep the seal, but we’ll kick the resolution down to, say, 500px. Deal?”

Hopefully cooler heads prevail here.

The Annual E-Business Report for the A.C.S.I. study encompassed thirty online media brands in the categories of: portals and search engines, news and information sites and for the first time in July 2010, social media sites.

Social media companies Facebook, Myspace, Wikipedia and YouTube were included for the first time this year, but achieved the worst “satisfaction” scores within the “e-business” group.

On a 0-100 point scale, Facebook scored just 64 points but Wikipedia scored 77. YouTube scored 73, and MySpace scored 63. By way of comparison, Netflix ranks at 87.

ForeSee Results expects to add Twitter next year but did not include Twitter in 2010 because so many people access the site through third-party applications (like TweetDeck) creating a varied user-experience said ForeSee Results chief executive Larry Freed.

Regarding Facebook’s low score, but dominance in the social media U.S. market, Freed notes: “Customer satisfaction is a combination of what you get and what you expect [from a website]. The business model of starting out free and ad-free, then turning your site into something else over time works somewhere in tech, but from the average consumer standpoint it doesn’t work.”

Privacy issues and promotional content — including everything from display ads to information posted by a user’s “friends” about Mafia Wars or Farmville — all frustrated Facebook customers.

Wikipedia, in contrast, has adhered to a non-profit business model where “it’s about the content more than anything else,” Freed says, and Wikipedia hasn’t added revenue generating features that make it “troubling for people to access and utilize an ever-changing site.”

The ForeSee Results study found that Wikipedia users are less frequent visitors compared to users of other social media sites. About one in five Wikipedia users visits daily compared to more than half of Facebook users.

According to July 2010 Hitwise data, Facebook is the top website in the U.S. with 9% of all website visits — Google has 7.4% — and 55% of all social media site visits.

Despite lower customer satisfaction numbers than researchers expected, people aren’t leaving Facebook and going to newer social media networks, Freed notes. Some are using it less frequently, he says, but they’re not jumping ship.

He compares Facebook’s position to eBay’s: “[EBay] has all these buyers and sellers, a large dominant group. If you want to sell, where are you going? Until consumers get a seriously viable alternative, they’re going nowhere.”

In total, the A.C.S.I. measures 223 companies online and off, with only ten of these scoring below a 65, including Facebook, Myspace, and airlines and cable providers. Among goverment agencies and websites ranked, only 10% score lower than 65 including the I.R.S.

The full report is available for free from ForeSee Results with registration.

UPDATE:

In response to this study, a Facebook representative writes: “We haven’t reviewed the survey methodology in detail, but clearly we have room to improve. Building a simple, useful service is the best way to earn and sustain the trust people put in us. That’s why we spend so much of our time and energy focused on improving the products we offer and introducing new ones.”

What’s the best site on the Web these days? Wikipedia, correct. Haters will hate, of course, pointing to this or that error, or highlighting high-profile compilations, but the spirit of the site endures: free and open information for all. Now a study has been published that says, you know what, on the whole, the information on Wikipedia isn’t any less accurate than you’ll find elsewhere. Does this mean, when writing a paper for you 12th grade history class, that you should ever have the site in your bibliography? No. No it does not. But to use the site as a stepping stone for further research? Absolutely, yes.

The study, carried out by researchers at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, says that the site is about as accurate as any published article you find in a peer-reviewed journal. The study specifically looked at Wikipedia pages on about cancer. The information turned out to be totally accurate, if only a little difficult to read. USA Today’s editors aren’t in charge of the site: the Wikipedia articles were said to be at a college-level reading level rather than a 9th grade reading level (found on PDQ, a professionally peer-reviewed Web site) That difference is due to the very nature Wikis: you’ve got a number of different people editing pages simultaneously, so naturally there chaos.

Whether you can extrapolate this information to other areas of the site, particularly those dealing with current events—you’ll notice that the page on the Gaza flotilla raid is semi-protected—I don’t know. It does, however, put to rest the idea that OMG WIKIPEDIA EVIL~!, an opinion usually put forward by someone who doesn’t know the difference between a Web browser and a driver.

Contrary to several reports, Wikipedia’s Founder Jimmy Wales is not relinquishing his editorial control of Wikipedia and its related projects. On Friday, Fox News reported that “a shakeup is underway at the top levels of Wikipedia…Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove administrators, assign projects or edit any content, sources say. Essentially, they say, he has gone from having free reign over the content and people involved in the websites to having the same capabilities of a low-level administrator.”

The report was picked up by Venturebeat and CNET.

An interesting story— except it’s not true according to Jimmy Wales in an e-mail on Sunday. Wales says the Fox News reporter hasn’t even tried to contact him to discuss the alleged “shakeup.” Ouch. Contrary to Fox News’ report of “chaos” at Wikipedia (the article cites an unidentified source close to the company), Wales says everything is fine.

Well, relatively speaking, Wikipedia is still on the defense after Fox News released a report in late April, accusing the site of knowingly distributing child pornography. The article cites former co-founder Larry Sanger (left Wikipedia in 2002), who wrote a letter to the FBI “outlining his concerns and identifying two specific Wikimedia Commons categories he believes violate federal obscenity law.” Wikipedia responded with a statement, defending its editors and its commitment to actively patrol the site: “If and when we are informed by law enforcement agencies of illegal content that has not already been removed through self-policing, we will take quick action to delete it.”

I’ll update with more information soon.

Most apparent is the new look and feel, which includes a refreshed puzzle globe logo, which was originally created in 2003. The Foundation goes into more detail about the logo update in a separate post, if you’re interested in its history and all that.

Here’s what else has changed:

Navigation

Improved for reading and editing pages. The tabs at the top of each page now more clearly define whether you are viewing the page or discussion page, and whether you are reading or editing a page.

Editing improvements

Formatting pages is now simpler and more intuitive, with a reorganized editing toolbar. The Foundation has also introduced a table wizard to make creating tables easier and find and a replace feature to simplify page editing.

Link wizard

A new tool that allows people to easily add links to other wiki pages as well as links to external sites.

Search improvements

Better search suggestions. Much needed imho.

Pediapress book creator

Create a book by selecting Wikipedia articles and adding them to the Book Creator (we talked about that here). Your articles will be turned into a PDF (or OpenDocument) file so you can easily take Wikipedia wherever you go.

If you don’t like the changes, all these new features can be easily turned off. All you need to do is revert back to the so-called MonoBook skin, although we should note you need to log in or create an account before you can do so.

Chances are you’ll like it, says Wikimedia, because they’ve beta tested it on a group of 635,000 people and saw a 83% user retention rate.

You tell us: do you think it’s an improvement, overall?