Wikipedia Hoping To Entice New Writers

Nearly $900,000 is going towards studying and simplifying Wikipedia's user interface in the hopes of attracting new authors.

In a recent press release the Wikimedia Foundation anounced that the
Stanton Foundation is donating money to Wikimedia to help bring in first-time authors.

The new project team based in San Fransisco, home to Wikimedia, will be looking at updating the user interface so that new contributions continue to flow in.

Some may remember the scandal of Wikipedia's secret mailing list, detailing who to ban, but Wikipedia seems to have cleaned up its act since then.

The project itself will employ 6 full time workers and run from January 2009 to April 2010.

With the massive increase of news reporting, one wonders if having a central encyclopedia compiled by Joe Public is a curse or a blessing. The BBC may think it's a curse, but then they had problems with Apple this week.