On Wikipedia: German chapter is the second largest (>100 FTEs) and collects donations directly, funding root org from them and keeping significant part for its own operations. It’s not exactly an American monopoly.
It does not matter anything in this case. It’s open source, it’s community-driven, and governance structure isn’t a moat. It can be forked in a matter of days, especially given that there exist independent European structures to support it.
Wikipedia is not community driven. About as public as so called public ownership in reality. It is clearly directed by a small group of people, mostly those with enough time on their hands.
Most folk can no longer edit it. They're blocked.
There are clear biases in its content provision, such as its coverage of certain rich people and establishment bodies.
> Most folk can no longer edit it. They're blocked.
Is this some sort of conspiracy theory? It’s just plain wrong. Wikipedia may block certain people, but it’s definitely not anywhere close to majority of editors. It’s easy to create an account and edit almost everything. It does have editorial policy and editors may have certain bias, but it has nothing to do with the fact, that you mentioning Wikipedia as some American monopoly were wrong.
Have you ever tried to edit Wikipedia using WiFi, mobile networks etc? Because then you will almost always get a message saying you are blocked and cannot edit. I get this all the time, and not because of anything I have done personally. Many people are on shared IPs now.
Even the computers at the National Library of Scotland are blocked, even though there is a paid Wikipedian on their staff and you have to have a membership to use the library.
Give us a break with the "conspiracy theory" mantra. This isn't even a theory. It's commonplace reality. They want everyone to sign up to a Wikipedia account which comes with other issues.
Also Wikipedia is a monopoly. 9/10 when I search for anything nowadays, Wikipedia is at the top. If I only wanted to search for Wikipedia articles I would go straight to their website.