Wikipedians support the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity by bidding on Wikipedia DVDs

January 7, 2008



On Thursday, January 3, a special Allegro.pl auction for the benefit of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity featured items donated by Stowarzyszenie Wikimedia Polska, the local polish chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. Among the items were ten DVD's containing the Polish language edition of Wikipedia. Most of the offers in the online auction came from people who actually helped to create the contents of the DVD.

One of the discs reached the "Featured Items" status on the same day when the item was offered for sale. Each of the ten DVDs has been autographed by a number of Wikipedians, mainly those who helped in creating the edition, together with Helion Publishing House. The release contains 238,000 articles whose quality had been checked by a panel of editors, complete with illustrations. It is the first stable version of the Polish-language Wikipedia.

The decision to offer the ten copies at the auction was taken in September 2007. Since then, the covers of the auction items have been circulating throughout Poland, in order to collect as many Wikimedians' signatures as possible during a number of Wikimedia events. All of the autographs are nicknames that the editors use in their daily work. Among them is e.g. the signature of the founder of Polish Wikipedia. Krzysztof Jasiutowicz, nicknamed Kpjas.

Among the people who placed an offer to buy one of the ten copies in the initial 24 hours of the auction were the Polish Wikipedians known as Zureks, Jersz, Pimke, Vindicator, Rdrozd, Paterm, Bartekbas, Airwolf, Mathel, Nemo5576, Wyksztalcioch, Wpedzich and Kotasik. Earlier, Stowarzyszenie Wikimedia Polska, a local chapter of The Wikimedia Foundation, decided together with Helion for those DVDs which have not been sold yet to be donated to various communities that would find them useful, mainly schools. Although currently Wikipedia contains about twice as many articles as the DVD version and it is freely available online, the income from the auction will add to the budget of a much older organisation, which is one of Poland's charity NGOs.

Stowarzyszenie Wikimedia Polska will prepare a special website for those people who offer the highest bids for the ten Wikipedia DVD copies, where they will be able to put their photos (together with the discs they have acquired), if they wish.

The auctions will end on the day of the Grand Finalé of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, January 13th, at 20:00 CET.