Scroll the list of the 10 most popular Web sites in the U.S., and you’ll encounter the Internet’s richest corporate players — names like Yahoo, Amazon.com, News Corp., Microsoft and Google.

Except for No. 7: Wikipedia. And there lies a delicate situation.

With 2 million articles in English alone, the Internet encyclopedia “anyone can edit” stormed the Web’s top ranks through the work of unpaid volunteers and the assistance of donors. But that gives Wikipedia far less financial clout than its Web peers, and doing almost anything to improve that situation invites scrutiny from the same community that proudly generates the content.

And so, much as how its base of editors and bureaucrats endlessly debate touchy articles and other changes to the site, Wikipedia’s community churns with questions over how the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the project, should get and spend its money.

Should it proceed on its present course, soliciting donations largely to keep its servers running? Or should it expand other sources of revenue — with ads, perhaps, or something like a Wikipedia game show — to fulfill grand visions of sending DVDs or printed books to people who lack computers? Is it helpful — or counter to the project’s charitable, free-information mission — to have the Wikimedia Foundation tight with a prominent venture capital firm?

These would be tough questions for any organization, let alone one in which hundreds of participants can expect to have a say.

The system “has strengths and weaknesses,” says Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder and “chairman emeritus.” “The strength is, we don’t do anything randomly, without lots and lots of lots of discussion. The downside is we don’t get anything done unless we actually come to a conclusion.”

Even the foundation’s leaders aren’t unified. Florence Devouard, a French plant scientist who chairs the board, said she and other Europeans…

Tags: computers, Google, information, Internet, microsoft