Whats wrong with paying a small donation if you wish to edit it?
What is wrong is that I want to create value in the bitcoin wiki and community by translating and creating pages. If I wanted to make a donation it wouldn't be a problem.
Guess what you don't like it, create your own wiki and prove that wiki is bad, instead of complaining.
Thank you for your constructive remark. Bashing users who wants to contribute to the documentation around Bitcoin is really helping the developpement of this currency.
As far as I know, "wiki" is not a synonym of a website with contents that everyone can edit. There are lots of wikis with locked-down pages that only the admin can edit, wikis that can only be edited by certain people (e.g. people who register and send an email somewhere asking for write permission), and even wikis (like the Bitcoin.it one) where one must pay to edit.
Personally I think that requiring a Bitcoin payment to enable editing is a smart feature to prevent bots from posting spam, and it ensures that the editor knows enough about the subject of the wiki (Bitcoin) to create bitcoin transations. About the fee being too high... well, some months ago 0.01 was "nothing". Now the standard for "nothing" is more like 0.0005, or even lower. That the fees are high is a more adequate subject for discussion, in my opinion.
EDIT: seeing that, as described on
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinPayment , the proceedings from the payments are used to keep with wiki online, and since probably not that many people are signing up, maybe the fee is not that high.
Maybe they could make the donation "reversable", so it could still prove that people know how to make a transaction, and it would still reduce spam if the donation is kept for like a month or with a certain number of edits.
Listen, i know that it is a measure against spam, I paid the fee for editing english pages, but I am reluctant of giving more money because I want to contribute to the wiki. I can prove that I am not a spammer, I made a nice email about it being an issue for me and got no response, so why make it so hard for people to add content ?
Hell, two years ago bitcoin were
given to contributors !
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin:Contributors_Award I do not ask for donations, but I think it would be a more sane approach, as people with time could edit the wiki, and those without could make donation to help the wiki.