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Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#191

Post by rasz »

vander_elst wrote: post #150
selfmodruntime wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that but I have yet to get what the foundation spends 155 MILLION dollars on - each year. Even with your arguments that number seems to be wildly inflated. Also, the Wikimedia Foundation explicitly asks for funding for Wikipedia. As far as I know, no one asked the Wikimedia Foundation to perform anything past that. This seems to be comparable to Mozilla‘s situation, who try to grow past Firefox with ideas nobody…

The foundation has around 700 employees ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation ), back on the envelope calculation and we have 200k per employee. I think it seems reasonable.

700 employees and wiki interface havent changed for the better in 10 years? Sounds like Twitters "indispensable" 7500.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#193

Post by GTP »

leephillips wrote: post #132
GTP wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some non-profits exist mainly to enrich their officers This could very well be, but it goes against what first comes to the mind of most people when talking about a non-profit: the name itself implies that those companies are "not for profit" after all. EDIT: I also think that the reason why most countries have a special tax law regarding non-profit organization, is to help people that want to do "the right thing" e…

I’m sorry, I thought that by “we” you were referring to a group of people including yourself (first person plural), not, in fact, “most people”, whom you seem to believe are naive and uninformed, a belief that is probably correct. Unless you were? EDIT (replying to your edit): They are neither cheating nor exploiting any loophole. At least in the U.S., there is no limit to the total compensation that a non-profit cor…

You highlight what the law say, and it is for sure interesting for me, as I'm not American and so ot familiar with US laws. But what I'm saying is that all laws are written for a reason. E.g. there are laws that say you can't kill another person because the vast majority of people agree that this is a thing that shouldn't be done. So what I'm saying here is that in this discussion we should also consider which was the reason behind the law, not just the technicalities of how the law is written.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#194

Post by MagicMoonlight »

Wikipedia is actually privately owned. They raised enough money to fund thenselves indefinitely a long time ago but then they got bought out. All these donations are now funneled into the shareholders of the parent company.

Think about it, all the work is done by volunteers. Server costs are negligible because it’s all cached plaintext that can fit on a single server if you need it to. There’s basically no costs.

And yet… hundreds of millions get withdrawn. It ain’t going to Wikipedia. Wikipedia was financially secure through investments a decade ago. It’s fraud.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#195

Post by MagicMoonlight »

xeromal wrote: post #141
voldacar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their spending grows commensurately with their fundraising. The cost of maintaining wikipedia is more or less constant. It's a cancerous growth pattern.

The number of articles, languages, and employees are probably not static either.

The number of languages is static. The number of articles is effectively static because 99% are finished and the rate of new articles will be pretty much constant.

The number of employees is obviously going to rise if you choose to spaff more money.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#196

Post by MikusR »

jkrauska wrote: post #37

All the other top websites [1] either are selling my information (Meta) , exist to show me ads (Google), or I pay monthly for (Netflix). Wikipedia runs one of the busiest websites in the world with a staff much smaller than any of those other sites. Like any company -- there's going to be priorities different than mine and waste. But I'm ok being asked to chip in for what I get. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_…

Where can I but the information Meta is selling?

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#197

Post by paulnpace »

shp0ngle wrote: post #75

Despite all the negative about wikipedia, it’s still sort of part of “old internet” that I don’t want to die. Even wikia, which was spun at first as “slightly more commercial wikipedia”, later became Fandom, which is something so horrible that I don’t want to look at Look at WikiTravel which is more commercial WikiVoyage… they immediately went and stuffed it with ads and trackers. And I mean wikimedia is fine NOW, bu…

I edited an article citing a published source.

My edit was reversed by a troll with some axe to grind on the article.

I attempted to discuss in the talk page and the troll basically said "you are wrong and the source is wrong", but cited no source supporting the claim, no policy stating there was something wrong with the specific source, and I cited policies supporting my use of the source.

Another editor showed up and agreed with me, and undid the troll's reversal, which the troll then restored the article to its state prior to my edit.

I undid the troll's restoration. Shortly thereafter I received a notice that I had been reported for some category of malicious editing. The troll reported me and the other editor for being sock-puppet accounts, and within 20 minutes my account and the other editor's accounts were deleted, my IP address banned from editing, and the edits to the article were deleted from record.

I received a notice that I can appeal the decision by sending an email to whatever the final governing board for all of Wikipedia is, which is a publicly published email address. I assumed this a "talk to the hand" step that results in nothing but wasting my time, since there is no way for me to disprove the sock-puppet claim (other than to state the fact that it is a lie) and all the evidence of the changes were vaporized.

(I did attempt to post a rebuttal to the claims, but when I clicked the post button, my account had already been deleted so the post was never posted.)

I had been editor of Wikipedia since shortly after they migrated to the new format (e.g., MediaWiki).

Wikipedia is not anything like what it originally started as.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#198

Post by anenefan »

As a simple resource, it's imperative it remains free of corporates with their own agendas, and to a lesser extent, advertising. The best way to fail is not have sufficient funds for emergencies.

Wikipedia is certainly more worthwhile for someone who is likely to use it regularly, than say an online newspaper that actually refuses to share the article content with an infrequent visitor that might be directed to that particular site a handful of times during the year. Often wikipedia asks for much less.

I'd probably donate, if not for the hundred plus hours I worked expanding their knowledge base in the early 00s ... it was all deleted as far as I can tell - most of that data wasn't ever going to be covered in a "must be in an existing ISBN book / ISSN publication" policy that was brought in sometime later on.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#199

Post by RattlesnakeJake »

Arrath wrote: post #133
shp0ngle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happens if you donate to ANY cause, ever. If you give money to, I don’t know, a charity for hungry kids in , they will send you MORE begging mails, not less.

Serious. I found donating blood to have been a bit of a mistake, the bastards just won't stop calling asking for more.

Same. I got so tired of the Red Cross phone calls that I changed the phone number in my profile to their customer service line.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#200

Post by brookst »

pwinnski wrote: post #172
brookst wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the dishonesty of Wikipedia that bothers me. The implication is that donations are urgently needed to keep the website running. In reality they have $300m in the bank and revenue is growing every year[0]. Even Wikipedia says only 43% of donations are used for site operations[1], and that includes all of their sites, not just Wikipedia. Fully 12% of the money they collect from you is. . . used to ask you for more…

I think you're conflating a few things. On your point 1, it is incredible normal for non-profit organizations to spend quite a bit of money on fundraising. They do this because spending less brings in less, and bringing in less means they cease to exist. As weird as it is to spend a million throwing a party to bring in five million, it works, and it brings in money from different people than letters in the mail or ba…

I’m a big fan of charitywatch! And that link is partly what I base my criticism on: the 43% of Wikimedia spending goes to operations would get them a D.

And I’m afraid you’ve bought into the “Wikimedia is on the verge of extinction” nonsense. There is no need for a skeleton staff and bare bones operations. They have a $300m endowment! They said, as recently as two years ago, that they only need a $100m endowment to meet their mission indefinitely.

What changed that merits a 3x increase? Do they really need to raise $120m per year, as they do now, to avoid the skeleton staff of doom that you propose?

I’ve posted supporting links elsewhere in this thread. I like Wikimedia. They do good work. Their management has run amok and is trapped in a spiral of raising ever-more money to justify more expensive management.

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