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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?

#201
>In reality, the Wikipedia Foundation is doing just fine. In fact, they make so much money from donations, they spend (read: waste) massive amounts of it on various social ventures instead of using it on the service that caused people to donate in the first place.

Meanwhile they refuse to roll out an onion service, which would enable folks to read it without fearing chilling effects and reduce the load on the network’s limited number of exit nodes, which due to a combination of sociological and technical reasons are much more onerous to run than relays.

Wikipedia overwhelmingly focuses on the wishes of editors, a small and separate group from the users (readers) in a manner unbecoming an alleged charity.

https://defcon.org/images/defcon-17/dc-17-presentations/defc...

https://blog.torproject.org/tips-running-exit-node/

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

#202
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…

re: "if the once a week banners bother you that much, it suggests you are using the site very, very frequently":

no.

the banners never bothered me when I used the website daily, multiple times a day. They bother me immensely now that I use wikipedia once / twice a month. Now, every time I open it there is the banner asking me to donate (every time more invasive).

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