Save your donation for ProPublica.
Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#12This impresses me just like a donation jar at a major bank begging customers to donate money to some noble cause.
WTF? You really don't have enough money to support the cause?
Someone need to write Chrome extension to hide this.
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#13> Do you donate to Wikipedia?
Content, occasionally.
Money? Not yet.
> Is their donation request motivating?
Well, obviously not sufficiently to cause me to give them money.
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#14Yes, both time and monetarily.
Why? Because it's one of the few informative sites that's still free and I use it's services often.
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#15No. The biggest value that Wikipedia provides is the content. None of the donations are going to the content creators, very little of them are going to covering IT costs. And a lot of them are used for paying big Bay Area wages to people in the foundation whose work I regard as highly peripheral to the core value provided.
What work do they do that you consider peripheral? I'm asking from a place of ignorance.
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#16Not directly, only through Humble Bundle if given the option.
I don't feel that I need them to live; I appreciate TV Tropes more and that's where a donation would go first. They are a nice luxury, but I opt for the non-Wikipedia answers where possible, because Wikipedia tends to explain things in a convoluted manner.
Plus they do make a lot of money and I feel the fundraising copy has been misleading about that.
I feel that the Wikipedia model doesn't work as a non-profit. I'd be happy to subscribe to some paid version where contributors get distributed a portion of the earnings, ala Spotify. Right now, it feels like some contributors get nothing, while some have a happy full time, full salary job. It's brought some good to the world, and I'd like the Wikipedia staff to make above average salaries, but it should be taken fairly out of everyone's pockets.
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#17I love wikipedia as much as anybody I have known. I currently don't donate but would love to once my situation changes. Their donation request is the most horrible one I have seen. They should definitely work on their tone and presentation. Having said that I feel they shouldn't need to ask for donation because they are basically providing the top search results for most of the search engines and Digital voice assistants like Alexa and should be able to have a stream of income from the big corps with out effecting their integrity.
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#18Yes, for many years already. I don't need the request to be motivating, I need the wikipedia to exist.
Re: Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating?
#19Ex editor here from the old days. Jimmy doesn't need your money, the foundation is well off on corporate sponsorship - they are an obvious choice for good PR and tax benefits.
He was spending a lot of money on traveling people around the world, instead of hiring editors who did a huge amount of work.
Stop supporting Wikipedia. They are beggars with a golden pocket watch.