Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
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Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#2Wow, I saw the banner last year and wouldn't have donated if I had read this article sooner.
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#3Related threads:
Wikipedia Has Cancer (2017) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21699011
Wikipedia doesn't need your money (2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4946912
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#4I think why it needs to start selling data services should also be asked. At the very least everyone should have equal access to Wikipedia. Using "Big Tech" as an excuse to charge is not relevant in my humble opinion.
https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-finally-asking-big-tec...
Edit: I would like to add that I think the Wikipedia Enterprise is not about big tech as Wikimedia suggest, but selling real-time streams of edit data to financial organisations.
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#5[deleted]
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#6Are all the volunteers good with their efforts starting a for profit entity with arguably superior access?
I would not be.
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#7The other great mystery is that despite Clay Shirkey's romantic web 2.0 book 'Here Comes Everybody' nearly all of Wikipedia is written by just 1 percent of its editors.
It's becoming hard to know who and what Wikipedia actually is
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-eli...
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#8Wow. $300 million and still the need to beg.
I have edited Wikipedia in the past, sometimes it felt like the troll army was too powerful because in a "poll" they quickly Mount an offensive and your words dont mean much it seems.
Havent edited in like a year, that includes osm.
Maybe they should share their funds with volunteers who are essentially working for the benefit of "managers".... like you would get funding based on number of edits, age of accounts, quality of edits, if any reversals you had, on and on. Would that not convince people to contribute and also keep leeches out because the funding would be manually given out, not automated.
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#9I think why it needs to start selling data services should also be asked. At the very least everyone should have equal access to Wikipedia. Using "Big Tech" as an excuse to charge is not relevant in my humble opinion. https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-finally-asking-big-tec... Edit: I would like to add that I think the Wikipedia Enterprise is not about big tech as Wikimedia suggest, but selling real-time streams…
I'm concerned by WMF's cancerous growth, but this particular initiative makes sense to me. Wikipedia already provides free APIs for everybody to use, and they work fine for typical users who want to grab a page or a hundred, but the Googles of the world are essentially scraping the entire site multiple times a day. This imposes a real cost on WMF, and it's a win-win for both sides if companies pay for support and get better service in return.
Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
#10Download speeds for the data dumps are abysmal in the smaller country where I live.
Machine readability, especially of Wiktionary, seems that it will never be improved.