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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?

#101

Post by paxys »

Clewza313 wrote: post #78
paxys wrote: post #75

> But keeping Wikipedia online is a task that the WMF could comfortably manage on $10 million a year This part is disingenuous and bordering on malicious. The linked email ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... ) has so much more nuance, and in typical fashion a single number from it is taken completely out of context to push a certain narrative. It is also an estimate from almost a decade…

Because 10 years earlier WMF's expenses were $10M/year, and it's pretty debatable if they're delivering 10x more today than they were back then.

> Because 10 years ago WMF's expenses were $10M/year

I linked to a source for their financial reports and you still pulled the number straight out of your ass.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#102

Post by cycrutchfield »

marcan_42 wrote: post #83
paxys wrote: post #75

> But keeping Wikipedia online is a task that the WMF could comfortably manage on $10 million a year This part is disingenuous and bordering on malicious. The linked email ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... ) has so much more nuance, and in typical fashion a single number from it is taken completely out of context to push a certain narrative. It is also an estimate from almost a decade…

Did you read their article? They mention how money they funnel into the fund is counted as "expenses", as is stuff like hiring 40 people just for fundraising. I have no doubt they could keep the website up and maintained on something of the order of $10m/year.

Ok but if they fired all their fundraisers how are they going to get $10m a year?

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#103

Post by watwut »

gspr wrote: post #71
bawolff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of fuss has been made about this graph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editor_Retention_Upd... Roughly, English Wikipedia hit its editor peak around 2007 and has been very slowly declining since then. Various people argue about various causes. Theories I've heard include wikipedia becoming too rule heavy, to community just not scaling past that point, to the internet being a lot more interesting now th…

Can't it just be that since 2007 most of the obvious topics for an encyclopedia to cover have been covered? It's probably less satisfying to change the wording in one sentence in an article about an Australian cheese than it is to write that article. So fewer people care.

No it is not. Some areas are perfectly describes, others basically empty. I remember dabbing into sewing a while ago and finding out wiki is basically empty.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#104

Post by j-pb »

zozbot234 wrote: post #91
j-pb wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let those projects fight and advertise for themselves. People donating to wikipedia only want wikipedia, they are unaware of the other stuff wikimedia does. Those projects would crash and burn though, because frankly, no one cares about them. Stuff like wikidata and SPARQL endpoints are an academic curiosity with no real value. The semantic web won't happen, articles do and will. In addition to that, the whole d…

> People donating to wikipedia only want wikipedia, they are unaware of the other stuff wikimedia does. On the contrary, Wikipedia itself has a lot of reliance on the other projects. For example, Wikidata solves the problem of interlinking Wikipedia languages and other projects when they're hosting content about the same real-world entity. In fact, this was Wikidata's MVP - the reason it got funded in the first place…

Using RDF to store multiple languages of the same article is gross overengineering. Interlinking with other projects isn't nessecary when there are no other projects.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#105

Post by j-pb »

kqr wrote: post #88
j-pb wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then let those projects fight and advertise for themselves. People donating to wikipedia only want wikipedia, they are unaware of the other stuff wikimedia does. Those projects would crash and burn though, because frankly, no one cares about them. Stuff like wikidata and SPARQL endpoints are an academic curiosity with no real value. The semantic web won't happen, articles do and will. In addition to that, the whole d…

Every long-term successful operation needs to sustain a few wild bets that look pointless today, with great probability will turn out to have been pointless tomorrow, but has just a tiny chance of becoming really important. If you just optimise for today, you will die tomorrow. Gradual improvements won't get you out of a local peak when that local peak is swallowed by rising tides. If your organisation isn't doing th…

Wikipedia exploded over night.

The semantic web is "tomorrow technology" for 20 years now. At what point does tomorrow technology become yesterdays vaporware to you?

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#106

Post by bawolff »

Clewza313 wrote: post #78
paxys wrote: post #75

> But keeping Wikipedia online is a task that the WMF could comfortably manage on $10 million a year This part is disingenuous and bordering on malicious. The linked email ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... ) has so much more nuance, and in typical fashion a single number from it is taken completely out of context to push a certain narrative. It is also an estimate from almost a decade…

Because 10 years earlier WMF's expenses were $10M/year, and it's pretty debatable if they're delivering 10x more today than they were back then.

They had ~30 million in expenses in the 2011-2012 financial year: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/0/09/FINAL...

Whether or not its 10x better service, I don't know, but they are definitely doing more now then back then. There's been lots of software development since 2011 (Some good, some not so much). Even just site speed and stability has improved significantly since 2011.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#107

Post by usrusr »

bawolff wrote: post #59
neolog wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia has already been bleeding editors for a long time Where can I learn about this?

A lot of fuss has been made about this graph: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editor_Retention_Upd... Roughly, English Wikipedia hit its editor peak around 2007 and has been very slowly declining since then. Various people argue about various causes. Theories I've heard include wikipedia becoming too rule heavy, to community just not scaling past that point, to the internet being a lot more interesting now th…

Being disgruntled about supporting a donations scam might be another reason to leave.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#108

Post by Clewza313 »

paxys wrote: post #101
Clewza313 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 10 years earlier WMF's expenses were $10M/year, and it's pretty debatable if they're delivering 10x more today than they were back then.

> Because 10 years ago WMF's expenses were $10M/year I linked to a source for their financial reports and you still pulled the number straight out of your ass.

19/20 expenses were $112M. Per the 09/10 annual report below, 10 years earlier expenses were $10.27M. What exactly am I pulling out of my ass?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/AR_web_a...

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#109

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

Outrage where there is no reason for it. Wikipedia is using the University Endowment model to fund its work. They are creating a permanent source of funds that will finance its work for the long run(forever?) and are using special fund raising for special projects. There is nothing wrong with that. It's a form of non-profit funding that will ensure it continues to function. Management should be congratulated for following a non-profit model that will keep it going for many years and not have to deal with the never ending danger of not getting enough money for the following year's budget. A hand to mouth existence is not the best way to run an organization. Yes, there's danger of money getting wasted but all non-profits get a high level of scrutiny from people looking for waste and eventually the waste goes away.

There's no such thing as a large organization where there is no waste. Even very lean for profit organizations have to deal with the problem. The best you can do is to keep an eye out for cases where there is waste and fix it as soon as possible.

Bottom line, if you don't like it then don't give. Period!

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