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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?

#121

Post by bawolff »

j-pb wrote: post #118
bawolff wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't stored as RDF. RDF is provided as an export format. The language contents also aren't stored in wikidata, its just matching which title in language X matches which title in language Y. Wikidata isn't just used for interlanguage linking. Its also used to keep infoboxes synced across different languages, and a way to easily query that data (Depends a bit on the language, english wikipedia isn't fully on board…

> its just matching which title in language X matches which title in language Y Like I said, gross overengineering. "You can save cents and seconds of time updating knowledge boxes, by spending millions and hours developing federated SPARQL query capabilities!"

More like, we put the facts and knowledge in a central (mysql) db, so that instead of updating them in 300 places (Wikipedia has a lot of languages), you just update them in one place.

And since the data happened to be there anyways, we added an RDF export feature, and threw that into a BlazeGraph DB so that people could do SPARQL queries if they want. The (not really federated) SPARQL queries have basically nothing to do with the central-place-to-store-facts that are used in multiple places, feature, but it was pretty cheap to do once everything was in a central place.

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

#122

Post by ramraj07 »

lostinquebec wrote: post #53
ramraj07 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their run rate is a few mill a year and they already have an endowment for hundreds of millions more why do they need to ask for more?

By that logic, if the run rate > earnings on endowment... fundraise?

With zero sarcasm, yes?

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

#123

Post by vasco »

barelyusable wrote: post #84

The author linked the report: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200... I know it's from 2018 and maybe something changed, but: they took $115M. They paid $90M in costs, including $38M in salaries and Imagine you just hire a techy support staff. Let's assume you only need 50 people, each making $100k to operate a global website in all timezones. That's probably like $140k total costs per employe…

A non profit shouldn't be setup forever. It should have a cushion and other than that it should keep providing enough value to society that people keep contributing. Creating an endowment is saying that even if in the future nobody thinks what they do is valuable and stops donating, they'll still be able to keep going. Why?

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

#124

Post by hellbannedguy »

zozbot234 wrote: post #21

Let's be clear about this, the donation money isn't just used to keep the encyclopedia online. They have hundreds of language versions of Wikipedia itself, and many related "sister" projects, with perhaps the most clearly impacting being Wikimedia Commons (a huge repository of free-content media with a focus on educational use - including much media in the public domain) and Wikidata (a project that has now emerged a…

I don't have a big isssue with Wikipedia asking for more donations, even though 99% of the work seems to be volunteered for free.

That said, I think we are all getting tired of 501c3's begging for money when they seem to be doing fantastic on paper.

I once heard that St. Judes Childrens hospital has 20 years of funding in the bank, and that's taking into account of new procedures, and inflation.

Cars for Kids has one house in the Sierra foothills that benefits children. (This was true around 5 years ago when I looked into the nonprofit.)

My point is the charities we all know through endless advertising/begging might not need money.

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

#126

Post by throwaway2037 »

watwut wrote: post #103
gspr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I also notice the coverage dedicated to women vs men is extremely imbalanced. I know they have a separate team working on the issue and big advert banners about it... but the issue remains: Much more is written about men (living or dead) than women.

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

#127

Post by ramraj07 »

harikb wrote: post #95
ramraj07 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a ridiculous criticism of a valid article with a lot of facts. I have donated to Wikipedia several times and feel violated now. They might have not lied outright but acting as if you’re a poor Non profit when you are most definitely not poor is outrageous. I don’t know if Jimmy Wales is part of this entire charade but this is exactly what you expect to happen when you employ a CEO who charges north of half a mil…

That is a ridiculous and ugly accusation to make. If you don’t know what it takes to run a globally available top site, it is better not throw stones at people.

Have I run a site comparable to Wikipedia? No. Do I know nothing about that topic? Debatable. Leaving that aside, Wikipedia was live and ticking when it had 1% of today’s coffers, so it’s hard to substantiate why they need money approaching a billion dollars for a non profit running a website all things considered.

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

#128

Post by throwaway2037 »

hkt wrote: post #111
zozbot234 wrote: post #21

Let's be clear about this, the donation money isn't just used to keep the encyclopedia online. They have hundreds of language versions of Wikipedia itself, and many related "sister" projects, with perhaps the most clearly impacting being Wikimedia Commons (a huge repository of free-content media with a focus on educational use - including much media in the public domain) and Wikidata (a project that has now emerged a…

In the UK your donations can be for a specified purpose, and must be earmarked for it. Is there no equivalent in the rest of the world? And perhaps more to the point, Wikipedia has legal personality in the UK, so one assumes the above applies. But really it would be pointless: I'm not going to tell Wikipedia what their strategy should be when I donate. So even if you do, they can put my donation to whatever purpose i…

"earmarking" -- I would say this is done a case-by-case basis. When the donation is large enough, anything is possible.

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

#129

Post by zozbot234 »

j-pb wrote: post #105
kqr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Wikidata gets more edits per second right now than the English wikipedia does. If that's not "exploding overnight", I don't know what is. It's just that fewer people are aware of it, because it powers sily things like search engine infoboxes and AI assistants - in addition to fostering unprecedented cooperation among knowledge producers in the Linked Data/Semantic Web ecosystem.

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

#130

Post by iKevinShah »

harikb wrote: post #95
ramraj07 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a ridiculous criticism of a valid article with a lot of facts. I have donated to Wikipedia several times and feel violated now. They might have not lied outright but acting as if you’re a poor Non profit when you are most definitely not poor is outrageous. I don’t know if Jimmy Wales is part of this entire charade but this is exactly what you expect to happen when you employ a CEO who charges north of half a mil…

That is a ridiculous and ugly accusation to make. If you don’t know what it takes to run a globally available top site, it is better not throw stones at people.

I am not the original commentator but all the replies to this seem like attacking the individual (for a lack of better term) than providing a counter argument. They clearly state that they have been donating and assume that "their intention is to just increase their coffers with no clear plan on WHAT they are going to use it."

Is that wrong ? Far from reality? Help them (and readers like me) get a clear understanding.

OKAY, it is an ugly accusation considering "don’t know what it takes to run a globally available top site", but why? How much does it cost to run a Wiki like site on that high traffic using some modified form of mediawiki platform?

I am just trying to get a clearer understanding than attacking / siding anyone

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