Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate? • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by depressedpanda » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #126

watwut wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The beauty of Wikipedia is that nothing prevents you (or other people) from writing those missing articles.

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

#202

Post by uselesstech » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

So far this doesn’t seem egregious but there are examples of non-profits cough Red Cross cough where their operational costs outweigh the good that they are able to provide.

Definitely something to continue to watch to see if Wikipedia continues to serve the public good.

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

#203

Post by kaba0 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #126

watwut wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, it may be because the coverage dedicated to women vs men was even more imbalanced in the past, fewer textual sources having been written about women so less to reference.

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

#204

Post by KingOfCoders » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

Why does Wikipedia not do more where it would matter? Get rid of all the jargon and hostile environment to get the world engaged in exchanging knowledge.

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

#205

Post by dgb23 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #167

bawolff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The side ventures aren't the thing they are doing now that they weren't back then (Other then wikidata which started in 2012, all the other side projects are really old). Things they are doing now is stuff like having a website that stays up and is speedy. Software improvements for english wikipedia EN Wikipedia has always been where the lion share of attention was focused on (With wikidata and commons coming in seco…

One should expect that with improvements in software and hosting, the cost-value-ratio improves. Does not seem to be the case here, which is strange.

More users, links, more languages more articles etc.

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

#206

Post by trompetenaccoun » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:22 AM UTC

5560675260 wrote: post #138

jonahbenton wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, think about what you are saying. You are not going to contribute with good intentions to a public service because there are people with bad intentions contributing to it...

The problem is that there is nothing done about people with bad intentions on organisational level.

Wikipedia folks are aware of the problem and there have been many changes over the years to better protect neutrality. I agree the situation is still far from perfect but Wikipedia is still one of the bastions of free information out there. They could have commercialized it but it became a non-profit relying on donations from users (as opposed to corporations) for a good reason.

What will happen when Wikimedia is gone?

There's a reason there's such a relentless smear campaign against it. Instead of turning our backs we have to think of ways we can support Wikipedia and protect it from shills with deep pockets. If you have any ideas on how this can be done more effectively try bringing them up! Anyone can sign up and participate. That's Wikipedia's strength and weakness.

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

#207

Post by ratww » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #135

bawolff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but they are definitely doing more now then back then And it's probably questionable if all side ventures are needed or if they could/should have sticked to the core project and developt it with little money. As mentioned further down: Do you really need 40 fundraiser positions?

If the fundraising positions are unambiguously bringing enough money to justify their stay, definitely. I have no idea, though.

It seems they currently (2019-2020) are responsible for 12% of the expenses [1], but I can't find any information as to which percentage of the donations they're responsible for. I wonder if there's a more transparent report for that.

Looking at their donor numbers [2], it suggests that most of the fundraising is still coming from the long tail, from regular people donating online. They only seem to have 17 "major benefactors" and even if we multiply the smallest amount for that tier (50k) by 10x, that still only accounts for 7% of the donations.

According to their 2019 data, the average donation seems to be $15, which suggests Jimbo banner is way more important than the fundraisers.

Of course my assumption might be completely incorrect.

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu...

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu...

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

#208

Post by andruby » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

I love Wikipedia and gladly donate every year.

I would say that Wikipedia is tremendously valuable to the human population. I find it to be money very well spent, even at $120M per year. I'd argue that the majority (90% ?) of tax money and other donations are spent on much less valuable endeavours.

Seriously, that's 2 dollar cents per year per human.

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

#209

Post by mihaaly » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

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…

Interestingly there was no mention of sister projects or the inflated activity in adjacent areas in the begging for money banner presented to me last time, did I miss something?!

It was asking for keeping the Wikipedia we use operational for a long time to come. No mention of educating the world or 'broader development goals'.

A Wikipedia that is created by volunteers (including the hundreds of language versions) for free, managed and promoted by sometimes high paid employees with expansion ambitions.

Are they risking the future of the Wikipedia we like and use today by the costly ambitions and the costly organization required to realize the big ambitions?!? Are they overstreching their means?!

The begging for money banners only talk about keeping it operational. Not about 'sister projects' or other ambitions, they do not ask money for those!

(not to mention that some of the banners condemn being commercial, saying 'it would be a great loss', exactly what Wikimedia LLC aspires to do)

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

#210

Post by kaba0 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

Negitivefrags wrote: post #67

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…

> Let's be clear about this, the donation money isn't just used to keep the encyclopedia online. This is the very source of the complaint though. People want to donate to fund the thing they actually use, not a bunch of other arbitrary projects they don’t care about. I mean take a look at the donation page under “Where your donation goes”. It does technically mention a “wide variety of projects” but the whole thing i…

So which one would you cut out? The hosted pictures, media? Or the database syncing factual data across languages so that a smaller language’s article won’t get factually wrong information because a data was spotted to be incorrect only in the large English version?