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?

#511

Post by bostonsre » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #240

bostonsre wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term it does kind of look like they have now money than they need and it may seem a little disingenuous, but I'm not sure that they amassing a large pool of money to ensure for their survival for the long term is all bad. They provide an invaluable tool to the world that allows anyone from anywhere to easily learn about anything. I would say that they are doing a great service to the world by ensuring their exi…

The budget will expand to consume the additional funds. It did before. This will make it more financially tenuous, not more. Added to which, once the insitution is addicted to money it becomes that much easier to corrupt.

Yea, that could probably happen as well. Hopefully they are more judicious with their spending on current projects. But I guess aggressively spending in the short term to share more knowledge with a larger portion of the world could be a worthy cause as well. Hopefully those in power understand the gravity of the responsibility they have and they don't trend towards something like the leadership of the NRA (assuming reported corruption was true and not politically biased).

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

#512

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #242

xenator wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very solid point. I personally don't trust Wikipedia articles in many subjects. There are many proofs that Russian Wikipedia have paid by government editors solving its own propaganda. I think +/- the same situation for other countries. Also, I know companies or celebrities who pay for their Wikipedia pages. You can find this service in 5 minutes by googling. "Profit-seeking and mindless consumption" can be a motto f…

> I personally don't trust Wikipedia articles in many subjects. For the smaller ones, that is warranted - for example, the Croatian Wikipedia is infamous for its bias towards nationalist positions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Wikipedia ), something that's only made worse by the aftermath of the Balkan wars decades ago... as a half-Croat myself, I can only say: let's keep it at "the situation is complex an…

Any article on the Middle East, in particular, is unreliable. Zionist gatekeepers are on constant patrol.

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

#513

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #145

onurcel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why they don't beg for editors? they also have enough cash to develop a more appealing editor experience, but all they are asking is money.

> then why they don't beg for editors? They do, particularly in educational contexts - getting students interested in Wiki projects and having them write review articles with good sources as "homework" that can then be posted to Wikipedia. But supporting that takes money as well!

Fixing student's homework projects is actually a burden on other more-experienced editors.

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

#514

Post by colordrops » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

malka wrote: post #443

colordrops wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not high for a software engineer in California.

And I do not see a good reason to give money to a fundation so it can pay such high wages, because California.

That's your choice, and it's fine.

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

#515

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #490

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What exactly is that CEO doing for that money" What is CEO of Twitter doing that CEO of Wikipedia isn't? Why dont we have a discussion of their salaries? Both are working a job. Enployees are not donating, donors are

The CEO of Twitter has the task of maximising profit for shareholders; he needs to constantly be on the lookout for new opportunities to exploit. Apparently Twitter made a profit for the first time last year. The CEO of Wikimedia needs to hire and manage maybe 50 people, of whom about 5 need executive pay. I have no idea why Wikimedia needs 500 staff, if they could build the site with a team of 20 or so. It looks lik…

How is he doing in finding opportunities, has he found one yet? Whats the most revolutuonary thing they've done in the past five years, increased the character limit?

You cannot possibly be serious, assigning twitter CEO some super demanding nebulous task of 'looking for new opportunities' but somehow downgrading Wikipedia one to that of a middle-manager.

Both websites have a massive audience, both have new intiatives and the ones by wikipedia are actually productive. Both have to deal with attempts at censorship, inappropriate content, and both have to find a place in the rapidly shifting techbology landscape.

This judgement 'if it's charity work then it's easy' comes across as dishonest and presumptios.

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

#516

Post by a4isms » Mon, May 31, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #506

a4isms wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those who say it's not a lot are disconnected from the way that most people in the country and the world live. I live in Canada. I earn much less than USD $375K/yr. But can we agree that I am very connected with how people live in other parts of the world? Good. Now let me tell you that were my employer to ask me to move my family to the US, ANYWHERE in the US, I would want way more than $375,000/yr to duplicate th…

What if I was laid off and lost my benefits right when she was diagnosed She'd go on Medicaid. Anyway, quit watching so much TV. It's just propaganda.

The consensus in civilized countries is that US healthcare is a disaster. If you want to brush all that off as “propaganda,” fine, that’s your business.

But I don’t watch TV. I do things like read HN. Where I recall an essay on the front page a few years back where a wealthy tech founder cashed out and then tried to buy health insurance for their family.

Despite being wealthy, they reported that basically, it was impossible to get insurance that met their needs. They did not say “no problem, the whole family got medicaid.”

Now tell me: How many people in the US had medical bankruptcies last year? How about the year before? Or the year before that?

I’ll let you tell me, since you believe that I only watch propaganda on television, and you believe you have all the answers. What are these medical bankruptcies, if medicaid solves all problems?

Is all this propaganda spread by smug Canadians to boost immigration? I think not, but if you’re prepared to cite some numbers showing that nobody ever loses their home because of cancer or some other major health problem, I’ll gladly read what you share.

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

#517

Post by middleclick » Mon, May 31, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #127

harikb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This assumes that traffic has not changed since "1% of its coffers". Traffic has grown and the site has become faster.

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

#518

Post by middleclick » Mon, May 31, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

codeecan wrote: post #497

frzj wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bias are you talking about? I thought Jimbo was an Rand Fanboy, freedom of speech is their religion.

In the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd article, they mention an event where he "held a pistol to a woman's stomach", but leave out that she was pregnant so it doesn't look as bad. Example 2, there was two mass shooting in March: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Boulder_shooting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Atlanta_spa_shootings In the Boulder shooting, all victims where white and the shooter wa…

The George Floyd thing is not mentioned because it's not true:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/15/fac...

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

#519

Post by thrwy_sv_v_eurp » Mon, May 31, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #290

bomdo wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For others interested in this, Wikimedia salaries are all public [0]. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salarie...

As someone who worked in a sandwich shop to survive while going to college($7.5/hr, 30 hrs/week), I can't imagine the universe some people live in where an income of $375,000 doesn't seem sky high. It's like there is a section of people who live in a different world. I understand that it isn't much for an executive, but then that stuns me even more. Edit: median US salary is around $70k. This executive's pay is over…

I see you got downvoted, but I created this throwaway because I wanted to respond, because salary is not the same depending on where you live. Mine is an extreme case, but it is a real case:

I am a software engineer who used to live in the Bay Area but now live in Europe. In my country, my family is living off of a salary of 30000 (Euros, or about 36k USD). (This is my wife's salary, I'm not currently working). Our income officially puts us below the poverty line, so we pay 0% in income taxes.

With this 30k, about 50% goes to housing, about 1/6 goes to special needs schooling for one of my two children (they both need it, but the younger one's school is currently free), and the remaining 1/3 is for food and bills and misc. expenses.

We own a small, fuel efficient car that my wife drives while I bike or take public transportation. Our entire apartment runs on an average of 250W (servers, laptops, cell phones, electric stove) because everything is energy efficient. (LED lighting, double-pane windows, good applicances) We pay 10 euros a month for gigabit internet, 200+ channels, and unlimited calling to 150+ countries.

We live comfortably in a large (100 m^2) four bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood (working class, but nice). We eat well, we can afford to go to restaurants occasionally, and even take the occasional vacation.

While we're not currently saving any money, because we have money saved up, we're not living hand to mouth, even though "technically" we are.

If we wanted to return to San Francisco, the budget would look something like this:

    * 60k Schooling for both kids
    * 60k Four bedroom apartment or split home
    * 30k Food, car, bills

Once you convert that to pre-tax in SF, you're looking at about 300,000 USD gross, just to maintain the same standard of living. That's a greater than 8x disparity in cost of living, mainly because of the social net here.

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

#520

Post by jiofih » Mon, May 31, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

zhdc1 wrote: post #284

jiofih wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expenses for operating Wikipedia.com would be around $10m. Their $112M expenses include the sky high executive compensation, money sent to the fund, millions spent on fundraising itself, and financing a host of programs not directly related to Wikipedia. I stopped donating because of this - definitely want to contribute to keeping Wikipedia online, I don’t necessarily want to give my money to a larger foundation…

I was expecting to see semi-outrageous, border line unjustifiable executive salaries after reading this comment and clicking on the direct link below. I guess there's a chance that executive compensation went up significantly after 2018, but nothing I saw looks out of place for an organization as large as Wikipedia. ~300k for a San Fransisco-based CEO and an average salary of ~120k for all employees employees seems f…

The salary aspect is not the worst of it, but the majority of cash that goes to non-Wikipedia funding. For some reason justifying the fairness of a $400k salary gets people more excited than discussing where the other $97 million are going.