Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

dailydot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 619 posts

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

#561

Post by [deleted] »

jonahbenton wrote: post #46
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…

I'm sorry, but your worldview is completely out of line with reality. The banner IS genuine. Non-profit funding IS scarce. Funding streams are fickle and Wikipedia has none of the monopolistic advantages that keep Apple and Google and FB and MSFT owners vastly vastly richer than any Wikipedia staff will ever be. By volunteering you ARE doing something so much more valuable than any post to any for profit social media…

[deleted]

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

#562

Post by Qub3d »

bawolff wrote: post #15

This seems to be about the endowment - That's not the same as normal donations, and they can't just "use it", they can basically only use the interest of that money, from what i understand. Disclaimer: Used to work for wikimedia, once upon a time, don't anymore.

The WMF has refused to state how the endowment is stuctured, so we have no proof that they cannot dip into the principle whenever they feel the need/want.

Users have tried asking for clarification. Multiple times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

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

#563

Post by throwaway438 »

cedilla wrote: post #522
throwaway438 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a housing bubble when the government does everything possible to prevent the bubble from bursting. The median salary in the USA is a joke for people that are without any relatives supporting them financially for a mortgage, that will never afford a decent home that's actually located somewhere desirable and until in they reach their 40s.

Half of people live with less than that joke by definition, and most don't have the privilege to be supported by wealthy relatives, either.

Exactly it's a giant joke and when homes were affordable 30 years ago. So it's ridiculous when people act like wages are too high while ignoring inflation without the ability to afford a home unless the wages match what's needed.

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

#564

Post by forgotmypw17 »

bawolff wrote: post #526
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "unsteady connections", I meant inconsistent or unreliable connections, where you may not be able to stay online reliably. On mobile, there is a new "feature" where each section is lazy-loaded, so if you do not expand them while you are online, you cannot read them once you're offline. Also, if the browser reloads the page from cache while offline, sections are also inaccessible. The desktop site is inaccessible t…

Fair enough. I'm personally not a fan of the mobile site, even on mobile. https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless is another option (for that link to work on mobile, you have to first click the use desktop button to have desktop cookies)

Thanks, I like the idea of Gemini, but haven't found the time to try any of the clients yet.

In my eyes it has a few shortcomings straight out of the gates by requiring TLS and also by being relatively new tech, so there's not much established knowledge base, and the "early problems" are still being solved.

It's much less accessible than Web in many different scenarios, such as when I can't install software on my device, when I'm using an older device, etc.

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

#565

Post by jari_mustonen »

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…

Sounds good but Wikipedia asks money with pitch ”help keep Wikipedia running”. It’s a lie if the money is diverted to other, how ever commendable, pursuits.

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

#566

Post by checkerscaptian »

bawolff wrote: post #461
saurik wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right: because you shifted the argument to editors from moderators; what they need are not people to edit articles, but instead to do community management that reduces the toxicity of the current de facto bureaucracy that is designed to prevent arguments but instead seems to cause them.

The parent literally used the phrase "editors/moderators". The current bureaucracy is not designed to prevent arguments, its designed to make sure such arguments are productive. Whether it succedes is debatable. Its certainly not without issue.

both of your comments are very interesting, i feel like there should be a way that Wikipedia could auto check facts using an algorithm to flag anything incorrect by referencing up to date reputable sources like NASA, Britannica ect.then use the editors/moderators to pick up anything that was flagged.

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

#567

Post by NoInkling »

j-pb wrote: post #74
zozbot234 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your idea of "survival"? Wikipedia has already been bleeding editors for a long time as the overall climate on the Web has shifted away from openness and towards profit-seeking and mindless consumption. They portray themselves as "essential infrastructure in the ecosystem of free knowledge" which looks like a factual and fair assessment to me. This is what must survive for the foreseeable future. It's not just…

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…

I use Wikidata data (in a non-academic capacity) shrug

It's not that easy to work with, but there aren't any good alternatives in my case. Freebase died. DBpedia doesn't compare. Domain-specific databases don't have the data I'm looking for (or it's woefully incomplete and/or hard to link to external entities) because it straddles multiple domains, not to mention they're usually not free. I for one am very thankful for Wikidata existing and seeing good activity.

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

#568

Post by clusterfish »

Siira wrote: post #557
clusterfish wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Mozilla didn't obtain and spend all that funding, Firefox would have been obsolete years ago. Google spends bazillions on Chrome, you can't compete with that on a shoestring budget.

Mozilla did NOT spend the money on Firefox. You did hear how they fired their core engineers recently, didn't you?

They downsized because they have less money coming in now. So? They might well be overspending on execs or whatever, but that doesn't make much difference in the face of the existential threat they're facing from Google.

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

#569

Post by mlang23 »

kaba0 wrote: post #304
mlang23 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"necessarily inefficiency"? what sort of legitimation is this? Besides, I dont own a car.

Okay, your computer is far from 100% efficiency, nor any appliance in your home, nor for-profit companies, nothing is. Why are we so outraged when a non-profit company doing great work is also inefficient a bit?

Because it is strictly unfair to volunteers. Volunteers do most of the important work, and usually get no pay at all. So why should managers get paid and everyone should look away and just call it an inefficientcy?

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

#570

Post by reader_mode »

CRConrad wrote: post #540
reader_mode wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And London ?

WTF does that have to do with anything? Isn't this whole discussion about how the WMF shouldn't be based in the fricking most overpriced city they can find?

Yeah you're going to get amazing executive candidates in Wales for eg., background in sheep herding and farm management will translate to running Wikipedia quite nicely I think.
Post reply on HN