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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#51

Post by scandox »

rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

Their communications about donations are just awful. As long as I get these sappy, puppy-dog-eyes appeals I will never donate to them again.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#52

Post by phpisthebest »

rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

In some ways Charity Navigator is like the BBB, and people need to take those ratings with a grain of salt.

What is not said here, but I think it was started this article there was a break-down on Twitter [2] recently where someone broke down the grants Wikimedia Foundation gives to other charities, A lot of Wikimedia has become advocacy for social issues not the spread of free information. Some of those Social issues many of the donors to Wikimedia may not agree with, and it being redistributed to some pretty controversial organizations. People donating to Wikimedia thinking they are advancing Wikipedia but in reality the bulk of the foundation spending is issuing grants to other charities.

>>Meanwhile eg the American Cancer Society gets 73/100 and spends more on fundraising than WMF's entire budget

I am reminded of this TED talk[1] from several years ago that talks about fundraising and charity

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...

[2] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579778161889652736.html

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#53

Post by ifqwz »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #30
account42 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla isn't even using the donations they collect themselve for browser development.

its a fucked up situation but do you have any alternatives? wikipedia keeping amasing all that money while mozilla sinks deeper and deeper into being dependent on google ad money, reducing costs which means laying off developers?

Of course there is an alternative... not donating to either of those corrupt businesses.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#55

Post by _glsb »

akolbe wrote: post #28
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

The issue is that they make it sound like they are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia running when they are actually wealthier than ever before. The whole premise of Wikipedia (or aspiration, at least, and yes, not always fulfilled ...) is that people should have information so they can't be manipulated. It kind of sucks to see the very organisation hosting the site do the opposite, don't you think?

They don't though. The banner has a whiny tone, but never do they say that they are struggling to keep the site up.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#57

Post by disruptiveink »

rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

Unfortunately, I think this is the most practical take to take here. WMF is "only" doing what pretty much all other large NGOs do, only they are in a highly visible position where: a) they operate on the Internet and b) their volunteer userbase is extremely obsessed about cataloguing and editing data, so it naturally follows they'd also be interested in the financial data around the organisation itself.

This is not to say they shouldn't be held accountable, but I do wonder what's the percentages of large charities that are "much worse" in terms of "we exist mostly to pay pretty good salaries to people whose purpose is to fundraise so we can repeat the loop".

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#58

Post by pastage »

noduerme wrote: post #36

A paltry few hundred million $ in the war chest is nothing to keep open a site mainly devoted to coordinating established facts in an information landscape otherwise controlled by state actors. And I would, and I did, contribute to Wikipedia. Until it became clear to me that they'd allowed antisemitic, anti-Israeli politics to warp their articles about things like the Holocaust, the 6-day war or the Israeli-Palestini…

This makes no sense especially if you know how Wikipedia works. But antisemtic propaganda accounts spread the same thing about Wikipedia, so no one will ever be satisfied.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#59

Post by ghusto »

mgamache wrote: post #42

It’s not just they are flush with cash. It’s they are funding and fanning the culture war despite claiming to be a neutral party. Some of their funds are being routed to political entities that are not neutral. Edit: here’s a link to a thread about what I mean: https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633?s=46&...

This.

I stopped donating when I saw how politicised they were.

People are people, and will have opinions about things. People of a kind will naturally group together. This is all fine, but it becomes a problem when one of the things that make what you produce worthwhile is neutrality, and you can't keep your politics in your pants.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#60

Post by Ensorceled »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #43
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

I used to donate, but no longer do, not for this, but because I'm tired about the Anglocentric, U.S.A.-centric style on Wikipedia with little efforts to fix it, as well as other neutrality issues. When they flung some banner about soliciting more female contributors in my face which reeked of Americana it was the last straw. I've seen some articles at least add “English-language criticism" by now instead of simply “c…

> When they flung some banner about soliciting more female contributors in my face which reeked of Americana it was the last straw.

What was this ad that was so objectionable?

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