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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#71

Post by foldr »

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 American Cancer Society gets 73/100 and spends more on fundraising than WMF's entire budget, so oncologists can snort blow off hookers in Vegas

Is there a reference here that I'm missing?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#72

Post by andrewstuart »

andrewstuart wrote: post #61

Is this the same person who every now and then appears on HN utterly outraged by Wikipedia's fundraising? I donate to Wikipedia. And I am glad they have lots of money. I do not feel outraged about it, I feel happy about it. I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world. Wikipedia is a great service, it should be valued. They should not always be…

"Wokepedia". This guy certainly has an axe to grind. Looks like urging people not to donate is in fact a right wing attack on Wikpedia - "The Daily Telegraph" of course being a Murdoch newspaper.

From the authors Wikpedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Orlowski

"Writing for The Daily Telegraph in May 2021, Orlowski said that the Wikimedia Foundation was "flush with cash" and passing money to the Tides Network, which he described as "a left-leaning dark money group"; he referred to Wikipedia as "Wokepedia" in an allusion to the term "woke".[24] In another article for The Daily Telegraph, in December 2021, Orlowski said the Wikimedia Foundation's urgent fundraising banners on Wikipedia were "preposterous" given that it held assets of $240 million and had a $100 million endowment, and the Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director had said in 2013 that the Foundation could be sustainable on "$10M+ a year".[25] In August 2022, Orlowski claimed that Wikipedia had "become a tool of the Left in the battle to control the truth", referencing the recent controversy over Wikipedia's definition of a recession.[26]"

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#73

Post by matthewdgreen »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #47

The advantage of a community supported encyclopedia should be a reasonable degree of impartiality, openness and academic freedom. Wikipedia has departed a good distance from this ideal and should support itself as other media does... through advertising or subscriptions. The case is best found in the OP link comments, but here's one I found that well summarizes: "You do have to filter out some stuff unfortunately – b…

I mean everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, but if the implication of those opinions is that we should take one of the last truly great sites on the Internet and ruin it with ads, then I think its fair for others to treat those opinions as ideas worth avoiding.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#74

Post by rippercushions »

scandox wrote: post #51
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.

Yeah man, and how dare the Red Cross manipulate people with pictures of starving children in their famine relief ads? A graph showing the intersection between available calories trending down and required calories staying constant would land so much better on HN.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#75

Post by gambiting »

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…

>>. A body pretending to represent free speech and human rights that's stuffed with illiberal violators of human rights.

UN literally never pretended to do such a thing - it's just a forum for countries to meet and discuss issues, with no power to really do anything other than agree or disagree with each other on whatever is being discussed. Kicking out say Russia or China or North Korea from the UN makes no sense in that context, because you can't have an international forum for discussion if you are not letting countries in to actually you know, discuss.

I think it stems from the idea of UN that people have in their head, maybe it's embedded by the popular media or otherwise, but I see people complaining that UN doesn't force countries to do X or Y. That's literally not how it works - it's just a forum to talk, nothing less nothing more.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#76

Post by shadowgovt »

akolbe wrote: post #62
pastage wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikimedia is vital to Wikipedia, they have little money and pay their exec too little for what they do. IMHO.

Then they should tell donors and prospective donors what they do. As ever, all the content is written by unpaid volunteers (or people paid by others), but still the Wikimedia Foundation's spending doubles every few years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial... What's it for? Tell donors what they are funding. And somehow the priorities are wrong. The Wikimedia Foundation has annual 8-figure s…

> Tell donors what they're funding

Wikimedia has a 100/100 transparency rating.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#77

Post by Macha »

andrewstuart wrote: post #61

Is this the same person who every now and then appears on HN utterly outraged by Wikipedia's fundraising? I donate to Wikipedia. And I am glad they have lots of money. I do not feel outraged about it, I feel happy about it. I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world. Wikipedia is a great service, it should be valued. They should not always be…

You can view the history of of submissions and comments on the wikipedia has cancer article to see how many of the posters have a long history of submissions that clearly indicates they're different people, and not just one single person with a grudge.

Not everyone shares your opinion on high pressure misleading sales as a persuasion method being acceptable.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#79

Post by navaati »

phpisthebest wrote: post #52
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 issue…

Hey, what is "the BBB" here ?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#80

Post by wccrawford »

Hamcha wrote: post #19
wnkrshm wrote: post #5

Any time they ask for donations, I donate to archive.org instead.

Pro tip: If you shop on Humble for videogames, you can select Internet Archive as your non-profit target in most* occasions! * some bundles/deals are locked to specific charities

I just checked and it seems you can do the same for Amazon Smile!
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