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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#191

Post by shkkmo »

Mindwipe wrote: post #39
akolbe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very good choice, because the Internet Archive is financially far less secure than the Wikimedia Foundation and provides a vital service, by archiving Wikipedia sources before they go offline. This makes sure you can still see in five years' time what someone has cited in an article. They also pay their executives far less.

> A very good choice, because the Internet Archive is financially far less secure than the Wikimedia Foundation That's at least in part because the IA board are idiots however.

Without specific criticism, this comment is just name calling and is inappropriate for HN.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#193

Post by a_c »

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…

More useful questions to ask are how much good they do and how much harm they cause. I use wiki daily. I gain so much from it that the 10 quids a month seems like a bargain.

The wiki outrage looks like a variation of bike shedding, the more people know, they more opinion they have

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#194

Post by denton-scratch »

phpisthebest wrote: post #148
KennyBlanken wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That twitter thread is garbage start to finish. It starts with 'wikipedia started out in a basement on a shoestring, so clearly all the millions spent two decades later is being pissed into the wind', which is absurd. ...then attacks SERCH claiming they've done nothing but release 'youtube videos with 50 views', attacks them for not having produced any within the last year (maybe their grant ended?) when if one googl…

>>>really blows its dog whistle if you want to know where you lost me, this is where.... Anyone talking about "dog whistle" gets an instant ignore from me. At the end of the day, my problem with wikimedia is the same problem I have with United Way, and other such "charities". I do not support charities of charities. I want to give directly to a cause I support, The fact that wikimedia is soliciting donations for one…

> Anyone talking about "dog whistle" gets an instant ignore from me.

I take it you think a "dog-whistle" is something the left criticizes the right for doing; and I suppose you are of the right. In fact a dog-whistle could be uttered by a politician of any colour; it's simply a message that is more likely to be heard by one particular political group than others.

There are evidently what you might call "anti-dog-whistles": messages that are not likely to be heard by some group. Apparently you belong to the group that can't hear messages containing the term "dog-whistle".

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#195

Post by tlb »

Ekaros wrote: post #187
tlb wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those salaries are at or below market for high-level execs in Silicon Valley, especially considering they can't offer stock options. The people capable of managing the large software projects Wikimedia needs can make more at other tech companies.

And why should Silicon Valley be any benchmark? Shouldn't they aim to some cheaper locale? Maybe Eastern Europe or Africa?

Wikimedia is based in Silicon Valley (San Francisco, really), so they're competing with other employers in the region for talent.

The reason they shouldn't move their HQ somewhere cheap is the same reason Apple or Google shouldn't: there isn't the concentration of tech talent there.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#196

Post by i_like_apis »

I give money to Wikipedia occasionally and will gladly continue, thanks.

Wikimedia makes the world a much better world place. They should have the funds to do whatever they want.

You’re mad at them for some reason because they have 400 mil? That’s not even half a billion.

I want a world where the Wikimedia foundation is a multi-billion dollar entity.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#197

Post by denton-scratch »

akolbe wrote: post #125
Macha wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, the mentions of having to seek alternative funding models like subscriptions and ads are clearly meant to raise the image of a site on the brink of unsustainability to potential donors

The implied subscription threat is a complete red herring. They should be ashamed for even mentioning it in their fundraising messages. Wikipedians wouldn't work for free for a subscription service. The whole project would fork to a new host. The Wikimedia Foundation's own mission statement says, "The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the internet free of charge, in perpe…

Much the same applies to the Mozilla Foundation.

You can't contribute donations to Firefox; you can only contribute to the Mozilla Foundation, which spends most of the money it gets from donations on things that aren't Firefox.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#199

Post by Silverback_VII »

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…

"The Wikimedia Foundation defines racial equity as shifting away from Eurocentricity, White-male-imperialist-patriarchal supremacy, superiority, power and privilege..."

from the knowledge equity fund page. what the heck

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#200

Post by oever »

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…

Here's a site with faceted search on WikiData: https://wikipedia.peerdb.org/

And here's an alternative way to browse Wikipedia and WikiData: https://conze.pt/

These sites are possible because the Wikimedia Foundation puts a lot of effort into making it easy for others to retrieve the data and reuse them.

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