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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#251

Post by criley2 »

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…

For the record, you aren't donating to Wikpedia, you're donating to the foundation. And the cost of running Wikipedia is generously less than 10% of donations per year.

Why do they need 550 employees? I think it's fair to question what the foundation has decided to do with your donation, because basically all of your donation goes to the "not-Wikipedia" parts.

But yeah the fact that this was written by some radical right-winger makes sense. The weird red-scare stuff at the end was so out of place, I should have realized it was by a right-wing propagandist, they have to shove that tripe into everything.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#252

Post by concordDance »

civilized wrote: post #242
concordDance wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With all claims backed by citations of course, should anyone make unfounded accusations of bias. Note that citations don't make bias impossible or claims true, they just make it easier to decide whether to trust information. E.g. If I cite the BBC in my statement and you trust the BBC you're more likely to trust my statement. A lot of right wingers believe that most news sources (and particularly a lot of the ones…

We aren't talking about a situation where we disagree about which third parties are trustworthy, e.g. I am citing the BBC which you distrust. My claim is that Orlowski attacks Wikipedia because its content is sometimes disagreeable to him politically, and I have supported that claim with citations from Wikipedia which are direct links to Orlowski's own opinion columns. Your point, while valid enough in general, is a…

Fair enough. I like getting the opportunity to soap box too much to pass it up.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#253

Post by denton-scratch »

concordDance wrote: post #233
civilized wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. So let's take a look at why the columnist, Andrew Orlowski, has such a problem with Wikipedia. It's not hard to find out why - it's on Wikipedia [1]. With direct links to Orlowski's own work, of course, should anyone make unfounded accusations of bias. > "It's the Khmer Rouge in diapers," observes one regular Register reader, which seems as good a description as any to us. https://www.theregister.com/2004/09/…

> With all claims backed by citations of course, should anyone make unfounded accusations of bias. Note that citations don't make bias impossible or claims true, they just make it easier to decide whether to trust information. E.g. If I cite the BBC in my statement and you trust the BBC you're more likely to trust my statement. A lot of right wingers believe that most news sources (and particularly a lot of the ones…

> A lot of right wingers believe that most news sources are grossly misleading or lying

Not just right-wingers. With few exceptions, Wikipedia "reliable sources" are mostly mainstream media, which most lefties regard as locked-down, neo-liberal propaganda cannons.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#254

Post by civilized »

concordDance wrote: post #252
civilized wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't talking about a situation where we disagree about which third parties are trustworthy, e.g. I am citing the BBC which you distrust. My claim is that Orlowski attacks Wikipedia because its content is sometimes disagreeable to him politically, and I have supported that claim with citations from Wikipedia which are direct links to Orlowski's own opinion columns. Your point, while valid enough in general, is a…

Fair enough. I like getting the opportunity to soap box too much to pass it up.

This comment made me cackle. High-five :)

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#255

Post by concordDance »

shadowgovt wrote: post #215
concordDance wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can start running the ads again once they only have enough cash to keep wikipedia running for the next five years rather than 35 years then.

Why leave donor money on the table for the ExxonMobil Foundations of the world to pick up?

These are charitable donations. That money wouldn't have gone to ExxonMobil et al, it would instead go to thinks like the Against Malaria Foundation.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#256

Post by agumonkey »

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?

My reluctance to donating again to wikipedia lies almost entirely on the subtext of their communication. There's a dissonance between the class of the project, the alleged finances, the in-your-face popups (some years it was half the page).

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#258

Post by Bakary »

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…

We would really need examples of what you are referring to. The reason for that being that intuitively, when someone talks about a platform no longer being neutral in such extreme language, it usually means the platform does not support their specific interpretation.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#259

Post by the_only_law »

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.

Yet you continue to engage

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#260

Post by throwaway2037 »

apexalpha wrote: post #95

Man, Wikipedia is like the best website I can think of. No joke. No silly 25MB framework, no hype, no popup banners (except the donation), no ads, no tracking, doesn't ask to sign up when I scroll down, no paywall... Just doing it's thing providing all the world with all knowledge for free, in a lot of languages. These managers can earn $4 million for all I care. Hell, I work for a mid-sized company that doesn't even…

I agree 200% with your words about Wikipedia. I am sure that I have spent 1000s (literally) of hours reading Wikipedia, opening my mind to new and interesting ideas. And, learning that I was wrong about long held beliefs. Plus, it is like a huge, free encyclopedia for lower income people in developing countries. The digital footprints are astonishingly large.

In closing, one small joke: About dark / annoying patterns: You forgot my least favourite: When you move the mouse out of tab, lightbox pops up: "Don't leave yet... blah blah blah... sign up for our newsletter!" As if that is going to keep me on the page!

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