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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#351

Post by socialismisok »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #340
socialismisok wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats are not a left party. They are squarely center, maybe even center right. As someone who is a communist, the Dems have nothing to do with Marx, and they are about as capitalist as they come.

Even the formally communist country of china semes to be capitalist in truth. To the point where they will likely overtake the US as the richest country in the world.

I think that's widely accepted, yeah. Deng Xiaoping changed a bunch of stuff that kept a lot of the authoritarianism but added capitalism.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#352

Post by jevgeni »

sokoloff wrote: post #103
_glsb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Read the donation page and see if you feel the same way: https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi... We ask you, humbly, to help. We'll get straight to the point: Today we ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence. We're a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online and thriving, but 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a…

Yes, it's in a whiny tone. The fact that it will go down is your interpretation. An alternative interpretation could be "98% of people get asymmetric value out of Wikipedia, please make it less asymmetric".

In fact, if they stop begging, what percentage of their users will contribute? Will it remain at 2%?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#353

Post by rat9988 »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #265
akolbe wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the other replies. Also, last year, the then-Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher was on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. (The wife of the WMF’s PR consultant, the Clinton Foundation’s Craig Minassian, works on the show as a producer.) In the interview, Noah put it to Maher that the downside of being a non-profit is that “you often struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running. So, two parts. O…

A significant amount of their donations came in during 2021 and 2022. That episode of the Daily Show was around April 2021. So, their funds were much smaller then. From the article: “ In 2021, the appeals raised a total of $162 million, a 50% year-on-year increase. ”

They were rich way before that. You can find older articles about it.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#354

Post by shadowgovt »

Macha wrote: post #338
jasonlotito wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/ How is this misleading? They provide an incredibly large amount of information. And more information can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Disputes

That is not the place donors get sent, nor the content of the ads shown to potential donors. The ads are screenshotted in the linked article and they lead here: https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi... Yes, users can go elsewhere to find the information. The records are on file in the metaphorical filing cabinet downstairs. But if the messaging you're putting front and center contradicts said r…

"Elsewhere" in this case is the FAQ link at the bottom of the donation page. If a person has questions, that's what an FAQ is for.

Calls to action are kept intentionally short because the research on human psychology is clear: every additional sentence beyond the first few decreases the odds of a conversion (that's adspeak for "closing the deal").

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#355

Post by shadowgovt »

blululu wrote: post #343
jasonlotito wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/ How is this misleading? They provide an incredibly large amount of information. And more information can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Disputes

There are laws against fine print for a reason. The front page pop up ad tells a different story than a stack of text heavy articles that require no small amount of technical expertise to figure out.

> The are laws against fine print for a reason

Has Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation broken any?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#356

Post by blululu »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #244
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 author of this has a decades long history of really disliking Wikipedia, so it seems unlikely that he's genuinely concerned about their funding levels. It's just another thing to attack them with. Why he's so consistently angry with Wikipedia is still a bit of a mystery to me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Orlowski#Criticism_of...

This is kind of a cheap ad hominem attack. There is a lot of legitimate criticism of the WMF, and it has been a problem for a long time so I don’t see why the criticism should stop.

The most vituperative critics of WMF are typically active Wikipedians. When a nonprofit is consistently acting against the desires of the community they are set up to support and when you as an unpaid volunteer feel like they are putting your work in jeopardy for their own benefit then you might be upset.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#357

Post by _glsb »

omnicognate wrote: post #69
_glsb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Read the screenshot: "... humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence", "if you donate... Wikipedia could keep thriving for years". The question as to whether this is manipulative isn't "is there are any clear statement of fact that is unambiguously a lie even in the most charitable possible interpretation?", it's "will this make ill-informed readers think their donations are necessary for Wikipedia's survival,…

I mean, it's basic English. "Independence" doesn't mean "just enough for server maintenance" and "thriving" doesn't mean "barely surviving".

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#358

Post by sokoloff »

jevgeni wrote: post #352
sokoloff wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the donation page and see if you feel the same way: https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Landi... We ask you, humbly, to help. We'll get straight to the point: Today we ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence. We're a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online and thriving, but 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a…

Yes, it's in a whiny tone. The fact that it will go down is your interpretation. An alternative interpretation could be "98% of people get asymmetric value out of Wikipedia, please make it less asymmetric". In fact, if they stop begging, what percentage of their users will contribute? Will it remain at 2%?

What else would "We ask you, humbly, to help...We're a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online" mean if not to raise the possibility to go down is present?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#359

Post by eric4smith »

jasec57322 wrote: post #229
eric4smith wrote: post #66

Brah… What’s the problem? Wikipedia will always be free to use. Some people will always support it, others won’t. Life will go on. This is exactly like trying to cancel someone on YouTube. Just don’t watch the channel.

What is the problem if I call you a rapist? Perhaps it's because it's deceptive, dishonest & undermines trust. Unless of-course you don't care about such things, then what's the problem? You don't have to read my comment, 'just' switch off the website. The problem is that Wikipedia goes to great effort to shill for the CIA-NATO propaganda machine - whilst deceptively claiming they're an independent factual source. Th…

You can actually “switch off” the website by using alternate sources.

Vote with your dollars and attention.

I’m sick of people trying to cancel the things that they do not like and does not affect their lives.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#360

Post by blululu »

petercooper wrote: post #190
rany_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the outrage either. It's almost like people want Wikipedia to be barely scrapping by which isn't good. Having some money in your reserves is fine.

I agree, but with a warchest of $400m, their budget can seemingly be funded at 2.5% withdrawal per year, so there may be no need to ask anymore. (Though personally I'd rather they spent even more and had more full time editors and researchers improving the site.)

There are no full time paid editors and that would severely distort the character and incentives of the encyclopedia.
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