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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#441

Post by skyyler »

eurleif wrote: post #434
skyyler wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Lysenko as evidence that Marx was anti-science is kinda weird. Stalin had thousands of Lysenko's critics imprisoned, I dunno how Marx would feel about that, but I have a feeling it wouldn't be particularly positive. What does Hegel have to do with anything here? Adam Smith was also "routed in Hegel"...

>Adam Smith was also "routed in Hegel"... Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations when Hegel was 5 years old, and died when Hegel was 19, and hadn't published anything yet.

I had it the other way around, neat!

Lysenkoism still isn't evidence that Marx was anti-science.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#442

Post by naasking »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #406
naasking wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, you asked how they strayed far from their goal of being a "neutral historian of world events", at least in idealistic terms. Those grants are specifically funding activism which many would argue is not neutral, so your question has been answered. Secondly, Exxon is not a charitable organization so you're drawing a false equivalency. Wikimedia is asking for donations with ads that suggest donating is about ke…

> you asked how they strayed far from their goal of being a "neutral historian of world events", I asked him how they strayed far far far away from being free, neutral and preserving facts. > Those grants are specifically funding activism which many would argue is not neutral, so your question has been answered. this does not follow again. I mean first of all, free and preserving facts would be fulfilled so the only…

> I mean first of all, free and preserving facts would be fulfilled so the only part that could be compromised as you said is neutrality.

Yes, which was a requirement the OP specified alongside the others. Abdicating neutrality was not acceptable.

> But their grants affect future events not the ones recorded and wikimedia aren't even the people writting the text on wikipedia, they are unpaid moderators.

Wikipedia only posts information with citations. The grant is funding organizations that will provide citations from a certain viewpoint ("shifting away from Eurocentricity, White-male-imperialist-patriarchal supremacy, superiority, power and privilege"), thus affecting the information that will show up on Wikipedia in the future. This follows trivially so I'm not sure exactly what doesn't follow.

> how so? The non voting shareholders of exxon and the donators in wikimedia have the same role, financing the operation.

The returns shareholders are expecting is money. The returns Wikipedia donors are expecting are improvements to Wikipedia in its role as neutral historian. Money and those expectations are not commensurate, so the comparison isn't really valid on its face.

Furthermore, if you accept that Wikimedia funded activism that's not strictly in line with being a neutral historian, then you must conclude that they abdicated that role contrary to donor expectations.

If you wanted a proper comparison to Exxon, then it would be comparable to Exxon making a series of choices that reduce shareholder value, which gives shareholders grounds to sue. There is no such recourse for Wikimedia donors as far as I understand so they still aren't directly comparable, but the "betrayal" of violated expectations as you termed it, is of a similar kind.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#443

Post by denton-scratch »

zzzeek wrote: post #306
denton-scratch wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or upper class Not sure what you mean by "upper class". The kind of people that term refers to for me, is a group of people that would never lower themselves to donating labour for nothing, and on the whole aren't sufficiently well-educated to even read a Wikipedia article. I agree the comparison to Marxism is unhinged!

> Not sure what you mean by "upper class" for the US, it refers to income above $156K, here's an explainer https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finan...

Ah, I see. In the UK, "upper class" generally means peerage and royalty. It implies familiarity with certain manners and customs, and having relatives that share those manners.

It's not a question of "politeness" - the upper classes curse like troopers, and generally can be very coarse. It's just a particular kind of manners, that they recognize. It's not a question of wealth, and certainly not a matter of exceeding some annual income threshold. Many people that would be considered upper class are not very rich, and most very rich people certainly aren't considered upper class.

Really, the UK upper class is defined by blood - who your mum and dad were. That affects where you go to school, which determines what manners you learn (and might influence how much you get to earn).

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#444

Post by sokoloff »

_glsb wrote: post #362
sokoloff wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That they are a non-profit funded by donations, maybe? Just a wild guess. /s

"...to stay online" is relevant in that clause.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#445

Post by origin_path »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #126
phpisthebest wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

The problem with the highlighted organizations is not (only) that they are irrelevant to Wikipedia's mission and the intent of the funders, it's that they don't seem to be doing anything which raises the question of why this specific group is being given free money. The answer can well be corruption or nepotism. Whatever it is, it doesn't look good.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#446

Post by denton-scratch »

jasec57322 wrote: post #322
denton-scratch wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that Wikipedia goes to great effort to shill for the CIA-NATO propaganda machine What exactly are you saying? Are you suggesting that thousands of Wikipedia editors have all been subborned by Western military agencies? Or are you just referring to the overpaid Wikimedia C-suite? Of course some Wikipedia editors are shills. Most MSM journalists are shilling for someone; if you pay attention to current…

I am saying what I am saying. The Wikimedia Foundation control Wikipedia, the subbordination is done by them. Editors are only as free as they permit - the two are inseparable, to suppose otherwise is as supposing chromium is independent from Google. Of-course Wikipedia is a useful tool, so what? Are they exempt from criticism? What is it you are saying? You abuse the English language; by definition a journalist is n…

> by definition a journalist is not a shill

Well, your definitions are eccentric. For example, Luke Harding is accredited as a senior journalist at The Guardian; he shills for the UK security services. I'm not sure whether we disagree as to what a shill is, or what a journalist is. The only journalists that I know of that are not shills are independent writers, like Jonathan Cook and Peter Hitchens.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#447

Post by cxr »

shadowgovt wrote: post #417
cxr wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, a classic motte-and-bailey. I'm familiar. Feel free to provide an actual argument against any one of the following: - Wikipedia is not short on cash - The current ads are misleading and intrusive - The ads of years past were successful despite not being this misleading or intrusive - The point you're trying to raise, when you're not being mercurial about it (the point about "support of the hacker community" for…

Sure. If you don't want to discuss hacker bias against success via using the tools that are demonstrated successful because they're not "virtuous" tools, I can't force you. It's the only piece of this I'm interested in though.

In other words, what you're ostensibly here to discuss has nothing to do with WMF's campaign in light of the actual circumstances, and you've shown a willingness to make a bunch of indefensible claims along the way—only to say that you were never really serious about those things. There's no good reason for anyone to attempt to discuss anything with you when the only thing you seem to actually be committed to is the use of misdirection while hoping no one notices.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#448

Post by denton-scratch »

kemayo wrote: post #329
denton-scratch wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a 2TB HDD was sold for about 160 dollars As far as I can see, the text of Wikipedia is about 10GB. I don't know how much space the images occupy, but if we assume they take up roughly the same space, then a single 2TB disk would accomodate 1,000 Wikipedias. This isn't about the cost of disk storage.

Totally agreed that the cost isn't really storage, but I wanted to point out that you're underestimating a fair bit on the size. Conveniently, there's a wikipedia article about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia "As of 21 September 2022, the size of the current version of all articles compressed is about 21.23 GB without media." (Note that's gzipped, so the actual size is much higher in-u…

> (Note that's gzipped, so the actual size is much higher in-use.)

OK; I did a quick dig to see how big Wikipedia is, but you've dug deeper.

You can still stick the whole English Wikipedia on a single disk, probably with all linked media (I suspect that a lot of what's on Wikimedia isn't linked from Wikipedia articles). So the main cost issue is serving content to the network; and there are lots of server farms that would cheerfully do that for the love.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#449

Post by jgwil2 »

seneca wrote: post #369
threatofrain wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I'd appreciate it if there were a way to restrict the usage of donations to the causes I care about within the foundation.

That's essentially pointless though. They may earmark your $10 for the core mission, but that just means another $10 that wasn't specified doesn't have to be used for the core, and gets used for their political initiatives. It's entirely semantics and doesn't change behavior at all unless an overwhelming majority earmark their donations the same way.

That "unless" clause at the end of your comment is precisely the point though. Just because you don't want to support most of the things that WMF are doing doesn't mean that others don't want to. If a majority of donors earmark their donations, then they will collectively have rebuked the foundation. If a majority of donors don't earmark their donations, then they will have collectively approved of the foundation's actions.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#450

Post by shepherdjerred »

cxr wrote: post #173
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…

> I donate to Wikipedia. Have you? Wikipedia doesn't accept money. Wikimedia does, though. > I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world. Necessary how? For what? I donate to Wikipedia—as a Wikipedian. I've contributed a bunch of time editing content and doing lots of gnomish things to create value so that Wikipedia is a "great service". Milli…

> I donate to Wikipedia

Have you? Wikipedia doesn't accept money. Wikimedia does, though.

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