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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#471

Post by bawolff »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #466
bawolff wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I stopped donating to them when I discovered how difficult it was to correct errors in literally my own family's history; As it should be. Wikipedia is not your personal blog. If you cannot prove what you say is true to an acceptable standard it should be reverted. That is how it wikipedia stays reliable.

> wikipedia stays reliable. Hi there. I have a bridge on Mars to sell you.

Of course wikipedia is far from perfect when it comes to reliability.

However, given you did not include a citation for the sale of that bridge that meets wikipedia's guidelines on appropriate sources, i am not sure it is quite the comeback you think it is.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#472

Post by shepherdjerred »

cxr wrote: post #453
shepherdjerred wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I donate to Wikipedia Have you? Wikipedia doesn't accept money. Wikimedia does, though.

Yeah, I have. Your (bad) attempt to be clever notwithstanding, my comment makes it clear that I'm not referring to donating money. That's not true of the person I responded to. Try again.

Ah, you're right. I thought it was ironic that you made the same mistake the previous comment did, but that isn't the case. It wasn't clear to me the first time I read your comment.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#473

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

naasking wrote: post #442
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 onl…

> 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.

Lets follow that example. You assume those grants can provide citations, and the mission of the grant is to shift away from eurocentricity. So theoretically there are enough eurocentric citacions already in Wikipedia, and they would provide a different analysis on the same topics.

This would improve wikipedia neutrality rather than diminish it. If OP wanted a neutral wikipedia then those grants would help that mission (if we believe that the grants actually generate content that promotes views not currently cited, and that people who update the affected pages will find, or cite those materials in the future. Two big ifs)

The only way this could affect neutrality is if you think a biased eurocentric telling is neutral but thats a circular argument where the status quo is always neutral and any new information is straying away from neutrality.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#475

Post by rany_ »

walls wrote: post #363
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'd rather Wikipedia not turn into another Mozilla. Not having a ton of extra money is a good way to prevent that kind of bloat.

Have to disagree, it makes them more dependent on a few mega doners (Google, Microsoft, etc.).

These campaigns are great to diversify and prevent Wikipedia from being beholden to them.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#476

Post by tchaffee »

FFRefresh wrote: post #459
tchaffee wrote: post #192

This is a hit piece by someone who hates Wikipedia. It should be ignored. If and when someone with far less bias writes an article on Wikimedia finances, I might be interested.

Would you actually be interested in reading about Wikimedia finances though? Wikimedia is a non-profit and posts all of their financial data publicly [1], why not go read it there? What's interesting is that you somehow know that the author is someone who hates wikipedia, yet you refuse to read his article(s). How did you arrive at the conclusion that the author is someone who is heavily biased against Wikimedia and…

I explained my approach in other comments. Look up the bullshit asymmetry principal for why I don't owe you the answers to your accusatory style questions and your "what's interesting" observations. Neither do I owe the author anything more than pointing out a history of heavy bias. You, like the author, are indeed ignorable. No one owes you a conversation and your cross-examining style is against HN rules.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#477

Post by _glsb »

omnicognate wrote: post #374
_glsb wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They have enough money to fund wikipedia in perpetuity several times over. Wikipedia's independence and thrivingness aren't at any risk whatsoever, even if donations were to completely stop immediately. The donations are used for side projects almost all donors are completely unaware of, whose existence and nature are not hinted at in the ads soliciting donations.

Again, problems with basic communication, it seems. Perpetuity means "forever". Because they have a finite amount of money and they are not generating money, they can't "fund wikipedia in perpetuity several times over".

They way they DO stay online for a resilient amount of time is by generating money, i.e. through donations.

In fact, they used to say exactly how many months they have left. Now they don't say that, because they feel they can allow themselves that. Does that mean that it makes sense to stop fundraising? No. Because the minute the public doesn't feel that there's an urgency in donating to your cause, then it's someone else's problem, meaning it's nobody's problem and that's how you kill NPOs.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#479

Post by jevgeni »

akolbe wrote: post #405
jevgeni wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%?

You mean, what percentage of users will pay for using a website advertised as "The Free Encyclopedia", written by unpaid volunteers? Just saying. If the WMF were working flat out on serving the volunteer community it would be a different matter. But it's taken on a life of its own, with Wikipedia as its cash cow.

No, I'm asking how many people will donate, if everybody thinks that it's not urgent and somebody else will?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#480

Post by akolbe »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #96
akolbe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs don't increase by a factor of 50 in ten years. Note I made the same argument in Wikipedia's community newspaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Read the comments from Wikipedians underneath. No one claimed it was a dishonest argument to make.

They don't? Why not? Have the unique users peaked? Are people accessing it less? I'm pretty happy to wager real money that Wikipedia has had to scale significantly in the last ten years. But, hey, if you've got evidence to the contrary, I'll happily read it.

Internet hosting costs have long been stable at about $2.5 million. You'll find them on page 5 of the following pdf (the page is numbered 3 and headed "Consolidated Statements of Activities"):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...

Annual revenue was $163 million. Of course hosting costs alone don't cover the entire outlay, but Wikimedia's budget and money demands have absolutely exploded in recent years.

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