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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#481

Post by Blikkentrekker »

happymellon wrote: post #166
Ensorceled wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When they flung some banner about soliciting more female contributors in my face which reeked of Americana it was the last straw. What was this ad that was so objectionable?

I don't remember it, but I was assuming that they felt like it was still requesting white Americans.

I really don't even care that much about skin colors.

White, black, purple Americans tend to have similar perspectives on things, so do white, black and purple Swedes.

The issue is that the articles on many international things are clearly written from an Anglo-Saxon perspective, often citing purely English sources on events that happen in, say, France or Syria.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#482

Post by omnicognate »

_glsb wrote: post #477
omnicognate wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

I suggest reading up about endowments. [1]

Money generates money. To fund something in perpetuity you need enough that the returns from investing it (taking into account tax, costs, inflation, etc) exceed the annual payment needed. This is not an infinite amount.

I haven't checked the figures but the article claims the foundation has $400 million cash and Wikipedia costs under $2 million per annum. There's no easy way of calculating the maximum annual sum that can be taken out in perpetuity from a well managed endowment but it's certainly a lot more than 0.5%.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_endowment

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#483

Post by pelasaco »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #397
pelasaco wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Human page, is quite neutral too (/s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Gender

Whats wrong with that blurb? The only bit missing a citation is "most societies have men over women", and that seems fairly unproblematic

> Whats wrong with that blurb?

well, the agenda trying to be pushed.

"Human societies typically exhibit gender identities and gender roles that distinguish between masculine and feminine characteristics and prescribe the range of acceptable behaviours and attitudes for their members based on their sex.".. Typically? Nope.

"The most common categorisation is a gender binary of men and women.[422] Many societies recognise a third gender,[423] or less commonly a fourth or fifth.[424][425] In some other societies, non-binary is used as an umbrella term for a range of gender identities that are not solely male or female.".. Many societies recognise a third gender? Nope.

Just some hyperbolic mischosen words right?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#484

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

I think the point is that they're misleading about where the money is going. Most people assume it's to keep the website going, not for sponsoring political interests of the people running wikimedia. It's the same reason people get mad at Mozilla.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#485

Post by stjohnswarts »

greyhair wrote: post #308
bombcar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it can become a bit of a scam where if you’re a “paying member” of the BBB you can “respond” to complaints and they disappear.

After fighting with Ford over a recall issue for over a year, I opened a claim with the BBB. Two months later they closed it with a note that Ford explained that my car had been determined to be outside the claim (even though it experienced the recall related failure). Four months later, Ford issued be a check for the full cost of the repair, with an apology note. Even though at that point, I had given up. I have to…

Ford and most corps have a deny-deny-deny culpability policy until the complaint hits someone who can make a decision on the matter (they actually have queues/emails). There is a hard money limit for the peons to be able to admit that it's the company's fault, above that amount it is a blanket deny and delay policy. We had a recent President who also lived by the same policies; lawyers have ingrained into the DNA of business.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#486

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

pelasaco wrote: post #483
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats wrong with that blurb? The only bit missing a citation is "most societies have men over women", and that seems fairly unproblematic

> Whats wrong with that blurb? well, the agenda trying to be pushed. "Human societies typically exhibit gender identities and gender roles that distinguish between masculine and feminine characteristics and prescribe the range of acceptable behaviours and attitudes for their members based on their sex.".. Typically? Nope. "The most common categorisation is a gender binary of men and women.[422] Many societies recogni…

> Typically? Nope.

What? How is it not typical to have general men and women roles in different societies? Those roles aren't always the same but the existance of such roles is more than typical is almost ubiquitous.

> Many societies recognise a third gender? Nope.

Is the problem there the word "many"? There is a citation with the number of societies they found that have such a mention.

They do say the most common is just two and its primarily associated with the sex of the person, how is the acknowledgement of cultural genders beyond that binary "an agenda"?

> Just some hyperbolic mischosen words right?

So you think the problem is two quantitative words (many/typically) that make certain social constructs seem more common that what you believe is fair? Is that what it boils down to?

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#487

Post by FFRefresh »

tchaffee wrote: post #476
FFRefresh wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://n…

You dismissed the article and author by labeling it a 'hit piece' by 'someone who hates wikipedia'. When other users asked if you had any substantive critiques of the claims in the article, you responded by saying you don't need to read or respond to the article's claims because of the 'bullshit asymmetry principle' that you adhere to.

The next natural question that I asked is how you arrived at the conclusion that the article/author is heavily biased (or filled with 'bullshit' as you have stated)? You respond by implying what I was asking is 'bullshit', and you don't need to answer any questions about it.

Overall, this thread/tangent has not been constructive. I was responding to your ad hominem on the author and shallow dismissal (which is against HN guidelines) of the article with no supporting arguments/remarks/evidence. Yes, my tone was more direct, as I'm not a fan of shallow dismissals based on ad hominem attacks. Probably my mistake for even engaging given the content of the comments that were posted to others.

Like you have stated a number of times here, you don't need to read/respond to anything you don't want to and you don't owe anybody anything. For future reference, this is just an implied rule in life, and doesn't need to be explicitly stated. Feel free to ignore this comment as you have stated you will, and I definitely don't expect/want anything else out of this conversation.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#488

Post by pelasaco »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #486
pelasaco wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whats wrong with that blurb? well, the agenda trying to be pushed. "Human societies typically exhibit gender identities and gender roles that distinguish between masculine and feminine characteristics and prescribe the range of acceptable behaviours and attitudes for their members based on their sex.".. Typically? Nope. "The most common categorisation is a gender binary of men and women.[422] Many societies recogni…

> Typically? Nope. What? How is it not typical to have general men and women roles in different societies? Those roles aren't always the same but the existance of such roles is more than typical is almost ubiquitous. > Many societies recognise a third gender? Nope. Is the problem there the word "many"? There is a citation with the number of societies they found that have such a mention. They do say the most common is…

"Human societies typically exhibit gender identities".. Nope, as the linked page explains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity, it started in the 60s, but until 2015, nobody heard of that. "Non-binary" didn't exist until recently. I'm not judging it, but it's for sure not typical. But to write that it is typical, is a farce. It's atypical, but exists and should be respected.

> Is the problem there the word "many"?

Yup, the right is "few". Few countries recognize it. From 195, 16. But again, to create a new reality to support an agenda, is wrong.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#489

Post by tchaffee »

FFRefresh wrote: post #487
tchaffee wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://n…

You dismissed the article and author by labeling it a 'hit piece' by 'someone who hates wikipedia'. When other users asked if you had any substantive critiques of the claims in the article, you responded by saying you don't need to read or respond to the article's claims because of the 'bullshit asymmetry principle' that you adhere to. The next natural question that I asked is how you arrived at the conclusion that t…

> You dismissed the article and author by labeling it a 'hit piece' by 'someone who hates wikipedia'.

Both of which are factual.

> The next natural question that I asked

You didn't just ask the next "natural" question. You were snarky, made accusatory questions, and broke HN rules.

> You respond by implying what I was asking is 'bullshit', and you don't need to answer any questions about it.

You left out the part where I said don't owe you the answers to your accusatory style questions. Which is the crux of the problem.

> For future reference, this is just an implied rule in life, and doesn't need to be explicitly stated.

Thanks for the advice. Here it is again explicitly stated because I'll continue to use my style of communication:

I don't have any obligation to reply to heavily biased "journalism" or the cross-examining style questions you used.

> I was responding to your ad hominem on the author and shallow dismissal (which is against HN guidelines)

It was ad hominem, but of the useful kind. It was not a shallow dismissal because I gave a solid reason folks should ignore his writing on that specific subject. That's the opposite of a shallow dismissal. All of my comments got a lot of up-votes. People here clearly found my observations useful. And my defense of my observations useful.

In contrast to comments similar to yours which got flagged.

> Feel free to ignore this comment as you have stated you will

Now you're putting words in my mouth. I never said I'll ignore any future comment you make. I said something different. Which anyone can re-read and make up their own mind about.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#490

Post by SanjayMehta »

bawolff wrote: post #471
SanjayMehta wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yawn.
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