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Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#91

All the other top websites [1] either are selling my information (Meta) , exist to show me ads (Google), or I pay monthly for (Netflix). Wikipedia runs one of the busiest websites in the world with a staff much smaller than any of those other sites. Like any company -- there's going to be priorities different than mine and waste. But I'm ok being asked to chip in for what I get. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#92
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would non-profits be expected to not fundraise as aggressively as possible? I think the reason is that we expect, or assume, non-profits to have a better ethical stance than for-profit organization. That's the point of a non-profit organization after all: doing something because they feel it's the right thing to do, regardless whether it is profitable or not.

I do not share this expectation or assumption. The difference between a for-profit and a non-profit corporation is defined in the tax code. It’s a legal distinction, not an ethical one. Some non-profits exist mainly to enrich their officers, and some profitable corporations are mainly concerned with benefiting society.

> Some non-profits exist mainly to enrich their officers

+100. But Charity Navigator can help you find those. The IRS form 990 discloses how much they pay their highest-paid employees.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#94
post #39

Goodbye Hacker News. A bunch of extremely well-paid SWEs complain about donating two bucks to a completely free encyclopedia representing hundreds of thousands of volunteer human hours of effort; replacing (sorry, “disrupting”) extremely expensive Britannica books means to me the orange site has lost it’s way.

[flagged]

Supporting charitable giving is what qualifies as an "awful organization" nowadays?

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#95

The Foundation is my client, but these views are only my own: This is not to say there's no excess, or that resources couldn't be allocated internally more effectively - I'm not going to put up some kind of strawman - but: 1. I took a 20% pay cut so that I could do more work for the Foundation. Worth it. 2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea ho…

Commons in particular should get a big overhaul. And ideally a phone app. I don’t know how would it look like, but… why is it 100 times easier to upload photo of a place from phone to Google Maps than it is to Commons?

(ironically, most poor country photos are from Panoramio from before it went to Google Maps.)

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#96

The Foundation is my client, but these views are only my own: This is not to say there's no excess, or that resources couldn't be allocated internally more effectively - I'm not going to put up some kind of strawman - but: 1. I took a 20% pay cut so that I could do more work for the Foundation. Worth it. 2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea ho…

They have $300m in assets and revenue increased from $100m to $120m in the past year[0].

Maybe the problem is that only 43% of donations are used for operations[1]?

0. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais...

1. https://www.wikimedia.ca/donate/

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#97

The Foundation is my client, but these views are only my own: This is not to say there's no excess, or that resources couldn't be allocated internally more effectively - I'm not going to put up some kind of strawman - but: 1. I took a 20% pay cut so that I could do more work for the Foundation. Worth it. 2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea ho…

Commons in particular should get a big overhaul. And ideally a phone app. I don’t know how would it look like, but… why is it 100 times easier to upload photo of a place from phone to Google Maps than it is to Commons? (ironically, most poor country photos are from Panoramio from before it went to Google Maps.)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.free.nrw.co...

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#98
post #5
post #2

I have no issue with a charity asking for money. I give them a regular donation.

Neither do I. I take issue with them asking for money with the pretext that Wikipedia is going to disappear because they don't have enough money.

Why? That's literally the pretext for any charity.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd rather that not happen. I donate every year. Wikipedia has far more money then they know what to do with, their entire foundation is very affluent and there is no risk of them facing any hardship. Your donations have exactly zero influence on Wikipedia staying up or even staying independent. Your money goes into a web of charities (undisclosed which exactly), at best some poor people might profit of a few percen…

That's okay, I have money to spare.

Then donate to a real charity which is open about where the money goes?

As far as "general charities" go Wikimedia foundation is pretty awful and your money doesn't help Wikipedia (the website) in any case. I would never donate to such a shady organization, using such disingenuous tactics and awful transparency.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?

#100

The Foundation is my client, but these views are only my own: This is not to say there's no excess, or that resources couldn't be allocated internally more effectively - I'm not going to put up some kind of strawman - but: 1. I took a 20% pay cut so that I could do more work for the Foundation. Worth it. 2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea ho…

People losing their jobs sucks, but I highly doubt it could even remotely be a result of an ongoing donation drive. You might be able to plan around a specific drive and change plans as a result of it tanking, but that wouldn’t happen in the middle of the drive. If it did, that screams of mismanagement far more than anything else.

Furthermore, the WMF fundraised $165 million in FY 2021-2022 already. That should more than cover staff salaries already, which were $68 million in 2020/2021.

The root of the issue is that the WMF does a lot, gets a lot of money for doing it, and puts back an abysmally small amount back into the thing they are most well known for: Wikipedia. So why would Wikipedia editors want to continue advertising it if they get little to no benefit from doing so?

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