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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?

#121

Post by hbrn »

tomg wrote: 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.

> bunch of extremely well-paid SWEs complain about donating two bucks to a completely free encyclopedia

You are NOT donating to free encyclopedia. You are donating to their parent company, which spends fraction of your donations on the encyclopedia, the rest goes to other questionable causes. That what bothers everybody.

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

#122

Post by GTP »

leephillips wrote: post #76
GTP wrote: 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

This could very well be, but it goes against what first comes to the mind of most people when talking about a non-profit: the name itself implies that those companies are "not for profit" after all.

EDIT: I also think that the reason why most countries have a special tax law regarding non-profit organization, is to help people that want to do "the right thing" even if it is not profitable, not to provide their officers with an easier way to enrich themselves. So if a non-profit is being used by their officers to enrich themselves, I think it is correct to see them as people that are cheating the system. If they are doing it in a way that is technically legal, I would say they are probably exploiting some loophole.

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

#123

Post by constantcrying »

95014_refugee wrote: post #98
cedws wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Why?

Because it is a complete and utter lie. The Wikimedia foundation is extremely wealthy and under no financial stress. They Have hundreds of millions in assets[0].

A charity should be honest and open about what they are doing with the money they are taking. Wikimedia foundation isn't and is fundraising as if they were about to go under.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikim...

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

#124

Post by flipbrad »

marcinzm wrote: post #115
flipbrad wrote: post #60

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…

>2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea how many projects besides Wikipedia are run by WMF - for instance, ever heard of Wikimedia Commons? Any idea how litigious and heavily-regulated the world has got, and how much effort has to be poured into softening some of the emerging laws, mounting judicial challenges against the rest, etc? Any idea how…

What's wrong with these?

https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe...

https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation

At some point you have to ask yourself "what would victim blaming look like, and how different is that from this"

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

#125

Post by sircastor »

sircastor wrote: post #55
jzellis wrote: post #35

Are there no prisons, no workhouses? What a perfect time of year to complain about people begging.

A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every (4th quarter).

I feel compelled to note that I'm quoting Ebenzer Scrooge as the parent above - as always, sarcasm doesn't transition well to text.

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

#126

Post by temp2022account »

Nomentatus wrote: post #42
jkrauska wrote: post #37

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_…

I was okay 'till I donated and got thoroughly spammed by them after that. Not okay with donating there now.

I'm in the same boat, every agency I've donated to has turned into a google-powered ad-shilling-machine within a week. It makes it impossible to trust well-intending organizations.

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

#127

Post by charcircuit »

flipbrad wrote: post #60

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…

2. All of those are either unnecessary or could be done much cheaper. Why does facilitating discussions even cost money when Wikipedia is already a platform that facilitates discussions?

>many people working here will be dealing with actual cancer

Just because cancer is a real thing doesn't mean it can not be used as a metaphor. Death is similarly used as a metaphor all of the time.

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

#128

Post by marcinzm »

flipbrad wrote: post #124
marcinzm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2. Posts that say "Wikipedia only has [x] more articles but budget has gone up [y]" are beyond stupid. Any idea how many projects besides Wikipedia are run by WMF - for instance, ever heard of Wikimedia Commons? Any idea how litigious and heavily-regulated the world has got, and how much effort has to be poured into softening some of the emerging laws, mounting judicial challenges against the rest, etc? Any idea how…

What's wrong with these? https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe... https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation At some point you have to ask yourself "what would victim blaming look like, and how different is that from this"

>What's wrong with these?

These don't seem to allow me to actually answer the questions OP brought up but merely give high level summaries of X% is spent on these N things or the strategic areas without money allotment. If the point of OPs questions is that knowing that information would make me more likely to donate then I don't know that information.

>At some point you have to ask yourself "what would victim blaming look like, and how different is that from this"

Interesting how questioning giving a money to a specific non-profit is now called victim blaming. I guess corporations really are people now.

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

#129

Post by jacooper »

temp2022account wrote: post #126
Nomentatus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was okay 'till I donated and got thoroughly spammed by them after that. Not okay with donating there now.

I'm in the same boat, every agency I've donated to has turned into a google-powered ad-shilling-machine within a week. It makes it impossible to trust well-intending organizations.

That's why you should be using an email alias for that

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

#130

Post by knome »

methodical wrote: post #36
4ggr0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on that, do you have any sources?

Can't speak for corruption, but the fact they are fundraising while having >$150m in the bank and begging for donations in their donation banner seems a bit disingenuous to me. https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-fou... Or you could just do a single google search about "wikimedia funding" and have gotten this article and about 100 others.

If I've read correctly while poking around on this, that means they have about a years worth of operating money in the bank. You might argue that they should restrict their spending ( most of it appears to be salaries for their hundreds of employees ) or even their scope ( they operate a number of wiki resources, not just wikipedia ), but I can't see anything wrong with fundraising when they have 12 months of leeway rather than waiting until they only have 6 or 3 months operating expenses in the bank.
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