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Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
131–140 of 202 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" e…
I’m sorry, I thought that by “we” you were referring to a group of people including yourself (first person plural), not, in fact, “most people”, whom you seem to believe are naive and uninformed, a belief that is probably correct. Unless you were?
EDIT (replying to your edit): They are neither cheating nor exploiting any loophole. At least in the U.S., there is no limit to the total compensation that a non-profit corporation may pay to its officers. The law refers to “reasonable” compensation, which of course is meaningless. In 2019 there were so many officers of “charitable” corporations earning more than a million dollars annually that the IRS instituted an excise tax on their earnings (21% I think).
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was okay 'till I donated and got thoroughly spammed by them after that. Not okay with donating there now.
That happens if you donate to ANY cause, ever. If you give money to, I don’t know, a charity for hungry kids in , they will send you MORE begging mails, not less.
Serious. I found donating blood to have been a bit of a mistake, the bastards just won't stop calling asking for more.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 blamin…
The OP didn't genuinely ask any questions, they simply mischaracterised the banners that are on Wikipedia at the moment. I'm not the only person in this thread that seems to be having a hard time finding one that's implying Wikipedia could shut down at any moment.
"Yes the criticism is wrong, but that's your fault for not informing the critics" is absolutely victim blaming.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#135Goodbye 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.
Bye bye! You are delusional if you believe everyone is a well-paid SWE
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s the dishonesty of Wikipedia that bothers me. The implication is that donations are urgently needed to keep the website running. In reality they have $300m in the bank and revenue is growing every year[0]. Even Wikipedia says only 43% of donations are used for site operations[1], and that includes all of their sites, not just Wikipedia. Fully 12% of the money they collect from you is. . . used to ask you for more…
What is your problem with [1]? I think almost every charity, or business, ever created spends some proportion of it's income on advertising / outreach, to increase future income. If they cut that 12%, and it decreased their income to half, or a third, of it's current value, would that make you happy? Also, please point me to "The implication is that donations are urgently needed to keep the website running.". I've no…
What's the problem with [1]? Well, it says they're swimming in money, and don't need your $2 donation to keep giving your free information.
Most of the arguments, including yours, are 100% qualitative. "They're a good site, so give them money." Or "other charities also spend money on advertising."
We should instead be quantitative : "Yes, you are a worthy cause, but you have plenty now. Other charities are more deserving."
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#137i just click on the "i already donated, stop showing me this message" option. i've never donated, but they dont need to know that.
Thanks, I just did that. It said "hide appeals for a week" but that's better than nothing. As for being a "sharp-eyed accountant": you don't have to be one of those to ask where the money is going. If it's going to reward the best volunteers or get better servers, fine. Charity Navigator gives them a 99% rating: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703 You can look at their 990 form on the IRS website: ========…
Charity Navigator also gives borderline scam United Way a 91% https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/131635294
It measures compliance and bureaucratic procedures, and that's about it.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#138The 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…
After reading this, I went an donated $10. Wikipedia is one of the most incredible resources on the Internet, and it pains me that it is having such issues. Maybe their messaging should say so.
That's wonderful!
Though personally, I think it's even better when people join the community of active users (whether Wikipedia or any of the other projects) and help out directly!
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, I just did that. It said "hide appeals for a week" but that's better than nothing. As for being a "sharp-eyed accountant": you don't have to be one of those to ask where the money is going. If it's going to reward the best volunteers or get better servers, fine. Charity Navigator gives them a 99% rating: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703 You can look at their 990 form on the IRS website: ========…
Charity Navigator also gives borderline scam United Way a 91% https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/131635294 It measures compliance and bureaucratic procedures, and that's about it.
You have to read beyond the rating & look at the numbers.
I could ask here "why do you call it a borderline scam?"
I think it is, too, but I'd love to see you show it to us.
Re: Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
#140Just to clarify, there's no Wikipedia Foundation, there's Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia is owned by Wikimedia Foundation. You can't donate to Wikipedia, the banners on Wikipedia lead to Wikimedia donations. It is quite unethical: 1. They have enough donations to keep Wikipedia running for decades, yet each year banner gets more and more manipulative, pretending WP is on the brink of collapse. 2. IIRC less than 5% o…
sure, they could "keep it running", except it would get no new features and refinement, and would operate in a static (stagnant, as the world keeps moving on) barebones version. would it also be able to scale with increase in visitor traffic? would it be able to deal with increase in media uploads, or would it have to limit or freeze them? what about inflation and increase in hosting prices, and prices of everything else? if your vision for wikipedia is a text-based website with feature set from 2007 - and just that, maybe it could run for even longer.