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Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

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Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#11

Post by bawolff »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
wombatmobile wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the work culture like inside of wmf? Gender balanced? Cooperative? I'm curious because my experience of editing, and that of other people I heard from at an editor meet up, was that the culture is heavily male dominated, and unnecessarily adversarial in a bullying way. That said, the CEO at the time (2007 - 2014), Sue Gardner, seemed enlightened, progressive, smart and highly capable.

. Is the non profit to gate people from editing if arbitrary diversity requirements aren't met? The best part about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it, anyone can run it, and nobody can lock up its content (for whatever reason). Look no further to Mozilla to see what happens when a non profit fails to meet it's mandate and is stuck with "peacocks" (folks who prioritize status or signaling > substance) instead of pr…

Sue was the ceo (executive director) before lila. Lila was the ceo where things went south.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#12

Post by ma2rten »

jedberg wrote: post #9

I donate to Wikipedia every year because I use the product almost every day, and I consider it paying for a good product, not a donation. They happen to be set up as a foundation where I can look at their financials, but in my mind I treat them more like a private company. If they want to waste my money then so be it. I pay what I think is a fair price for the amount of value I get from the product.

But wikipedia is written by unpaid volunteers...

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#13

Post by seneca »

Article is fair and well reasoned. I used to donate a fair amount to WMF multiple times a year, but over the years they have fallen prey to activist editors that have really tainted the value of a lot of articles. I recognize that it's a difficult problem, but last I looked into it it didn't seem that they were doing enough to combat it, and it has really compromised their value.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#14

Post by sundarurfriend »

> Wikipedia has helped me so much, it's important to pay back: The WMF has done a reasonable job of stewardship, but I believe that insofar as there inheres a strong moral obligation to pay back, this obligation is to content creators. Donating to the WMF does not reward past content creators.

That's an interesting point, and it got me thinking: what does reward past content creators? As someone who has contributed to and created Wikipedia articles in the past, I tried to imagine what would feel like a reward to me, and the things that come to mind are:

a. People adding to those articles and making them more and more polished, turning them into A-class articles that I'd be proud to have contributed to.

b. Knowing that the article has helped someone in some specific way, changing their life a little bit. Some kind of "thank you" page attached to the articles would be nice, where a school kid could tell you how the article brought the subject to life for her, or a middle aged man could say thanks for informing him about his medical condition. (I can see the practical issues with this, but even a heavily-moderated slowly-updated page would serve the purpose, and would provide positive value.)

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#15

Post by mattnewton »

jedberg wrote: post #9

I donate to Wikipedia every year because I use the product almost every day, and I consider it paying for a good product, not a donation. They happen to be set up as a foundation where I can look at their financials, but in my mind I treat them more like a private company. If they want to waste my money then so be it. I pay what I think is a fair price for the amount of value I get from the product.

I think the crux of the argument is that the money is largely not going to improving the product, which is mostly done by volunteer editors and contributors, but it is going to a management class fighting over project funding for new initiatives. This argument may be out of date since they have had a huge management shakeup since it was written, but the criticism that volunteer labour produces the bulk of the value is still worth considering.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#16

Post by toomuchtodo »

bawolff wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

. Is the non profit to gate people from editing if arbitrary diversity requirements aren't met? The best part about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it, anyone can run it, and nobody can lock up its content (for whatever reason). Look no further to Mozilla to see what happens when a non profit fails to meet it's mandate and is stuck with "peacocks" (folks who prioritize status or signaling > substance) instead of pr…

Sue was the ceo (executive director) before lila. Lila was the ceo where things went south.

Excuse my sloppy comment. Lila did a terrible job, but Sue was running Wikimedia while there was a slow decline in editors since the mid 00s. Having donated to Wikimedia previously, I no longer do, because senior leadership (across "administrations") is more concerned with issues completely disconnected from their core role ("To unlock the world's knowledge"). Those dollars go to the Internet Archive now (which stores copies of Wikipedia distinct from Wikimedia's control).

Non profit dollars are hard to come by, and the greater issue and frustration is watching orgs like Mozilla and Wikimedia incinerate them on causes that are not their mission (in stark contrast to efficient, nimble orgs like Let's Encrypt and the Free Law Project).

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#17

Post by xscott »

I've donated thousands of dollars to Wikimedia over the years. Before I retired, I took frequent advantage of my company's policy for matching donations, doubling the amount I gave. After retirement, I set my "Amazon Smile" donations to go there. Maybe I'm bragging, but I just want to show I actually care about the topic.

I know children's cancer and other horrible things pull on more heart strings, but Wikipedia makes such a huge wealth of great information available to such a huge percentage of the world, including many poor people who might otherwise not have access to much education. Saving sick kids is kind, but there are lot of healthy kids who could use a leg up too.

I honestly don't value the other Wikimedia projects very much, and I'm sure there is waste in their policies and beuracracy, but assuming Wikipedia is only getting 10% of my donations, I still think it's great bang for the buck.

If there is a better charity, I'd like to know about it. However, this article reads to me as "Meh, you shouldn't really feel obligated", and I don't think it said much that was useful.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#18

Post by LoSboccacc »

I donated in the past and would have said yes in 2015.

in 2020 however it appears to me that wikpedia gentrified, accruing a thick fat of bureaucrats and has somewhat been stagnating around his stack.

reducing support is maybe a good opportunity for them to lean down a little and get back at rethinking the future of crowd knowledge self-organization, instead of putting layers of gates and red tapes around each bureaucrat turf.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#19

Post by sundarurfriend »

bawolff wrote: post #2

It should be noted that WMF had a significant management shake up since then. The lila era management is basically all gone. However im glad that this is the article posted, and not the rediculous "cancer" article that compares amount spent on servers when the site was smaller, slow and constantly going down to the modern day site when its fast, stable and a bigger site. [Disclaimer: used to work for wmf. Do not anym…

What were the problems with the "lila era management" in your opinion? The article made it sound like there were just some well intentioned decisions received poorly, that led to that person being sacked. But there's often a festering hoard of management issues beneath what's apparent to outsiders like us, and I'm wondering if that was the case here.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#20

Post by bawolff »

zozbot234 wrote: post #10
bawolff wrote: post #2

It should be noted that WMF had a significant management shake up since then. The lila era management is basically all gone. However im glad that this is the article posted, and not the rediculous "cancer" article that compares amount spent on servers when the site was smaller, slow and constantly going down to the modern day site when its fast, stable and a bigger site. [Disclaimer: used to work for wmf. Do not anym…

It's more than a bit ironic that people complain about the knowledge engine initiative, when Wikidata is now one of the more successful Wikimedia projects and pretty much the same thing.

Wikidata already existed during the knowledge engine fiasco, so if it was the same thing im not sure what they were doing.

I suspect a lot of KE's failure related to inconsistent messaging and project scope. I'm pretty sure even now, nobody knows what KE was planned to be or what its value proposition would be, or "what" it actually is beyond buzzwords

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