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Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

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Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#201

Post by topranks »

mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

- It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in.

- Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption”. So far it’s been fairly pathetic. Organisations who accept it provide a focal point for crypto advocates to point to, legitimising it and luring more retail investors into the Ponzi.

- The environmental impact is massive, which makes accepting it ethically dubious and does not align with the Wikimedia Foundation’s values.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#202

Post by lxgr »

throwaway290 wrote: post #183
px43 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no different than buying things with a credit card and having the payment processor convert your currency to the local currency etc.

Can't you just switch currency on your bank card, avoiding conversion?

Some banks allow that, but very likely the card networks‘ conversion rates are going to be much closer to mid-market.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#203

Post by lxgr »

jdrc wrote: post #43
jraph wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accepting cryptocurrencies is not neutral neither. Neutral hardly exists.

accepting bitcoin is as legal and regulated as banks and paypal. as if banks don't spend billions in pointless air travel and (empty in past 2 years) concrete highrises. When WP goes down the ideological rabbit hole everyone loses. maybe someone will follow up with an RFC to remove banks Then paypal

It seems pretty clear that ethics, not legality, was the main consideration here.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#204

Post by topranks »

mardifoufs wrote: post #57
qeternity wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you are a charity They are a non-profit only in the most technical sense these days, but have never been a charity.

Yes you are right! I always mix charity and non profit. But yeah, Wikimedia became a huge organization with an annual budget of 150M$ (of which a lot goes to completely unrelated pet projects), so it is a non profit only in a technical sense as you said. But it still feels the need to plead (or almost beg) for 3-5$ donations yearly with huge call to action banners on every wiki page. Which is okay, I get that they ne…

I’m not sure how scale affects whether something is “non profit” or not.

This decision has been taken by the community, aka users. This isn’t a decision the WMF has taken, nor have they responded thus far.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#205

Post by lxgr »

sparkie wrote: post #193
cycomanic wrote: post #98

I find many of the replies here fascinating. On one hand whenever there is talk about government regulating some industry or actor a large portion of commenter here reply that if you don't agree with the practice don't use them, no regulation needed. Now an organisation does exactly that, they decide that they don't want to use a "service" that they ethically disagree with, and lots of replies call it pointless virtu…

It is pointless virtue signalling because the primary argument for ending bitcoin donations is about energy usage, but the effect of ending bitcoin donations will have precisely zero impact on the amount of electricity used by the bitcoin network. This isn't the same as when you boycott a company's products and it causes a loss of sales.

Accepting or spending Bitcoin increases its utility quadratically per participant (via the network effect).

Utility increases utilization, which increases fees, which incentivize mining.

It really is exactly the same thing as boycotting a company.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#206

Post by topranks »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #177
Liquid_Fire wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking this may be impractical. But for crypto donations, you don't need to check - you _know_ that it was generated in an environmentally-unfriendly way (at least for the currencies currently accepted).

eth is moving to proof of stake imminently

If I was waiting on a bus that was supposed to arrive “imminently” for this long I’d be well pissed off.

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/05/11/vitalik-buterin-say...

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#207

Post by londons_explore »

topranks wrote: post #201
mardifoufs wrote: post #37

Honestly the reasoning is weird. Don't get me wrong, I think crypto currencies are for the most part a scam, a ponzi scheme or a platform for pump and dumps. Yet the whole thing just does not make sense imo. It's one thing to be against crypto, but refusing it when you are a charity for the most asinine moral purity tests is absurd. This 100% reminds me of the almost cultist like extremely negative reaction to anythi…

- It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in. - Crypto has been on a 10+ year long quest for “adoption”. So far it’s been fairly pathetic. Organisations who accept it provide a focal point for crypto advocates to point to, legitimising it and luring more retail investors into the Ponzi. - The environmental impact is massive, which makes accepting it ethically dubious and does not align with the Wikimedia…

> - It’s not significant in terms of the funds it brings in.

> Crypto was around 0.08% of our revenue last year, and it remains one of our smallest revenue channels.

This alone would be a sufficient reason to drop it if it requires extra accounting work, technical maintenance work, staff training, support work, etc.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#208

Post by topranks »

mcherm wrote: post #141
ithinkso wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a vote, the majority (70%+) of those that voted voted to stop. I don't know why other arguments would matter

Because I didn't participate in that vote, along with huge numbers of people who are similarly situated. I am a user of Wikipedia and a regular donor, but I do not follow whatever list there is of issues to be voted on. This was not a vote of Wikipedia donors, it was a vote of politically active Wikipedia authors on the subject of which donations should be accepted.

It was posted here, on twitter , Reddit etc.

There were significant numbers of pro-crypto people sharing it to get people to vote no.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#209

Post by topranks »

ithinkso wrote: post #186
mcherm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I didn't participate in that vote, along with huge numbers of people who are similarly situated. I am a user of Wikipedia and a regular donor, but I do not follow whatever list there is of issues to be voted on. This was not a vote of Wikipedia donors, it was a vote of politically active Wikipedia authors on the subject of which donations should be accepted.

I understand that but it was not a vote for Wikipedia users nor it was a vote for Wikipedia donors. It was a vote for Wikipedia and what payment do they accept - it has no impact for you as an user, and as a donor - they made their choice how and what they want to be donated to them It's an interesting topic in on itself, about rejecting donations. On one hand they are donations to you so you should be greatful but o…

It’s a “community” vote so it’s very much for users (readers and editors). Anyone could participate.

Re: Wikipedia RFC to stop accepting cryptocurrencies passes by majority vote

#210

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #176
marginalia_nu wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not looking at outcomes, I'm looking at actions, my actions to be specific. What you do is up to you. In the first scenario I'm contributing to a bad thing, in the next I'm not. It really is as simple as that. There is one thing I have control over in this life, and that is what I choose to do. Consequently, that is also what is what I opt to judge.

> I'm not looking at outcomes, I'm looking at actions, my actions to be specific. What you do is up to you. In the first scenario I'm contributing to a bad thing, in the next I'm not. It really is as simple as that. Okay, based on this clarification it appears that we agree on the subject matter, you just didn't like the terminology I used to describe it. Your description is exactly what I mean when I say motivated b…

I’m super confused. A person has acknowledged that participating in eth (even to accept eth) uses eth, and they are fundamentally against eth… so they don’t use it. You’re making their position sound more boneheaded than it is by adding arbitrary it’s. because the person doesn’t participate in your arbitrary hypothetical making they are not looking at outcomes?
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