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Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

wikimediafoundation.org

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Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#31

Post by teej »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

Wikimedia has sufficient assets to host Wikipedia in perpetuity ($91 million @ 4 percent withdrawal rate = $3.64 million, ~$1 million above their current hosting tech and people costs). As long as Wikipedia text and media dumps are archived in the Internet Archive, it's not going to disappear even if Wikimedia Foundation goes defunct. No further fundraising is required, ever, if properly managed.

A 4% withdrawal rate has a non-zero failure rate over 30 years, let alone in perpetuity. I would say they are no where close to being completely self sustaining. Also, using math calculated for personal retirement (The Trinity Study) is not appropriate for a trust/endowment/etc. Different risk tolerance, different investment strategy, different goals.

On top of that, assuming they will have zero effective cost increases is wrong. There is so much growth left in content and users. How much has Wikipedia grown in the last five years? How well do they cover non English languages? What if they had the same size article base in English as every other language? What if every internet connected user could use Wikipedia?

Saying we could freeze Wikipedia costs in 2019 based on $90M in the bank is shortsighted.

The page on The Wikimedia Endowment is actually quite interesting if you're into finance and investing - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#32

Post by ausjke »

sigi45 wrote: post #29
c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

Wikisomething gave me so much information. The price i'm paying with my few donations i made over the years, are donations i don't bother to check what they are doing with it. Why? I'm not part of it. I'm just here, reading stuff on wikipedia. I don't know what they wanna try out. I don't know who or why so many people are part of it. I haven't written a single article. I fixed stuff but thats it. Perhaps they need i…

I also donate each year and don't care what they are doing with my donation, because the value I got from wikipedia overshadowed my donation greatly and that's a great deal already.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#33

Post by Geimfari »

omouse wrote: post #19
c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

They're only well-funded for now. That funding can go away if enough people, such as yourself, complain about this. They need to sustain themselves, just like any other organization. If they are a net negative in the world, I would withhold donations. For producing material like this? It's still a net positive and therefore still worthy of donating to.

The foundation has so much money that they could fully sustain themselves just from their endowment if they wanted to. They really do not need donations from the public and their petitions for money are misleading for the majority of people, who think they are helping to pay for editors (free) and server costs (minor costs).

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#34

Post by Geimfari »

sigi45 wrote: post #29
c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

Wikisomething gave me so much information. The price i'm paying with my few donations i made over the years, are donations i don't bother to check what they are doing with it. Why? I'm not part of it. I'm just here, reading stuff on wikipedia. I don't know what they wanna try out. I don't know who or why so many people are part of it. I haven't written a single article. I fixed stuff but thats it. Perhaps they need i…

But you aren't paying for the editors and only a fraction of the donation goes to covering server costs. The Wikipedia project does not need your money and the foundation has enough money to survive indefinitely if they'd cut costs.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#35

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #27
c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

Just because Wikipedia is a non-profit doesn't mean that brand outreach and other administrative/meta work isn't important. These are as important in non-profit as in for-profit organizations and are a normal part of business. As a past donor I'm happy that they're spending resources in this area.

Exactly. This is an area I think many technologists tend to glance over: "They paid how much to a 'brand consultancy' to replace an M with a P??"

And while these types of things can get "fluffy", if this branding change results in just a small percentage of additional people becoming more aware of the broader goals and projects of Wiki(m/p)edia, it was money well spent.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#36

Post by [deleted] »

teej wrote: post #31
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikimedia has sufficient assets to host Wikipedia in perpetuity ($91 million @ 4 percent withdrawal rate = $3.64 million, ~$1 million above their current hosting tech and people costs). As long as Wikipedia text and media dumps are archived in the Internet Archive, it's not going to disappear even if Wikimedia Foundation goes defunct. No further fundraising is required, ever, if properly managed.

A 4% withdrawal rate has a non-zero failure rate over 30 years, let alone in perpetuity. I would say they are no where close to being completely self sustaining. Also, using math calculated for personal retirement (The Trinity Study) is not appropriate for a trust/endowment/etc. Different risk tolerance, different investment strategy, different goals. On top of that, assuming they will have zero effective cost increa…

[deleted]

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#37

Post by 8ytecoder »

c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

I was going to say that I don't mind and I'm happy to donate whatever I donate every year. But then went and looked up information on their budget - it's quite surprising that they spend as much as they do and it's not very clear on how they spend it and also plans on how they are going to contain the spend. I don't mind Wikimedia having a fat balance sheet and at least a few years worth of reserve but the growth of expenditure to match the donations is concerning. I'm worried they have fallen into the usual trap every startup that's well-funded fall into - assuming that the money they have will somehow magically last forever or that they can get more funding with their aggressive tactics.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#38

Post by spac »

Contrarily to the negative sentiment expressed so far in the comments, I find branding an important question:

If a foundation does good work, you’d want the foundation to receive more money to do more good work.

For example, Wikipedia would benefit from many more tech investments, for example in the excellent wiki data and wikimedia research initiatives; or think of wiki vandalism and fake news.

It’s well known in the non-profit world (and intuitive) that spending money in marketing does indeed help achieve larger goals in terms of deployed funding.

Beyond funding, the fact that people (hacker news is not a representative sample) don’t recognize Wikimedia and the fact that it’s responsible for something that is used daily is a problem. It detracts from the project and removes visibility.

Edit: made it more readable

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#39

Post by newnewpdro »

c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

It looks like textbook empire-building to me.

Something non-profits successful at fundraising strike me as especially fertile land for.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#40

Post by est31 »

c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

You know how much money Google is wasting? Their main source is still ads from their websites. They could lay off all of their staff that's not working on the search or ad parts and put that money into dividends instead. But instead they are using lot of money that belongs to the stakeholders on this giant project of finding a new thing that's similarly profitable as search.

I definitely agree that WMF has definitely enough money, and maybe the money is not used in the best way. But others do it at much larger scales while WMF is getting most of the heat.

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