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Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

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Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#31

Post by petters »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #7

Wikipedia is far and away the most valuable project the world has ever seen and this guy is complaining about donation emails?

Wikipedia is incredibly valuable, but the Wikimedia foundation is not known to spend money wisely.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12...

A very small fraction of the money is going to keep the servers running. The editors of Wikipedia are unpaid.

The software projects ran by Wikimedia have not been very impressive. What happened to proper discussion pages, for example? That has been going on for more than a decade.

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#33

Post by ceejayoz »

inferyes wrote: post #24

I have always found Wikipedias begging for money weird. Even if they chose to be driven by donations, I'd have imagined one the biggest website on the internet has better, more effective ways of raising money. Is it really that bad for non-profits on the internet?

> I'd have imagined one the biggest website on the internet has better, more effective ways of raising money.

How many of them are good for users, though? Sure, you can slap some Google AdWords on there, but there's a reputational and privacy cost. NPR-style sponsorships? Maybe, but I cringe when NPR does a story on Facebook that's bookended by "Facebook is a sponsor of NPR" a little.

I'm a fan of the current model, in that it makes a conflict of interest quite unlikely.

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#34

Post by kettleballroll »

inferyes wrote: post #24

I have always found Wikipedias begging for money weird. Even if they chose to be driven by donations, I'd have imagined one the biggest website on the internet has better, more effective ways of raising money. Is it really that bad for non-profits on the internet?

I can't really any good ways for them to raise money, outside of becoming a subscription service or selling user data. What ways did you imagine? Because the more I think about it, the harder this problem appears to be...

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#35

Post by nameless912 »

avalys wrote: post #2

A nonprofit using tricks to get your attention as they ask for donations? Say it isn’t so! In other news, NPR pledge drives are so annoying .

But at least they're (mostly) honest? They take up some time, but they're clear about what's happening. The only "deceptive" practice they have is the two-for-one matching grants, which I'm dubious about whether they exist or not.

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#36

Post by wyager »

simonswords82 wrote: post #4

What to do with a problem like Wikipedia. It’s ultimately a fantastic source of information like nothing else on the internet. That has to be worth something right? Problem is that people probably don’t bother to donate as much as they could or should. I know I haven’t donated. Is there another way it could be monetised without ads?

Wikipedia is not expensive to run. Wikimedia is a classic bloated nonprofit that keeps “needing” more money to grow the number of useless administrative sinecures they can support. https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_c...

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#37

Post by wpietri »

inferyes wrote: post #24

I have always found Wikipedias begging for money weird. Even if they chose to be driven by donations, I'd have imagined one the biggest website on the internet has better, more effective ways of raising money. Is it really that bad for non-profits on the internet?

What did you have in mind as those better and more effective ways?

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#38

Post by colechristensen »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

As of September 2021, the Wikimedia endowment stands at >$100 million. https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/22/wikimedia-fo... (sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation )

It seems that this is approximately how much they spend each year and have ~500 staff.

I like Wikipedia but does it really take that many people and that much money to run it?

Having grown with startups from a very early stage to mid-stage, it seems pretty clear that 500 people never do 10x as much as 50 people, more like 2x if that.

That much spend seems unsustainable long term.

Re: Jimmy Wales’ Final Email

#39

Post by junon »

petters wrote: post #31
wly_cdgr wrote: post #7

Wikipedia is far and away the most valuable project the world has ever seen and this guy is complaining about donation emails?

Wikipedia is incredibly valuable, but the Wikimedia foundation is not known to spend money wisely. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12... A very small fraction of the money is going to keep the servers running. The editors of Wikipedia are unpaid. The software projects ran by Wikimedia have not been very impressive. What happened to proper discussion pages, for example? That has been going on…

The "make a book" function has been literally broken (see: non-functional, with a "sorry about that" message) for years now. It used to be my favorite part of Wikipedia and now you can't do shit with it.
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