Wikipedia is not short on cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#311

Post by akolbe » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #294

denton-scratch wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more full time editors and researchers By "full-time" you mean paid? Researchers can't contribute to Wikipedia at all, unless the "research" consists of a literature review. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research And if there were full-time paid editors, I'd stop editing immediately, and instead contribute my efforts to the fork that would inevitably result.

Yeah, I didn't mean original or scientific research, more working on missing citations, integrating information from newly discovered original sources, or maybe even attempting to discover such original sources. I guess Wikipedians prefer to call this editing! With the foundation's resources and clout, someone working on their behalf may be able to get better access to many source materials. And if there were full-ti…

Sure, there are paid editors performing PR services on Wikipedia (both above-board, declared, and flying under the radar, undeclared).

What the WMF does do at times is fund community "organizers" trying to get unpaid volunteer editors to work on its content. See e.g.:

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/09/22/join-the-organizer-lab...

Direct editing paid for by the Foundation was tried once, with bad results:

https://thewikipedian.net/2014/04/02/bats-in-the-belfer-a-be...

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#312

Post by denton-scratch » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #294

denton-scratch wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more full time editors and researchers By "full-time" you mean paid? Researchers can't contribute to Wikipedia at all, unless the "research" consists of a literature review. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research And if there were full-time paid editors, I'd stop editing immediately, and instead contribute my efforts to the fork that would inevitably result.

Yeah, I didn't mean original or scientific research, more working on missing citations, integrating information from newly discovered original sources, or maybe even attempting to discover such original sources. I guess Wikipedians prefer to call this editing! With the foundation's resources and clout, someone working on their behalf may be able to get better access to many source materials. And if there were full-ti…

> may be able to get better access to many source materials.

As an established Wikipedia editor, you can sign-up for free access to a variety of source materials that "civilians" would have to pay for. You don't have to be employed by Wikimedia.

> but aren't there already full-time paid editors, just not from the foundation?

There are two kinds of paid editor: people who are employed by WMF, and also edit (but they're not actually paid to edit, at least in theory); and lobbyists, reputation-managers, marketing consultants and so on, who are allowed to edit within limits. Personally I would like those pluggers removed with extreme prejudice, but WP is very relaxed about these things.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#313

Post by socialismisok » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

soundnote wrote: post #268

EdwardDiego wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a strange definition of far-left, didn't see a single Maoist insurrection in that Twitter link. Curse of American politics, I guess, when one considers the Democrats to be "left leaning", then your whole political perception is skewed. (The Democrats are significantly to the right of our centre-right party. People who call them lefties or socialists or commies amuse, confuse, and bemuse me.)

They are leftists. The woke ideology has a clear geneaology to Marx. Of course, they are not economic class focused leftists by any stretch of the imagination - bourgeoisie champagne socialists who've re-engineered the Marxian thinking style to focus on social identities, which makes it really easy to purport to care for the oppressed. It's very high quality champagne socialism. But it's still leftist in origin and i…

Democrats are not a left party. They are squarely center, maybe even center right.

As someone who is a communist, the Dems have nothing to do with Marx, and they are about as capitalist as they come.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#314

Post by aembleton » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #164

conaclos wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another solution is to use an ad-blocker such as ublock Origin with the following custom rules: wikipedia.org##.cn-fundraising wikipedia.org##.frb

Thanks! I wonder if Firefox sync copies these settings across machines as well?

It doesn't but you can create your own filter list in github. Then link to the raw copy as a custom filter.

You'll then just need the URL to your filter and paste that it into your different instances of Firefox.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#315

Post by klelatti » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #282

klelatti wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when an oil company writes a report on the viability of solar power then that doesn't affect how we should view the report? His motivation absolutely affects how he reports on this issue. He's not a neutral observer and so he picks and chooses which facts he includes and puts his own spin around the issues.

> So when an oil company writes a report on the viability of solar power then that doesn't affect how we should view the report? But why do you think it does affect how you view the report? Because the company is likely to lie, right? So you should perhaps examine the report more carefully. But that has nothing to do with the report's factuality. It may affect how likely it is to be true, but once you've determined i…

The actually makes a very basic factual error.

> Indeed, in the 2012/13 year the Foundation budgeted for $1.9m to provide all its free information on tap.

$1.9m is was the capital expenditure budget for 2012/3 (ie cost of servers etc).

But I'm sure that his motivations had nothing to do with the fact that he found a conveniently small expense figure to mislead with.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#316

Post by otherme123 » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

Jwarder wrote: post #283

magicalhippo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it's highly manipulative. Wikimedia does way more than "just" Wikipedia, and the majority of the money goes to these other activities. Now, I'm not saying that's bad, some of those activities might be well worth it. But the banners I've seen have invariably been about the imminent demise of Wikipedia. Not that they got lots of other side projects they want funded.

Weird, I haven't seen any recent banners frame it in terms of demise of Wikipedia. The urgent banners I've seen are about the time to complete the fund drive. Along the lines of: If X% of users paid $Y then the goal would be reached in Z minutes. If you assume the fund drive exists to help keep the lights on then I think it is natural to treat it as an existential issue for Wikipedia, but that doesn't seem to match t…

The banner shown in the article has a subtle tone of demise: if you don't donate, Wikipedia itself stops being independent, could not thrive, could not give reliable or independent info. And then the money is primarily spent in things other than Wikipedia. They never state or at least insinuate where the money go.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#317

Post by jasonlotito » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #88

shadowgovt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell donors what they're funding Wikimedia has a 100/100 transparency rating. https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703

Notably none of the criteria measured in that rating consider their marketing. So yes their policies and filings exist, but those are not what they're presenting to potential donors, so do not prove the ads are not misleading

https://wikimediafoundation.org/

How is this misleading? They provide an incredibly large amount of information.

And more information can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Disputes

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#318

Post by the_only_law » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #241

EdwardDiego wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a strange definition of far-left, didn't see a single Maoist insurrection in that Twitter link. Curse of American politics, I guess, when one considers the Democrats to be "left leaning", then your whole political perception is skewed. (The Democrats are significantly to the right of our centre-right party. People who call them lefties or socialists or commies amuse, confuse, and bemuse me.)

There isn't a single left-right axis. Instead it's many dimensional.

That’s a bit too complex for the average HN poster.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#319

Post by Mezzie » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #132

rippercushions wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah man, and how dare the Red Cross manipulate people with pictures of starving children in their famine relief ads? A graph showing the intersection between available calories trending down and required calories staying constant would land so much better on HN.

It's ironic that you use Red Cross as an example. An organization that has been proven again and again to be among the worst charity orgs you can donate to, repeatedly spends money on anything else but charity, and often does things that are both antithetical to their stated mission and unethical to boot.

They're terrible to their employees too.

And related to that, some of the practices raise eyebrows.

(For example, letting children play in your freezers and around your blood and plasma donations.)

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#320

Post by petercooper » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

akolbe wrote: post #311

petercooper wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I didn't mean original or scientific research, more working on missing citations, integrating information from newly discovered original sources, or maybe even attempting to discover such original sources. I guess Wikipedians prefer to call this editing! With the foundation's resources and clout, someone working on their behalf may be able to get better access to many source materials. And if there were full-ti…

Sure, there are paid editors performing PR services on Wikipedia (both above-board, declared, and flying under the radar, undeclared). What the WMF does do at times is fund community "organizers" trying to get unpaid volunteer editors to work on its content. See e.g.: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/09/22/join-the-organizer-lab... Direct editing paid for by the Foundation was tried once, with bad results: https://the…

Interesting story in that last link, thanks.

I guess what I was thinking more of was philanthropic organizations paying mathematicians, geologists, and various other types of academic to improve the quality of Wikipedia's entries on a full time basis. Maybe I am being hopefully naive about the allocation of capital though, and thinking merely the sort of things I'd like to fund if I were a billionaire.. ;-)