Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

dailydot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 619 posts

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#41

Post by corin_ »

bawolff wrote: post #37
swores wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that require communism or a revolution? The American state already gives tax breaks and/or funding to charities, research organisations, public messaging initiatives, school systems, public services etc... there's a huge range of options that involve tweaking the rules of current systems before even getting anywhere near needing to change the entire political system.

I mean the parent suggested not relying on charity. School systems are essentially an arm of the government. I just don't see what the options are for something like wikipedia (Or even say something like a critical open source project like openssl) that doesn't involve relying on charity or advertisments, short of a major change to how our society is structured.

Well for example, and I'm not advocating for these ideas other than pointing out that they'd be much simpler than changing the structure of society: the Government could either buy, or forcefully take control of, Wikipedia, or they could create a competitor with enough funding to take over. They could do it creating a gov department to run it, or they could set it up as an organisation fully owned by the state. They wouldn't even have to go that far, they could just pass a bill that would send however much money from taxpayers to Wikipedia every year, or as a one-off to create a new taxpayer-funded endowment.

There's lots of changes to society that I think would be good, but "ability for government to decide to spend taxpayer money on a charity like Wikipedia, or to create their own version in-house" isn't exactly lacking from the current system.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#42

Post by neolog »

zozbot234 wrote: post #38
ramraj07 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be clear, the article does mention the size of the org and some salaries, but it’s clear it’s main premise is the outrageous amount of money they have already amassed and still hiding it in their messaging to make more. It doesn’t matter if they have big plans, the way they ask for money doesn’t say that it says they can’t survive without my 10 bucks which is disgusting. I’d rather be shown ads than this.

What's your idea of "survival"? Wikipedia has already been bleeding editors for a long time as the overall climate on the Web has shifted away from openness and towards profit-seeking and mindless consumption. They portray themselves as "essential infrastructure in the ecosystem of free knowledge" which looks like a factual and fair assessment to me. This is what must survive for the foreseeable future. It's not just…

> Wikipedia has already been bleeding editors for a long time

Where can I learn about this?

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#43

Post by furi »

olivermarks wrote: post #7

The other great mystery is that despite Clay Shirkey's romantic web 2.0 book 'Here Comes Everybody' nearly all of Wikipedia is written by just 1 percent of its editors. It's becoming hard to know who and what Wikipedia actually is https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-eli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody

>nearly all of Wikipedia is written by just 1 percent of its editors

Is this true? I've heard a counter-argument to this in the past that Wikipedia works much like other encyclopedias do, a large number of domain specialists contribute large blocks of text about their respective fields (perhaps in just one edit) and then a core group of "editors" go around adjusting style, adding "[citation needed]" and making it all fit together (many many edits).

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#44

Post by k1m »

jonahbenton wrote: post #14

Ridiculous question and even more ridiculous factoids. The assumption that operating as a non-profit implies an entity should stop asking its audience for help advancing the mission, or that it should pay its necessary staff less than competitive wages...please. Give wikipedia more so they can take on the MUCH more well-endowed and entirely opaque private capital taking over nearly every other information outlet in t…

Wikipedia in my experience doesn't "take on" anyone. They have a list of sources of large information outlets that are marked, mostly arbitrarily, "reliable". With the media landscape being as skewed as it is (largely reflecting interests of media owners and advertisers, see Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model), Wikipedia has set itself up to reflect those same biases by relying on the same sources.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#46

Post by jonahbenton »

ramraj07 wrote: post #29
jonahbenton wrote: post #14

Ridiculous question and even more ridiculous factoids. The assumption that operating as a non-profit implies an entity should stop asking its audience for help advancing the mission, or that it should pay its necessary staff less than competitive wages...please. Give wikipedia more so they can take on the MUCH more well-endowed and entirely opaque private capital taking over nearly every other information outlet in t…

What a ridiculous criticism of a valid article with a lot of facts. I have donated to Wikipedia several times and feel violated now. They might have not lied outright but acting as if you’re a poor Non profit when you are most definitely not poor is outrageous. I don’t know if Jimmy Wales is part of this entire charade but this is exactly what you expect to happen when you employ a CEO who charges north of half a mil…

I'm sorry, but your worldview is completely out of line with reality.

The banner IS genuine.

Non-profit funding IS scarce.

Funding streams are fickle and Wikipedia has none of the monopolistic advantages that keep Apple and Google and FB and MSFT owners vastly vastly richer than any Wikipedia staff will ever be.

By volunteering you ARE doing something so much more valuable than any post to any for profit social media platform, INCLUDING this one.

The reason you think "intentions" are "honest"? Advertising.

Please revisit your assumptions.

Best wishes, sincerely. Cheers.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#48

Post by bawolff »

ramraj07 wrote: post #29
jonahbenton wrote: post #14

Ridiculous question and even more ridiculous factoids. The assumption that operating as a non-profit implies an entity should stop asking its audience for help advancing the mission, or that it should pay its necessary staff less than competitive wages...please. Give wikipedia more so they can take on the MUCH more well-endowed and entirely opaque private capital taking over nearly every other information outlet in t…

What a ridiculous criticism of a valid article with a lot of facts. I have donated to Wikipedia several times and feel violated now. They might have not lied outright but acting as if you’re a poor Non profit when you are most definitely not poor is outrageous. I don’t know if Jimmy Wales is part of this entire charade but this is exactly what you expect to happen when you employ a CEO who charges north of half a mil…

FWIW, Jimmy is on the board but hasn't been involved with the day-to-day for a very long time (Although I'm sure as a board member he would be involved with major decisions like budget).

I don't think its fair to call this willful hiding. I mean, they've written blog posts about this subject - https://diff.wikimedia.org/2016/01/14/wikipedia-15-foundatio... you don't write blog posts about things you're trying to hide.

Disclaimer: used to work for them, don't anymore.

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#49

Post by EvanDotPro »

After reading the article and the comments here so far, I'm legitimately struggling to decide how I should feel about this as a long-time WMF donor. I can understand the upset and deceit people are feeling, but I am also aware of the many initiatives WMF is behind, their endowment fund usage is strictly controlled from what I understand, and as a business owner, I also deeply sympathize with the idea of having "rainy day" money but continuing to behave as if you don't.

Is there some middle ground here?

Re: Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?

#50

Post by jonahbenton »

bongoman37 wrote: post #26
jonahbenton wrote: post #14

Ridiculous question and even more ridiculous factoids. The assumption that operating as a non-profit implies an entity should stop asking its audience for help advancing the mission, or that it should pay its necessary staff less than competitive wages...please. Give wikipedia more so they can take on the MUCH more well-endowed and entirely opaque private capital taking over nearly every other information outlet in t…

I've donated to Wikipedia and contributed content as well but now I've decided not to anymore for the time being. Any kind of controversial article is decided more by the amount of time which side has to push their agenda rather than any kind of objective Neutral Point of View. There is a lot of astroturfing as well.

With respect, think about what you are saying. You are not going to contribute with good intentions to a public service because there are people with bad intentions contributing to it...
Post reply on HN