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Wikipedia is not short on cash

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Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#41

Post by ianai »

akolbe wrote: post #28
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

The issue is that they make it sound like they are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia running when they are actually wealthier than ever before. The whole premise of Wikipedia (or aspiration, at least, and yes, not always fulfilled ...) is that people should have information so they can't be manipulated. It kind of sucks to see the very organisation hosting the site do the opposite, don't you think?

Marketing. They hired someone(s) with marketing experience.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#42

Post by mgamache »

It’s not just they are flush with cash. It’s they are funding and fanning the culture war despite claiming to be a neutral party. Some of their funds are being routed to political entities that are not neutral.

Edit: here’s a link to a thread about what I mean:

https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633?s=46&...

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#43

Post by Blikkentrekker »

rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

I used to donate, but no longer do, not for this, but because I'm tired about the Anglocentric, U.S.A.-centric style on Wikipedia with little efforts to fix it, as well as other neutrality issues.

When they flung some banner about soliciting more female contributors in my face which reeked of Americana it was the last straw.

I've seen some articles at least add “English-language criticism" by now instead of simply “criticism” when talking about the critical reception of work that wasn't even in the English language so that's a start, but too often still that doesn't happen. It's obviously unavoidable that English-language Wikipedia incurs some Anglocentric bias, but there is almost no effort to fix it and not even a template seemingly to warn that an article might carry an Anglocentric bias, even those that report on matters that mostly pertain outside of the Anglosphære.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#44

Post by sushibowl »

onion2k wrote: post #24
akolbe wrote: post #6

Note that the fundraising banners are currently only shown to a small percentage of readers – these are the October pre-tests : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#W... The actual fundraiser will come at the end of the year, when the banners will follow everyone visiting Wikipedia around for over a month (29th of November – 31st of December). https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising#Current_…

It seems odd to me that an organization would try to fund raise around the same time that lots of people have increased fuel bills from heating, and expensive festivals like Thanks Giving and Christmas to pay for. No doubt there's some reasoning behind it but I'd definitely have thought that fund raising at almost any other time would be more successful.

Christmas, and by extension the holiday season, has a longstanding tradition of charitable giving (probably originating around Christianity?). People are just in a giving mood around the end of the year. It's not unusual for 30% of all donations to occur in the last month of the year. So it's by far the best months for fundraising.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#45

Post by pastage »

akolbe wrote: post #28
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

The issue is that they make it sound like they are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia running when they are actually wealthier than ever before. The whole premise of Wikipedia (or aspiration, at least, and yes, not always fulfilled ...) is that people should have information so they can't be manipulated. It kind of sucks to see the very organisation hosting the site do the opposite, don't you think?

Wikimedia is vital to Wikipedia, they have little money and pay their exec too little for what they do. IMHO.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#46

Post by harywilke »

onion2k wrote: post #24
akolbe wrote: post #6

Note that the fundraising banners are currently only shown to a small percentage of readers – these are the October pre-tests : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#W... The actual fundraiser will come at the end of the year, when the banners will follow everyone visiting Wikipedia around for over a month (29th of November – 31st of December). https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising#Current_…

It seems odd to me that an organization would try to fund raise around the same time that lots of people have increased fuel bills from heating, and expensive festivals like Thanks Giving and Christmas to pay for. No doubt there's some reasoning behind it but I'd definitely have thought that fund raising at almost any other time would be more successful.

"Around 31% of donations are made in December alone and 12% come in the final three days of the year.

Your donors often feel generous as the giving or holiday season approaches. Many will also be looking to make year-end donations for tax relief." [0]

[0] https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/fundraising-season

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#47

Post by howmayiannoyyou »

The advantage of a community supported encyclopedia should be a reasonable degree of impartiality, openness and academic freedom. Wikipedia has departed a good distance from this ideal and should support itself as other media does... through advertising or subscriptions. The case is best found in the OP link comments, but here's one I found that well summarizes:

"You do have to filter out some stuff unfortunately – but even academia, scientists and historians are now confessing that they are tailoring their output to ‘fit in’ with wokeness and sensitivities."

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#48

Post by Silverback_VII »

rany_ wrote: post #31
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely usef…

I don't get the outrage either. It's almost like people want Wikipedia to be barely scrapping by which isn't good. Having some money in your reserves is fine.

If lifespan was the goal they would keep the extent of their organisational structure to the minimum. But this is obviously not the case with now more than 500 employees and some with big paychecks.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#49

Post by forgotpwd16 »

deepstack wrote: post #35
akolbe wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very good choice, because the Internet Archive is financially far less secure than the Wikimedia Foundation and provides a vital service, by archiving Wikipedia sources before they go offline. This makes sure you can still see in five years' time what someone has cited in an article. They also pay their executives far less.

what about archive.vn ?

Archive.sth isn't an organization but a private site thus their finances aren't fully known. Based on that, think it like a GitHub project. If you like its work and can, donate.

Re: Wikipedia is not short on cash

#50

Post by e12e »

mgamache wrote: post #42

It’s not just they are flush with cash. It’s they are funding and fanning the culture war despite claiming to be a neutral party. Some of their funds are being routed to political entities that are not neutral. Edit: here’s a link to a thread about what I mean: https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633?s=46&...

Free access to knowledge isn't a neutral position.

But I gather you think wmf is doing something beyond this? Which side, of which culture war do they support, in your view?

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