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Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

forum.effectivealtruism.org

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Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#61

Post by throwaway5752 »

scribu wrote: post #56
xscott wrote: post #17

I've donated thousands of dollars to Wikimedia over the years. Before I retired, I took frequent advantage of my company's policy for matching donations, doubling the amount I gave. After retirement, I set my "Amazon Smile" donations to go there. Maybe I'm bragging, but I just want to show I actually care about the topic. I know children's cancer and other horrible things pull on more heart strings, but Wikipedia mak…

Did you read the part where it says that the people writing the content don't receive any of the donations? And that the foundation's software initiatives have been largely innefective at getting more/better content? [0] (I've also donated to Wikimedia in the past and contributed to Wikipedia itself) [0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/...

I'm surprised people are surprised by this, speaking as an annual donator. The "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." implies it to me.

That's almost entirely what makes Wikipedia what it is, the idea that it's community maintained by volunteer contributors. If it's compensated, it completely changes the contribution culture and the identity of the site at the core. It still needs a legal team, professional staff, payroll, etc, too. I know they have other projects and that's fine by me, even if they don't succeed.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#62

Post by wombatmobile »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42
TheNorthman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the non profit to gate people from editing if arbitrary diversity requirements aren't met? Notice how you're the one suggesting `diversity requirements' and then proceed by going on a tirade about it. There are many things to be done about diversity and not all of them requires coercion.

The comment I replied to mentioned gender about a cohort of participants ("I'm curious because my experience of editing, and that of other people I heard from at an editor meet up, was that the culture is heavily male dominated"), hence where my statement comes from. I want to see quality work regardless of who is doing it, and the folks doing this are uncompensated volunteers. EDIT: @TheNorthman I cannot reply to yo…

You are right, toomuchtodo, that anyone can edit Wikipedia. If you want to see "quality work regardless of who is doing it" then it would pay to look deeper into the dynamics of gender.

Why?

Male editing culture tends to work differently to female editing culture.

How?

One tends to be hierarchical. The other tends to be cooperative.

It's possible to develop a system that uses both of these modes to sharpen the editorial process, but that doesn't happen through self organisation when the starting point is a large gender imbalance.

Resolving this conflict is one of the biggest challenges faced by Wikipedia.

The difficulty is, however, that WMF isn't directly involved with Wikipedia content, which comes from the community. WMF is just a software company responsible for the tools the community uses for publishing.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#63

Post by throwawaybutwhy »

dvt wrote: post #48

This is going to be a very unpopular opinion, but I'm curious what folks think: I don't like Wikipedia. I think it's done more harm than good, I think the editing process is biased, skews to the political left or right (depending on the article), Wikipedia also generally skews secular and humanist (because that's the nature of most contributors). References constantly 404, but that's not even the main problem: refere…

You are not alone. Quoting pterry:

> Wikipedia is wonderful, it provokes wonder.

> ...

> Wikipedia is terrific. It begets terror.

What's more, it is amusing to leaf through the revision history of many pages, and notice patterns of wilful suppression of evidence and deliberate propaganda.

It is delightful to browse contributions of various checkusers, and see clearly which part of the establishment they represent.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#64

Post by bawolff »

dvt wrote: post #60
bawolff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only articles that are high quality tend to be very technical ones Really? Technical subjects tend to be some of the worst on wikipedia. Articles on say undergrad math topics tend to be very poor introductions to a topic. > Because there's a new phenomenon where one reads the Wiki page of a complex topic (say, something like Free Will) and 5 minutes later, the reader thinks they're a bonafide expert on a topic…

> Really? Technical subjects tend to be some of the worst on wikipedia. Articles on say undergrad math topics tend to be very poor introductions to a topic. True, that's why I said very technical. The ones on advanced math are pretty good (for example, technical logic/metalogic articles have impressed me). The ones on undergrad math tend to be edited by.. undergrads ;)

On the contrary, the problem with undergrad math articles is they are usually written at the wrong level. They are often written at a graduate level, where the function of an introductory article is to introduce someone to the topic. You should be able to understand any encyclopedia article just with a high school education imo (its an encyclopedia, not a scientific paper or a textbook), or at the most you should maybe have to read 1 or 2 other articles for background.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#65

Post by TheNorthman »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42
TheNorthman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the non profit to gate people from editing if arbitrary diversity requirements aren't met? Notice how you're the one suggesting `diversity requirements' and then proceed by going on a tirade about it. There are many things to be done about diversity and not all of them requires coercion.

The comment I replied to mentioned gender about a cohort of participants ("I'm curious because my experience of editing, and that of other people I heard from at an editor meet up, was that the culture is heavily male dominated"), hence where my statement comes from. I want to see quality work regardless of who is doing it, and the folks doing this are uncompensated volunteers. EDIT: @TheNorthman I cannot reply to yo…

Sure. I'm not disputing them bringing up gender diversity, I'm simply stating that nobody but you were talking about requirements and keeping people out to meet certain `diversity requirements'. You were, simply put, attacking your own straw-man.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#66

Post by bawolff »

wombatmobile wrote: post #58
bawolff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately there was a lack of confidence in Lila's leadership. The how & why doesn't matter if you can't effectively lead people. See also https://www.mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/

> The how & why doesn't matter if you can't effectively lead people. On the contrary, how could any CEO lead an organisation that is dysfunctionally structured in the first place? I'm not commenting on Lila, of whom I know nothing. Rather, I'm looking at the structure of WMF and the Wikipedia product and seeing disconnects and ambiguities. Wikipedia's value comes from its content, which is provided by contributors wh…

These questions have the same answer as basically any other company. Most internet companies do not pay their content creators or if they do (e.g. youtube) they pay them a relatively small pot of the pie that is really only significant for the super popular people (whether that's ethical is totally different question).

Anyways, some of the info you seek is probably at meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Disseminati... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy

Jimbo is largely a public figure-head. He has limited influence on WMF priorities beyond what any other board member would have. He has significant moral influence in the english wikipedia volunteer community.

[To be clear, im just answering questions. I dont care whether you donate. Do with your money what you think is best, its none of my business]

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#67

Post by loeg »

umvi wrote: post #55
loeg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to beg for donations to keep the lights on. That's kind of the problem. They are vastly overfunded for running wikipedia and mostly squander any additional income they receive on non-Wikipedia projects. This is very well documented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CANCER They get more and more in donations every year and continue to ramp up their spending, mostly not on Wikipedia (neither operat…

Wow, if that's true their emails are really deceptive... "About a year ago, you donated $15 to keep Wikipedia online for hundreds of millions of readers. I'm surprised by and deeply grateful for your continued support. You are part of the 2% of readers who donated to support Wikipedia. We need your help again this year ... most people will ignore this message. We have no choice but to turn to you: please renew your g…

Yes, I agree their fundraising messaging is deceptive and it's the primary reason I no longer give money to them.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#68

Post by dvt »

bawolff wrote: post #64
dvt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really? Technical subjects tend to be some of the worst on wikipedia. Articles on say undergrad math topics tend to be very poor introductions to a topic. True, that's why I said very technical. The ones on advanced math are pretty good (for example, technical logic/metalogic articles have impressed me). The ones on undergrad math tend to be edited by.. undergrads ;)

On the contrary, the problem with undergrad math articles is they are usually written at the wrong level. They are often written at a graduate level, where the function of an introductory article is to introduce someone to the topic. You should be able to understand any encyclopedia article just with a high school education imo (its an encyclopedia, not a scientific paper or a textbook), or at the most you should may…

I did a double-check on a few "simple" math topics, and -- yeah -- I think you're right. The Pythagorean theorem[1] article (even though rated as "Good") is all over the place, not to mention way too long. If I want a super simple introduction, Math Planet does a much better job[2]. And if I want a more technical deep-dive, Wolfram Alpha does a better job[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

[2] https://www.mathplanet.com/education/pre-algebra/right-trian...

[3] https://mathworld.wolfram.com/PythagoreanTheorem.html

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#69

Post by bawolff »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #35
bawolff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some research to suggest that (en) wikipedia's growth pattern (a peak followed by slow decline as beurocracy becomes ossified) is common in similar projects. So maybe they didn't do anything wrong they just failed to fix it. That said i dont think anyone really knows what to do about the editor decline.

> That said i dont think anyone really knows what to do about the editor decline. Pay them? Tens of millions of dollars in donations, what's the excuse not to?

So there are roughly 150,000 active editors ( hard to get good numbers cross language/project https://wikistats.wmcloud.org/wikimedias_html.php?s=ausers_d... but if you sum you double count people active in multiple which is common).

WMF had 104 million in revenue in 2018. Even if you could give all of that to contributors, no administrative fees, no money to buy servers, no developers, no bank fees, etc (highly unrealistic), you would only be able to give rmeach person $690. That hardly seems like enough to actually get people to edit wikipedia as a job.

There's also plenty of articles on the internet about how introducing money into volunteer projects can very easily cause the project to collapse and have unexpected side effects.

Re: Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015)

#70

Post by xscott »

scribu wrote: post #56
xscott wrote: post #17

I've donated thousands of dollars to Wikimedia over the years. Before I retired, I took frequent advantage of my company's policy for matching donations, doubling the amount I gave. After retirement, I set my "Amazon Smile" donations to go there. Maybe I'm bragging, but I just want to show I actually care about the topic. I know children's cancer and other horrible things pull on more heart strings, but Wikipedia mak…

Did you read the part where it says that the people writing the content don't receive any of the donations? And that the foundation's software initiatives have been largely innefective at getting more/better content? [0] (I've also donated to Wikimedia in the past and contributed to Wikipedia itself) [0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/...

> Did you read the part where it says that the people writing the content don't receive any of the donations?

I did, but I think there's value in just sustaining the platform. I'm worried about perverse incentives and gaming metrics if you reward the contributors. I'm sure you can imagine that going poorly. And, even without rewards, there sure are a lot of good contributions.

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