4 ms·

Wikipedia has a ton of money. So why is it begging you to donate yours?

15 points by sparkzilla 11y ago

sparkzilla 11y ago
Wikipedia is a fundraising project that happens to make an encyclopedia. Having written a couple of articles on this topic, my main concern is that none of the donation money goes to the contributors, and instead goes to an ineffective tech and executive team, whose goal is more fundraising. All while Google makes millions by scraping and presenting Wikipedia's content. http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-forever/ http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-...
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  Much like Susan G. Komen is a fundraising project that happens to make pink ribbons and talk about breast cancer, right?
electricblue 11y ago
$77 million doesn't sound like that much for a site the size of Wikipedia
- juliangoldsmith 11y ago
  As the article says, it's about 3 times what it takes to run the site for a year.
  - sparkzilla 11y ago
    After you count the inflated headcount, yes. If it ran on a reasonable budget of $10 million it would be able to run for many years even on existing reserves.
- VOYD 11y ago
  considering it's "community written" content - otherwise known as "free", that seems like a high price to run a server farm.
deepnet 11y ago
The stats in the article seem to be out by orders of magnitude. 374M Uniques in August viewed 17.9 Billion Pages according to https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/# https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/# but main graph in the article suggests ~20M Pageviews in 2015 - which seems to rather downplay the utility and influence of Wikipedia.
jcrben 11y ago
Does Wikipedia "need" the money? Does any software need any money beyond the cost of servers? If Wikipedia is to remain relevant, it needs money. But everyone has different priorities, and admittedly not everyone can afford to donate a few dollars to support free information. (Disclosure: I'm a community volunteer serving on the Wikimedia Foundation audit committee, so I'm a bit biased.)

15 points by sparkzilla 11y ago

Wikipedia is a fundraising project that happens to make an encyclopedia. Having written a couple of articles on this topic, my main concern is that none of the donation money goes to the contributors, and instead goes to an ineffective tech and executive team, whose goal is more fundraising. All while Google makes millions by scraping and presenting Wikipedia's content. http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-forever/ http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-...

ThrustVectoring 11y ago
Much like Susan G. Komen is a fundraising project that happens to make pink ribbons and talk about breast cancer, right?

electricblue 11y ago

$77 million doesn't sound like that much for a site the size of Wikipedia

juliangoldsmith 11y ago
As the article says, it's about 3 times what it takes to run the site for a year.
- sparkzilla 11y ago
  After you count the inflated headcount, yes. If it ran on a reasonable budget of $10 million it would be able to run for many years even on existing reserves.
VOYD 11y ago
considering it's "community written" content - otherwise known as "free", that seems like a high price to run a server farm.

deepnet 11y ago

The stats in the article seem to be out by orders of magnitude. 374M Uniques in August viewed 17.9 Billion Pages according to https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/# https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/# but main graph in the article suggests ~20M Pageviews in 2015 - which seems to rather downplay the utility and influence of Wikipedia.

jcrben 11y ago

Does Wikipedia "need" the money? Does any software need any money beyond the cost of servers? If Wikipedia is to remain relevant, it needs money. But everyone has different priorities, and admittedly not everyone can afford to donate a few dollars to support free information. (Disclosure: I'm a community volunteer serving on the Wikimedia Foundation audit committee, so I'm a bit biased.)