10 ms·

A lot of people seem to have that reaction. And that's why WMF is swimming in cash.

by akolbe 9y ago

vinceguidry 9y ago
Awesome, more power to them. If they can't work out how to stop nagging me, I'll find a technological solution to the problem. Ideally, I'd turn it on after I donate and it will turn off after the donation drive is done, so I can get reminded to again next year. But of course that's never going to happen. So I'll never get reminded and my donations are going to stop. Oh well.
- akolbe 9y ago
  Why more power to them? The WMF often treats the volunteer community - the people actually writing Wikipedia - like shit. Many of their flagship engineering projects were disasters that required unpaid volunteers to clean up after them. The WMF operates in its own bubble, happy to ride its cash cow – a top-5 website to display its fundraising ads on, built by unpaid labour. This open letter for example, endorsed by more volunteers than any other Wikipedia initiative ever, never even got a response from WMF: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundation:_Superprotect_and_Media_Viewer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundati... More background: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1275679-donate-to-wikipedia-and-pay-for-what-exactly/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1275679-donate-to-wikipedia-... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundation_money_in_wrong_place/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundatio... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12... https://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-corruption-wikimedia-chapters/ https://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-co... Be sure you know what you support and empower, and what role it does and doesn't play in creating and maintaining Wikipedia.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    Color me absolutely unsurprised to learn that there are political issues at Wikipedia. All these people that hate it so much should go on over to that other, freer encyclopedia where they won't get treated like shit and they'll make a greater contribution to the world. I can't remember what the name of it is, but when you find it you let me know so I can go there too.
    - akolbe 9y ago
      You just don't get that WMF, who you give your money to, and Wikipedia are not the same. WMF don't write Wikipedia, don't curate Wikipedia, don't check its content. They pay the hosting (2% of their expenses), tweak the software (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse), give out grants (often of doubtful benefit to the reader) and use it as a fundraising platform. Their expenditure has increased 20-fold over the past ten years. I've been contributing to Wikipedia since 2006. It was a top-10 website even then. It's not twenty times better today than it was ten years ago (and what expansion and improvement of content there has been since then is not down to the WMF). Its software is not half a billion dollars better than it was ten years ago. But that's the amount of money the WMF has soaked up.
      - vinceguidry 9y ago
        You finally got me interested, so I started to read your links. I got halfway through one of them before I decided to go see what Jimmy Wales has to say about the WMF. Perusing his most recent Quora answers he chose not to answer any on this issue, so I looked up the WMF itself's Quora topic and found this: https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-ask-for-donations-even-though-it-has-a-huge-reserve-60M-of-value-cash-investments-etc/answer/Andreas-Kolbe https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-a... It explains what they're using the money for and addresses the messaging problem created by the donation banners and what their solution was.
        akolbe 9y ago
        Thanks for looking into it. (Btw, I wrote that Quora answer you linked to.) Yes, the donation banners sound slightly less alarmist these days (partly due to year-long efforts by myself and others), but most people who donate still think there is an acute hosting costs crisis and ask no questions about what the money is spent on, and what benefit that spending brings to readers and contributors. For example, I would like to see WMF spend money on displays giving readers a rough idea of an article's health and reliability (based e.g. on the quality of the cited sources, and the contributor mix - it's quite easy to distinguish an astroturfed article from a healthy one, if you know what to look for). No interest. I would like them to spend some of their millions to give contributors free access to sources (paywalled services, digitised books, online libraries etc.) But that's not where their spending priorities are. What they do do in this area seems more like a fig leaf. I'd like them to do research on known problem areas in their content (such as PR editing and political and other kinds of manipulation, especially in some of the other language versions) and to issue consumer warnings for these known flaws, but they prefer to sweep them under the carpet. To my mind, the WMF are very provincial and inward-looking: tinkering with the software, PR and fundraising come first, readers and contributors last. Until that changes, I don't recommend donating to them.

A lot of people seem to have that reaction. And that's why WMF is swimming in cash.

by akolbe 9y ago

A lot of people seem to have that reaction. And that's why WMF is swimming in cash.

Awesome, more power to them. If they can't work out how to stop nagging me, I'll find a technological solution to the problem. Ideally, I'd turn it on after I donate and it will turn off after the donation drive is done, so I can get reminded to again next year. But of course that's never going to happen. So I'll never get reminded and my donations are going to stop. Oh well.

akolbe 9y ago
Why more power to them? The WMF often treats the volunteer community - the people actually writing Wikipedia - like shit. Many of their flagship engineering projects were disasters that required unpaid volunteers to clean up after them. The WMF operates in its own bubble, happy to ride its cash cow – a top-5 website to display its fundraising ads on, built by unpaid labour. This open letter for example, endorsed by more volunteers than any other Wikipedia initiative ever, never even got a response from WMF: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundation:_Superprotect_and_Media_Viewer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundati... More background: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1275679-donate-to-wikipedia-and-pay-for-what-exactly/ http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1275679-donate-to-wikipedia-... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundation_money_in_wrong_place/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundatio... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12... https://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-corruption-wikimedia-chapters/ https://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-co... Be sure you know what you support and empower, and what role it does and doesn't play in creating and maintaining Wikipedia.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Color me absolutely unsurprised to learn that there are political issues at Wikipedia. All these people that hate it so much should go on over to that other, freer encyclopedia where they won't get treated like shit and they'll make a greater contribution to the world. I can't remember what the name of it is, but when you find it you let me know so I can go there too.
  - akolbe 9y ago
    You just don't get that WMF, who you give your money to, and Wikipedia are not the same. WMF don't write Wikipedia, don't curate Wikipedia, don't check its content. They pay the hosting (2% of their expenses), tweak the software (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse), give out grants (often of doubtful benefit to the reader) and use it as a fundraising platform. Their expenditure has increased 20-fold over the past ten years. I've been contributing to Wikipedia since 2006. It was a top-10 website even then. It's not twenty times better today than it was ten years ago (and what expansion and improvement of content there has been since then is not down to the WMF). Its software is not half a billion dollars better than it was ten years ago. But that's the amount of money the WMF has soaked up.
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      You finally got me interested, so I started to read your links. I got halfway through one of them before I decided to go see what Jimmy Wales has to say about the WMF. Perusing his most recent Quora answers he chose not to answer any on this issue, so I looked up the WMF itself's Quora topic and found this: https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-ask-for-donations-even-though-it-has-a-huge-reserve-60M-of-value-cash-investments-etc/answer/Andreas-Kolbe https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-a... It explains what they're using the money for and addresses the messaging problem created by the donation banners and what their solution was.
      - akolbe 9y ago
        Thanks for looking into it. (Btw, I wrote that Quora answer you linked to.) Yes, the donation banners sound slightly less alarmist these days (partly due to year-long efforts by myself and others), but most people who donate still think there is an acute hosting costs crisis and ask no questions about what the money is spent on, and what benefit that spending brings to readers and contributors. For example, I would like to see WMF spend money on displays giving readers a rough idea of an article's health and reliability (based e.g. on the quality of the cited sources, and the contributor mix - it's quite easy to distinguish an astroturfed article from a healthy one, if you know what to look for). No interest. I would like them to spend some of their millions to give contributors free access to sources (paywalled services, digitised books, online libraries etc.) But that's not where their spending priorities are. What they do do in this area seems more like a fig leaf. I'd like them to do research on known problem areas in their content (such as PR editing and political and other kinds of manipulation, especially in some of the other language versions) and to issue consumer warnings for these known flaws, but they prefer to sweep them under the carpet. To my mind, the WMF are very provincial and inward-looking: tinkering with the software, PR and fundraising come first, readers and contributors last. Until that changes, I don't recommend donating to them.