7 ms·

This is not helpful. Wikipedia is a community project, and managing that community takes a lot of the resources, obviously. The Internet Archive has proved its

by Blahah 6y ago

This is not helpful. Wikipedia is a community project, and managing that community takes a lot of the resources, obviously. The Internet Archive has proved itself so many times over, and is so underfunded, that it deserves all the money it can possibly raise - which will allow them to solve more of the problems they face.

h_anna_h 6y ago
I believe that it is helpful because if I knew about that a few years back I would never bother donating nor contributing to them. > and managing that community takes a lot of the resources, obviously I do not think that parties in Accra using donation funds is an integral part of "managing that community". The Internet Archive has proved that they are not to be trusted multiple times. Such as when they decided to not be transparent, to retroactively remove content if asked by the site owner or if robots.txt started banning crawlers, when they started "lending" e-books with DRM, or when they decided to do the whole "National Emergency Library" thing and publishers sue it over it (the lawers and possibly said publishers if they win the ruling - which is likely - will be paid via the donation money).
- dleslie 6y ago
  You've never attended an office party, or a company-hosted partner event, or any sort of enjoyable relationship building event? Parties serve a purpose. We are social mammals.
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    Even if they aren't, I don't see why the people doing good things in the world can't have something enjoyable. If everyone who works for a charity has to work for at most minimum wage, then I don't think sites like Wikipedia or the Internet Archive would be as high quality as they are.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      I think it's because a lot of people with limited means apparently donate to Wikimedia thinking it's a small non-profit on the verge of bankruptcy. And in no small part because they imply this every year during their fund drives. I doubt they'd do as well fundraising if your average donator knew that Wikimedia was pulling in $100m a year, is paying it's directors and above $200-400k a year, and the vast majority of their dollars are not spent on "servers and power" like their ads imply. Personally, I'm fine with their budget, but I do wonder if their fundraisers are as ethical as they could be.
      - h_anna_h 6y ago
        This is my main issue. The minimum wage in Greece, where I a from, is less than 10k/year, some people who I know (including me) donated to them a few years back in hopes of helping because they make themselves seem like they are in the brick of collapse every time they fund-raise, only to learn that they give huge wages to their higher ups and waste the donations on things irrelevant to Wikipedia.
        Blahah 6y ago
        But Wikipedia doesn't, and couldn't run from Greece. It runs from San Francisco, because that's where they can be the most efficient at getting the most billionaires to help. In San Fran employees would probably worrying about money at $120k, and would be homeless way before they got to $10k. Also, WMP aren't hiring people at average wage - you're comparing the average job in Greece to running one of the most important organisations in the world from San Francisco. That's not a reasonable comparison. Of course WMP has to have brilliant, motivated, connected, experienced people at the top. They pay them far below average wage for people in that market. Honestly you should compare what WMP pays with other similar sized global organisations.
        h_anna_h 6y ago
        > because that's where they can be the most efficient at getting the most billionaires to help They should choose between the donors and the billionaires then. (regardless, they are a tech company, they could employ people remotely) This still does not address the issue of the dishonest fundraising though (pretending that they need your help despite making 1/10th of their wage and not saying up-front on what they spend the money on). I am sure that you would be upset if you gave money to a beggar that you later see getting in his Mercedes, or if you donated money to an organization for the homeless but then realized that 90% of the money goes for researching new pie recipes. It honestly feels like that.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    That is totally fine! But if people don’t want to donate for them, they should know so they can make that choice, and not be swindled by Wikipedia’s donation request banners that make it sound like the public good is perpetually on the verge of insolvency.
    - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      Thank you for informing me. I did not know about such parties.
      - f430 6y ago
        Not only that but the execs and many pay themselves a nice fat salary with all the benefits and perks of course that most small to medium enterprises would be appalled at for a "struggling non-profit" that we have of their image. From the banners one might conclude that they are facing imminent shut down and getting by in an unheated offices. no way I'm giving them money especially after reading the threads here and people attack h_anna for exposing the truth.
        Blahah 6y ago
        What actually happens is that the organisation needs certain skills and networks and hires the right people to bring them in. The salaries are small compared to what the people getting them could get paid at other organisations. I know good people who turned down much bigger salaries to work at WMF. Nobody has exposed anything, these are all public facts published and actively publicised by Wikipedia itself. They literally actively try to expand participation in local groups, and small parties for the people who gave their time is a gesture of thanks to those people, not some ostentatious overspend.
        f430 6y ago
        > The salaries are small compared to what the people getting them could get paid at other organisations. six digit salaries is small to you?
- Blahah 6y ago
  > I do not think that parties in Accra using donation funds is an integral part of "managing that community". Well, that's why the opinion is unhelpful. Wikipedia runs the largest decentralised and communal knowledge curation project in history. Making it and keeping it great takes a lot of free labour, all over the world. They have to organise communities at many many different levels, and often that involves getting a bunch of people in a room together - people who aren't getting paid - for a few days to make a ton of decisions and design and implement things. It involves recruiting new people to help and teaching them the organisational processes and skills, and nurturing new people up through the organisation, and resolving comflicts. All of that is absolutely necessary to make something like wikipedia work and barely scratches the surface. A party for the people who worked their asses off for free is really an incredibly cheap way to reward people.
  - h_anna_h 6y ago
    You think that it is unhelpful and this is fine, you are free to ignore my comment and donate to wikipedia if you want. My post is meant to inform people so that they can make an informed decision and not feel like they have been scammed. As for whether parties are important for wikipedia, anyone interested in this topic can read the links that I posted earlier. There was a debate whether they are helpful or not if I remember correctly.
    - Blahah 6y ago
      Wikipedia is good at running wikipedia. They produce something incredible. If you want to exercise moral control over people who do jobs you don't understand, by all means keep your money. But it's not helpful for you to encourage others to do that.
      - h_anna_h 6y ago
        > Wikipedia is good at running wikipedia Many wikipedians will disagree with you. > They produce something incredible The volunteers do. > But it's not helpful for you to encourage others to do that. Again, my desire was to inform people as to not regret their decision to donate, unlike me.
- DanBC 6y ago
  You're mentioning "parties" and "Accra" in a weird way. What's your problem with local Wikimedia groups holding events in Ghana? These are the events you're talking about. They hardly seem to be lavish events. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/OFWA https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/OFWA https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/Ghana https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/Ghana These are people working to enhance the encyclopedia. Here's one example: https://twitter.com/NanaYawBotar/status/1356678087560343567?s=20 https://twitter.com/NanaYawBotar/status/1356678087560343567?...
  - h_anna_h 6y ago
    I only mentioned Accra because it was the first mentioned in the post that I linked. Feel free to replace it with "Berlin" or "Chandigarh".
- gojomo 6y ago
  It's interesting that one of your criticisms is that the Internet Archive is too lawsuit-averse - that it takes things down, after requests from apparent rightsholders, too quickly & opaquely. But your other criticism is that the Archive hasn't been lawsuit-averse enough - that during a once-in-a-century emergency with the nations' libraries closed, they took too much of a risk in offering extra digitized book loans, against the wishes of rightsholders. As a former Internet Archive employee, but not speaking for them here: That's inconsistent. If the Archive were as meek about deferring to traditional-rightsholder supremacy as you want with regard to the "Emergency Library" of digital books, the web archive might not exist at all, or could only include material with explicit prior permissions – shrinking it to a tiny fraction of its size. When the Archive started crawling & storing websites, there was no clear legal right to do so. (The 1996 DMCA, which if read a certain way, immunizes some such activities as "caching", wasn't even law when the IA started in 1995 - but its immunity also requires the prompt retroactive removals you find objectionable!) There was, from the start, a colorable argument, based on 'fair use' & the historical role & respect given libraries by our law & culture, that this should be legal, and could be legal if the facts were interpreted a certain way. But on the letter-of-the-law, there was an immense risk rightsholders could sue - like the publishers have now with regard to pandemic book-lending. It was only by demonstrating the immense value of such an archive, & repeatedly making the case for its legitimacy via such demonstration and reasoning in courts & legislatures & culture, that the right of such an archive to exist has now been firmly established. The fact that lawyers & courts themselves have found it so essential has been part of the success. And, now that it is a familiar activity, it continues to gain reinforcement by being assumed-as-legitimate when new laws/policies are drafted, because those now avoid language that could be inadvertently interpreted to prohibit something obviously good & existing. Still, having an automated exclusion procedure (via 'robots.txt'), and generally respecting credible rightsholder takedown requests, is essential to capping the legal risks of such a large archive. And the Archive's approach on book-lending, including during the "Emergency Library" program, has been broadly similar. An urgent need & technological opportunity arose before laws & explicit "ask first" processes could accommodate the situation. Culture & precedent suggested extraordinary, but temporary, adaptation could plausibly be legal & would be net-beneficial for society. (Which is better: no access to library-loaned physical books while in 'lockdown', or tracked time-limited access to temporarily-created digital copies, smaller-in-number than the count locked in closed libraries? Does technological format-shifting in response to an emergency, with minimal impact on rightsholders' revenues, fit 'fair use'?) Still, the legal risks were capped by setting the program to be of limited duration, & having a policy of respecting any explicit book-exclusion requests from rightsholders. If you're really so afraid of rightsholder damages judgements, sure, the Archive isn't your best donation target. (I think the risks to the Internet Archive from the latest lawsuit are limited to having a bad precedent established, not bankruptcy.) But know that every historical website you can access is there because the Archive was willing to take some risks establishing new rights/precedents, & your preferred policy of fewer-exclusions would mean yet more legal risks. And lots of people donate to good causes specifically so that they can defend themselves, legally, or push new cases, legally, for broader benefits.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by Blahah 6y ago

h_anna_h 6y ago

I believe that it is helpful because if I knew about that a few years back I would never bother donating nor contributing to them. > and managing that community takes a lot of the resources, obviously I do not think that parties in Accra using donation funds is an integral part of "managing that community". The Internet Archive has proved that they are not to be trusted multiple times. Such as when they decided to not be transparent, to retroactively remove content if asked by the site owner or if robots.txt started banning crawlers, when they started "lending" e-books with DRM, or when they decided to do the whole "National Emergency Library" thing and publishers sue it over it (the lawers and possibly said publishers if they win the ruling - which is likely - will be paid via the donation money).

dleslie 6y ago
You've never attended an office party, or a company-hosted partner event, or any sort of enjoyable relationship building event? Parties serve a purpose. We are social mammals.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  Even if they aren't, I don't see why the people doing good things in the world can't have something enjoyable. If everyone who works for a charity has to work for at most minimum wage, then I don't think sites like Wikipedia or the Internet Archive would be as high quality as they are.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    I think it's because a lot of people with limited means apparently donate to Wikimedia thinking it's a small non-profit on the verge of bankruptcy. And in no small part because they imply this every year during their fund drives. I doubt they'd do as well fundraising if your average donator knew that Wikimedia was pulling in $100m a year, is paying it's directors and above $200-400k a year, and the vast majority of their dollars are not spent on "servers and power" like their ads imply. Personally, I'm fine with their budget, but I do wonder if their fundraisers are as ethical as they could be.
    - h_anna_h 6y ago
      This is my main issue. The minimum wage in Greece, where I a from, is less than 10k/year, some people who I know (including me) donated to them a few years back in hopes of helping because they make themselves seem like they are in the brick of collapse every time they fund-raise, only to learn that they give huge wages to their higher ups and waste the donations on things irrelevant to Wikipedia.
      - Blahah 6y ago
        But Wikipedia doesn't, and couldn't run from Greece. It runs from San Francisco, because that's where they can be the most efficient at getting the most billionaires to help. In San Fran employees would probably worrying about money at $120k, and would be homeless way before they got to $10k. Also, WMP aren't hiring people at average wage - you're comparing the average job in Greece to running one of the most important organisations in the world from San Francisco. That's not a reasonable comparison. Of course WMP has to have brilliant, motivated, connected, experienced people at the top. They pay them far below average wage for people in that market. Honestly you should compare what WMP pays with other similar sized global organisations.
        h_anna_h 6y ago
        > because that's where they can be the most efficient at getting the most billionaires to help They should choose between the donors and the billionaires then. (regardless, they are a tech company, they could employ people remotely) This still does not address the issue of the dishonest fundraising though (pretending that they need your help despite making 1/10th of their wage and not saying up-front on what they spend the money on). I am sure that you would be upset if you gave money to a beggar that you later see getting in his Mercedes, or if you donated money to an organization for the homeless but then realized that 90% of the money goes for researching new pie recipes. It honestly feels like that.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  That is totally fine! But if people don’t want to donate for them, they should know so they can make that choice, and not be swindled by Wikipedia’s donation request banners that make it sound like the public good is perpetually on the verge of insolvency.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    Thank you for informing me. I did not know about such parties.
    - f430 6y ago
      Not only that but the execs and many pay themselves a nice fat salary with all the benefits and perks of course that most small to medium enterprises would be appalled at for a "struggling non-profit" that we have of their image. From the banners one might conclude that they are facing imminent shut down and getting by in an unheated offices. no way I'm giving them money especially after reading the threads here and people attack h_anna for exposing the truth.
      - Blahah 6y ago
        What actually happens is that the organisation needs certain skills and networks and hires the right people to bring them in. The salaries are small compared to what the people getting them could get paid at other organisations. I know good people who turned down much bigger salaries to work at WMF. Nobody has exposed anything, these are all public facts published and actively publicised by Wikipedia itself. They literally actively try to expand participation in local groups, and small parties for the people who gave their time is a gesture of thanks to those people, not some ostentatious overspend.
        f430 6y ago
        > The salaries are small compared to what the people getting them could get paid at other organisations. six digit salaries is small to you?
Blahah 6y ago
> I do not think that parties in Accra using donation funds is an integral part of "managing that community". Well, that's why the opinion is unhelpful. Wikipedia runs the largest decentralised and communal knowledge curation project in history. Making it and keeping it great takes a lot of free labour, all over the world. They have to organise communities at many many different levels, and often that involves getting a bunch of people in a room together - people who aren't getting paid - for a few days to make a ton of decisions and design and implement things. It involves recruiting new people to help and teaching them the organisational processes and skills, and nurturing new people up through the organisation, and resolving comflicts. All of that is absolutely necessary to make something like wikipedia work and barely scratches the surface. A party for the people who worked their asses off for free is really an incredibly cheap way to reward people.
- h_anna_h 6y ago
  You think that it is unhelpful and this is fine, you are free to ignore my comment and donate to wikipedia if you want. My post is meant to inform people so that they can make an informed decision and not feel like they have been scammed. As for whether parties are important for wikipedia, anyone interested in this topic can read the links that I posted earlier. There was a debate whether they are helpful or not if I remember correctly.
  - Blahah 6y ago
    Wikipedia is good at running wikipedia. They produce something incredible. If you want to exercise moral control over people who do jobs you don't understand, by all means keep your money. But it's not helpful for you to encourage others to do that.
    - h_anna_h 6y ago
      > Wikipedia is good at running wikipedia Many wikipedians will disagree with you. > They produce something incredible The volunteers do. > But it's not helpful for you to encourage others to do that. Again, my desire was to inform people as to not regret their decision to donate, unlike me.
DanBC 6y ago
You're mentioning "parties" and "Accra" in a weird way. What's your problem with local Wikimedia groups holding events in Ghana? These are the events you're talking about. They hardly seem to be lavish events. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/OFWA https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/OFWA https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/Ghana https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events/Ghana These are people working to enhance the encyclopedia. Here's one example: https://twitter.com/NanaYawBotar/status/1356678087560343567?s=20 https://twitter.com/NanaYawBotar/status/1356678087560343567?...
- h_anna_h 6y ago
  I only mentioned Accra because it was the first mentioned in the post that I linked. Feel free to replace it with "Berlin" or "Chandigarh".
gojomo 6y ago
It's interesting that one of your criticisms is that the Internet Archive is too lawsuit-averse - that it takes things down, after requests from apparent rightsholders, too quickly & opaquely. But your other criticism is that the Archive hasn't been lawsuit-averse enough - that during a once-in-a-century emergency with the nations' libraries closed, they took too much of a risk in offering extra digitized book loans, against the wishes of rightsholders. As a former Internet Archive employee, but not speaking for them here: That's inconsistent. If the Archive were as meek about deferring to traditional-rightsholder supremacy as you want with regard to the "Emergency Library" of digital books, the web archive might not exist at all, or could only include material with explicit prior permissions – shrinking it to a tiny fraction of its size. When the Archive started crawling & storing websites, there was no clear legal right to do so. (The 1996 DMCA, which if read a certain way, immunizes some such activities as "caching", wasn't even law when the IA started in 1995 - but its immunity also requires the prompt retroactive removals you find objectionable!) There was, from the start, a colorable argument, based on 'fair use' & the historical role & respect given libraries by our law & culture, that this should be legal, and could be legal if the facts were interpreted a certain way. But on the letter-of-the-law, there was an immense risk rightsholders could sue - like the publishers have now with regard to pandemic book-lending. It was only by demonstrating the immense value of such an archive, & repeatedly making the case for its legitimacy via such demonstration and reasoning in courts & legislatures & culture, that the right of such an archive to exist has now been firmly established. The fact that lawyers & courts themselves have found it so essential has been part of the success. And, now that it is a familiar activity, it continues to gain reinforcement by being assumed-as-legitimate when new laws/policies are drafted, because those now avoid language that could be inadvertently interpreted to prohibit something obviously good & existing. Still, having an automated exclusion procedure (via 'robots.txt'), and generally respecting credible rightsholder takedown requests, is essential to capping the legal risks of such a large archive. And the Archive's approach on book-lending, including during the "Emergency Library" program, has been broadly similar. An urgent need & technological opportunity arose before laws & explicit "ask first" processes could accommodate the situation. Culture & precedent suggested extraordinary, but temporary, adaptation could plausibly be legal & would be net-beneficial for society. (Which is better: no access to library-loaned physical books while in 'lockdown', or tracked time-limited access to temporarily-created digital copies, smaller-in-number than the count locked in closed libraries? Does technological format-shifting in response to an emergency, with minimal impact on rightsholders' revenues, fit 'fair use'?) Still, the legal risks were capped by setting the program to be of limited duration, & having a policy of respecting any explicit book-exclusion requests from rightsholders. If you're really so afraid of rightsholder damages judgements, sure, the Archive isn't your best donation target. (I think the risks to the Internet Archive from the latest lawsuit are limited to having a bad precedent established, not bankruptcy.) But know that every historical website you can access is there because the Archive was willing to take some risks establishing new rights/precedents, & your preferred policy of fewer-exclusions would mean yet more legal risks. And lots of people donate to good causes specifically so that they can defend themselves, legally, or push new cases, legally, for broader benefits.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]