8 ms·

Ridiculous question and even more ridiculous factoids. The assumption that operating as a non-profit implies an entity should stop asking its audience for help

• bongoman37 5y ago
  I've donated to Wikipedia and contributed content as well but now I've decided not to anymore for the time being. Any kind of controversial article is decided more by the amount of time which side has to push their agenda rather than any kind of objective Neutral Point of View. There is a lot of astroturfing as well.
  • jonahbenton 5y ago
    With respect, think about what you are saying. You are not going to contribute with good intentions to a public service because there are people with bad intentions contributing to it...
    • 5560675260 5y ago
      The problem is that there is nothing done about people with bad intentions on organisational level.
      • trompetenaccoun 5y ago
        Wikipedia folks are aware of the problem and there have been many changes over the years to better protect neutrality. I agree the situation is still far from perfect but Wikipedia is still one of the bastions of free information out there. They could have commercialized it but it became a non-profit relying on donations from users (as opposed to corporations) for a good reason. What will happen when Wikimedia is gone? There's a reason there's such a relentless smear campaign against it. Instead of turning our backs we have to think of ways we can support Wikipedia and protect it from shills with deep pockets. If you have any ideas on how this can be done more effectively try bringing them up! Anyone can sign up and participate. That's Wikipedia's strength and weakness.
        • busymom0 5y ago
          > Instead of turning our backs we have to think of ways we can support Wikipedia and protect it from shills with deep pockets. Have you actually looked at where most of the donations come from? They come from DEEP POCKETS. In 2019, Google made $2 million contribution to the Wikimedia Endowment and another $1.1 million to the Wikimedia Foundation: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/google-org-donates-2-million-to-wikipedias-parent-org/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/google-org-donates-2-milli... Amazon, Google.org, Musk Foundation, George Soros, Facebook all donating $2 million+ https://wikimediaendowment.org/#benefactors https://wikimediaendowment.org/#benefactors Look at who their benefactors were in 2019 apart from 7 "Major benefactors" who were anonymous: https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/benefactors/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/benefactors/ Wikipedia folks have done the exact opposite to "protect neutrality" and "bastions of free information". They openly block any edits of articles even when the said article is slandering someone as long as it fits the political narrative. And if one simply looked at their co-founder and other admin's twitter feed, one would realize that they don't care about "neutrality".
  • mavhc 5y ago
    But the arguments and the edit history are public. Better than any other site where the pov is decided by who has the most money
• ramraj07 5y ago
  What a ridiculous criticism of a valid article with a lot of facts. I have donated to Wikipedia several times and feel violated now. They might have not lied outright but acting as if you’re a poor Non profit when you are most definitely not poor is outrageous. I don’t know if Jimmy Wales is part of this entire charade but this is exactly what you expect to happen when you employ a CEO who charges north of half a mill to run a non profit - their intention is to just increase their coffers with no clear plan on WHAT they are going to use it. There might have been a time when the banner was genuine and a donation from the user was needed to plan their budget a year in the future, but if they’re showing the same banner now after making hundreds of millions (and if this article is accurate, willfully hiding it as much as legally possible) they’re disgusting. I feel less disgust interacting with entities like apple and google, at the least their intentions seem far more honest than this bs.
  • jonahbenton 5y ago
    I'm sorry, but your worldview is completely out of line with reality. The banner IS genuine. Non-profit funding IS scarce. Funding streams are fickle and Wikipedia has none of the monopolistic advantages that keep Apple and Google and FB and MSFT owners vastly vastly richer than any Wikipedia staff will ever be. By volunteering you ARE doing something so much more valuable than any post to any for profit social media platform, INCLUDING this one. The reason you think "intentions" are "honest"? Advertising. Please revisit your assumptions. Best wishes, sincerely. Cheers.
    • busymom0 5y ago
      Their banner says: > “This Thursday Wikipedia really needs you. This is the 10th appeal we’ve shown you. 98% of our readers don’t give; they look the other way … We ask you, humbly, don’t scroll away.” You think "really needs you" IS genuine? And what does "volunteering" have to do with the question being raised in the article or by the OP you are responding to?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • 5y ago
• k1m 5y ago
  Wikipedia in my experience doesn't "take on" anyone. They have a list of sources of large information outlets that are marked, mostly arbitrarily, "reliable". With the media landscape being as skewed as it is (largely reflecting interests of media owners and advertisers, see Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model), Wikipedia has set itself up to reflect those same biases by relying on the same sources.
  • Clewza313 5y ago
    Here's the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... You'll note that (eg) Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, The Economist and Al Jazeera are all considered "reliable" (green), while Fox News is yellow (OK except for politics).
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    Or maybe they're marked "reliable" because they're less likely to make stuff up. I know that it is problematic when all the most obvious sources are slanted towards one political point of view, but citing the Daily Mail and other tabloids for stuff that the viewer's supposed to trust is even worse.
    • TulliusCicero 5y ago
      I mean there's definitely left leaning banned sources too, like Alternet.
  • bawolff 5y ago
    Wikipedia (Like all encyclopedias) is a tertiary source. Its goal is not to provide the capital-T Truth, but to summarize as best it can contemporary knowledge. It aims to do that as neutrally as possible, but perfect neutrality doesn't exist, so all it can do is always try and get closer and closer to that ideal.
• furi 5y ago
  I feel like we've already seen this pan out once. Mozilla received a large payment from Google for many years for making Google Search the primary search engine in Firefox. They used that money to pay large salaries, launch a dozen side projects (none of which ever achieved anything like the success of Firefox) and aim for lofty goals much like Wikimedia is doing here. Now the money's drying up (because Firefox's market share is dwindling) and Mozilla are having to cut staff, including staff who work on Firefox development, to survive. It's less obvious what would cause Wikipedia's money to dry up, but in light of Mozilla's example the only part of this I disagree with is the article's negative angle on the endowment. Creating an endowment like that is exactly what Mozilla should have done.
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    > none of which ever achieved anything like the success of Firefox Hi, let me introduce you to this weird newfangled language called Rust... /s
    • influx 5y ago
      How much are they bringing into Mozilla with that?
    • furi 5y ago
      Rust is definitely a significant and important project. That said, Firefox's peak market share was a little over 30% of desktop browsers (in 2009 so they weren't yet a sideshow), while Rust isn't even currently in the TIOBE Index top 20 (can't find any easy way to see a peak position sadly). More importantly though, we have other Rusts. Rust has half a dozen competitors and essentially nobody thinks that making a robust new systems programming language is an unachievable goal. Firefox is the only non-profit browser engine we have and most people consider it an impossible undertaking to develop a new one from scratch at this stage. Indeed, Microsoft recently tried before conceding defeat and switching Edge over to Chromium's Blink.
      • kubb 5y ago
        Could you name these six Rust competitors please?
• brittonsmith 5y ago
  I'm with you. Wikipedia has revolutionized access to information. I can't imagine where we would be without it today. I'd much rather they be more than ready to weather a few storms than about to pull the plug before people feel the need to donate. I think this article rubs me the wrong way because it leans a little heavily on vagueness to take you from the facts to how you should feel about them. Some volunteers are not amused? How many? A majority? A vocal few? "Wikipedians who have made hundreds of thousands of edits may well feel someone else is enjoying the fruit of their labor." Well, do they or don't they? Did you ask them? I'll even admit that my initial reaction to this article was why do they need more of my money? But I gave $10 last year (basically nothing for my current income), and I'll do the same this year. Don't give so much money that you get bent out of shape about where it goes. If everyone gave an amount that meant relatively little to them, they would be in great shape. That's also basically what the donation banners say, too, but the article doesn't mention that.
• thepangolino 5y ago
  Wikimedia foundation spends over 55M to pay for 400 staff. That’s 137k a year in payroll costs per employee. Are they all top management and or US based engineers?!
  • MagnumOpus 5y ago
    Yes, most of them are. And most of them work on "Advancement" (begging, fund raising, and schmoozing rich people and organisations for future fund raising) and "communication" (PR and brand building).[1] And of course with the obligatory diversity and inclusion staff, also on six digit salaries, also based in the swanky skyscraper in central San Francisco.[2] [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/ [2] And the rent for the swanky office is another million and a half per year, because it's not their money after all...
• pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  > pay its necessary staff less than competitive wages My opinion is that basically no-one needs to have an income above a couple of times median in the country they're in [it's hard to normalise across countries]. Just because CEOs, etc., think they're worth $millions doesn't mean that charitable organisations should adopt that model. You're panhandling effectively, you beg people to give money but you already have it, you're only distributing it to wealthy people instead of favouring the aims of your charity. Sure, pay your staff for a median income in your/their country; much higher in a poor or developing country is fine. But I don't donate to any charity that thinks one person needs to be paid >£120k (that's >4x median graduate wage in UK). Some people are awesome at what they do, but they're using the same proportion of their lives to do it as the people who are awesome and getting paid a pittance, it's wrong to beg people and then fritter it away on luxuries for a limited set of staff. If a person wants to beg for money for themselves then they can, "I have an income of >$500,000 per year and work $days a week for $charity, please pay me money", sure, but don't hide that support of someone's ludicrously income (compared to ordinary people, not SV programmers) by fronting it through a charity.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    First enforce your (valid) criticism in other companies. If a person could make 10x what he/she currently makes with the same work, why would he/she settle for less? Even with very strong morals, this failing of capitalism should not be dealt with at Wikipedia’s level. Comparatively to US companies, wikipedia’s salaries are hardly extreme.
    • pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      Fair, but those other conscious aren't begging me to contribute to them paying their execs. And yes, as a consumer I do try and take note of the companies who have the most egregious pay disparities. Charities that spend a lot on donation acquisution, or who use immoral techniques (doorstep pressure, 'gift' giving to create psychological compulsion, ...) should not be supported.