6 ms·

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 o

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]
bawolff 5y ago
FWIW, Jimmy is on the board but hasn't been involved with the day-to-day for a very long time (Although I'm sure as a board member he would be involved with major decisions like budget). I don't think its fair to call this willful hiding. I mean, they've written blog posts about this subject - https://diff.wikimedia.org/2016/01/14/wikipedia-15-foundation-endowment/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2016/01/14/wikipedia-15-foundatio... you don't write blog posts about things you're trying to hide. Disclaimer: used to work for them, don't anymore.
asdff 5y ago
What wikipedia does with their banner ads is hardly worse than what NPR does or any other nonprofit for that matter. It doesn't surprise me that they are well funded. Have you ever heard of wikipedia going down?
harikb 5y ago
That is a ridiculous and ugly accusation to make. If you don’t know what it takes to run a globally available top site, it is better not throw stones at people.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Have I run a site comparable to Wikipedia? No. Do I know nothing about that topic? Debatable. Leaving that aside, Wikipedia was live and ticking when it had 1% of today’s coffers, so it’s hard to substantiate why they need money approaching a billion dollars for a non profit running a website all things considered.
  - gcthomas 5y ago
    I wonder how much Facebook spends on running _its_ website?
  - kaba0 5y ago
    They are not just running a website?
    - xvector 5y ago
      Then their donation banner should reflect the true purpose of the donation, rather than misleading readers into thinking it’s necessary for Wikipedia.com.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        It is necessary for Wikipedia.
  - middleclick 5y ago
    This assumes that traffic has not changed since "1% of its coffers". Traffic has grown and the site has become faster.
peteretep 5y ago
> I have donated to Wikipedia several times and feel violated now You need some perspective.
saurik 5y ago
> but if they’re showing the same banner now Sadly, the banner has only gotten bigger and more dire over the years.
kmaher 5y ago
It wasn't north of half a mil, though that does sound nice. It was $300k when I started and just over $400k when I left five years later, which is all data that is entirely accessible through the organization's public 990 filings. To inform this conversation a bit, the biggest driver of salaries is the market cost of domain expertise and leadership. Wikimedia's salaries are pegged to a basket average of leading US non-profits, but (particularly for more experienced staff) dramatically below market rates for technology organizations. You cannot run something at the technical and social scale and complexity of Wikimedia without exceptionally talented people, and you can't compete for talent without some degree of competitive salary. Although Wikimedia employees leave a lot on the table in order to work for a mission-driven non-profit (comparative compensation but zero upside equity), it isn't sustainable (or arguably ethical) to ask people to work for significantly less than the value of their labor. IMHO, the Wikimedia ecosystem organizations could (and perhaps should) be significantly better resourced than they currently are in order to serve the mission of the organization. Currently most of the funding goes into servicing the existing infrastructure, much of which is dominated by the scale of the largest, largely European-language, Wikipedias. To truly serve the world free knowledge, and serve it well, Wikimedia would need to continue to invest in increasing its global competences, often in regions/languages/markets where operations are more challenging, with commensurate cost. That would mean scaling up that expertise, whether language engineering or legal. All that costs money, which is why so much of the world is so poorly served by businesses with ROI models. Fortunately, that's not Wikimedia, and will never be. And hopefully, it will also never be the case that some loud people on the internet dissuade the projects, movement, and organization from investing in the necessary capacity to sustain the remarkable good it does for so many hundreds of millions of people and hundreds of millions yet to come.
- akolbe 5y ago
  Hi Katherine. What is not ethical is to create the impression that you struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running, when in fact you are three or four times richer than just five years ago, and are building a $100M endowment in half the time anticipated. What is not ethical is not to correct that mistaken impression – that you often struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – when you are asked directly, on TV, whether it is true that you often struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKdn1s9Sjfo&t=270s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKdn1s9Sjfo&t=270s Global plans for knowledge equity are well and good. But then you (or now, your successors) should TELL readers about these plans when asking them for money. Instead, under your watch the WMF has scared people – including millions in third-world countries like India, where it takes 200,000 people donating the recommended $2 to pay just one year of your annual compensation – into thinking that Wikipedia is about to go under, or may have to raise a paywall. https://www.freepressjournal.in/technology/is-wikipedia-dying-the-online-encyclopedia-seeks-donation-from-users https://www.freepressjournal.in/technology/is-wikipedia-dyin... Telling prospective donors about your plans for global expansion, including the plans for machine-translated Wikidata-based articles in hundreds of languages via the new Wikifunctions project, the building of regional hubs, etc., has several objective advantages, over and above just being a simple question of honesty. Among these advantages are: 1. People can decide whether or not you are the right organization for the job, and the best organization to support for this. 2. People can compare actual progress made to the rhetoric, and demand to see results for their money. How much money is stockpiled, used to fund WMF salaries rising to even greater levels, and how much actually finds its way to Africa, India, etc.? How much free content is created? Is the work cost-effective? Raising funds by pretending you are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running relieves you of that scrutiny and accountability – because then the mere continued existence of Wikipedia will appear to have justified the money demands, and the money donations. Avoiding scrutiny and accountability is a slippery slope. It is not good for an organization. You don't just want cheerleaders. Moreover, consistently pretending to be poor also makes you vulnerable (deservedly so!) to backlashes like this one: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1399236909495328771 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1399236909495328771 This Twitter thread, with 1.6K Likes and nearing 1K re-tweets at the time of writing, describes your banners as "deceitful", "manipulative", designed to "guilt people into donating money they would've otherwise spent elsewhere." The author goes on to describe your fundraising practices as "predatory, misleading, malicious and downright evil," saying you've been "preying on poorer folks from less well-off countries" to give you money you absolutely didn't need. When people learn about the actual state of WMF finances they feel fooled, had. You can see this from the comments of past donors here on this very page. Why do that to them? The German fundraising banners (the only ones authored by a local chapter rather than the WMF, I believe) don't pretend there is an emergency. Germans still donate millions each year, because people love Wikipedia. Why overegg the WMF banners in this way, when volunteers have told you, year after year, that they feel disgusted and ashamed by them? This is my view of the ethics of the situation. I have a question about transparency, too. As mentioned in the article, last year the WMF had an underspend because of the pandemic and put $8.7M of this unspent money into a Tides Advocacy fund: the "Knowledge Equity Fund". Last December, a volunteer expressed disbelief that such a substantial amount of donors' money had been secretly transferred to an unaffiliated outside organization ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/IAEIVZX3P4M2UC35L3DDXGSKCYH5WLJB/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... ). The WMF had promised in its 2019/2020 financials FAQ to provide further information on this fund by the end of 2020. Then it promised the information would be made available in early 2021 ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/XI5A4FKDJUK3VWOQWZIPIZXMWAMIX5IW/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... ). Then it promised it would share details in May 2021 ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment&oldid=21528100#Knowledge_Equity_Fund,_Tides_Advocacy https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_... ). These repeated promises have all remained unfulfilled. It is now June. Almost a year has passed since this money disappeared from the WMF accounts. As far as I am aware, still no one outside of the WMF and the Tides Foundation knows what has happened to those $8.7M. Whatever this is – even if there is nothing whatsoever improper about the fund, and full details describing exactly what has happened with donors' money will in due course appear – it falls short of the standards of transparency the WMF and its spokespersons have often claimed to uphold.

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]

bawolff 5y ago

FWIW, Jimmy is on the board but hasn't been involved with the day-to-day for a very long time (Although I'm sure as a board member he would be involved with major decisions like budget). I don't think its fair to call this willful hiding. I mean, they've written blog posts about this subject - https://diff.wikimedia.org/2016/01/14/wikipedia-15-foundation-endowment/ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2016/01/14/wikipedia-15-foundatio... you don't write blog posts about things you're trying to hide. Disclaimer: used to work for them, don't anymore.

asdff 5y ago

What wikipedia does with their banner ads is hardly worse than what NPR does or any other nonprofit for that matter. It doesn't surprise me that they are well funded. Have you ever heard of wikipedia going down?

harikb 5y ago

That is a ridiculous and ugly accusation to make. If you don’t know what it takes to run a globally available top site, it is better not throw stones at people.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ramraj07 5y ago
Have I run a site comparable to Wikipedia? No. Do I know nothing about that topic? Debatable. Leaving that aside, Wikipedia was live and ticking when it had 1% of today’s coffers, so it’s hard to substantiate why they need money approaching a billion dollars for a non profit running a website all things considered.
- gcthomas 5y ago
  I wonder how much Facebook spends on running _its_ website?
- kaba0 5y ago
  They are not just running a website?
  - xvector 5y ago
    Then their donation banner should reflect the true purpose of the donation, rather than misleading readers into thinking it’s necessary for Wikipedia.com.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      It is necessary for Wikipedia.
- middleclick 5y ago
  This assumes that traffic has not changed since "1% of its coffers". Traffic has grown and the site has become faster.

peteretep 5y ago

> I have donated to Wikipedia several times and feel violated now You need some perspective.

saurik 5y ago

> but if they’re showing the same banner now Sadly, the banner has only gotten bigger and more dire over the years.

kmaher 5y ago

It wasn't north of half a mil, though that does sound nice. It was $300k when I started and just over $400k when I left five years later, which is all data that is entirely accessible through the organization's public 990 filings. To inform this conversation a bit, the biggest driver of salaries is the market cost of domain expertise and leadership. Wikimedia's salaries are pegged to a basket average of leading US non-profits, but (particularly for more experienced staff) dramatically below market rates for technology organizations. You cannot run something at the technical and social scale and complexity of Wikimedia without exceptionally talented people, and you can't compete for talent without some degree of competitive salary. Although Wikimedia employees leave a lot on the table in order to work for a mission-driven non-profit (comparative compensation but zero upside equity), it isn't sustainable (or arguably ethical) to ask people to work for significantly less than the value of their labor. IMHO, the Wikimedia ecosystem organizations could (and perhaps should) be significantly better resourced than they currently are in order to serve the mission of the organization. Currently most of the funding goes into servicing the existing infrastructure, much of which is dominated by the scale of the largest, largely European-language, Wikipedias. To truly serve the world free knowledge, and serve it well, Wikimedia would need to continue to invest in increasing its global competences, often in regions/languages/markets where operations are more challenging, with commensurate cost. That would mean scaling up that expertise, whether language engineering or legal. All that costs money, which is why so much of the world is so poorly served by businesses with ROI models. Fortunately, that's not Wikimedia, and will never be. And hopefully, it will also never be the case that some loud people on the internet dissuade the projects, movement, and organization from investing in the necessary capacity to sustain the remarkable good it does for so many hundreds of millions of people and hundreds of millions yet to come.

akolbe 5y ago
Hi Katherine. What is not ethical is to create the impression that you struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running, when in fact you are three or four times richer than just five years ago, and are building a $100M endowment in half the time anticipated. What is not ethical is not to correct that mistaken impression – that you often struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running – when you are asked directly, on TV, whether it is true that you often struggle to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKdn1s9Sjfo&t=270s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKdn1s9Sjfo&t=270s Global plans for knowledge equity are well and good. But then you (or now, your successors) should TELL readers about these plans when asking them for money. Instead, under your watch the WMF has scared people – including millions in third-world countries like India, where it takes 200,000 people donating the recommended $2 to pay just one year of your annual compensation – into thinking that Wikipedia is about to go under, or may have to raise a paywall. https://www.freepressjournal.in/technology/is-wikipedia-dying-the-online-encyclopedia-seeks-donation-from-users https://www.freepressjournal.in/technology/is-wikipedia-dyin... Telling prospective donors about your plans for global expansion, including the plans for machine-translated Wikidata-based articles in hundreds of languages via the new Wikifunctions project, the building of regional hubs, etc., has several objective advantages, over and above just being a simple question of honesty. Among these advantages are: 1. People can decide whether or not you are the right organization for the job, and the best organization to support for this. 2. People can compare actual progress made to the rhetoric, and demand to see results for their money. How much money is stockpiled, used to fund WMF salaries rising to even greater levels, and how much actually finds its way to Africa, India, etc.? How much free content is created? Is the work cost-effective? Raising funds by pretending you are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running relieves you of that scrutiny and accountability – because then the mere continued existence of Wikipedia will appear to have justified the money demands, and the money donations. Avoiding scrutiny and accountability is a slippery slope. It is not good for an organization. You don't just want cheerleaders. Moreover, consistently pretending to be poor also makes you vulnerable (deservedly so!) to backlashes like this one: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1399236909495328771 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1399236909495328771 This Twitter thread, with 1.6K Likes and nearing 1K re-tweets at the time of writing, describes your banners as "deceitful", "manipulative", designed to "guilt people into donating money they would've otherwise spent elsewhere." The author goes on to describe your fundraising practices as "predatory, misleading, malicious and downright evil," saying you've been "preying on poorer folks from less well-off countries" to give you money you absolutely didn't need. When people learn about the actual state of WMF finances they feel fooled, had. You can see this from the comments of past donors here on this very page. Why do that to them? The German fundraising banners (the only ones authored by a local chapter rather than the WMF, I believe) don't pretend there is an emergency. Germans still donate millions each year, because people love Wikipedia. Why overegg the WMF banners in this way, when volunteers have told you, year after year, that they feel disgusted and ashamed by them? This is my view of the ethics of the situation. I have a question about transparency, too. As mentioned in the article, last year the WMF had an underspend because of the pandemic and put $8.7M of this unspent money into a Tides Advocacy fund: the "Knowledge Equity Fund". Last December, a volunteer expressed disbelief that such a substantial amount of donors' money had been secretly transferred to an unaffiliated outside organization ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/IAEIVZX3P4M2UC35L3DDXGSKCYH5WLJB/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... ). The WMF had promised in its 2019/2020 financials FAQ to provide further information on this fund by the end of 2020. Then it promised the information would be made available in early 2021 ( https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/XI5A4FKDJUK3VWOQWZIPIZXMWAMIX5IW/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... ). Then it promised it would share details in May 2021 ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment&oldid=21528100#Knowledge_Equity_Fund,_Tides_Advocacy https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikimedia_... ). These repeated promises have all remained unfulfilled. It is now June. Almost a year has passed since this money disappeared from the WMF accounts. As far as I am aware, still no one outside of the WMF and the Tides Foundation knows what has happened to those $8.7M. Whatever this is – even if there is nothing whatsoever improper about the fund, and full details describing exactly what has happened with donors' money will in due course appear – it falls short of the standards of transparency the WMF and its spokespersons have often claimed to uphold.