5 ms·

I read the page. It's very angry about Wikipedia's finances. I still don't resent their asking and I still donate. Wikipedia is a truly worthwhile service an

I read the page. It's very angry about Wikipedia's finances. I still don't resent their asking and I still donate. Wikipedia is a truly worthwhile service and I'm happy they have much more money than they need to scrape by. You seem to feel that the amount of money they should have is just above what they need to get by. I think that is a bad way to run any operation.

joshmanders 5y ago
My thoughts too, "living paycheck to paycheck" doesn't sound like it ensures Wikimedia's survival. We'd all be shouting "Save Wikipedia!" if they have a bad year were expenses are up and donations are drastically down and they end up going offline due to not having enough reserve to help it.
- joshuaissac 5y ago
  But Wikipedia is living paycheck to paycheck despite getting a lot of donations. That is what Guy Macon's article is complaining about.
  - loeg 5y ago
    Yeah. The paycheck is rising exponentially every year, and yet they find a way to spend it all every year. The vast majority of those expenses are not Wikipedia. Wikipedia's cancer is the Wikimedia organization.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      Cancer? Wow. Personally, I expect they have a lot of good they can do in the world. And I believe they need resources to do it. What do you do that is so virtuous that you can call Wikimedia a cancer?
      - loeg 5y ago
        > What do you do that is so virtuous that you can call Wikimedia a cancer? That's a very caustic statement, and it's not your place to judge, but if you're inviting me to soapbox: Personally, I give my charitable dollars to Against Malaria Foundation to buy insecticidal bed nets. They've raised $342 million in total since their founding and distributed ~137 million nets. GiveWell estimates the program costs about $3000-5000 per life saved; or to put it another way, they've saved roughly 68,000 lives. The WHO estimates that 409,000 people died of malaria in 2019 alone; there's a lot left to do here. WMF has raised more than double that (~$800 million), over a similar time frame. Of that, Wikipedia's current hosting expenses and compensation for authors and editors totals something like $2.5 million annually. If you think that's a good use of your charity dollars, great. We can agree to disagree. If you have any spare capacity, though, I would highly encourage giving to Against Malaria Foundation, or any of GiveWell's other top charities.
- bashmack 5y ago
  The $100m Endowment was their hedge against donations drying up, being a big enough cash hoard to allow them to stay online indefinitely if donations dropped to zero. It is now fully funded. I wonder how many people even realise this is the case, and will carry on donating under the false impression Wikipedia needs their help to survive.
coldpie 5y ago
Yeah. I always wonder if the complainers do the same deep analysis and whining about how for-profit companies spend their income, or if they just plunk down $120 for Xbox Game Pass and leave happy. Is Wikipedia worth $20 a year to me? Yeah. So they can have it and spend it how they like. Just like Microsoft can with my Game Pass subscription.
- bashmack 5y ago
  You aren't paying for a product. It's crazy people don't even realise that Wikipedia isn't free because they're just nice people who prefer prefer run on donations not capitalism. It's free because they don't own a single word of their encyclopedia. That was how it was set up. They knew they couldn't charge for it, because they weren't paying anyone to write it, and aren't offering any guarantee that you can trust it. It can be copied and hosted freely by anyone. Wikipedia can do what it likes with your money, except, of course, pay someone to write and maintain a trustworthy encyclopedia. Not by choice, by law.
loeg 5y ago
> You seem to feel that the amount of money they should have is just above what they need to get by. Not at all. The only reason Wikimedia do not have enough money to run Wikipedia in perpetuity is because of Wikimedia's exponential spending growth in non-"Pedia" projects. I would love for them to spin off a Wikipedia-only endowment that funds Wikipedia forever. It would (likely) not need to take any future donations. The level of money Wikimedia take in is far, far in excess of "just what [Wikipedia] need[s] to get by." The problem I have with Wikimedia's fundraising is that it is disingenuous. Wikimedia's gross mismanagement of the donation revenue threatens Wikipedia's long-term viability, which is something donors should probably care about.

joshmanders 5y ago

My thoughts too, "living paycheck to paycheck" doesn't sound like it ensures Wikimedia's survival. We'd all be shouting "Save Wikipedia!" if they have a bad year were expenses are up and donations are drastically down and they end up going offline due to not having enough reserve to help it.

joshuaissac 5y ago
But Wikipedia is living paycheck to paycheck despite getting a lot of donations. That is what Guy Macon's article is complaining about.
- loeg 5y ago
  Yeah. The paycheck is rising exponentially every year, and yet they find a way to spend it all every year. The vast majority of those expenses are not Wikipedia. Wikipedia's cancer is the Wikimedia organization.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Cancer? Wow. Personally, I expect they have a lot of good they can do in the world. And I believe they need resources to do it. What do you do that is so virtuous that you can call Wikimedia a cancer?
    - loeg 5y ago
      > What do you do that is so virtuous that you can call Wikimedia a cancer? That's a very caustic statement, and it's not your place to judge, but if you're inviting me to soapbox: Personally, I give my charitable dollars to Against Malaria Foundation to buy insecticidal bed nets. They've raised $342 million in total since their founding and distributed ~137 million nets. GiveWell estimates the program costs about $3000-5000 per life saved; or to put it another way, they've saved roughly 68,000 lives. The WHO estimates that 409,000 people died of malaria in 2019 alone; there's a lot left to do here. WMF has raised more than double that (~$800 million), over a similar time frame. Of that, Wikipedia's current hosting expenses and compensation for authors and editors totals something like $2.5 million annually. If you think that's a good use of your charity dollars, great. We can agree to disagree. If you have any spare capacity, though, I would highly encourage giving to Against Malaria Foundation, or any of GiveWell's other top charities.
bashmack 5y ago
The $100m Endowment was their hedge against donations drying up, being a big enough cash hoard to allow them to stay online indefinitely if donations dropped to zero. It is now fully funded. I wonder how many people even realise this is the case, and will carry on donating under the false impression Wikipedia needs their help to survive.

coldpie 5y ago

Yeah. I always wonder if the complainers do the same deep analysis and whining about how for-profit companies spend their income, or if they just plunk down $120 for Xbox Game Pass and leave happy. Is Wikipedia worth $20 a year to me? Yeah. So they can have it and spend it how they like. Just like Microsoft can with my Game Pass subscription.

bashmack 5y ago
You aren't paying for a product. It's crazy people don't even realise that Wikipedia isn't free because they're just nice people who prefer prefer run on donations not capitalism. It's free because they don't own a single word of their encyclopedia. That was how it was set up. They knew they couldn't charge for it, because they weren't paying anyone to write it, and aren't offering any guarantee that you can trust it. It can be copied and hosted freely by anyone. Wikipedia can do what it likes with your money, except, of course, pay someone to write and maintain a trustworthy encyclopedia. Not by choice, by law.

loeg 5y ago

> You seem to feel that the amount of money they should have is just above what they need to get by. Not at all. The only reason Wikimedia do not have enough money to run Wikipedia in perpetuity is because of Wikimedia's exponential spending growth in non-"Pedia" projects. I would love for them to spin off a Wikipedia-only endowment that funds Wikipedia forever. It would (likely) not need to take any future donations. The level of money Wikimedia take in is far, far in excess of "just what [Wikipedia] need[s] to get by." The problem I have with Wikimedia's fundraising is that it is disingenuous. Wikimedia's gross mismanagement of the donation revenue threatens Wikipedia's long-term viability, which is something donors should probably care about.