3 ms·

What is Wikimedia supposed to do? Only fundraise when they run out of money? That’s a recipe for failure and I quite hope Wikimedia… doesn't. If you donate to W

by dcow 4y ago

What is Wikimedia supposed to do? Only fundraise when they run out of money? That’s a recipe for failure and I quite hope Wikimedia… doesn't. If you donate to Wikimedia you are helping keep them free. The raw size of their endowment doesn't matter, nobody actively spends down their endowment on operating costs because it’s not sustainable. Operating costs come from at most like 3-6% of your endowment. The wording is not manipulative by any stretch of the imagination.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
opportune 4y ago
Wikimedia has plenty of whale donors that aren't making spur of the moment donations based on banner ads. Wikimedia spends plenty of money on things that aren't growing their endowment or operating Wikipedia. I don't think anybody is asking Wikimedia to stop fundraising, just to be less deceptive and less zealous. Especially if the money is going to things like grants to other nonprofits or developing less-familiar parts of wikimedia that donors likely don't care about.
ninth_ant 4y ago
The manipulation is in the lack of distinction between Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Wikipedia requires very little funding, but is also the most popular product of Wikimedia. Read the emails yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_(proposals)&oldid=1108428168#Email_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVilla... They are playing off the public appeal of Wikipedia --- Wikipedia dominates the branding and word usage of the emails. It implies, falsely, that Wikipedia is verging on needing to run ads or run out of funds shorty. It's Wikimedia that needs the funding to stay operational, largely for products that are not Wikipedia. What are Wikimedia supposed to do? They could be honest in their communications, and be more clear what they are raising funds for.
- bawolff 4y ago
  This isn't true. Most of software dev work is still going to wikipedia or stuff that is generic. The other products do not get much love (other than wikidata)
  - akolbe 4y ago
    What do you make of the statement here? https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-ties-to-big-tech https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-t... "The vast majority of Wikimedia’s value to ordinary people – the website we know and use – costs the firm about 30 percent of their $112.5 million operating budget ($33.75 million) to maintain according to Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia."
    - bawolff 4y ago
      I'm not sure what the context of the original quote is. It really all depends on what is meant by "maintain" and how you define things that affect wikipedia. To give a small example, if WMF pays for some swag for an event to promote minority groups to edit wikipedia - that's not what i would call "maintaining" wikipedia, but i also wouldn't say its money not going to wikipedia. Unfortunately, we dont really have a fine grained public breakdown so its hard to really see. Anyways, i'm mostly objecting to the idea that some other wikimedia project is getting more funding than wikipedia. By and large wikipedia is the favourite child and the other projects are ignored (except maybe wikidata, but wikipedia still way outweighs wikidata).
      - akolbe 4y ago
        That is true if by project you mean the wikis online (Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wikispecies and so forth, most of which the public is largely unaware of). I am less sure how much money presently goes on other projects in the conventional sense of the word "project". Guillaume Paumier, Principal Program Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, once said: ------------- And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016." https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/MBLZ5R6SGOWU53CGTEKYOCHVOZ7YY74B/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... ------------- When he's talking about how we would like to have $1 billion a year, that seems to me to indicate that they envision a role for themselves that goes well beyond maintaining a few websites. And most of that money is supposed to come from Wikipedia fundraising ... yet there is not a word about this in the fundraising messages.

by dcow 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

opportune 4y ago

Wikimedia has plenty of whale donors that aren't making spur of the moment donations based on banner ads. Wikimedia spends plenty of money on things that aren't growing their endowment or operating Wikipedia. I don't think anybody is asking Wikimedia to stop fundraising, just to be less deceptive and less zealous. Especially if the money is going to things like grants to other nonprofits or developing less-familiar parts of wikimedia that donors likely don't care about.

ninth_ant 4y ago

The manipulation is in the lack of distinction between Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Wikipedia requires very little funding, but is also the most popular product of Wikimedia. Read the emails yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_(proposals)&oldid=1108428168#Email_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVilla... They are playing off the public appeal of Wikipedia --- Wikipedia dominates the branding and word usage of the emails. It implies, falsely, that Wikipedia is verging on needing to run ads or run out of funds shorty. It's Wikimedia that needs the funding to stay operational, largely for products that are not Wikipedia. What are Wikimedia supposed to do? They could be honest in their communications, and be more clear what they are raising funds for.

bawolff 4y ago
This isn't true. Most of software dev work is still going to wikipedia or stuff that is generic. The other products do not get much love (other than wikidata)
- akolbe 4y ago
  What do you make of the statement here? https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-ties-to-big-tech https://braveneweurope.com/michael-olenick-wikipedias-deep-t... "The vast majority of Wikimedia’s value to ordinary people – the website we know and use – costs the firm about 30 percent of their $112.5 million operating budget ($33.75 million) to maintain according to Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia."
  - bawolff 4y ago
    I'm not sure what the context of the original quote is. It really all depends on what is meant by "maintain" and how you define things that affect wikipedia. To give a small example, if WMF pays for some swag for an event to promote minority groups to edit wikipedia - that's not what i would call "maintaining" wikipedia, but i also wouldn't say its money not going to wikipedia. Unfortunately, we dont really have a fine grained public breakdown so its hard to really see. Anyways, i'm mostly objecting to the idea that some other wikimedia project is getting more funding than wikipedia. By and large wikipedia is the favourite child and the other projects are ignored (except maybe wikidata, but wikipedia still way outweighs wikidata).
    - akolbe 4y ago
      That is true if by project you mean the wikis online (Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wikispecies and so forth, most of which the public is largely unaware of). I am less sure how much money presently goes on other projects in the conventional sense of the word "project". Guillaume Paumier, Principal Program Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, once said: ------------- And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016." https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/MBLZ5R6SGOWU53CGTEKYOCHVOZ7YY74B/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list... ------------- When he's talking about how we would like to have $1 billion a year, that seems to me to indicate that they envision a role for themselves that goes well beyond maintaining a few websites. And most of that money is supposed to come from Wikipedia fundraising ... yet there is not a word about this in the fundraising messages.