37 ms·

Once again so many people are led to think Wikipedia is broke and must be saved

276 points by akolbe 4y ago

akolbe 4y ago
Single-page: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1570072717931552770.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1570072717931552770.html
- avg_dev 4y ago
  Once again, I’m grateful for your message. (I did end up getting my refund. I hope you remember me.) On a completely unrelated note, I was looking at a somewhat complicated Wikipedia page yesterday and noticed a piece of text I would like to edit. It had some stuff (citations and references) I felt I didn’t understand how to edit without being sure I wouldn’t break anything. Is there a good forum or place where I could ask for help with my edit?
  - chordalkeyboard 4y ago
    not that I am aware of; and Wikipedia has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade on a more user-friendly UI with nothing to show for it to date. Which is a good reason to question how well they allocate their hundred million dollar annual revenue.
    - Hayarotle 4y ago
      They're testing out the new UI in the other language Wikipedias. It adds a nice collapsible topic structure to the sidebar and sets a text width limit, but hides the available languages for the article behind a button on the header. This makes it harder to tell whether the article is available in specific languages, and to switch the language. It's a bit unwieldy as of now, as you now have to jump to the top of the page and click the "languages" button just to check if the article is available in your desired language, but they are showing some effort. They plan to make the header sticky and add direct links to the user's most frequently used languages. I just hope a sticky header doesn't take away much of the space dedicated to the page's content. Here's a link to the ideas page discussing the change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#UX_research_and_usability_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos... And a link to a page describing the changes: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme...
      - akolbe 4y ago
        That Village Pump page, incidentally, is also where the poll about the fundraising emails is, a few sections further down.
  - kragen 4y ago
    My advice is: 1. preview changes until the result looks the way you think it should 2. have faith that if you broke something non-obvious, then the WikiGnomes will fix it (and then you can look at the page history and see the change and learn) 3. be bold! If you've never had an edit reverted you aren't contributing enough.
  - akolbe 4y ago
    I do, and glad to hear it. :) To ask questions, a good place to start is the Teahouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse Good luck!
yupper32 4y ago
Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.
- mysterydip 4y ago
  What do they do, though?
- coding123 4y ago
  that's a lot of salary for something that is going broke and needs donations now.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    Is requesting donations better or worse than selling advertising?
    - cool_dude85 4y ago
      Better. The real question is, is this way of soliciting donations better than another way of soliciting donations? Answer to that is not clear.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      How about they start spending their money wisely instead of growing infinitely? That way they can keep Wikipedia up and running for the next decade or so without bothering us with these solicitations.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. It's not, really. It's about how you frame things, and the follow-up tweets touch on that: >You wouldn't think so from the fundraising emails currently being sent out, telling people to donate "to keep Wikipedia online", saying it's "awkward to ask", etc. A recent poll of Wikipedia volunteers condemned these emails as unethical and misleading >If people want to throw money into a bottomless pit, fine; but let's not pretend that the money is needed "to keep Wikipedia online". >And that story is not the story told to prospective donors. Wikipedia and its unpaid volunteers – the people who actually write and curate Wikipedia – deserve better.
orlp 4y ago
With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically, would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap into this money for personal benefit. I can't help but conclude that if you love Wikipedia and what it does... don't give them any more money for the time being.
- tootie 4y ago
  It's completely normal for a successful nonprofit to have an endowment that grows in good years and can be spent when needed. They don't pay dividends or anything like that so it sits in a cash reserve.
- reflexco 4y ago
  The bigger threat to Wikipedia is people who want to corrupt its information content. People wanting to get their treasure chest is not an existential threat. The existing employees and collaborators are more likely to get corrupted by nefarious actors if they don't have independent revenue sources.
  - Kinrany 4y ago
    > People wanting to get their treasure chest is not an existential threat. For the organization, sure. For the content it may very well be.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > if they don't have independent revenue sources. Nobody is saying wikipedia should have zero donations. Just that people piling on extra money should cool it.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    More reason to have fewer employees.
- 4y ago
dbingham 4y ago
This is an extremely misleading take. Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report. They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1] So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue operating and cannot be liquefied to cover operating expenses. In 19-20, they took in $120 million against a $111 million operating budget.[2] [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim... [2]https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/financials/#section-1 https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu... So, yes, Wikipedia is doing well - as we should hope they would be. But no, they are not rolling in it, and yes they do depend on our continued support to continue doing well. Edit: The article linked in the tweet asks valid questions and puts the stats in better context, but the twitter thread presents the numbers in a way that is very, frustratingly, misleading.
- jefftk 4y ago
  They have an "$111 million operating budget", but that's because they've decided to spend money on lots of things other than "serve Wikipedia": https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe... Note that "Direct support to websites" includes things like designing and implementing more intuitive article editing UI, which while potentially worth it isn't the kind of "obviously we must do this" that keeping the site serving is. For example, in 2016 Wikipedia served a similar amount of page views as it does today [1] on an operating budget of about half [2]. Go farther back and my impression is it's much more dramatic, though I'm not finding good page view statistics for, say, 2010. [1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|all|agent~user|monthly https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-pag... [2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat... vs https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY16-17.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...
xwdv 4y ago
The reason Wikipedia is so important is because a project like this could likely never be created again from scratch in our current times. It is a relic from a kinder past, that can still serve for generations to come if we take care of it. It will be a dark day for humanity when Wikipedia shuts down for good. Just donate, they don’t even ask for much. $5 or $10 is enough for your part.
- throaway913249 4y ago
  The issue is not whether Wikipedia is important or not. It is indeed very important, despite it's many faults, and that's exactly why many donate even if they struggle financially. The issue is that in the world we live in every organization has as its primary goal to stay alive and grow - the primary goal of the WMF is to get more money, to pay themselves better. The knowledge curated by volunteers became merely a product they can use to profit from. Not even 5% of their annual expenses are for hosting. It would be entirely possible for them to cap their donations to 50 million, and wikipedia itself would still be the same. But hundreds of people would stop receiving money for what is likely a privileged and secure job that doesn't require lots of effort. A secure bubble to live in and feel good about. Sadly, this is technically parasitic - others are doing the work, and these people leach on both the work of volunteers, and money of donors. The sad truth is that emotionally manipulative messages are essential to the survival and growth of the WMF. It's simply a complacent strategy to get the biggest financial return with the least amount of work. If they published a message that said "This year we need 10 million to survive, everything extra is optional and you don't need to donate if you don't have spare money. No matter what happens, Wikipedia will stay online, because we will always manage to collect enough money to cover the hosting", then many privileged people at the WMF would lose their secure job. And that's why the WMF will NEVER change the strategy, even though they pay lip-service to keep the volunteers in line. If one day they get 500 million per year in donations, their expenses will rise accordingly, to something like 400 million, as putting away 100 million is in their best own interest. What's not in their own interest, though, is respecting the wishes of the volunteers and donors. When we look at it from the outside, we can understand the donation campaigns as the work of a self-serving entity that takes the free knowledge of the world hostage for their own advantage. Now, no one can blame them - in the system we live in, this is the only way how organizations can exist. They always try to survive and grow and sustain itself. The bigger problem is that society hasn't yet figured out how to create structures that don't devolve into money-grabs, but continue to serve the public good. The problem is with the incentives and lack of transparency. A traditional corporation has an incentive to be economical - at least small and middle sized companies do. If you have 10 employees, and one of them has 0% productivity, you have to fire him. WMF has what to them likely feels like an endless money flow based on nothing but a banner. They can use as much money as they receive, and there won't be any negative consequences at all in the short-term. What the WMF calls "expenses" is actually simply the decision to transfer most of the income immediately into the hands of the employees of the WMF. In a world of ads, affiliate links and profit-driven journalism, Wikipedia, despite its faults, is essential, even in the state it's currently in. It should be scrutinized, but be kept in mind that it's still one of the best things that exist on the world wide web.
elil17 4y ago
I'd really like to seem them get an endowment for keeping the servers up and running, then let them fund raise to cover the UI improvements, community grants, and whatever else. I think those are important and useful but it should really be a different pot of money.
- akolbe 4y ago
  They already have an endowment of over $100M: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment Hosting costs them $2.4M a year: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf#page=5 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim... Less than ten years ago, one of their VPs said they could sustain their mission on "$10M+/year": https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124621.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... What he actually said in 2013 was this: "WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The "what's the level required for bare survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity." Total Wikimedia assets (Foundation + Endowment funds at Tides) stood at about $400 million in March 2022.
  - ryan_lane 4y ago
    That particular VP wasn't very good at his job, and at the time he wrote that, the foundation was still considerably understaffed, and simply wasn't keeping up with the needs of any part of the community (readers, editors, volunteer developers). I'm really tired of your argument that hosting costs $2.4m a year. It's disinformation at best, because you're leaving out salaries of the folks who keep it running.
    - 4y ago
koprulusector 4y ago
I don't understand the point of this tweet. Is this a bad thing? If this is a bad thing, why?
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  I think most people would agree that it's a bad thing to mislead people, yes.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  The point is lots of people (including myself until about a year ago) were under the impression that Wikipedia was on the verge of bankruptcy, and would likely either stop existing or be purchased by Microsoft or Google if it wasn't for our donations, so I gave every time they asked. Learning that they are swimming in money makes us seem like we've been fooled.
  - yupper32 4y ago
    Do you just donate to places without looking into their finances and how they spend their money? It's not like wikipedia hides it. It's right on their website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances I tend to only donate to places that seem to spend the money well and efficiently, for example.
    - netsharc 4y ago
      Not OP, but probably a lot of people had faith that if the foundation behind Wikipedia says they need money to keep the servers online, they just believed them without trying to find details behind a "Beware of the Leopard" sign. It'd be similar to if a trusted family member said they needed some help. But guess what, maybe their faith that this organization is misplaced.
    - xboxnolifes 4y ago
      > Do you just donate to places without looking into their finances and how they spend their money? I'd say most people do, yes. Especially when it's something like $10.
verisimilitudes 4y ago
pella 4y ago
OpenStreetMap: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/2021/Treasurer%E2%80%99s_report https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/...
Overtonwindow 4y ago
The Wikimedia foundation has a ton of money, the constant badgering is a bit much. I got turned off by Jimmy Wales early on and swore I’d never give a dime to Wikipedia.
- mcguire 4y ago
  Sounds fine, if you don't use Wikipedia either.
IshKebab 4y ago
Yeah I've looked into this before and it's basically true. They have way more money than they need. They justify it by saying "look at all the outreach projects we do!" but really nobody was asking for those. The people donating don't know they exist. If they had spent wisely they could easily have a $0.5bn endowment by now and basically be self-sustaining without donations. It also feels like a massive waste for one of the few open source organisations that is actually well funded. Where are the technical improvements to Wikipedia? The only thing I remember changing in the last 10 years is the link hover box which is very nice, but is that it?
- Macha 4y ago
  They've built several GUI editors, and a more forum like discussion experience (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Flow/Bac_%C3%A0_sable https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Flow/Bac_%C3%A0...) which the community on larger wikis has pretty forcefully rejected
  - akolbe 4y ago
    Gee, Flow was awful. :) The little "Reply" button they've made now is cool, but as Kunal Mehta (User:Legoktm) pointed out the other day, they knew even then that was all that was required: "Back in 2014, we had a very clear list of how to fix talk pages. Yet the mw:Talk pages project only started in 2019." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-08-01/Election_guide/Candidate_Op-Ed_–_Kunal_Mehta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Which reminds me: 3 of the 6 community candidates shortlisted for the Wikimedia board this year supported election compass statement #5: "WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever." https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Election_Compass/Answers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio...
    - Qub3d 4y ago
      That is a fascinating thing to me - I have noticed that a lot of people arguing that the WMF is out of control and needs to cool it are editors. It really feels like there is a fundamental disconnect between project contributors and the team making decisions at the foundation level. Of course, I expect to some degree that there will be disagreements, and that is why a foundation needs to exist, but the last couple of years its seemed a lot like people are just being stonewalled. Ultimately, the communications gap is by far the most concerning part of it for me, even to the point where I would suggest the donation campaign is a symptom rather than the cause.
bool3max 4y ago
Wikipedia is a very effective medium for reinforcing the spread of false information and as such will never be "broke".
- feoren 4y ago
  If you see false information on Wikipedia, go and correct it!
  - y42 4y ago
    Not gonna work. Has to be re-viewed first.
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    Who's got more time and capacity to play the wiki game, me or the PR firm hired to edit a politician's wiki page?
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      All you have to do is find a bored wikipedia nerd "editor". They will gladly take on the bureaucratic battle to get that PR firm banned from editing wikipedia content. The people who make editing wikipedia their identity have A LOT of time on their hands, and LOVE fixing these kinds of things because it makes wikipedia better, and look better.
      - Akronymus 4y ago
        And A LOT of those people have ideological motivations on their own.
  - jokethrowaway 4y ago
    There is an entire industry of fact checkers and editors highlighting the side of the news their party like and hiding the opposite's viewpoint. Wikipedia's bias is well known. From the page on abortion: > When properly done, induced abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine. Mind you, not too safe for the baby.
user3939382 4y ago
I’ve come to see Wikipedia as the enemy in many cases, where its editorial policies, intentionally or not, result in entrenching corrupt establishment political narratives propagated by the White House, State Dept, corporate media, etc. I remember looking at the vote history where they decided The Greyzone (one of whose journalists was called to testify at the UN on their investigative journalism) wasn’t a “credible source”, the very first vote I checked belonged to a unique username that was used on other sites for an anti-Palestinian think tank academic. For completely uncontroversial topics it’s fine, for everything else you have to read all the dismissed/shut out outsiders complaining on the talk page to get any real sense of the topic. Wikipedia has little legitimacy which is the purpose of an encyclopedia, I’ll never donate $1 to it and if it shut down tomorrow I wouldn’t care.
- r00fus 4y ago
  Is it the case that other encyclopedias handle controversial topics well? If school textbooks are an example, we taught all sorts of historical nonsense as facts that are now completely debunked.
- themitigating 4y ago
  How else should they run the service?
- iudqnolq 4y ago
  A single article by a "reliable source" is enough to include something in a Wikipedia article, because Wikipedia can't do primary research. Grayzone sometimes publishes articles by employees of the Russian government. One of those articles wouldn't be sufficiently reliable on its own, so Grayzone isn't a reliable source for Wikipedia's purposes. A UN committee is equipped to go beyond simply reciting what secondary sources say. It can conduct it's own research, and carefully compare different secondary sources. So it makes sense for them to want to hear from people that sometimes say interesting things but aren't always reliable.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    Greyzone isn’t a reliable source because some Wikipedia editors voted they weren’t. I’m pointing out that the motivations of those participating in that are highly questionable to put it charitably. I don’t know what “employees of the Russian government” you’re talking about (maybe RT articles?) but I’ve watched WaPo and NYT perpetually without criticism or follow up publish White House and State Dept. talking points.
leokennis 4y ago
I might be too simple of a person, but I donate €10 per year to Wikipedia which is nothing. In return, I get immediate access to a veritable wealth of accurate and up to date knowledge on more or less everything. It’s such an amazingly great deal that I honestly think, who the F cares that they could have spent that money in a slightly more optimized way? Who cares that Jimmy Wales drives a BMW instead of a Volkswagen? Who is the loser here? Do we really need to get this level of angry online because an already amazing situation isn’t perfect?
- akolbe 4y ago
  Arguably, Wikipedia is the loser, because you are rewarding a management mindset that thinks manipulating the public for financial gain is okay. Wikipedia is the most widely read reference source on the planet. Wouldn't you rather it was stewarded by an organisation that was honest with the public? There are other losers. This man, guilt-tripped into donating to Wikipedia when all he has is $18 to his name is a loser: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#Shame_on_you_WMF%21_Shame%21 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S... Actually, that sounds wrong. He is a wonderful man, but one that really should not have been put in this invidious position. What about her? https://twitter.com/tizzie/status/1570095249044967424 https://twitter.com/tizzie/status/1570095249044967424 There are other losers still. People in India and South Africa are scared into donating to Wikipedia by emails that raise the spectre of a subscription fee, or of Wikipedia blinking out of existence for lack of funds. There are other charitable causes they could have donated to in their own country, rather than sending money to the US, money that might have saved lives in their own country, rather than added another treat to a US employee's benefits package. Those are some of the "losers".
  - llbeansandrice 4y ago
    > guilt-tripped into donating to Wikipedia when all he has is $18 to his name is a loser: If Wikipedia didn't "guilt-trip" him into it I'm sure some Nigerian prince would have.
    - 4y ago
loeg 4y ago
Obligatory link to "Wikipedia has Cancer:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... with slightly more historical context than a twitter thread.
Eleison23 4y ago
I think there's a disconnect in what people believe is the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. The WMF is an ideologically-driven movement. It is much more than simply a benevolent public service. The WMF has social-justice based goals in the world, and the public-facing Wikipedia projects are simply the friendly face of this movement. They're building an endowment to keep the movement alive, not merely to keep the lights on for their server racks. The most useful thing that a typical user can donate to WMF is their time. So edit a few articles and get involved with the process if you're so inclined. It's volunteer labor, over and above all else, that keeps the projects running. If you're a minor donor then you need to understand that your money goes to support the movement, not simply the service.
- rad88 4y ago
  What are you talking about?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
10g1k 4y ago
Wikipedia is a dumpster fire and should be tossed into a black hole.
- wan_ala 4y ago
throwlejos 4y ago
ever expanding spending for a site that, while big, probably has the same traffic patterns (for mostly static content while at that) year by year, and with no visible software improvements in the past few years (so they are not spending a fortune in developers) leads me to think that it’s just political money being channeled through them.
nomoreusernames 4y ago
tssva 4y ago
Thank you to all those that donate to the Wikimedia Foundation. Your donations help fund my local public schools, fire department, sheriff department, etc through Wikimedia's payment of local property taxes.

276 points by akolbe 4y ago

Single-page: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1570072717931552770.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1570072717931552770.html

avg_dev 4y ago
Once again, I’m grateful for your message. (I did end up getting my refund. I hope you remember me.) On a completely unrelated note, I was looking at a somewhat complicated Wikipedia page yesterday and noticed a piece of text I would like to edit. It had some stuff (citations and references) I felt I didn’t understand how to edit without being sure I wouldn’t break anything. Is there a good forum or place where I could ask for help with my edit?
- chordalkeyboard 4y ago
  not that I am aware of; and Wikipedia has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade on a more user-friendly UI with nothing to show for it to date. Which is a good reason to question how well they allocate their hundred million dollar annual revenue.
  - Hayarotle 4y ago
    They're testing out the new UI in the other language Wikipedias. It adds a nice collapsible topic structure to the sidebar and sets a text width limit, but hides the available languages for the article behind a button on the header. This makes it harder to tell whether the article is available in specific languages, and to switch the language. It's a bit unwieldy as of now, as you now have to jump to the top of the page and click the "languages" button just to check if the article is available in your desired language, but they are showing some effort. They plan to make the header sticky and add direct links to the user's most frequently used languages. I just hope a sticky header doesn't take away much of the space dedicated to the page's content. Here's a link to the ideas page discussing the change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#UX_research_and_usability_testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos... And a link to a page describing the changes: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme...
    - akolbe 4y ago
      That Village Pump page, incidentally, is also where the poll about the fundraising emails is, a few sections further down.
- kragen 4y ago
  My advice is: 1. preview changes until the result looks the way you think it should 2. have faith that if you broke something non-obvious, then the WikiGnomes will fix it (and then you can look at the page history and see the change and learn) 3. be bold! If you've never had an edit reverted you aren't contributing enough.
- akolbe 4y ago
  I do, and glad to hear it. :) To ask questions, a good place to start is the Teahouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse Good luck!

yupper32 4y ago

Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. That seems low for an executive at one of the most important (or at least, most viewed) websites on the planet.

mysterydip 4y ago
What do they do, though?
coding123 4y ago
that's a lot of salary for something that is going broke and needs donations now.
- mcguire 4y ago
  Is requesting donations better or worse than selling advertising?
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    Better. The real question is, is this way of soliciting donations better than another way of soliciting donations? Answer to that is not clear.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    How about they start spending their money wisely instead of growing infinitely? That way they can keep Wikipedia up and running for the next decade or so without bothering us with these solicitations.
jjulius 4y ago
>Sure but pointing out $350k executive salaries as somehow lavish is strange. It's not, really. It's about how you frame things, and the follow-up tweets touch on that: >You wouldn't think so from the fundraising emails currently being sent out, telling people to donate "to keep Wikipedia online", saying it's "awkward to ask", etc. A recent poll of Wikipedia volunteers condemned these emails as unethical and misleading >If people want to throw money into a bottomless pit, fine; but let's not pretend that the money is needed "to keep Wikipedia online". >And that story is not the story told to prospective donors. Wikipedia and its unpaid volunteers – the people who actually write and curate Wikipedia – deserve better.

orlp 4y ago

With the financial situation being how it is I, paradoxically, would currently consider donating to Wikipedia to be actively harmful to the future of Wikipedia. The larger its dragon hoard of money grows (which is already way beyond any sort of costs to keep up Wikipedia for decades), the larger the incentive for unscrupulous individuals to corrupt the Wikipedia mission to tap into this money for personal benefit. I can't help but conclude that if you love Wikipedia and what it does... don't give them any more money for the time being.

tootie 4y ago
It's completely normal for a successful nonprofit to have an endowment that grows in good years and can be spent when needed. They don't pay dividends or anything like that so it sits in a cash reserve.
reflexco 4y ago
The bigger threat to Wikipedia is people who want to corrupt its information content. People wanting to get their treasure chest is not an existential threat. The existing employees and collaborators are more likely to get corrupted by nefarious actors if they don't have independent revenue sources.
- Kinrany 4y ago
  > People wanting to get their treasure chest is not an existential threat. For the organization, sure. For the content it may very well be.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > if they don't have independent revenue sources. Nobody is saying wikipedia should have zero donations. Just that people piling on extra money should cool it.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  More reason to have fewer employees.
4y ago

dbingham 4y ago

This is an extremely misleading take. Wikipedia had a really good year in 20-21, their most recent financial report. They took in $162 million, against an $111 million operating budget, and came out of the year with $240 million in assets.[1] So they had about half a year's surplus, and wound up with ~2 years worth of savings. And yes, that's a simplification, a good chunk of those assets are necessary to continue operating and cannot be liquefied to cover operating expenses. In 19-20, they took in $120 million against a $111 million operating budget.[2] [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim... [2]https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/financials/#section-1 https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu... So, yes, Wikipedia is doing well - as we should hope they would be. But no, they are not rolling in it, and yes they do depend on our continued support to continue doing well. Edit: The article linked in the tweet asks valid questions and puts the stats in better context, but the twitter thread presents the numbers in a way that is very, frustratingly, misleading.

jefftk 4y ago
They have an "$111 million operating budget", but that's because they've decided to spend money on lots of things other than "serve Wikipedia": https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goes/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe... Note that "Direct support to websites" includes things like designing and implementing more intuitive article editing UI, which while potentially worth it isn't the kind of "obviously we must do this" that keeping the site serving is. For example, in 2016 Wikipedia served a similar amount of page views as it does today [1] on an operating budget of about half [2]. Go farther back and my impression is it's much more dramatic, though I'm not finding good page view statistics for, say, 2010. [1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-page-views/normal|bar|all|agent~user|monthly https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-projects/reading/total-pag... [2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat... vs https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY16-17.pdf https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundat...

xwdv 4y ago

The reason Wikipedia is so important is because a project like this could likely never be created again from scratch in our current times. It is a relic from a kinder past, that can still serve for generations to come if we take care of it. It will be a dark day for humanity when Wikipedia shuts down for good. Just donate, they don’t even ask for much. $5 or $10 is enough for your part.

throaway913249 4y ago
The issue is not whether Wikipedia is important or not. It is indeed very important, despite it's many faults, and that's exactly why many donate even if they struggle financially. The issue is that in the world we live in every organization has as its primary goal to stay alive and grow - the primary goal of the WMF is to get more money, to pay themselves better. The knowledge curated by volunteers became merely a product they can use to profit from. Not even 5% of their annual expenses are for hosting. It would be entirely possible for them to cap their donations to 50 million, and wikipedia itself would still be the same. But hundreds of people would stop receiving money for what is likely a privileged and secure job that doesn't require lots of effort. A secure bubble to live in and feel good about. Sadly, this is technically parasitic - others are doing the work, and these people leach on both the work of volunteers, and money of donors. The sad truth is that emotionally manipulative messages are essential to the survival and growth of the WMF. It's simply a complacent strategy to get the biggest financial return with the least amount of work. If they published a message that said "This year we need 10 million to survive, everything extra is optional and you don't need to donate if you don't have spare money. No matter what happens, Wikipedia will stay online, because we will always manage to collect enough money to cover the hosting", then many privileged people at the WMF would lose their secure job. And that's why the WMF will NEVER change the strategy, even though they pay lip-service to keep the volunteers in line. If one day they get 500 million per year in donations, their expenses will rise accordingly, to something like 400 million, as putting away 100 million is in their best own interest. What's not in their own interest, though, is respecting the wishes of the volunteers and donors. When we look at it from the outside, we can understand the donation campaigns as the work of a self-serving entity that takes the free knowledge of the world hostage for their own advantage. Now, no one can blame them - in the system we live in, this is the only way how organizations can exist. They always try to survive and grow and sustain itself. The bigger problem is that society hasn't yet figured out how to create structures that don't devolve into money-grabs, but continue to serve the public good. The problem is with the incentives and lack of transparency. A traditional corporation has an incentive to be economical - at least small and middle sized companies do. If you have 10 employees, and one of them has 0% productivity, you have to fire him. WMF has what to them likely feels like an endless money flow based on nothing but a banner. They can use as much money as they receive, and there won't be any negative consequences at all in the short-term. What the WMF calls "expenses" is actually simply the decision to transfer most of the income immediately into the hands of the employees of the WMF. In a world of ads, affiliate links and profit-driven journalism, Wikipedia, despite its faults, is essential, even in the state it's currently in. It should be scrutinized, but be kept in mind that it's still one of the best things that exist on the world wide web.

elil17 4y ago

I'd really like to seem them get an endowment for keeping the servers up and running, then let them fund raise to cover the UI improvements, community grants, and whatever else. I think those are important and useful but it should really be a different pot of money.

akolbe 4y ago
They already have an endowment of over $100M: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment Hosting costs them $2.4M a year: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2020-2021_Audit_Report.pdf#page=5 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim... Less than ten years ago, one of their VPs said they could sustain their mission on "$10M+/year": https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March/124621.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... What he actually said in 2013 was this: "WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The "what's the level required for bare survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity." Total Wikimedia assets (Foundation + Endowment funds at Tides) stood at about $400 million in March 2022.
- ryan_lane 4y ago
  That particular VP wasn't very good at his job, and at the time he wrote that, the foundation was still considerably understaffed, and simply wasn't keeping up with the needs of any part of the community (readers, editors, volunteer developers). I'm really tired of your argument that hosting costs $2.4m a year. It's disinformation at best, because you're leaving out salaries of the folks who keep it running.
  - 4y ago

koprulusector 4y ago

I don't understand the point of this tweet. Is this a bad thing? If this is a bad thing, why?

TulliusCicero 4y ago
I think most people would agree that it's a bad thing to mislead people, yes.
jhbadger 4y ago
The point is lots of people (including myself until about a year ago) were under the impression that Wikipedia was on the verge of bankruptcy, and would likely either stop existing or be purchased by Microsoft or Google if it wasn't for our donations, so I gave every time they asked. Learning that they are swimming in money makes us seem like we've been fooled.
- yupper32 4y ago
  Do you just donate to places without looking into their finances and how they spend their money? It's not like wikipedia hides it. It's right on their website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances I tend to only donate to places that seem to spend the money well and efficiently, for example.
  - netsharc 4y ago
    Not OP, but probably a lot of people had faith that if the foundation behind Wikipedia says they need money to keep the servers online, they just believed them without trying to find details behind a "Beware of the Leopard" sign. It'd be similar to if a trusted family member said they needed some help. But guess what, maybe their faith that this organization is misplaced.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    > Do you just donate to places without looking into their finances and how they spend their money? I'd say most people do, yes. Especially when it's something like $10.

verisimilitudes 4y ago

pella 4y ago

OpenStreetMap: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/2021/Treasurer%E2%80%99s_report https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/...

Overtonwindow 4y ago

The Wikimedia foundation has a ton of money, the constant badgering is a bit much. I got turned off by Jimmy Wales early on and swore I’d never give a dime to Wikipedia.

mcguire 4y ago
Sounds fine, if you don't use Wikipedia either.

IshKebab 4y ago

Yeah I've looked into this before and it's basically true. They have way more money than they need. They justify it by saying "look at all the outreach projects we do!" but really nobody was asking for those. The people donating don't know they exist. If they had spent wisely they could easily have a $0.5bn endowment by now and basically be self-sustaining without donations. It also feels like a massive waste for one of the few open source organisations that is actually well funded. Where are the technical improvements to Wikipedia? The only thing I remember changing in the last 10 years is the link hover box which is very nice, but is that it?

Macha 4y ago
They've built several GUI editors, and a more forum like discussion experience (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Flow/Bac_%C3%A0_sable https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Flow/Bac_%C3%A0...) which the community on larger wikis has pretty forcefully rejected
- akolbe 4y ago
  Gee, Flow was awful. :) The little "Reply" button they've made now is cool, but as Kunal Mehta (User:Legoktm) pointed out the other day, they knew even then that was all that was required: "Back in 2014, we had a very clear list of how to fix talk pages. Yet the mw:Talk pages project only started in 2019." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-08-01/Election_guide/Candidate_Op-Ed_–_Kunal_Mehta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Which reminds me: 3 of the 6 community candidates shortlisted for the Wikimedia board this year supported election compass statement #5: "WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever." https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Election_Compass/Answers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio...
  - Qub3d 4y ago
    That is a fascinating thing to me - I have noticed that a lot of people arguing that the WMF is out of control and needs to cool it are editors. It really feels like there is a fundamental disconnect between project contributors and the team making decisions at the foundation level. Of course, I expect to some degree that there will be disagreements, and that is why a foundation needs to exist, but the last couple of years its seemed a lot like people are just being stonewalled. Ultimately, the communications gap is by far the most concerning part of it for me, even to the point where I would suggest the donation campaign is a symptom rather than the cause.

bool3max 4y ago

Wikipedia is a very effective medium for reinforcing the spread of false information and as such will never be "broke".

feoren 4y ago
If you see false information on Wikipedia, go and correct it!
- y42 4y ago
  Not gonna work. Has to be re-viewed first.
- cool_dude85 4y ago
  Who's got more time and capacity to play the wiki game, me or the PR firm hired to edit a politician's wiki page?
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    All you have to do is find a bored wikipedia nerd "editor". They will gladly take on the bureaucratic battle to get that PR firm banned from editing wikipedia content. The people who make editing wikipedia their identity have A LOT of time on their hands, and LOVE fixing these kinds of things because it makes wikipedia better, and look better.
    - Akronymus 4y ago
      And A LOT of those people have ideological motivations on their own.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  There is an entire industry of fact checkers and editors highlighting the side of the news their party like and hiding the opposite's viewpoint. Wikipedia's bias is well known. From the page on abortion: > When properly done, induced abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine. Mind you, not too safe for the baby.

user3939382 4y ago

I’ve come to see Wikipedia as the enemy in many cases, where its editorial policies, intentionally or not, result in entrenching corrupt establishment political narratives propagated by the White House, State Dept, corporate media, etc. I remember looking at the vote history where they decided The Greyzone (one of whose journalists was called to testify at the UN on their investigative journalism) wasn’t a “credible source”, the very first vote I checked belonged to a unique username that was used on other sites for an anti-Palestinian think tank academic. For completely uncontroversial topics it’s fine, for everything else you have to read all the dismissed/shut out outsiders complaining on the talk page to get any real sense of the topic. Wikipedia has little legitimacy which is the purpose of an encyclopedia, I’ll never donate $1 to it and if it shut down tomorrow I wouldn’t care.

r00fus 4y ago
Is it the case that other encyclopedias handle controversial topics well? If school textbooks are an example, we taught all sorts of historical nonsense as facts that are now completely debunked.
themitigating 4y ago
How else should they run the service?
iudqnolq 4y ago
A single article by a "reliable source" is enough to include something in a Wikipedia article, because Wikipedia can't do primary research. Grayzone sometimes publishes articles by employees of the Russian government. One of those articles wouldn't be sufficiently reliable on its own, so Grayzone isn't a reliable source for Wikipedia's purposes. A UN committee is equipped to go beyond simply reciting what secondary sources say. It can conduct it's own research, and carefully compare different secondary sources. So it makes sense for them to want to hear from people that sometimes say interesting things but aren't always reliable.
- user3939382 4y ago
  Greyzone isn’t a reliable source because some Wikipedia editors voted they weren’t. I’m pointing out that the motivations of those participating in that are highly questionable to put it charitably. I don’t know what “employees of the Russian government” you’re talking about (maybe RT articles?) but I’ve watched WaPo and NYT perpetually without criticism or follow up publish White House and State Dept. talking points.

leokennis 4y ago

I might be too simple of a person, but I donate €10 per year to Wikipedia which is nothing. In return, I get immediate access to a veritable wealth of accurate and up to date knowledge on more or less everything. It’s such an amazingly great deal that I honestly think, who the F cares that they could have spent that money in a slightly more optimized way? Who cares that Jimmy Wales drives a BMW instead of a Volkswagen? Who is the loser here? Do we really need to get this level of angry online because an already amazing situation isn’t perfect?

akolbe 4y ago
Arguably, Wikipedia is the loser, because you are rewarding a management mindset that thinks manipulating the public for financial gain is okay. Wikipedia is the most widely read reference source on the planet. Wouldn't you rather it was stewarded by an organisation that was honest with the public? There are other losers. This man, guilt-tripped into donating to Wikipedia when all he has is $18 to his name is a loser: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#Shame_on_you_WMF%21_Shame%21 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising/Archive_6#S... Actually, that sounds wrong. He is a wonderful man, but one that really should not have been put in this invidious position. What about her? https://twitter.com/tizzie/status/1570095249044967424 https://twitter.com/tizzie/status/1570095249044967424 There are other losers still. People in India and South Africa are scared into donating to Wikipedia by emails that raise the spectre of a subscription fee, or of Wikipedia blinking out of existence for lack of funds. There are other charitable causes they could have donated to in their own country, rather than sending money to the US, money that might have saved lives in their own country, rather than added another treat to a US employee's benefits package. Those are some of the "losers".
- llbeansandrice 4y ago
  > guilt-tripped into donating to Wikipedia when all he has is $18 to his name is a loser: If Wikipedia didn't "guilt-trip" him into it I'm sure some Nigerian prince would have.
  - 4y ago

loeg 4y ago

Obligatory link to "Wikipedia has Cancer:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... with slightly more historical context than a twitter thread.

Eleison23 4y ago

I think there's a disconnect in what people believe is the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. The WMF is an ideologically-driven movement. It is much more than simply a benevolent public service. The WMF has social-justice based goals in the world, and the public-facing Wikipedia projects are simply the friendly face of this movement. They're building an endowment to keep the movement alive, not merely to keep the lights on for their server racks. The most useful thing that a typical user can donate to WMF is their time. So edit a few articles and get involved with the process if you're so inclined. It's volunteer labor, over and above all else, that keeps the projects running. If you're a minor donor then you need to understand that your money goes to support the movement, not simply the service.

rad88 4y ago
What are you talking about?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

10g1k 4y ago

Wikipedia is a dumpster fire and should be tossed into a black hole.

wan_ala 4y ago

throwlejos 4y ago

ever expanding spending for a site that, while big, probably has the same traffic patterns (for mostly static content while at that) year by year, and with no visible software improvements in the past few years (so they are not spending a fortune in developers) leads me to think that it’s just political money being channeled through them.

nomoreusernames 4y ago

tssva 4y ago

Thank you to all those that donate to the Wikimedia Foundation. Your donations help fund my local public schools, fire department, sheriff department, etc through Wikimedia's payment of local property taxes.