6 ms·

You bet he should! To me, there are 3 projects I'd throw my money to: - uBlock Origin - ytdl - The Internet Web Archive

by baal80spam 4y ago

cptaj 4y ago
Not wikipedia? It seems way more important
- von_lohengramm 4y ago
  Have you seen how much money they receive and where they squander it all?
  - sbarre 4y ago
    Can you share more information on this?
    - icelancer 4y ago
      There are fast-growing sections of their budget slated for political-like causes, not technical ones that keep the website online and accessible. They call it the Thriving Movement and it's largely based around DEI-type initiatives. "The Thriving Movement budget has increased from $14.3 million last fiscal year to $36.7 million in this budget which represents an increase of $22.4 million or 157%. It has also grown from being 13.2% of the Foundation’s overall budget to 24.5%." Not only is more money going into it, a larger share of their budget is being allocated to it, so a larger share of each donation goes into DEI initiatives. If you're the kind of person that does not think this is a valuable investment of your money, you might not be inclined to donate anymore (or to donate less than before). I personally believe a 24.5% share of the budget for what are largely DEI initiatives is not something I'd prefer to support with increasing donations, so I have scaled back my donations to them (as well as Mozilla/Firefox for the same reasons). I am sure many people agree with DEI initiatives and donate more. That's fine. We all vote with our wallet. Source: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/Annual_Plan_2021-2022 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...
      - capableweb 4y ago
        As someone who never heard of "Thriving Movement" nor "DEI-type initiaives" before, it seems to be around making the workplace (Wikimedia Foundation) more diverse, equal and inclusive. At a glance, those seems like good things to introduce to global organizations (especially foundations) that is supposed to be represented by the whole world. But I can agree that it seems like a large part of the budget, for being what it is. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, you're saying it's a negative for them to put such a focus on it?
        icelancer 4y ago
        I'm not morally judging them. If they think it's a good idea, good for them. I'm just not interested in funding those initiatives at that percentage of budget and would rather send the money to other essential Internet companies who have lesser investments in those ideas. I still give some to Wikimedia, just not as much.
        capableweb 4y ago
        Thank you for explaining your position! Which internet companies do you currently donate to that also publishes exactly what they spend their money on, so you can make sure they don't spend similar amount on similar initiatives? In my experience, the Wikimedia Foundation seems to be the one who is most transparent about where funds go, while organizations like Internet Archive doesn't make a lot of data public, at least via their own website.
        icelancer 4y ago
        Wikimedia is not unique. CharityWatch is a good place to start. Many high-rated nonprofits detail very specifically where all funding goes. https://www.charitywatch.org/ https://www.charitywatch.org/ Also, Wikimedia may not be as transparent as you think. Here's more information on that, but the whole thread is worth reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32841892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32841892
    - vuln 4y ago
      This is an interesting article and comment thread on wiki and their funds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32840097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32840097
- SteeCee 4y ago
  If you've ever seen how topics are treated in a Wikipedia discussion thread you'd feel like the whole website has zero credibility. There's a reason academics don't let you use it.
  - longtimelistnr 4y ago
    The reason is that it is not a direct source of course because the authors cannot be validated. Never met a college professor that said don’t use Wikipedia (if anything it was encouraged) as long as you’re pulling from the citations. I had plenty of high school teachers talk about how awful it is though and I think it was because they just didn’t understand it
    - comfypotato 4y ago
      I'll take this a step further to say that my graduate algorithms professor assigned Wikipedia articles as reading. The parent blanket statements are just that: overgeneralizations.
      - fedorareis 4y ago
        I had a similar experience. My cryptography professor regularly linked to Wikipedia articles in his assignments as the reading to go with the assignment. Honestly, the last time I had a teacher really say something against using Wikipedia was in high school.
      - thayne 4y ago
        My undergrad physics professors didn't exactly assign wikipedia articles, but they did tell us that some articles were useful resources for understanding certain topics. In my experience, the more technical a topic, the more likely the wikipedia article is to be reliable. Probably because there isn't much incentive for someone who isn't an expert to edit it.
radlad 4y ago
SponsorBlock is on my list these days too.
- behnamoh 4y ago
  + Clickbait Remover for YT (removes the eye-catching thumbnails) + Dark Reader
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
runjake 4y ago
But, do you donate? https://archive.org/donate?origin=wbwww-TopNavDonateButton https://archive.org/donate?origin=wbwww-TopNavDonateButton (Couldn't find links for uBo and ytdl. I've asked gorhill where to donate in the past and they've refused donations.)
- account42 4y ago
  I donated before but then they spammed me with nag-mails asking for more donations. Not going to support that kind of behavior.
- jchw 4y ago
  Note that you cannot manage your recurring IA donation for any reason without manually contacting them. For this reason I have not moved my IA donation to my newer credit card nor increased my donation since it was set up. I do not know if this is a dark pattern or just an oddly limited system, but the only officially recommended solution is to use PayPal. So I'd recommend that. https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-update-or-change-my-recurring-gift-payment-information/ https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-update-or-change-my-r...
  - tibbon 4y ago
    I've worked on several large recurring payments platforms. It isn't rocket science, but let me tell you it is generally a pain in the ass to to manage recurring payments - in most of the systems I've worked in its easiest to just cancel and start a new one. The schemas are generally awful and make a lot of assumptions in the worst of ways. I wouldn't be shocked if the IA just finds it easier to manage manually than put in the large amounts of money for a refactor. One org I was with it took a Staff engineer nearly two years to rework the very odd weekly recurring feature to make it something that would be later made into something you could edit (of note, it was entirely separate in logic than the monthly recurring...)
    - jchw 4y ago
      I've worked on several platforms with recurring billing, including a marketplace prior to Stripe Connect existing, so I get that it can be pretty challenging. That said: - IA doesn't even offer cancelling. That's... not a particularly technically challenging feature. I have a strong feeling that they in fact have a cancel button somewhere in their backend anyways. - While some of this can be annoying, it's kinda table stakes these days. If you can't handle basic subscription functionality, god help you for things like 3-D Secure.
ehsankia 4y ago
OBS for me. VLC also.
agumonkey 4y ago
My top 3 too

You bet he should! To me, there are 3 projects I'd throw my money to: - uBlock Origin - ytdl - The Internet Web Archive

cptaj 4y ago

Not wikipedia? It seems way more important

von_lohengramm 4y ago
Have you seen how much money they receive and where they squander it all?
- sbarre 4y ago
  Can you share more information on this?
  - icelancer 4y ago
    There are fast-growing sections of their budget slated for political-like causes, not technical ones that keep the website online and accessible. They call it the Thriving Movement and it's largely based around DEI-type initiatives. "The Thriving Movement budget has increased from $14.3 million last fiscal year to $36.7 million in this budget which represents an increase of $22.4 million or 157%. It has also grown from being 13.2% of the Foundation’s overall budget to 24.5%." Not only is more money going into it, a larger share of their budget is being allocated to it, so a larger share of each donation goes into DEI initiatives. If you're the kind of person that does not think this is a valuable investment of your money, you might not be inclined to donate anymore (or to donate less than before). I personally believe a 24.5% share of the budget for what are largely DEI initiatives is not something I'd prefer to support with increasing donations, so I have scaled back my donations to them (as well as Mozilla/Firefox for the same reasons). I am sure many people agree with DEI initiatives and donate more. That's fine. We all vote with our wallet. Source: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/Annual_Plan_2021-2022 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...
    - capableweb 4y ago
      As someone who never heard of "Thriving Movement" nor "DEI-type initiaives" before, it seems to be around making the workplace (Wikimedia Foundation) more diverse, equal and inclusive. At a glance, those seems like good things to introduce to global organizations (especially foundations) that is supposed to be represented by the whole world. But I can agree that it seems like a large part of the budget, for being what it is. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, you're saying it's a negative for them to put such a focus on it?
      - icelancer 4y ago
        I'm not morally judging them. If they think it's a good idea, good for them. I'm just not interested in funding those initiatives at that percentage of budget and would rather send the money to other essential Internet companies who have lesser investments in those ideas. I still give some to Wikimedia, just not as much.
        capableweb 4y ago
        Thank you for explaining your position! Which internet companies do you currently donate to that also publishes exactly what they spend their money on, so you can make sure they don't spend similar amount on similar initiatives? In my experience, the Wikimedia Foundation seems to be the one who is most transparent about where funds go, while organizations like Internet Archive doesn't make a lot of data public, at least via their own website.
        icelancer 4y ago
        Wikimedia is not unique. CharityWatch is a good place to start. Many high-rated nonprofits detail very specifically where all funding goes. https://www.charitywatch.org/ https://www.charitywatch.org/ Also, Wikimedia may not be as transparent as you think. Here's more information on that, but the whole thread is worth reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32841892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32841892
  - vuln 4y ago
    This is an interesting article and comment thread on wiki and their funds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32840097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32840097
SteeCee 4y ago
If you've ever seen how topics are treated in a Wikipedia discussion thread you'd feel like the whole website has zero credibility. There's a reason academics don't let you use it.
- longtimelistnr 4y ago
  The reason is that it is not a direct source of course because the authors cannot be validated. Never met a college professor that said don’t use Wikipedia (if anything it was encouraged) as long as you’re pulling from the citations. I had plenty of high school teachers talk about how awful it is though and I think it was because they just didn’t understand it
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    I'll take this a step further to say that my graduate algorithms professor assigned Wikipedia articles as reading. The parent blanket statements are just that: overgeneralizations.
    - fedorareis 4y ago
      I had a similar experience. My cryptography professor regularly linked to Wikipedia articles in his assignments as the reading to go with the assignment. Honestly, the last time I had a teacher really say something against using Wikipedia was in high school.
    - thayne 4y ago
      My undergrad physics professors didn't exactly assign wikipedia articles, but they did tell us that some articles were useful resources for understanding certain topics. In my experience, the more technical a topic, the more likely the wikipedia article is to be reliable. Probably because there isn't much incentive for someone who isn't an expert to edit it.

radlad 4y ago

SponsorBlock is on my list these days too.

behnamoh 4y ago
+ Clickbait Remover for YT (removes the eye-catching thumbnails) + Dark Reader
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

runjake 4y ago

But, do you donate? https://archive.org/donate?origin=wbwww-TopNavDonateButton https://archive.org/donate?origin=wbwww-TopNavDonateButton (Couldn't find links for uBo and ytdl. I've asked gorhill where to donate in the past and they've refused donations.)

account42 4y ago
I donated before but then they spammed me with nag-mails asking for more donations. Not going to support that kind of behavior.
jchw 4y ago
Note that you cannot manage your recurring IA donation for any reason without manually contacting them. For this reason I have not moved my IA donation to my newer credit card nor increased my donation since it was set up. I do not know if this is a dark pattern or just an oddly limited system, but the only officially recommended solution is to use PayPal. So I'd recommend that. https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-update-or-change-my-recurring-gift-payment-information/ https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-update-or-change-my-r...
- tibbon 4y ago
  I've worked on several large recurring payments platforms. It isn't rocket science, but let me tell you it is generally a pain in the ass to to manage recurring payments - in most of the systems I've worked in its easiest to just cancel and start a new one. The schemas are generally awful and make a lot of assumptions in the worst of ways. I wouldn't be shocked if the IA just finds it easier to manage manually than put in the large amounts of money for a refactor. One org I was with it took a Staff engineer nearly two years to rework the very odd weekly recurring feature to make it something that would be later made into something you could edit (of note, it was entirely separate in logic than the monthly recurring...)
  - jchw 4y ago
    I've worked on several platforms with recurring billing, including a marketplace prior to Stripe Connect existing, so I get that it can be pretty challenging. That said: - IA doesn't even offer cancelling. That's... not a particularly technically challenging feature. I have a strong feeling that they in fact have a cancel button somewhere in their backend anyways. - While some of this can be annoying, it's kinda table stakes these days. If you can't handle basic subscription functionality, god help you for things like 3-D Secure.

ehsankia 4y ago

OBS for me. VLC also.

agumonkey 4y ago

My top 3 too