5 ms·

How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"? What does "pushing woke politics" mean? Why is the cost of web ho

by qwery 4y ago

How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"? What does "pushing woke politics" mean? Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting? Which political extremists have taken over? What is ruined?

nnopepe 4y ago
>What does "pushing woke politics" mean? Pushing for global use of the US's anachronistic racial science over more nuanced alternatives such as ethnicity/nationality
- acdha 4y ago
  Could you provide some examples? Be specific about the parts which you think are scientifically relevant.
  - boppo1 4y ago
    Well, if I'm reading this all correctly, there's no audit-trail for those funds. So, no we can't provide examples.
    - Goronmon 4y ago
      That can't be true though. OP knows they are pushing woke policies, so that information is out there.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - acdha 4y ago
      The person I was replying to made a bunch of allegations which had to be based on something, right? If you’re going to attack them for something they did there has to be some kind of specific event you could point to.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
commitpizza 4y ago
> How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"? In their donations campaigns, they make it sound like most of the donations go to fund the site while it's almost less than 2%. If they were to employ cheaper developers not working in the city centre of SF and stuck with the pure operational costs (Wikipedia is driven by people working for free for the most part anyway) it would be significally less than it is today. Even if they change nothing how the site is developed and the actual engineering costs, the funding pages are still dishonest since most of the funding does not go to Wikipedia itself. > What does "pushing woke politics" mean? They give money, a lot of it, more than double than the operational costs to highly controversial funds that are politically driven and does not lean on anything else. Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas and therefore are pushing politics. > Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting? Because they make it sound like this is the main reason that they need additional funding when they ask for it on their webpage. It is what they claim (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fex9854WIAIHSun?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fex9854WIAIHSun?format=jpg&name=...) they need in order to operate the site. If they strictly just used the funding to operate the site they could do so for many years to come. > What is ruined? The sense of having an actual free community that governs factual information for free for everyone. A site where everyone can rejoice over and take pride in the common knowledge of humanity and the accessability that it provides for people in countries that can't easily get this information otherwise. This is slowly being ruined by people, like I assume yourself, that are so blinded by the current political agendas that they cannot see the damage they're inflicting on the community. I understand that people always have had different political agendas but you used to be able to talk to people on the other side of the spectrum and accept basic physical facts about the world. Now it seems like we've thrown everything out of the window. People can't even get along over well established scientific facts and this is true for extremists on all sides. It is hard to trust a source of information if you know the people that controls the information are political extremists. I would want to live in a world where I can trust that the articles on Wikipedia is as objective as can be.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas They fund specific agendas. I suspect you are from the USA, have never come across groups with extreme leftwing views, and have confused touchy-feely leftish liberalism with "extreme left wing". Certainly they are using the funds to discreetly push a political agenda; I think they shouldn't do that. I think they should invest the capital, and run Wikipedia on the investment income. That's what you do with an endowment; you don't launch a search for ways to give all the money away.
moralestapia 4y ago
>Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Err ... Wikipedia is a website, come on.
- qwery 4y ago
  Yes, and seeing the total cost of running a website being significantly greater than the cost of the web hosting seems perfectly reasonable.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    Sure, but they’re spending money on things that have nothing to do with running the website.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      And the banner ads always make it sound like the server might grind to a halt any minute.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        This is the key - and it's the failure mode of all political/charity begging across decades and decades. "We want money to do the things we want to do" doesn't get as much reaction as "holy shit the servers will die tomorrow because you fucks don't ever donate and just suck the sweet sweet wikitit of knowledge". It's obviously manipulative and at some point it crosses a boundary into immoral. You could add a "My donation is necessary to keep the Wikipedia servers online next year" yes/no question to the donation page and I bet you'd get something high like 80%+ picking yes, because of how the appeals are written.
x-complexity 4y ago
> How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"? As noted in their own 2020 report: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf&page=5 https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWi... Only 2.4 of the 112.4 million spent was actually on maintaining the servers themselves. The rest were spent on salaries (55.6 million (!!)), grants (22.8 million (!, why?)), & "Professional services" (11.67 million (again, why?)). > What does "pushing woke politics" mean? From what I can gather, it's the promotion of leftist talking points that relegates objectivism & personal liberty in favor of any form of rebalancing, be it racial, political, economical, social, gender-based, or sexual. My problem with this is that its mainly a phenomenon that's isolated to western countries, with Asian & Middle-eastern countries seemingly skirting by with LGBT+ arrests & atrocities without any major recompense. > Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting? This is mainly because Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running", when their own reports make it clear that a lot of the donated funds have been sucked up by the foundation's own internal mechanisms. > Which political extremists have taken over? Mainly left-oriented extremists, with the organizations listed from here onwards being examples that were funded by the foundation. https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579779097278181378 https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579779097278181378 > What is ruined? For one: Wikipedia's neutral reputation. Wikipedia was supposed to be a place where consensus could be reached without falling into the trappings of personal or political bias. Instead, the foundation is now seeking to reduce its own transparency by ceasing the publications of its quarterly reviews: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-10-31/News_and_notes#:~:text=Wikimedia%20Foundation%20stops%20publication%20of%20its%20quarterly%20%22tuning%20sessions%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic.
- qwery 4y ago
  > Only 2.4 of the 112.4 million spent was actually on maintaining the servers themselves. ... why? You seem to be arguing that anything other than strictly server maintenance is wrong, immoral or unnecessary. I'm not sure why that would be the case. I think people may be focusing on these high-level figures a bit too much. The Wikimedia website has other information about what it is they are actually doing. > Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running" Fair enough, I can imagine how that could be an issue. As one opposed to such manipulations in general, a critique of the sort of messaging being used is something that I would welcome. > Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic. Thanks, I didn't know that term before. I used a string of blunt questions formatted in that way to be as clear as possible, and because it mirrored the form of the OP's comment.

by qwery 4y ago

nnopepe 4y ago

>What does "pushing woke politics" mean? Pushing for global use of the US's anachronistic racial science over more nuanced alternatives such as ethnicity/nationality

acdha 4y ago
Could you provide some examples? Be specific about the parts which you think are scientifically relevant.
- boppo1 4y ago
  Well, if I'm reading this all correctly, there's no audit-trail for those funds. So, no we can't provide examples.
  - Goronmon 4y ago
    That can't be true though. OP knows they are pushing woke policies, so that information is out there.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - acdha 4y ago
    The person I was replying to made a bunch of allegations which had to be based on something, right? If you’re going to attack them for something they did there has to be some kind of specific event you could point to.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

commitpizza 4y ago

> How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"? In their donations campaigns, they make it sound like most of the donations go to fund the site while it's almost less than 2%. If they were to employ cheaper developers not working in the city centre of SF and stuck with the pure operational costs (Wikipedia is driven by people working for free for the most part anyway) it would be significally less than it is today. Even if they change nothing how the site is developed and the actual engineering costs, the funding pages are still dishonest since most of the funding does not go to Wikipedia itself. > What does "pushing woke politics" mean? They give money, a lot of it, more than double than the operational costs to highly controversial funds that are politically driven and does not lean on anything else. Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas and therefore are pushing politics. > Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting? Because they make it sound like this is the main reason that they need additional funding when they ask for it on their webpage. It is what they claim (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fex9854WIAIHSun?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fex9854WIAIHSun?format=jpg&name=...) they need in order to operate the site. If they strictly just used the funding to operate the site they could do so for many years to come. > What is ruined? The sense of having an actual free community that governs factual information for free for everyone. A site where everyone can rejoice over and take pride in the common knowledge of humanity and the accessability that it provides for people in countries that can't easily get this information otherwise. This is slowly being ruined by people, like I assume yourself, that are so blinded by the current political agendas that they cannot see the damage they're inflicting on the community. I understand that people always have had different political agendas but you used to be able to talk to people on the other side of the spectrum and accept basic physical facts about the world. Now it seems like we've thrown everything out of the window. People can't even get along over well established scientific facts and this is true for extremists on all sides. It is hard to trust a source of information if you know the people that controls the information are political extremists. I would want to live in a world where I can trust that the articles on Wikipedia is as objective as can be.

denton-scratch 4y ago
> Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas They fund specific agendas. I suspect you are from the USA, have never come across groups with extreme leftwing views, and have confused touchy-feely leftish liberalism with "extreme left wing". Certainly they are using the funds to discreetly push a political agenda; I think they shouldn't do that. I think they should invest the capital, and run Wikipedia on the investment income. That's what you do with an endowment; you don't launch a search for ways to give all the money away.

moralestapia 4y ago

>Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Err ... Wikipedia is a website, come on.

qwery 4y ago
Yes, and seeing the total cost of running a website being significantly greater than the cost of the web hosting seems perfectly reasonable.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  Sure, but they’re spending money on things that have nothing to do with running the website.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    And the banner ads always make it sound like the server might grind to a halt any minute.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      This is the key - and it's the failure mode of all political/charity begging across decades and decades. "We want money to do the things we want to do" doesn't get as much reaction as "holy shit the servers will die tomorrow because you fucks don't ever donate and just suck the sweet sweet wikitit of knowledge". It's obviously manipulative and at some point it crosses a boundary into immoral. You could add a "My donation is necessary to keep the Wikipedia servers online next year" yes/no question to the donation page and I bet you'd get something high like 80%+ picking yes, because of how the appeals are written.

x-complexity 4y ago

> How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"? As noted in their own 2020 report: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf&page=5 https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWi... Only 2.4 of the 112.4 million spent was actually on maintaining the servers themselves. The rest were spent on salaries (55.6 million (!!)), grants (22.8 million (!, why?)), & "Professional services" (11.67 million (again, why?)). > What does "pushing woke politics" mean? From what I can gather, it's the promotion of leftist talking points that relegates objectivism & personal liberty in favor of any form of rebalancing, be it racial, political, economical, social, gender-based, or sexual. My problem with this is that its mainly a phenomenon that's isolated to western countries, with Asian & Middle-eastern countries seemingly skirting by with LGBT+ arrests & atrocities without any major recompense. > Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting? This is mainly because Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running", when their own reports make it clear that a lot of the donated funds have been sucked up by the foundation's own internal mechanisms. > Which political extremists have taken over? Mainly left-oriented extremists, with the organizations listed from here onwards being examples that were funded by the foundation. https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579779097278181378 https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579779097278181378 > What is ruined? For one: Wikipedia's neutral reputation. Wikipedia was supposed to be a place where consensus could be reached without falling into the trappings of personal or political bias. Instead, the foundation is now seeking to reduce its own transparency by ceasing the publications of its quarterly reviews: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-10-31/News_and_notes#:~:text=Wikimedia%20Foundation%20stops%20publication%20of%20its%20quarterly%20%22tuning%20sessions%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic.

qwery 4y ago
> Only 2.4 of the 112.4 million spent was actually on maintaining the servers themselves. ... why? You seem to be arguing that anything other than strictly server maintenance is wrong, immoral or unnecessary. I'm not sure why that would be the case. I think people may be focusing on these high-level figures a bit too much. The Wikimedia website has other information about what it is they are actually doing. > Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running" Fair enough, I can imagine how that could be an issue. As one opposed to such manipulations in general, a critique of the sort of messaging being used is something that I would welcome. > Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic. Thanks, I didn't know that term before. I used a string of blunt questions formatted in that way to be as clear as possible, and because it mirrored the form of the OP's comment.