7 ms·

Wikimedia Foundation Raises $20 Million From 1 Million+ Donors

30 points by B-Scan 15y ago

talkingquickly 15y ago
"Funds raised in this campaign will be used to .... provide legal defence for the projects .... " It depresses me that an institution such as Wikipedia which relatively speaking achieves so much with so little money will have to spend what I expect is a none trivial amount of its limited funds on legal defence.
- tommorris 15y ago
  It's not actually that much. Most of it goes on technical: namely, servers and developers. I think they currently have two people in legal, and something like 50 in technical (development, ops etc.). I'm an OTRS volunteer - that is someone who answers email sent to the Foundation. A lot of the potential legal issues get resolved amicably by volunteers before ever hitting the legal department. An aside - one thing I've learned dealing with people making legal threats to Wikipedia: it's astounding how even some of the biggest multinational companies on the planet are completely clueless about copyright law.
  - neilk 15y ago
    And thank you for doing that work! FYI, there are three FT legal now. There also are a number of legal interns at any given time. I worked with one of them in 2011 on making Commons a little more robust against potential lawsuits. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff#Legal http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff#Legal
neilk 15y ago
Can I start the inevitable thread: "OMG why don't they use Google Ads. It disturbs me that someone else is achieving such a high audience share, and is so beloved by its users, and is not answering to a VC or advertiser. This threatens my worldview, so as a valued member of the startuphackerseoblogging community, I am going to suggest, nay, insist they change business models."
- edge17 15y ago
  For the scale on which wikipedia operates, it is dangerous to the dissemination of knowledge for them to have a business model. I for one applaud wikimedia for not going that route. Furthermore, the quality of the content and the alignment of the motives would be greatly changed, and they would lose the credibility that they have built since the project began. It's certainly not a perfect source, but for better or worse, it has made an enormous impact to the way research is done. They create a much greater value for the world by remaining disentangled from corporate reins. Open source will always be a 'bad business model' if you want to call it a business model in the first place.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    Yeah, that's also their explanation for focusing on diffuse small donors. It's not really strictly the case that Wikipedia is going to go offline if they don't raise enough money--- for one thing, their actual core servers/admins/bandwidth budget is much lower than the overall Foundation budget (which includes a number of ambitious research/outreach/etc. initiatives), and for another thing, companies like Google have offered to donate bandwidth and servers. For a while they accepted some South Korean servers/bandwidth in a Yahoo datacenter, but generally they prefer to remain independent as Plan A.
    - edge17 15y ago
      Interesting, I hadn't realized that they even turn down offers for additional resources in place of paying for their own. Wondering if you could point me to an article or something?
      - neilk 15y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-02-14/Google_hosting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20... Here's an article from 2005. I believe they've also offered similar deals more recently.
    - neilk 15y ago
TobbenTM 15y ago
I wonder if they even noticed a bump in donations after they spoke out against SOPA (with the reddit donation thread and all)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  It may start corrupting them in ways unforeseen to us. >> constant begging for money is far more invasive and offensive to the vast majority of users Those users do not have to use Wikipedia if it really offends them that much.
  - downandout 15y ago
    Perhaps they should have a popup when you first visit that would give users the option. It would set a cookie with their selection. You have a choice between seeing some highly targeted text ads off to the side of articles, or you can see a massive banner begging for money at the top of every single page that you have to scroll past to find what you wanted. I know which I'd select.
    - tommorris 15y ago
      It's not just about you, it's about everyone. Back in 2002, the mere suggestion of advertising revenue led to the complete exodus of Spanish editors. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/20/wikipedia-spanish-fork?page=all http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/20/wikipedia-spa... If Wikipedia introduced advertising, a huge number of the people who write and maintain Wikipedia would stop contributing on the spot. Lack of advertising is fundamental to the projects.
    - jaipilot747 15y ago
      Out of curiosity, which would you select?
      - downandout 15y ago
        :)
    - felipemnoa 15y ago
      You can close the fund raising banner by clicking on the x. >>You have a choice between seeing some highly targeted text ads off to the side of articles, or you can see a massive banner begging for money at the top of every single page that you have to scroll past to find what you wanted. So you will instead have businesses begging you (trying to sell you) to buy their stuff or use their services. Right now wikipedia exists only because of its volunteers across the world and because of individual contributions. It makes it feel like it really belongs to us, the citizens of the world. My gut feeling tells me that having ads will corrupt the overall organization. It will make people care less, more indifferent to wikipedia. The amount of money they raise each year is really nothing compared to the amount of time that tens of thousands of editors contribute each year. It would probably alienate a huge number of contributors and without them no matter how much money they are able to raise Wikipedia would surely decline in quality and eventually cease to exist. So you see, selling themselves could and probably will corrupt wikipedia eventually. This is just a gut feeling though.

30 points by B-Scan 15y ago

"Funds raised in this campaign will be used to .... provide legal defence for the projects .... " It depresses me that an institution such as Wikipedia which relatively speaking achieves so much with so little money will have to spend what I expect is a none trivial amount of its limited funds on legal defence.

tommorris 15y ago
It's not actually that much. Most of it goes on technical: namely, servers and developers. I think they currently have two people in legal, and something like 50 in technical (development, ops etc.). I'm an OTRS volunteer - that is someone who answers email sent to the Foundation. A lot of the potential legal issues get resolved amicably by volunteers before ever hitting the legal department. An aside - one thing I've learned dealing with people making legal threats to Wikipedia: it's astounding how even some of the biggest multinational companies on the planet are completely clueless about copyright law.
- neilk 15y ago
  And thank you for doing that work! FYI, there are three FT legal now. There also are a number of legal interns at any given time. I worked with one of them in 2011 on making Commons a little more robust against potential lawsuits. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff#Legal http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff#Legal

neilk 15y ago

Can I start the inevitable thread: "OMG why don't they use Google Ads. It disturbs me that someone else is achieving such a high audience share, and is so beloved by its users, and is not answering to a VC or advertiser. This threatens my worldview, so as a valued member of the startuphackerseoblogging community, I am going to suggest, nay, insist they change business models."

edge17 15y ago
For the scale on which wikipedia operates, it is dangerous to the dissemination of knowledge for them to have a business model. I for one applaud wikimedia for not going that route. Furthermore, the quality of the content and the alignment of the motives would be greatly changed, and they would lose the credibility that they have built since the project began. It's certainly not a perfect source, but for better or worse, it has made an enormous impact to the way research is done. They create a much greater value for the world by remaining disentangled from corporate reins. Open source will always be a 'bad business model' if you want to call it a business model in the first place.
- _delirium 15y ago
  Yeah, that's also their explanation for focusing on diffuse small donors. It's not really strictly the case that Wikipedia is going to go offline if they don't raise enough money--- for one thing, their actual core servers/admins/bandwidth budget is much lower than the overall Foundation budget (which includes a number of ambitious research/outreach/etc. initiatives), and for another thing, companies like Google have offered to donate bandwidth and servers. For a while they accepted some South Korean servers/bandwidth in a Yahoo datacenter, but generally they prefer to remain independent as Plan A.
  - edge17 15y ago
    Interesting, I hadn't realized that they even turn down offers for additional resources in place of paying for their own. Wondering if you could point me to an article or something?
    - neilk 15y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-02-14/Google_hosting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20... Here's an article from 2005. I believe they've also offered similar deals more recently.
  - neilk 15y ago

TobbenTM 15y ago

I wonder if they even noticed a bump in donations after they spoke out against SOPA (with the reddit donation thread and all)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

felipemnoa 15y ago
It may start corrupting them in ways unforeseen to us. >> constant begging for money is far more invasive and offensive to the vast majority of users Those users do not have to use Wikipedia if it really offends them that much.
- downandout 15y ago
  Perhaps they should have a popup when you first visit that would give users the option. It would set a cookie with their selection. You have a choice between seeing some highly targeted text ads off to the side of articles, or you can see a massive banner begging for money at the top of every single page that you have to scroll past to find what you wanted. I know which I'd select.
  - tommorris 15y ago
    It's not just about you, it's about everyone. Back in 2002, the mere suggestion of advertising revenue led to the complete exodus of Spanish editors. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/20/wikipedia-spanish-fork?page=all http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-01/20/wikipedia-spa... If Wikipedia introduced advertising, a huge number of the people who write and maintain Wikipedia would stop contributing on the spot. Lack of advertising is fundamental to the projects.
  - jaipilot747 15y ago
    Out of curiosity, which would you select?
    - downandout 15y ago
      :)
  - felipemnoa 15y ago
    You can close the fund raising banner by clicking on the x. >>You have a choice between seeing some highly targeted text ads off to the side of articles, or you can see a massive banner begging for money at the top of every single page that you have to scroll past to find what you wanted. So you will instead have businesses begging you (trying to sell you) to buy their stuff or use their services. Right now wikipedia exists only because of its volunteers across the world and because of individual contributions. It makes it feel like it really belongs to us, the citizens of the world. My gut feeling tells me that having ads will corrupt the overall organization. It will make people care less, more indifferent to wikipedia. The amount of money they raise each year is really nothing compared to the amount of time that tens of thousands of editors contribute each year. It would probably alienate a huge number of contributors and without them no matter how much money they are able to raise Wikipedia would surely decline in quality and eventually cease to exist. So you see, selling themselves could and probably will corrupt wikipedia eventually. This is just a gut feeling though.