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They have been known for continuously lying in their banner advertisements for donations so I wouldn't be surprised if they ever finally sold out. https://en.w

by mik1998 4y ago

They have been known for continuously lying in their banner advertisements for donations so I wouldn't be surprised if they ever finally sold out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

pwinnski 4y ago
People keep making that claim, and yet when I ask for example of lying, I never seem to get anything. Just asking for money while you already have money is not inherently lying. You might not like it, but lying involves making untrue statements. "We need your money" is not untrue, even if you already have a lot of money. "We need your money or else we'll shut down" would be untrue, but all of the pitches I've seen don't include anything like that.
bastawhiz 4y ago
I disagree with the very premise of this essay. > Sounds a lot like cancer, doesn't it? No, it sounds like running one of the most popular websites on the Internet requires well-paid employees, benefits, and infrastructure investment. 300 employees is two orders of magnitude fewer employees than Microsoft laid off this week. 300 employees to run one of the most trafficked and useful websites ever created is a strikingly small number. Yes, I want wikipedia to have redundancy. Yes, I want Wikipedia to be resilient against incidents. Yes, I want them to have lawyers to respond to legal issues (both founded and malicious). Yes, I want them to invest in new projects that may or may not pan out into useful services like the ones I already enjoy (it's hard to appreciate how many Wikimedia offers). If you told me that they spend $100M each year to keep the site online and running well, I'd believe you. A third of that is surprising because it's an astoundingly small number given the sheer amount of value that they create with it, especially for me personally.
- mik1998 4y ago
  > given the sheer amount of value that they create with it Not a single cent goes to the people who actually add value to Wikipedia, i.e. the contributors and admins. They are all volunteers. The only work that Wikimedia does is keeping the servers on, which is not work for many people, certainly not more than a few.
  - bastawhiz 4y ago
    You have a wildly distorted view of what it takes to keep the lights on for a heavily trafficked website. All of the people you mentioned might be volunteers, but they only volunteer because the platform exists and works well. And it continues to exist and continues to work well because people are paid to do it. And if you disagree with that, then where are all the top 1000 websites that are run by "a few" people?
    - mik1998 4y ago
      What? How much work do you think it is to run a HTTP server that serves static content in a datacenter? I've ran moderately popular websites before and it's zero work most of the time. In 2005, Wikipedia ran on $5000 with one employee and over a billion views just fine. People did, in fact, contribute to it despite money not being thrown into mud. > And if you disagree with that, then where are all the top 1000 websites that are run by "a few" people? Where are all the static HTTP websites that are ran by dozens of people? At most SaaS companies, keeping the lights on for the HTTP server is the least work you do. Your view of the world seems strongly distorted by zealous belief in FAANG overstaffing.
      - bastawhiz 4y ago
        > run a HTTP server that serves static content in a datacenter It's not static content! > I've ran moderately popular websites before and it's zero work most of the time. I run a service that gets ten million requests on a bad day. There's almost always work to be done. > Where are all the static HTTP websites that are ran by dozens of people? Most static websites don't allow anyone to sign up for an account and mutate the content. > At most SaaS companies, keeping the lights on for the HTTP server is the least work you do. Most SaaS companies aren't serving a multi-terabyte mutable dataset to billions of people a month. They also aren't dealing with tens of millions of pages of user-generated content. Or a huge volume of legal requests because of all of their user-generated content. > zealous belief in FAANG overstaffing. Which FAANG company has only 300 employees? Seriously, 23 billion page views per day. That's like if each of their employees oversaw a service that got 76M page views per day. That's a quarter million page views (not requests!) Per second. Half a billion pages on Wikipedia alone: that's a few million pages per employee.

pwinnski 4y ago

People keep making that claim, and yet when I ask for example of lying, I never seem to get anything. Just asking for money while you already have money is not inherently lying. You might not like it, but lying involves making untrue statements. "We need your money" is not untrue, even if you already have a lot of money. "We need your money or else we'll shut down" would be untrue, but all of the pitches I've seen don't include anything like that.

bastawhiz 4y ago

I disagree with the very premise of this essay. > Sounds a lot like cancer, doesn't it? No, it sounds like running one of the most popular websites on the Internet requires well-paid employees, benefits, and infrastructure investment. 300 employees is two orders of magnitude fewer employees than Microsoft laid off this week. 300 employees to run one of the most trafficked and useful websites ever created is a strikingly small number. Yes, I want wikipedia to have redundancy. Yes, I want Wikipedia to be resilient against incidents. Yes, I want them to have lawyers to respond to legal issues (both founded and malicious). Yes, I want them to invest in new projects that may or may not pan out into useful services like the ones I already enjoy (it's hard to appreciate how many Wikimedia offers). If you told me that they spend $100M each year to keep the site online and running well, I'd believe you. A third of that is surprising because it's an astoundingly small number given the sheer amount of value that they create with it, especially for me personally.

mik1998 4y ago
> given the sheer amount of value that they create with it Not a single cent goes to the people who actually add value to Wikipedia, i.e. the contributors and admins. They are all volunteers. The only work that Wikimedia does is keeping the servers on, which is not work for many people, certainly not more than a few.
- bastawhiz 4y ago
  You have a wildly distorted view of what it takes to keep the lights on for a heavily trafficked website. All of the people you mentioned might be volunteers, but they only volunteer because the platform exists and works well. And it continues to exist and continues to work well because people are paid to do it. And if you disagree with that, then where are all the top 1000 websites that are run by "a few" people?
  - mik1998 4y ago
    What? How much work do you think it is to run a HTTP server that serves static content in a datacenter? I've ran moderately popular websites before and it's zero work most of the time. In 2005, Wikipedia ran on $5000 with one employee and over a billion views just fine. People did, in fact, contribute to it despite money not being thrown into mud. > And if you disagree with that, then where are all the top 1000 websites that are run by "a few" people? Where are all the static HTTP websites that are ran by dozens of people? At most SaaS companies, keeping the lights on for the HTTP server is the least work you do. Your view of the world seems strongly distorted by zealous belief in FAANG overstaffing.
    - bastawhiz 4y ago
      > run a HTTP server that serves static content in a datacenter It's not static content! > I've ran moderately popular websites before and it's zero work most of the time. I run a service that gets ten million requests on a bad day. There's almost always work to be done. > Where are all the static HTTP websites that are ran by dozens of people? Most static websites don't allow anyone to sign up for an account and mutate the content. > At most SaaS companies, keeping the lights on for the HTTP server is the least work you do. Most SaaS companies aren't serving a multi-terabyte mutable dataset to billions of people a month. They also aren't dealing with tens of millions of pages of user-generated content. Or a huge volume of legal requests because of all of their user-generated content. > zealous belief in FAANG overstaffing. Which FAANG company has only 300 employees? Seriously, 23 billion page views per day. That's like if each of their employees oversaw a service that got 76M page views per day. That's a quarter million page views (not requests!) Per second. Half a billion pages on Wikipedia alone: that's a few million pages per employee.