9 ms·

Why does Wikimedia give so much away when Wikipedia itself is completely reliant on donations? Saw some "if everyone gave $2" banners earlier today.

• mrguyorama 3y ago
  Wikipedia is sufficiently funded for quite some time into the future. They have a lot of money.
• theamk 3y ago
  The banners lies (or to be precise, misleads): they say they "depend on donations" but they don't say what they are trying to do.. they don't need donation to keep wikipedia.org alive, they need donations so they can do outreach and grants and travel and community programs.
  • mschuster91 3y ago
    > they don't need donation to keep wikipedia.org alive, they need donations so they can do outreach and grants and travel and community programs. Keeping Wikipedia alive isn't difficult on the tech side. Like, the software needs a bit of maintenance and the occasional rebrush, but that's it. The problem is the community. Wikipedia's survival depends on editors and administrators, both of which are in short supply - which has been an issue for way too long. I remember it from back when I was still at school, so way over a decade ago, that there was a huge issue with the Croatian Wikipedia basically having been taken over by far-right nationalist ideology on everything related to history, and other Balkan Wikipedias suffering from the same fate of nationalism, not made easier by people argumenting that there shouldn't be a distinct Wikipedia as it is a widespread belief that Croatian and Serbian are the same language - but no Croat will ever learn to read and write Cyrillic unless he has to (vice versa is a bit better because most Serbs will learn English and with it the Latin alphabet). Therefore, Wikimedia has no alternative but to (massively) invest in outreach, because the less active editors there are the higher the chance of entire communities being lost to ethnic squabbles or plain fraud (IIRC there used to be a case of someone making up entire articles in a faked Germanic? dialect).
    • laurensr 3y ago
      You are referring to the Scots Wikipedia [1]. [1]: https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/scots-wikipedia-language-american-teenager.html https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/scots-wikipedia-languag...
    • vasac 3y ago
      Minor nitpick: all Serbs will learn the Latin alphabet not because they’ll eventually learn English, but because the Latin alphabet is being taught in elementary schools alongside Cyrillic.
      • thfuran 3y ago
        As an alternative orthography for Serbian or as a foreign language?
        • grujicd 3y ago
          Latin and Cyryllic alphabets are completely equal in theory and practice. All Serbs know both. You can find books, newspapers, logos, restaurant menus in both alphabets. Some prefer cyrillic as more traditional and "more Serbian", some prefer latin as a more practical when using computers.
    • newaccount74 3y ago
      Thank you for being the first person in this thread who understands that there is more to running a site than keeping apache running.
• jtwoodhouse 3y ago
  Agendas don't promote themselves.