6 ms·

Huh. Guess I will stop donating to Wikimedia. Not that I don’t support those causes. I just thought my money went to maintaining Wikipedia.

dewey 3y ago
It's not like they decided to use 100% of donations for other projects, it still supports the Wikipedia.
- kikokikokiko 3y ago
  It doesn't matter. It's highly reproachable that they decided to use the money that people donated to help keep Wikipedia's lights on, on a political endeavour. It sends a clear signal to me to never, ever, give money to them again. It is infuriating to see your resources being employed on political causes that you fiercely oppose.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - kikokikokiko 3y ago
      I live in a third world country, so the level of my donations may not compare to the average HN user, but I used to pledge around 5 dollars per year. In the last couple of years to tell you the truth I hadn't donated since I started getting sick of those stupid banners, and now I think it's good that I did not participated in their shennanigans.
      - micromacrofoot 3y ago
        Oh no worries, I was just wondering how much I could increase my donation to counter everyone claiming that they'll stop donating in this thread.
        sometimesweenie 3y ago
        I donate $1,000/yr and I’m stopping due to this
        micromacrofoot 3y ago
        I see what you're doing and I'm here for it
  - notnmeyer 3y ago
    won’t literally any charity spend money somewhere you wouldn’t necessarily agree with? most of the time you simply wouldn’t know.
    - kikokikokiko 3y ago
      Well, if you donate to a charity that is supposed to do X, and along the way said charity tells the whole world that "by the way, out of every 100 dollars that you donate to us, we'll give 5, maybe 10 dollars, to causes that you absolutely can't stand", you'll only continue donating to this charity if you are a self hating imbecile.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    It's part of the Wikipedia mission. It hasn't been kept secret. It's been well-known for a long time. [1] Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective
- calpaterson 3y ago
  I am not sure it does - wikipedia famously does not pay contributors (except for that one guy). The majority of their spending is on wages though, for their 700 employees. I'm sure some of them are doing worthwhile development on MediaWiki etc but I suspect the majority are not. Like Mozilla, the organisation could charitably be described as bloated.
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  Only 42% of donations go to Wikipedia and related websites. There is no breakdown for this, and there are likely some vanity projects that are not needed (they mention data analytics)
  - omginternets 3y ago
    Another thread was quoting 2% for hosting costs, so I'm curious where the 42% comes from.
    - oxfordmale 3y ago
      https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annu...
notnmeyer 3y ago
surely $1m is a small fraction of their donations, which also means the vast majority of your donation does go to maintaining wikipedia.
- zo1 3y ago
  Reading some comments, there appears to have been a move a few years ago where they moved 10mil to some sort of "equity knowledge fund". The rabbit hole just got deeper and I'm seriously disappointed I didn't stop donating sooner. I'm just gonna stop going down this rabbit hole before it depresses me even more.
- sdsd 3y ago
  >the vast majority of your donation does go to maintaining wikipedia. Who knows? Is there any good investigative breakdown of exactly what Wikimedia Foundation spends most of its income on? Does it have a huge admin parasitical attachment sucking the money away? I'm not accusing, just wondering myself. Perhaps someone knows about this.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - notnmeyer 3y ago
    https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/ is the best source i know for this.
  - oxfordmale 3y ago
    Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites. How do you square that with this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736) that says only they only spend "2% on actual hosting costs." 100% of the work of actually maintaining Wikipedia is is done by unpaid volunteers, and much of the tooling they use also appears to be developed on a volunteer basis.
jasonlotito 3y ago
> I just thought my money went to maintaining Wikipedia. Wikipedia, it's purpose and intent is... "to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal." - Jimmy Wales, 2008 The grants work to serve that goal. Of ensuring that everyone has access to that information and can use it. So, my question is simple, if they didn't send the money to these organizations, but instead, used it instead to improve only, let's say, the machines it's hosted on, but you and whatever country you were in couldn't access it, would you still give them money? Wikipedia still exists for everyone else, but you and your fellow countrymen can't access it. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective
- theamk 3y ago
  The page we are discussing lists specific grants.. which ones of those help with that goal? There is nothing wrong with "matching racial justice leaders with machine learning research engineers to develop data-based machine learning applications", but that work is clearly not required to "create and distribute a free encyclopedia".
omginternets 3y ago
If I was misled about where my donation was spent, I suspect I am being misled about what this "Knowledge Equity" fund is doing. Trust broken. I'm out forever.
mike00632 3y ago
Donate to the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine! https://help.archive.org/help/category/donations-2/donating-to-the-internet-archive/ https://help.archive.org/help/category/donations-2/donating-...
- yeeeeeee 3y ago
  or better yet, archive.today

dewey 3y ago

It's not like they decided to use 100% of donations for other projects, it still supports the Wikipedia.

kikokikokiko 3y ago
It doesn't matter. It's highly reproachable that they decided to use the money that people donated to help keep Wikipedia's lights on, on a political endeavour. It sends a clear signal to me to never, ever, give money to them again. It is infuriating to see your resources being employed on political causes that you fiercely oppose.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - kikokikokiko 3y ago
    I live in a third world country, so the level of my donations may not compare to the average HN user, but I used to pledge around 5 dollars per year. In the last couple of years to tell you the truth I hadn't donated since I started getting sick of those stupid banners, and now I think it's good that I did not participated in their shennanigans.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      Oh no worries, I was just wondering how much I could increase my donation to counter everyone claiming that they'll stop donating in this thread.
      - sometimesweenie 3y ago
        I donate $1,000/yr and I’m stopping due to this
        micromacrofoot 3y ago
        I see what you're doing and I'm here for it
- notnmeyer 3y ago
  won’t literally any charity spend money somewhere you wouldn’t necessarily agree with? most of the time you simply wouldn’t know.
  - kikokikokiko 3y ago
    Well, if you donate to a charity that is supposed to do X, and along the way said charity tells the whole world that "by the way, out of every 100 dollars that you donate to us, we'll give 5, maybe 10 dollars, to causes that you absolutely can't stand", you'll only continue donating to this charity if you are a self hating imbecile.
- jasonlotito 3y ago
  It's part of the Wikipedia mission. It hasn't been kept secret. It's been well-known for a long time. [1] Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective
calpaterson 3y ago
I am not sure it does - wikipedia famously does not pay contributors (except for that one guy). The majority of their spending is on wages though, for their 700 employees. I'm sure some of them are doing worthwhile development on MediaWiki etc but I suspect the majority are not. Like Mozilla, the organisation could charitably be described as bloated.
oxfordmale 3y ago
Only 42% of donations go to Wikipedia and related websites. There is no breakdown for this, and there are likely some vanity projects that are not needed (they mention data analytics)
- omginternets 3y ago
  Another thread was quoting 2% for hosting costs, so I'm curious where the 42% comes from.
  - oxfordmale 3y ago
    https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2021-annu...

notnmeyer 3y ago

surely $1m is a small fraction of their donations, which also means the vast majority of your donation does go to maintaining wikipedia.

zo1 3y ago
Reading some comments, there appears to have been a move a few years ago where they moved 10mil to some sort of "equity knowledge fund". The rabbit hole just got deeper and I'm seriously disappointed I didn't stop donating sooner. I'm just gonna stop going down this rabbit hole before it depresses me even more.
sdsd 3y ago
>the vast majority of your donation does go to maintaining wikipedia. Who knows? Is there any good investigative breakdown of exactly what Wikimedia Foundation spends most of its income on? Does it have a huge admin parasitical attachment sucking the money away? I'm not accusing, just wondering myself. Perhaps someone knows about this.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- notnmeyer 3y ago
  https://www.charitynavigator.org/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/ is the best source i know for this.
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Only 42% of donations are used to maintaining Wikipedia and it's related sites. How do you square that with this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180736) that says only they only spend "2% on actual hosting costs." 100% of the work of actually maintaining Wikipedia is is done by unpaid volunteers, and much of the tooling they use also appears to be developed on a volunteer basis.

jasonlotito 3y ago

> I just thought my money went to maintaining Wikipedia. Wikipedia, it's purpose and intent is... "to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal." - Jimmy Wales, 2008 The grants work to serve that goal. Of ensuring that everyone has access to that information and can use it. So, my question is simple, if they didn't send the money to these organizations, but instead, used it instead to improve only, let's say, the machines it's hosted on, but you and whatever country you were in couldn't access it, would you still give them money? Wikipedia still exists for everyone else, but you and your fellow countrymen can't access it. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Prime_objective

theamk 3y ago
The page we are discussing lists specific grants.. which ones of those help with that goal? There is nothing wrong with "matching racial justice leaders with machine learning research engineers to develop data-based machine learning applications", but that work is clearly not required to "create and distribute a free encyclopedia".

omginternets 3y ago

If I was misled about where my donation was spent, I suspect I am being misled about what this "Knowledge Equity" fund is doing. Trust broken. I'm out forever.

mike00632 3y ago

Donate to the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine! https://help.archive.org/help/category/donations-2/donating-to-the-internet-archive/ https://help.archive.org/help/category/donations-2/donating-...

yeeeeeee 3y ago
or better yet, archive.today