4 ms·

Of all the things people can be angry about Wikipedia's small contributions to other non-profits is the one they choose do protest. Amazing. Wikipedia has been

Of all the things people can be angry about Wikipedia's small contributions to other non-profits is the one they choose do protest. Amazing. Wikipedia has been one of the most beautiful creations of the Internet and they continue to be trustworthy. I don't really see anything worthy of bad faith assumptions about Wikipedia's $70K donation Filipino American National Historical Society. Seriously people find better causes. Protest real issues.

LightHugger 3y ago
Wikipedia is very untrustworthy on controversial topics. They often ignore the controversy and just state one side's opinions as facts, i am not talking about vaccination or global warming something that is obviously fact based, i'm talking about social controversies things that cite entirely opinion pieces.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  Wikipedia the company does this? or are you complaining about the contributors?
oxfordmale 3y ago
My donations to the Wikipedia foundation should solely be used to support the Wikipedia platform. I make donations to many different charities, but I do my own due diligence, in particular how much money actually goes to the cause in question, rather gets used to pay an expensive C-suite.
- akolbe 3y ago
  Not too long ago, the Wikimedia Foundation spent nearly $1 million on two executives' severance pay. One had only worked there for 2.5 years: Signpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 And for a laugh, see the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ashutosh-upreti-wedding.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ash... "The couple traveled around the world in early 2022 and moved to New York that June. ... On July 22, Erica Kochi, a friend of the couple who became a one-day deputy marriage commissioner in San Francisco, officiated the wedding before 140 guests on the lawn of Willow Camp in Stinson Beach, Calif. The day before, the groom rode in on a white horse for a Hindu ceremony. “It was two days of cross-cultural celebration and community,” Ms. Maher said, “and a really big dance party.”" I guess the donations helped pay for that as well.
palmer_fox 3y ago
People are sensitive to questions involving money. Personally I disagree with the idea of re-donating the money I donated. Just this practice in principle is questionable. I won't go into discussing the photos of sad looking Jimmy Wales that pop up in my inbox twice a year: you have probably read plenty on this topic already. The only argument I have is I donate money to sustain the project I value, not the Filipino American National Historical Society. I would, perhaps, donate to this Society directly, but don't make this decision for me. It feels deceptive.
- CameronNemo 3y ago
  Their endowment has been growing for years, and that has earned them quite a lot of criticism. Now they aim to shrink it somewhat, by supporting archives (which Wikipedia articles often depend on). Perhaps they simply don't know how to efficiently spend your donations!
  - palmer_fox 3y ago
    I would definitely express more support for any investment that directly supports Wikipedia. For examle, creating a fund to improve the quality, the scope, the number of translated articles about Filipino people and their history. Yes please. Any donations to vague causes like "growing advocacy" will forever be questonable in my view.
    - BizarroLand 3y ago
      They could have just as easily put a redirect or post donation page in and said, "Thank you for your support, here are some other worthwhile charitable causes you can invest in!" and have gotten $1,000,000 in further donations for them over the last year. That would have been upright and trustworthy, if a bit annoying. Finding out that they are re-donating my donations irks me. I don't like it. I like the stated missions statements of the charities they donated to, but I don't know anything about them. Are they good charities? What were the grants used for? Who's going to put the effort in to let me know that this wasn't a greedy soulless con job and some of the money I spent to protect a huge trove of human knowledge actually went to some greedy dickhead in Brazil and there's not a dang thing I can do about it? I'm not donating to Wikipedia & co again until those questions are answered, and I'm not putting any more effort into finding the answer than spitting this rant out. There's too much shifty questionable things going on to blindly trust any longer.
dale_glass 3y ago
I'm not a big fan of re-donating donations in general. At the very least I'd want a good explanation of why this furthers the organization's objective. Eg, if they donate to MariaDB because they use the database, or to the EFF because they offered legal assistance, that makes perfect sense to me. But donating to an organization that doesn't directly benefit Wikipedia in any way, that's where I'm much more doubtful. I'd much prefer they just advertised them in some way instead, like during their donation drives.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  FWIW the current set of donations seems at least mostly aligned with Wikipedia's mission. The only thing I'm suspicious about[0] is "Data for Black Lives", which sounds like AI snake oil. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180695
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  >But donating to an organization that doesn't directly benefit Wikipedia in any way, that's where I'm much more doubtful. I'd much prefer they just advertised them in some way instead, like during their donation drives. The biggest donation is going to a charity managing an archive. A place that has important documents that can be cited by, oh I don't know, an encyclopedia maybe?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
unethical_ban 3y ago
I will echo what many seem to be saying. It is the layman's understanding that donations to Wikipedia are directly for the operations of this obviously great resource. If they had a separate foundation for data gathering and social justice, or if they said in their pledge drives "5% of your donation will be redistributed to causes for equity in journalism and encyclopedic knowledge" this wouldn't be a story.
M2Ys4U 3y ago
> Of all the things people can be angry about Wikipedia's small contributions to other non-profits is the one they choose do protest. Amazing. It doesn't strike me as coincidental that people are complaining about money going to be people who aren't considered white.
JeremyNT 3y ago
HN is the same group that wants Mozilla to only work on Firefox. These non profits have missions that go beyond their most visible projects. This is almost always the case with any non profit. It's not called "the Wikipedia server foundation" or "the Firefox browser foundation" for a reason.

LightHugger 3y ago

Wikipedia is very untrustworthy on controversial topics. They often ignore the controversy and just state one side's opinions as facts, i am not talking about vaccination or global warming something that is obviously fact based, i'm talking about social controversies things that cite entirely opinion pieces.

micromacrofoot 3y ago
Wikipedia the company does this? or are you complaining about the contributors?

oxfordmale 3y ago

My donations to the Wikipedia foundation should solely be used to support the Wikipedia platform. I make donations to many different charities, but I do my own due diligence, in particular how much money actually goes to the cause in question, rather gets used to pay an expensive C-suite.

akolbe 3y ago
Not too long ago, the Wikimedia Foundation spent nearly $1 million on two executives' severance pay. One had only worked there for 2.5 years: Signpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-05-22/News_and_notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115 And for a laugh, see the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ashutosh-upreti-wedding.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ash... "The couple traveled around the world in early 2022 and moved to New York that June. ... On July 22, Erica Kochi, a friend of the couple who became a one-day deputy marriage commissioner in San Francisco, officiated the wedding before 140 guests on the lawn of Willow Camp in Stinson Beach, Calif. The day before, the groom rode in on a white horse for a Hindu ceremony. “It was two days of cross-cultural celebration and community,” Ms. Maher said, “and a really big dance party.”" I guess the donations helped pay for that as well.

palmer_fox 3y ago

People are sensitive to questions involving money. Personally I disagree with the idea of re-donating the money I donated. Just this practice in principle is questionable. I won't go into discussing the photos of sad looking Jimmy Wales that pop up in my inbox twice a year: you have probably read plenty on this topic already. The only argument I have is I donate money to sustain the project I value, not the Filipino American National Historical Society. I would, perhaps, donate to this Society directly, but don't make this decision for me. It feels deceptive.

CameronNemo 3y ago
Their endowment has been growing for years, and that has earned them quite a lot of criticism. Now they aim to shrink it somewhat, by supporting archives (which Wikipedia articles often depend on). Perhaps they simply don't know how to efficiently spend your donations!
- palmer_fox 3y ago
  I would definitely express more support for any investment that directly supports Wikipedia. For examle, creating a fund to improve the quality, the scope, the number of translated articles about Filipino people and their history. Yes please. Any donations to vague causes like "growing advocacy" will forever be questonable in my view.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    They could have just as easily put a redirect or post donation page in and said, "Thank you for your support, here are some other worthwhile charitable causes you can invest in!" and have gotten $1,000,000 in further donations for them over the last year. That would have been upright and trustworthy, if a bit annoying. Finding out that they are re-donating my donations irks me. I don't like it. I like the stated missions statements of the charities they donated to, but I don't know anything about them. Are they good charities? What were the grants used for? Who's going to put the effort in to let me know that this wasn't a greedy soulless con job and some of the money I spent to protect a huge trove of human knowledge actually went to some greedy dickhead in Brazil and there's not a dang thing I can do about it? I'm not donating to Wikipedia & co again until those questions are answered, and I'm not putting any more effort into finding the answer than spitting this rant out. There's too much shifty questionable things going on to blindly trust any longer.

dale_glass 3y ago

I'm not a big fan of re-donating donations in general. At the very least I'd want a good explanation of why this furthers the organization's objective. Eg, if they donate to MariaDB because they use the database, or to the EFF because they offered legal assistance, that makes perfect sense to me. But donating to an organization that doesn't directly benefit Wikipedia in any way, that's where I'm much more doubtful. I'd much prefer they just advertised them in some way instead, like during their donation drives.

kmeisthax 3y ago
FWIW the current set of donations seems at least mostly aligned with Wikipedia's mission. The only thing I'm suspicious about[0] is "Data for Black Lives", which sounds like AI snake oil. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37180695
M2Ys4U 3y ago
>But donating to an organization that doesn't directly benefit Wikipedia in any way, that's where I'm much more doubtful. I'd much prefer they just advertised them in some way instead, like during their donation drives. The biggest donation is going to a charity managing an archive. A place that has important documents that can be cited by, oh I don't know, an encyclopedia maybe?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

unethical_ban 3y ago

I will echo what many seem to be saying. It is the layman's understanding that donations to Wikipedia are directly for the operations of this obviously great resource. If they had a separate foundation for data gathering and social justice, or if they said in their pledge drives "5% of your donation will be redistributed to causes for equity in journalism and encyclopedic knowledge" this wouldn't be a story.

M2Ys4U 3y ago

> Of all the things people can be angry about Wikipedia's small contributions to other non-profits is the one they choose do protest. Amazing. It doesn't strike me as coincidental that people are complaining about money going to be people who aren't considered white.

JeremyNT 3y ago

HN is the same group that wants Mozilla to only work on Firefox. These non profits have missions that go beyond their most visible projects. This is almost always the case with any non profit. It's not called "the Wikipedia server foundation" or "the Firefox browser foundation" for a reason.