4 ms·

Why would you do free work for a company which is planning to profit from your labor? Wikipedia/Wikimedia is a non-profit. All of their money pays for real expe

Why would you do free work for a company which is planning to profit from your labor? Wikipedia/Wikimedia is a non-profit. All of their money pays for real expenses instead of whatever vanity project Musk has decided is necessary to sell xAI to the masses.

charcircuit 1y ago
Do you think Wikimedia doesn't profit off of the contributions people make to Wikipedia? >pays for real expenses Only a small percentage of donations do. >instead of whatever vanity project Anytime the topic of Wikimedia donations come up you will see people complaining about their vanity projects too, wishing they could donate towards wikipedia itself.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  This. They could use some competition for sure. Spending billions on simple html website doesn't make any sense.
- measurablefunc 1y ago
  If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    To me it's no worse than working for a "nonprofit" without financial compensation.
  - NedF 1y ago
    [dead]
  - filoleg 1y ago
    > If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion. Not the person you are replying to, and it is a bit tangential, but you just basically described a solid chunk of open-source software work. I am not mocking open-source software work, I am mocking how reductionist the parent comment was, because their logic often applies to volunteer open-source software work as well. And, I suspect, on HN we can agree that volunteer open-source software work can often be worth doing, regardless of how "irrational" it is or how much for-profit corporations could benefit from it.
    - camel_Snake 1y ago
      I don't think this is an accurate comparison. Working on open source software means you are contributing to that software, which yes may be used by for profit companies. This is more analogous to contributing to Wikipedia, which is then used by for profit companies like Grok, than it is contributing to Grok products directly, which cannot be leveraged by other tools in this ecosystem (afaik).
txcwg002 1y ago
"All of their money pays for real expenses" Not true, nearly 30% of their budget goes to partisan activism with DEI related initiatives. "Supporting equity represents the second largest part of our programmatic work" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/Finances#Budget_allocations https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...
- undeveloper 1y ago
  that's a real expense. who else on earth should be doing DEI initiatives if not the goddamn chroniclers of human experience?
  - txcwg002 1y ago
    Definitely not an encyclopedia that is supposed to be objective.
    - a0123 1y ago
      When you grow up to be an adult, you will understand that "objectivity"is a fiction. And an encyclopedia can absolutely do that and still present factual information based on actual research and facts. You know that just because a lady has blue hair or a person has colored skin does NOT mean that they can't be right about something or do good research. Right? You do know it, right? Because in the end, when you cry about DEI (whatever you believe it to mean), this is the implication that comes with it: that you can't imagine for a second that anyone who doesn't look exactly like you could ever do anything competently. I genuinely wonder if you've ever thought about that for more than half a second after you closed that Charlie Kirk video. If you do believe it, fair enough. I guess you're allowed to believe it. But at least be honest about it.
      - txcwg002 1y ago
        [flagged]
Timon3 1y ago
[flagged]
- tstrimple 1y ago
  Because truth is inconvenient to their world view. Better to build up the world and facts as you imagine them to be than risk learning something that contradicts deeply held beliefs.
  - Timon3 1y ago
    Can you explain how that applies in this specific case? Because I can't come up with a scenario where you suggesting corrections to Grokipedia does any good. If you're correcting a lie that they actively want to spread (e.g. the "White Genocide" lie) they obviously won't accept your correction. If you're correcting a lie that they don't care about (hypothetical example: "ripe strawberries are blue") they might accept your correction, but that makes it less likely that an uninformed visitor will see through their lies. So the best case scenario is that literally nothing happens, and the worst case one is that you're indirectly helping their cause. What am I missing?
    - tstrimple 1y ago
      Let me rephrase. The type of person who would submit "corrections" to grokopedia are the types of people who are typically interested in supporting its ideological outcomes. Because they have close enough to the same world-views. The same types of people who say female instead of women outside of a medical context or complain all the time about wokeness invading their favorite media. Someone who suggests that reporting errors to grokopedia would do any good are firmly in the camp that believes in the garbage it's trying to perpetuate. That's why they support it and why they think others should submit corrections. They know that this is being built with an explicitly partisan bias, but also know liberal folk are super weak to certain types of attacks. Attacks like "be fair" and "you can submit feedback". They are explicitly playing on liberal weaknesses all while leaning into the blatantly false representation of history. They will say "you can't judge it since you haven't provided feedback to help correct it" but that was never their intention and they just say those things because it confuses liberals. And I know I've overused "liberals" here. That's absolutely my bias slipping in. But they are the most credulous folks who will constantly try to reach across the aisle to blatant bad faith actors. If there's a better term for this, I haven't learned it in my 20+ years of being politically active in the US. Not that I think it does any good on a site like this, but I vouched for your original comment. I completely agree with you. I was also raised in the cult and have first hand experience with many people still in it. I know why they would support and lend effort to things like these. They support all sorts of awful shit.

charcircuit 1y ago

Do you think Wikimedia doesn't profit off of the contributions people make to Wikipedia? >pays for real expenses Only a small percentage of donations do. >instead of whatever vanity project Anytime the topic of Wikimedia donations come up you will see people complaining about their vanity projects too, wishing they could donate towards wikipedia itself.

dzhiurgis 1y ago
This. They could use some competition for sure. Spending billions on simple html website doesn't make any sense.
measurablefunc 1y ago
If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  To me it's no worse than working for a "nonprofit" without financial compensation.
- NedF 1y ago
  [dead]
- filoleg 1y ago
  > If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion. Not the person you are replying to, and it is a bit tangential, but you just basically described a solid chunk of open-source software work. I am not mocking open-source software work, I am mocking how reductionist the parent comment was, because their logic often applies to volunteer open-source software work as well. And, I suspect, on HN we can agree that volunteer open-source software work can often be worth doing, regardless of how "irrational" it is or how much for-profit corporations could benefit from it.
  - camel_Snake 1y ago
    I don't think this is an accurate comparison. Working on open source software means you are contributing to that software, which yes may be used by for profit companies. This is more analogous to contributing to Wikipedia, which is then used by for profit companies like Grok, than it is contributing to Grok products directly, which cannot be leveraged by other tools in this ecosystem (afaik).

txcwg002 1y ago

"All of their money pays for real expenses" Not true, nearly 30% of their budget goes to partisan activism with DEI related initiatives. "Supporting equity represents the second largest part of our programmatic work" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/Finances#Budget_allocations https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...

undeveloper 1y ago
that's a real expense. who else on earth should be doing DEI initiatives if not the goddamn chroniclers of human experience?
- txcwg002 1y ago
  Definitely not an encyclopedia that is supposed to be objective.
  - a0123 1y ago
    When you grow up to be an adult, you will understand that "objectivity"is a fiction. And an encyclopedia can absolutely do that and still present factual information based on actual research and facts. You know that just because a lady has blue hair or a person has colored skin does NOT mean that they can't be right about something or do good research. Right? You do know it, right? Because in the end, when you cry about DEI (whatever you believe it to mean), this is the implication that comes with it: that you can't imagine for a second that anyone who doesn't look exactly like you could ever do anything competently. I genuinely wonder if you've ever thought about that for more than half a second after you closed that Charlie Kirk video. If you do believe it, fair enough. I guess you're allowed to believe it. But at least be honest about it.
    - txcwg002 1y ago
      [flagged]

Timon3 1y ago

[flagged]

tstrimple 1y ago
Because truth is inconvenient to their world view. Better to build up the world and facts as you imagine them to be than risk learning something that contradicts deeply held beliefs.
- Timon3 1y ago
  Can you explain how that applies in this specific case? Because I can't come up with a scenario where you suggesting corrections to Grokipedia does any good. If you're correcting a lie that they actively want to spread (e.g. the "White Genocide" lie) they obviously won't accept your correction. If you're correcting a lie that they don't care about (hypothetical example: "ripe strawberries are blue") they might accept your correction, but that makes it less likely that an uninformed visitor will see through their lies. So the best case scenario is that literally nothing happens, and the worst case one is that you're indirectly helping their cause. What am I missing?
  - tstrimple 1y ago
    Let me rephrase. The type of person who would submit "corrections" to grokopedia are the types of people who are typically interested in supporting its ideological outcomes. Because they have close enough to the same world-views. The same types of people who say female instead of women outside of a medical context or complain all the time about wokeness invading their favorite media. Someone who suggests that reporting errors to grokopedia would do any good are firmly in the camp that believes in the garbage it's trying to perpetuate. That's why they support it and why they think others should submit corrections. They know that this is being built with an explicitly partisan bias, but also know liberal folk are super weak to certain types of attacks. Attacks like "be fair" and "you can submit feedback". They are explicitly playing on liberal weaknesses all while leaning into the blatantly false representation of history. They will say "you can't judge it since you haven't provided feedback to help correct it" but that was never their intention and they just say those things because it confuses liberals. And I know I've overused "liberals" here. That's absolutely my bias slipping in. But they are the most credulous folks who will constantly try to reach across the aisle to blatant bad faith actors. If there's a better term for this, I haven't learned it in my 20+ years of being politically active in the US. Not that I think it does any good on a site like this, but I vouched for your original comment. I completely agree with you. I was also raised in the cult and have first hand experience with many people still in it. I know why they would support and lend effort to things like these. They support all sorts of awful shit.