4 ms·

That's pretty cool and worthy endeavor. Having public domain pictures of cultural events seems like a worthy cause IMO.

by shimman 3mo ago

alt227 3mo ago
The point is when you go to Wikipedia and they are on a funding drive with their very prominent ads for donation requests, they dont mention any of this. They make it sound like wikipedia is very much at risk of dying due to lack of funds when in reality they are looking for more funding for programmes like this, which is where a lot of the mistrust and 'deceptive advertising' opinions come from.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  They could tell us which programs.
  - alt227 3mo ago
    They could, but if their donation ads said for example 'please help us to take more photos of live events' instead of 'we need your help to keep wikipedia alive' then they would not get half the donations they do currently, which is the point.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      I agree, that you can lie to people to make more money. That's called fraud.
    - Sabinus 3mo ago
      I wonder how well they would go if you could target your donation. Humble bundle did this and I appreciated it.
    - bawolff 2mo ago
      If the ads only mentioned a program that gets less than 1% of the budget, that would also be pretty deceptive
- joshspankit 3mo ago
  Honestly, I’ve never donated bc “keeping Wikipedia up” could be a solved problem by now. Not just cheaper processing and bandwidth costs, but p2p hosting, etc. Every time I see that ad, I say to myself “it should not be that expensive”. Now, if they had said “We need 200k to send CC photographers to the Olympics”, count me in. That sounds bigger and way more interesting!
  - ReactiveJelly 3mo ago
    I don't even use Wikipedia anymore, I use the free online P2P encyclopedia. It's called
  - Gander5739 3mo ago
    Hosting isn't the expensive part, maintaining mediawiki is. For example, unifying the parser for the markup language: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Parser_Unification/en https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Parser_Unification/en
    - account42 3mo ago
      Maintaining a shitty PHP website isn't that expensive either.
    - bawolff 2mo ago
      Depends on how you define "hosting". CapEx costs for buying the servers is a non trivial expense (note: in accounting statements this isn't considered part of internet hosting). Not as much as software, but still expensive.
  - bawolff 2mo ago
    P2P hosting doesn't really work in reality, especially for websites that change regularly and require quick propagation of those changes. Its not just Wikipedia. Name a high traffic site that actually uses p2p hosting. I'll wait. Bandwidth is also the sort of thing that gets way cheaper at scale than most people expect. When you are big enough there comes a point where the telecom companies want to connect to you because all their users want to access your website. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot (not all) of Wikimedia's bandwidth is actually free.
akudha 3mo ago
Genuinely curious - why is photographing FIFA World Cup important? It is a very wildly watched event, extremely popular. Literally every for-profit media is going to cover it. Wouldn’t that money be spent on lesser known, lesser popular events? Or even projects like photographing the effects of climate change etc - the events that for-profit media is unlikely to cover?
- krackers 3mo ago
  I guess maybe the reasoning is that because it's a watched event it's useful to have libre/public domain photos of it?
- dannyw 3mo ago
  The for-profit media don’t release photos under freely available licenses. So we’re looking at those images being under copyright for ~100 years. Licenses do matter, just like open source.
  - scarab92 3mo ago
    If it’s really that important to people, they should be able to raise donations for that program in particular. Raising funding for Wikipedia, then diverting 90% of the funds for pet projects is dishonest at best, and most likely fraudulent. The other problem, is that the projects wikimedia foundation has historically funded have a notable political bias, to the point where it has been accused of being a pseudo-PAC.
- Kayvanian 3mo ago
  Speaking as a WikiPortraits organizer: Wikipedia primarily uses free media, and the for-profit event coverage is of course usually not releasing their photos under free licenses. Our photos are released under Creative Commons for use by Wikipedia and, well, anyone, and big events like the World Cup are where we can capture a lot of the most notable people at scale. That being said, we're not just covering the big fancy events. We've done hundreds of events from indigenous festivals to minor league sports to science conferences. We've also donated equipment to wiki communities in Kenya, Ghana, and Benin to photograph their local events and culture, which are very undercovered on-wiki. The big events are what gets a lot of visibility and make the headlines but we do a lot more than that. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiPortraits_by_event_type https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiPortraits_by...

That's pretty cool and worthy endeavor. Having public domain pictures of cultural events seems like a worthy cause IMO.

by shimman 3mo ago

That's pretty cool and worthy endeavor. Having public domain pictures of cultural events seems like a worthy cause IMO.

The point is when you go to Wikipedia and they are on a funding drive with their very prominent ads for donation requests, they dont mention any of this. They make it sound like wikipedia is very much at risk of dying due to lack of funds when in reality they are looking for more funding for programmes like this, which is where a lot of the mistrust and 'deceptive advertising' opinions come from.

inigyou 3mo ago
They could tell us which programs.
- alt227 3mo ago
  They could, but if their donation ads said for example 'please help us to take more photos of live events' instead of 'we need your help to keep wikipedia alive' then they would not get half the donations they do currently, which is the point.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    I agree, that you can lie to people to make more money. That's called fraud.
  - Sabinus 3mo ago
    I wonder how well they would go if you could target your donation. Humble bundle did this and I appreciated it.
  - bawolff 2mo ago
    If the ads only mentioned a program that gets less than 1% of the budget, that would also be pretty deceptive
joshspankit 3mo ago
Honestly, I’ve never donated bc “keeping Wikipedia up” could be a solved problem by now. Not just cheaper processing and bandwidth costs, but p2p hosting, etc. Every time I see that ad, I say to myself “it should not be that expensive”. Now, if they had said “We need 200k to send CC photographers to the Olympics”, count me in. That sounds bigger and way more interesting!
- ReactiveJelly 3mo ago
  I don't even use Wikipedia anymore, I use the free online P2P encyclopedia. It's called
- Gander5739 3mo ago
  Hosting isn't the expensive part, maintaining mediawiki is. For example, unifying the parser for the markup language: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Parser_Unification/en https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Parser_Unification/en
  - account42 3mo ago
    Maintaining a shitty PHP website isn't that expensive either.
  - bawolff 2mo ago
    Depends on how you define "hosting". CapEx costs for buying the servers is a non trivial expense (note: in accounting statements this isn't considered part of internet hosting). Not as much as software, but still expensive.
- bawolff 2mo ago
  P2P hosting doesn't really work in reality, especially for websites that change regularly and require quick propagation of those changes. Its not just Wikipedia. Name a high traffic site that actually uses p2p hosting. I'll wait. Bandwidth is also the sort of thing that gets way cheaper at scale than most people expect. When you are big enough there comes a point where the telecom companies want to connect to you because all their users want to access your website. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot (not all) of Wikimedia's bandwidth is actually free.

akudha 3mo ago

Genuinely curious - why is photographing FIFA World Cup important? It is a very wildly watched event, extremely popular. Literally every for-profit media is going to cover it. Wouldn’t that money be spent on lesser known, lesser popular events? Or even projects like photographing the effects of climate change etc - the events that for-profit media is unlikely to cover?

krackers 3mo ago
I guess maybe the reasoning is that because it's a watched event it's useful to have libre/public domain photos of it?
dannyw 3mo ago
The for-profit media don’t release photos under freely available licenses. So we’re looking at those images being under copyright for ~100 years. Licenses do matter, just like open source.
- scarab92 3mo ago
  If it’s really that important to people, they should be able to raise donations for that program in particular. Raising funding for Wikipedia, then diverting 90% of the funds for pet projects is dishonest at best, and most likely fraudulent. The other problem, is that the projects wikimedia foundation has historically funded have a notable political bias, to the point where it has been accused of being a pseudo-PAC.
Kayvanian 3mo ago
Speaking as a WikiPortraits organizer: Wikipedia primarily uses free media, and the for-profit event coverage is of course usually not releasing their photos under free licenses. Our photos are released under Creative Commons for use by Wikipedia and, well, anyone, and big events like the World Cup are where we can capture a lot of the most notable people at scale. That being said, we're not just covering the big fancy events. We've done hundreds of events from indigenous festivals to minor league sports to science conferences. We've also donated equipment to wiki communities in Kenya, Ghana, and Benin to photograph their local events and culture, which are very undercovered on-wiki. The big events are what gets a lot of visibility and make the headlines but we do a lot more than that. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiPortraits_by_event_type https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiPortraits_by...