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You are free to waste your money as you wish. Just remember that less that 5% of your donation will go to hosting, and even less will go the people who actually

You are free to waste your money as you wish. Just remember that less that 5% of your donation will go to hosting, and even less will go the people who actually created the content. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundation_money_in_wrong_place/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundation... That said, you do not seem to have a good understanding of the word "clickbait" and seem to be using it as an insult against content you do not like. A primary feature of clickbait is that the headline does not directly say what the article is about. Example: "You won't believe what this huge website is doing with your donations!" or "These do-nothing programmers get paid with this one weird trick!" The objective is to incite the reader's curiosity so that they will click on something they normally wouldn't. As you can plainly see, the link to my article tells readers exactly what to expect before clicking. FYI there are quite a few other recent articles about this topic on the web: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/01/penniless_and_desperate_wikipedia_sits_on_60m_cash/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/01/penniless_and_desper...

jcalvinowens 12y ago
> Just remember that less that 5% of your donation will go to hosting I don't understand why you find this surprising. I think the people who work on the site deserve to be well paid for their work, just like anybody else. I think the outreach efforts are interesting as well. > and even less will go the people who actually created the content This argument makes little sense to me: nobody who contributes content to Wikipedia has any expectation of ever being paid for it. > That said, you do not seem to have a good understanding of the word "clickbait" Your definition of clickbait is far too narrow IMO. Your article takes some facts about Wikipedia's finances and presents them with very little context in a way that is intended to elicit an emotional response from people who aren't familiar with the scale on which they operate. Most egregiously, you present $50MM as though it were some huge amount of money, when in reality that's pocket change compared to the financial resources of most entities that host and maintain websites like Wikipedia. And if you think "Stop donating to Wikipedia" isn't an inflammatory headline, you're deluding yourself. You wrote this article to piss a bunch of people off and get publicity for your new site: that's textbook clickbait.
bad_user 12y ago
Clickbait also includes scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or yellow journalism as a whole. The Register fits that category very well and I didn't even have to open those 2 links to know that they are rubbish. Personally, I don't care on how many millions the directors of Wikimedia sit on, because Wikipedia is possibly the most useful online service we have. And not only that, but all the content in it is licensed under open licenses that allow for reuse [1], which is very relevant in a climate in which copyright extensions keep being granted. I also prefer to see them asking for donations instead of serving ads, because ad companies are selling my data to the highest bidder and I don't necessarily want other parties to find out the topics I'm interested in. Do you care about the internal expenses or about the revenue of each company you're interacting with? If Wikimedia would introduce a subscription model, they'd earn much more than they are doing right now. They don't have a subscription model, they don't serve ads, they aren't locking-in content, they don't sell my traffic - all they are doing is asking nicely for donations about once a year, which is totally optional, it's not like you have to pay up. I really don't get what's wrong with that. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_con...
- akolbe 12y ago
  You shouldn't write anyone a free license to collect as much money as they can by monetizing the Wikipedia brand. The money has to actually serve a need and be spent in a way that benefits the reader. And there have been germane questions asked about that, even by Wikimedia's own outgoing director: http://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-corruption-wikimedia-chapters/ http://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-cor... The reason most of the Wikimedia Foundation's expenditure goes on salaries these days is that they have vastly expanded their staff. Staff expansion isn't bad, but it shouldn't be an end in itself, and the staff hired should be qualified and deliver value for money. And here even Jimmy Wales admitted that their cost/benefit ratio needs a lot of improvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=next&oldid=623290066 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_W... The main thing to bear in mind is that donations are not needed to keep Wikipedia online and ad-free, as the fundraising banners say. There is more than enough money for that; it's a very small part of the Foundation's expenditure today. It used to be different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR0gx0QBZ4#t=275 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR0gx0QBZ4#t=275
alayne 12y ago
I just donated to Wikipedia after reading some of your inane comments.

jcalvinowens 12y ago

> Just remember that less that 5% of your donation will go to hosting I don't understand why you find this surprising. I think the people who work on the site deserve to be well paid for their work, just like anybody else. I think the outreach efforts are interesting as well. > and even less will go the people who actually created the content This argument makes little sense to me: nobody who contributes content to Wikipedia has any expectation of ever being paid for it. > That said, you do not seem to have a good understanding of the word "clickbait" Your definition of clickbait is far too narrow IMO. Your article takes some facts about Wikipedia's finances and presents them with very little context in a way that is intended to elicit an emotional response from people who aren't familiar with the scale on which they operate. Most egregiously, you present $50MM as though it were some huge amount of money, when in reality that's pocket change compared to the financial resources of most entities that host and maintain websites like Wikipedia. And if you think "Stop donating to Wikipedia" isn't an inflammatory headline, you're deluding yourself. You wrote this article to piss a bunch of people off and get publicity for your new site: that's textbook clickbait.

bad_user 12y ago

Clickbait also includes scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or yellow journalism as a whole. The Register fits that category very well and I didn't even have to open those 2 links to know that they are rubbish. Personally, I don't care on how many millions the directors of Wikimedia sit on, because Wikipedia is possibly the most useful online service we have. And not only that, but all the content in it is licensed under open licenses that allow for reuse [1], which is very relevant in a climate in which copyright extensions keep being granted. I also prefer to see them asking for donations instead of serving ads, because ad companies are selling my data to the highest bidder and I don't necessarily want other parties to find out the topics I'm interested in. Do you care about the internal expenses or about the revenue of each company you're interacting with? If Wikimedia would introduce a subscription model, they'd earn much more than they are doing right now. They don't have a subscription model, they don't serve ads, they aren't locking-in content, they don't sell my traffic - all they are doing is asking nicely for donations about once a year, which is totally optional, it's not like you have to pay up. I really don't get what's wrong with that. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_con...

akolbe 12y ago
You shouldn't write anyone a free license to collect as much money as they can by monetizing the Wikipedia brand. The money has to actually serve a need and be spent in a way that benefits the reader. And there have been germane questions asked about that, even by Wikimedia's own outgoing director: http://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-corruption-wikimedia-chapters/ http://www.dailydot.com/business/sue-gardner-log-rolling-cor... The reason most of the Wikimedia Foundation's expenditure goes on salaries these days is that they have vastly expanded their staff. Staff expansion isn't bad, but it shouldn't be an end in itself, and the staff hired should be qualified and deliver value for money. And here even Jimmy Wales admitted that their cost/benefit ratio needs a lot of improvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=next&oldid=623290066 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_W... The main thing to bear in mind is that donations are not needed to keep Wikipedia online and ad-free, as the fundraising banners say. There is more than enough money for that; it's a very small part of the Foundation's expenditure today. It used to be different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR0gx0QBZ4#t=275 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR0gx0QBZ4#t=275

alayne 12y ago

I just donated to Wikipedia after reading some of your inane comments.