Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after “somewhat-viral” tweet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-10-31/News_and_notes

by akolbe • 4 years ago

479 285 4 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

gcau• 4 years ago

I use Wikipedia a lot and will never, ever donate a single dollar unless there's radical changes (that we know we'll never happen). If there was a better alternative to Wikipedia without all it's beaurocratic and managerial BS I would donate to it. Wikipedia is a lost cause now in that regard I think.

Akronymus2• 4 years ago

I long stopped using wikipedia for anything that involves the media, is contemporary, is political or otherwise controversial, due to the sheer amount of bias because of the "reliable" sources rules, which simply don't reliably work for any of those.

For the "hard" sciences they generally are pretty reliable.

denton-scratch3• 4 years ago

or otherwise controversial

I find that articles about political theories and movements are usually fairly good. Articles about history, especially the history of regions where nationalist movements are active, are another matter entirely. Those are political battlegrounds. They tend to have 10 or more archives of the talk page, indicating that the article is widely disputed or even "owned".

Any article about the Middle East, for example, is heavily gatekept; I won't even try to fix punctuation on such articles, I treat them only as a source of links to more-reliable material.

constantcrying2• 4 years ago

Basically the reason why I will not donate to any large organization. Imagine donating to an organization because you think it helps them pay for their servers or devs and then it enters an intangible web of different obscure organizations, all donating to one another in some obscure way. The cause it goes to is "external organizations that support knowledge equity by addressing the racial inequities preventing access and participation in free knowledge", which is about the most nebulous, meaningless "cause" imaginable. Where does the money go? Unkown. Who benefits? The charities.

INTPenis• 4 years ago

Just personal cynical opinion here but as soon as large amounts of money are in complex circulation like that, vultures appear. I don't trust for one second that some of that money isn't being siphoned off in various creative ways that most civilians couldn't imagine understanding.

bpodgursky• 4 years ago

You don't even have to be creative. These charities pay friends who work as administrators in those charities and accomplish nothing.

rippercushions7• 4 years ago

Stripped of jargon, that sentence is saying "many people can't access or contribute to Wikipedia because of racism", which is basically true if you account for second-order effects. For example, a major reason why Haiti is poor and has few Wikipedia users is centuries of European and American prejudice and straight-up racism against former slaves.

Personally, I'd prefer Wikimedia focus on improving access for poor people around the world regardless of skin color, but unfortunately this view seems to have gone out of style.

constantcrying2• 4 years ago

That is missing the point. The point is that Wikipedia baits people by begging for help to keep the site up. Then, the raised money is funneled through different layers of charities (each obviously taking a cut) to then end up in a vague, totally unclear cause.

"many people can't access or contribute to Wikipedia because of racism" is not a thing you can pay money to fix. These are not server costs, where you can present the donor a bill for where his money went.

Who received the money ultimately? What happened because of that money? What could have been avoided because of that money?

Can you answer these questions? Would you donate to any organization which did not tell you these answers? Certainly I will not.

luckylion2• 4 years ago

Why not create, or donate to, a separate non-profit that focuses on improving access for poor people? Asking established entities to shift their focus to your favorite topic (or just making them, if you succeed to subvert them) feels like a sneaky way to bypass convincing people of your goals, and just redirecting funds that were meant to go elsewhere.

fallingknife4• 4 years ago

You can't blame racism and colonialism for countries being poor when they were also poor before that happened.

joenot4432• 4 years ago

"many people can't access or contribute to Wikipedia because of racism", which is basically true if you account for second-order effects

This kind of very shaky use of second-order effects is dangerous and is responsible for some of the most well-intentioned but also destructive policy changes in the last 20 years.

itsthelowiq• 4 years ago

Haiti has been independent for a very long time.

michaelt2• 4 years ago

Personally, I'd prefer Wikimedia focus on improving access for poor people around the world regardless of skin color, but unfortunately this view seems to have gone out of style.

I'm pretty sure the foundation could fund such work with the full support of the community, if they went about it in a different way.

For example, if they transparently said they were going to try paying professional researchers/editors/translators to beef up articles on subjects that were under-represented; they took a systematic look at subjects and determined Haiti was under-represented; and they spent $x00k towards some concrete goal, like getting Haiti more articles/words/featured articles than Star Wars.

Or if paying editors is unpopular or ineffective, they could fund efforts to recruit more volunteer contributors to the Hatian-language wikipedia, spending $x00k and measuring success by the increase in article count, how long the newly recruited volunteers stay around for, and suchlike.

You know - transparent priorities, with goals expressed in terms of wikipedia contributions.

Gareth3212• 4 years ago

They throw in the term "racial inequities" specifically so they can call anyone who questions the funds "racist." It's a tried and true tactic used for fraud.

tootie3• 4 years ago

Every American nonprofit publishes all their financial data by law. They're called 990 forms. Typically a year or two lag from filing until public but you can always see executive comp, major outlays and income sources, trustees, etc. It's incredibly cynical to just assume they're up to no good. Large orgs do work at scale that smaller ones never can. Certainly some of them are bad, but they're behavior is almost never secret.

akolbe12• 4 years ago

The Wikimedia Endowment contains over $100 million of donations. Find me one Form 990 for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

yucky• 4 years ago

That is not the case here because the Tides Foundation is a Donor Advised Fund, which is a dark money vehicle used to fund causes indirectly, hiding the source.

Let's say (hypothetically) that Wikimedia wanted to use our donations to fund the eradication of Palestinians from Israel. If they fund it directly, people would know and might stop giving money to Wikimedia. However, Wikimedia can give your money to the Tides Foundation with instructions on how to disburse it. Tides doesn't have to disclose who's money is used for what. Ta-da! Dark money charities.

commitpizza7• 4 years ago

Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that a lot, probably most, goes to pushing woke politics?

2021 the hosting costs were $2.4 million and they spend well over $100 million each year.

If they were to use their funds to actually drive the site they have enough to fund it for years to come. Most of their funding goes to stuff that has nothing to do with Wikipedia. This is yet another example of an org that has been taken over by political extremists that don't care about the core product and ruins everything.

I am a bit upset about it because I used to donate monthly until I learned about how they actually used the donations. I think this is a very important topic and urge that everyone that donates to Wikimedia stop immedietly.

rippercushions7• 4 years ago

Where are you getting "about 90%" from? The controversy here is about a US$4.5 million fund, which is about 2.7% of Wikimedia's 2021 income.

commitpizza7• 4 years ago

Well, not true. They have employed hundreds of people and pays them ridicolous salaries. Less than half is actually used on actually operating/developing the site. Yes that fund is the most controversial part but it's not the only thing about the topic that is controversial.

2021 website hosting cost $2.4 million - which is less than it did in 2012. Most of the money they recieve by donations goes to something else. As you may see, the site hosting costs are less than what the spend on that controversial fund.

dmurray• 4 years ago

Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that about 90%+ goes to pushing woke politics?

Lots of people! The advancing of fashionable progressive causes is a far more popular thing to do today than hosting free online encyclopaedias. Wikipedia would arguably get more donations if they stuck a Black Lives Matter logo on their banner ads.

lelanthran• 4 years ago

Lots of people! The advancing of fashionable progressive causes is a far more popular thing to do today than hosting free online encyclopaedias. Wikipedia would arguably get more donations if they stuck a Black Lives Matter logo on their banner ads.

I don't think so. Just because the social activists are vocal does not mean that they are numerous.

In fact, looking at raw numbers, they're obviously in the minority: wikipedia donators outnumber actual BLM donators, so there are obviously more people interested in donating to wikipedia than to BLM.

If the wikimedia foundation were honest in their request for donations ("We plan to spend this on political activism"), they'd get fewer donators.

_Algernon_3• 4 years ago

This is yet another example of an org that has been taken over by political extremists

[Citation needed]

NaturalPhallacy4• 4 years ago

[Citation needed]

Here you go, from Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger:

Wikipedia Is Badly Biased

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

EMIRELADERO• 4 years ago

Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that a lot goes to pushing woke politics?

What exactly do you mean by "woke politics"?

commitpizza7• 4 years ago

https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633

That is the twitter thread that started the uproar, all the info you'll need is in there.

ajdude• 4 years ago

May be referring to this part of the thread[1] linked in the article

Wikimedia gave $250,000 to Borealis's Racial Equity in Journalism Fund. That money was then cascaded down to a dozens of ideologically aligned news outlets across the US.
Thus, the money you give to keep Wikipedia online is diverted to bankroll the inescapable American culture war.

[1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579776106034757633.html

croisillon2• 4 years ago

if you seriously ask: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#Woke_as_a_pejorative_term

if you were being sarcastic, the answer is: anything vaguely antiracist ist woke

atdrummond3• 4 years ago

After reading some of the comments in the arbitration process discussed on this page (see: “Administrator desysopped after RfA comment, arb case in progress”) I would find it hard for anyone to argue, with a straight face, that the most active members of the community do not lean towards a common political ideology.

Whether that influences the quality of the articles, particularly new ones, I cannot say; I was banned as an admin and editor years ago and have zero desire to return. (Although I am wondering if I might enjoy working on some of the non-English wikis, having seen that their communities seem far less internally combatative.)

rippercushions7• 4 years ago

FWIW, here's the comment that led to Athaenara getting desysopped, and it amounts to a direct personal attack on an admin candidate for the sole reason that they're trans: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&diff=prev&oldid=...

I'm pretty sure you'd get banned here on HN for saying that as well.

pseudo0• 4 years ago

For reference, here's the comment that was deemed sufficient grounds to be desysopped.

# '''Oppose.''' I think the domination of Wikipedia's woman niche, for lack of a better term, by males masquerading as females as opposed to welcoming actual, genuine, real women who were born and have always been female, is highly toxic. Go ahead, "cancel" me, I don't care. – [[User:Athaenara|Athaenara]] [[User talk:Athaenara| ]] 00:44, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

bArray• 4 years ago

I would find it hard for anyone to argue, with a straight face, that the most active members of the community do not lean towards a common political ideology.

I believe it, but then let's not pretend it is otherwise. Let's not have people fund projects under the false pretence of keep servers online.

Whether that influences the quality of the articles, particularly new ones, I cannot say

With zero intention of doing so, over time, people's political ideologies will bleed into the content. The organization itself will become more and more hostile towards opposing views.

The neutral topics themselves still have merit, but I suspect not for much longer. We no longer can have an article about master-slave buses without bringing up slavery [1], for example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Master/slave_(technology)#Ter...

tablespoon• 4 years ago

Honestly, it seems like one of the main [1] motivations for anyone participate on Wikipedia is to push some ideology or another. I know they theoretically have rules against it, but those are invariably enforced inconsistently and/or only against the most blatant cases.

IMHO, some prime Wikipedia skills are finding bureaucratic cover and being deliberately mute about your motives.

[1] though not only, another big one is obsession

Gigachad• 4 years ago

Yeah I used to donate semi regularly but not anymore. The EFF is just about the only org I still trust.

qwery4• 4 years ago

How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"?

What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting?

Which political extremists have taken over?

What is ruined?

nnopepe• 4 years ago

What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

Pushing for global use of the US's anachronistic racial science over more nuanced alternatives such as ethnicity/nationality

commitpizza7• 4 years ago

How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"?

In their donations campaigns, they make it sound like most of the donations go to fund the site while it's almost less than 2%. If they were to employ cheaper developers not working in the city centre of SF and stuck with the pure operational costs (Wikipedia is driven by people working for free for the most part anyway) it would be significally less than it is today.

Even if they change nothing how the site is developed and the actual engineering costs, the funding pages are still dishonest since most of the funding does not go to Wikipedia itself.

What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

They give money, a lot of it, more than double than the operational costs to highly controversial funds that are politically driven and does not lean on anything else. Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas and therefore are pushing politics.

Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting?

Because they make it sound like this is the main reason that they need additional funding when they ask for it on their webpage. It is what they claim (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fex9854WIAIHSun?format=jpg&name=...) they need in order to operate the site. If they strictly just used the funding to operate the site they could do so for many years to come.

What is ruined?

The sense of having an actual free community that governs factual information for free for everyone. A site where everyone can rejoice over and take pride in the common knowledge of humanity and the accessability that it provides for people in countries that can't easily get this information otherwise.

This is slowly being ruined by people, like I assume yourself, that are so blinded by the current political agendas that they cannot see the damage they're inflicting on the community. I understand that people always have had different political agendas but you used to be able to talk to people on the other side of the spectrum and accept basic physical facts about the world.

Now it seems like we've thrown everything out of the window. People can't even get along over well established scientific facts and this is true for extremists on all sides.

It is hard to trust a source of information if you know the people that controls the information are political extremists. I would want to live in a world where I can trust that the articles on Wikipedia is as objective as can be.

moralestapia• 4 years ago

Why is the cost of web hosting so important?

Err ... Wikipedia is a website, come on.

x-complexity2• 4 years ago

How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"?

As noted in their own 2020 report:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWi...

Only 2.4 of the 112.4 million spent was actually on maintaining the servers themselves. The rest were spent on salaries (55.6 million (!!)), grants (22.8 million (!, why?)), & "Professional services" (11.67 million (again, why?)).

What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

From what I can gather, it's the promotion of leftist talking points that relegates objectivism & personal liberty in favor of any form of rebalancing, be it racial, political, economical, social, gender-based, or sexual.

My problem with this is that its mainly a phenomenon that's isolated to western countries, with Asian & Middle-eastern countries seemingly skirting by with LGBT+ arrests & atrocities without any major recompense.

Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting?

This is mainly because Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running", when their own reports make it clear that a lot of the donated funds have been sucked up by the foundation's own internal mechanisms.

Which political extremists have taken over?

Mainly left-oriented extremists, with the organizations listed from here onwards being examples that were funded by the foundation.

https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579779097278181378

What is ruined?

For one: Wikipedia's neutral reputation.

Wikipedia was supposed to be a place where consensus could be reached without falling into the trappings of personal or political bias. Instead, the foundation is now seeking to reduce its own transparency by ceasing the publications of its quarterly reviews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic.

causi2• 4 years ago

Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that a lot, probably most, goes to pushing woke politics?

Hold up a second. The last time I saw an article whining about political bias on Wikipedia the complaint was that Wikipedia were a bunch of incel neckbeards and/or Nazis. Has something changed?

Gareth3212• 4 years ago

Things have changed a LOT in the last 15 years. There are no neckbeards left on Wikipedia. It's all purple-haired, blue check marked ideologues now. Everyone else gets banned.

denton-scratch3• 4 years ago

Wikipedia is basically the Wikipedia volunteers. Anyone can volunteer, so unsurprisingly some of the volunteers are "odd".

This article is about WMF, which is run by paid employees, not volunteers. They reflect the political posture of their employer, not the consensus of the Wikipedia volunteers.

jrochkind16• 4 years ago

probably most

As far as I can tell from the OP and it's cited links[1], in 2021 they had around $160 in total revenue. $5 million of that went to the Tides foundation, the thing I think you are describing as "pushing woke politics". Another $50 million of that revenue was simply left over as unspent surplus.

Are you talking about other expenditures as "pushing woke politics"? On what basis are you claiming that a "lot, probably most" of donations to go "pushing woke politics"?

(Around 1/3rd of donations (still not "probably most") remain simply unspent, which is kind of weird, but not about "pushing woke politics").

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...

matai_kolila2• 4 years ago

Even if that were true (it doesn't seem like you're able to substantiate this)...

Good.

"Woke" politics (better known as "anything conservatives don't like") are the only sane politics taking place right now. Perfect? No. Actually trying to help the people who need it most? Yes.

SilasX2• 4 years ago

Pretty much word for word what I say about Mozilla and their constant "need" for more money.

commandlinefan3• 4 years ago

I'll certainly never donate again.

zinekeller• 4 years ago

It blew up now, but a user has pointed out (since 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Guy_Macon/Wi...) that Wikimedia Foundation has spiraled out of control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C....

Even though I'm not German, I (still) donate to Wikimedia Deutschland (which is legally separate to Wikimedia Foundation) since that I see them as the "janitors" which actually experiments with new software that could be useful to Wikipedia et al., like for example Wikidata (https://www.wikidata.org).

endisneigh• 4 years ago

This is why I don’t donate to any organization ever. If it’s organized it’s by definition political and I don’t donate to politicians /s

Ekaros2• 4 years ago

This, but without sarcasm.

bendbro• 4 years ago

This, but without sarcasm, and with mostly peaceful violence.

Traubenfuchs• 4 years ago

The wikimedia foundation is a kleptocratic blight upon wikipedia.

rippercushions7• 4 years ago

Previous HN discussion about Wikimedia squandering money, all of two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33174533

trabant00• 4 years ago

Wiki Education Foundation Executive Director Frank Schulenburg: "there have been serious concerns expressed about the ROI and ethics of funding grantees not doing any work that has a direct measurable impact on Wikimedia projects"

I think this is the best criticism as it avoids going into politics and addresses the practical issue.

From https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund:

Many of the barriers that prevent people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge are rooted in systems of racial oppression.

I don't think there would be a scandal if the money would have been used for the fund stated purpose: to help access and contribution to Wikipedia.

The money instead has gone to a political lobby group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tides_Foundation#Advocacy_Fund

lantry• 4 years ago

Every time something like this makes the hn frontpage, I increase my monthly recurring donation by 1$. Wikipedia is literally the best thing to come from the modern Internet and I'm not willing to let it die, no matter how "problematic" the Wikimedia foundation becomes.

pca006132• 4 years ago

The hosting cost is just tiny comparing with their other budgets, maybe having less income can make them spend less on something else?

teraflop• 4 years ago

Does the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation already receives way more money than it needs to host Wikipedia, and that therefore Wikipedia is in no danger of dying, enter your calculations at all?

Do you really mean to say that the content of Wikipedia is so valuable that no matter what else Wikimedia does, it still deserves as much funding as possible? Even though the Wikimedia Foundation did not create that content, and doesn't own it in either a moral or legal sense? Do you not see how that creates some really bad incentives for the health of Wikipedia?

(Personally, I don't have huge disagreements with the actual worthiness of most of the causes that Wikimedia chooses to support, but I think the way it fundraises for them is wildly deceptive.)

dontbenebby• 4 years ago

Does the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation already receives way more money than it needs to host Wikipedia, and that therefore Wikipedia is in no danger of dying, enter your calculations at all?

Thanks for highlighting this. I am concerned about architectural decisions like the refusal to add a dot onion service, paired with never navigating the original sin of people who created their own name pages and edited them abusing that social position to deny that others are notable.

The fun comes when someone flips that logic around: "I was born in the 80s, who are these pedophiles who met me as a child who keep thinking they can... coerce me? Haven't they read the constitution? I thought they put a crazy catch all in the 9th amendement to avoid some of these retarded takes".

For context, I'm on the autistic spectrum, so I can use the word, and I attended an approved private school before eventually graduating from one of the most allegedly prestigous high schools in the... let's say county?... in the mythical "suburbs of Pittsburgh".

And to be fair, many of the people I'm angry at are not pedophiles -- they're just totally normal people who keep voting for literal fasciss over and over and then expecting me to smile and wave like it's 1996 still.

(It's not gonna happen.)

I think we, as a society, need to think about how to handle edge cases where folks purposefully make bad decisions under uncertainty for purely sadistic reasons, and yeah, that's kind of shitty they don't invest that money such so that it's perpetually self sustaining or donate it over to more infrastructure related projects like Mozilla, Tor, or the various projects associated with HTTPS.

(Doesn't SSL or something have a bug?)

- Greg

usrusr• 4 years ago

But what is the most likely cause of death for Wikimedia? It's not running out of money to operate servers or maintain the knowledge of keeping them ruining: it's collapsing under it's own wealth, rising costs and inefficiency to a point where one day they actually will be unable to maintain servers and knowledge. Money attracts people eager to get it under their control, and determined wealth-seekers will always outdo their more idealist peers in ascending to that control. And chances are they'll fool everyone including themselves, believing that they are believers when in fact they wouldn't have come close to thinking about joining up without that glimmer of gold leading their attention.

Note that I'm not suggesting that idealists must remain poor, I'm suggesting that there needs to be balance and I don't see Wikimedia anywhere close. I'd rather donate to a frugal Wikimedia for getting them from reserveres equivalent to six generations of operation without new donations to seven generations of reserves than for yet another expensive side project that roughly correlates with some interpretations of Wikipedia ideals.

If those side projects have adequate merit they'll find donations on their own, but if they can only fund themselves hiding behind the wikipedia front, they don't deserve your dollars.

vesinisa2• 4 years ago

The money was transferred to an outside organisation, Tides Advocacy, sometime in the 2019–2020 financial year when the Foundation found it had a large amount of money left over because of an underspend

This is the root of the problem. Wikimedia rises too much money, and instead of putting it in a fund they "need" to find projects, programmes and - now apparently - outside organization that are in no way accountable to Wikimedia.

Instead of burning all the money they are donated, Wikimedia should first and foremost strive to secure the technical and financial continuity of the project by e.g. investing a lion's share of the donations to a distributing fund that provides perpetual passive income from e.g. stock market dividends. Only once that passive income surpasses the current and foreseeable technical running costs (hosting, bandwidth, project and engineering staff) should they start giving money to external organizations.

luckylion2• 4 years ago

I don't know whether they needed to "find projects":

the fact that the transfer coincided with Amanda Keton's move in the 2019–2020 financial year from General Counsel of the Tides Network and CEO of Tides Advocacy to General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Sounds like someone got into power at Wikimedia and went ahead and moved a few millions to their project.

fallingknife4• 4 years ago

This is how most large non-profits work. They start out from building something genuinely successful, like Wikipedia, and from that visibility they raise more donations than they know how to spend. So naturally they want to expand their work. But it's very rare that the founders also happen to have the skills to run a large organization, so they need to bring in "professional management."

And who could be better than someone who has previously run a large non-profit? They are now run by some career non-profit manager, and the first thing they will do is focus on fundraising. They will pay large salaries to professional fundraisers who are, you guessed it, their friends from previous organizations they have worked at. Their jobs will be easy and their salaries fat. Then they will build an expensive administration structure whose salaries will eat up an ever increasing share of donation income.

The non-profit becomes essentially a feudal structure, with idealistic volunteers doing all of the productive work while highly paid managers consume all of the donation income. As long as fundraising investment has a positive ROI in terms of donations, management will find new ways to spend it. They will hire more and more parasitic administrators, and if things are particularly lucrative, they will donate to other organizations run by people they know in the industry. Always good to have someone else owe you a favor when times get tough.

This will continue until the organization grows so big that it collapses under the weight of its own structure. In the case of Wikipedia, some of the serf volunteers have figured this out and described it as "Wikipedia has Cancer" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

throwA29B• 4 years ago

Looks like saying "where is the fraud there is bound to be embezzling" is on the money again.

300bps2• 4 years ago

This is the root of the problem. Wikimedia rises too much money

100% agree and it’s endemic to the people running any organization not held accountable. There’s a port authority near me that was formed to maintain key bridges. The tolls on these bridges is exorbitant.

The people who run the authority use it as their own personal slush fund, donating money to things like ballet schools and other pet projects.

Maybe these projects are the most worthy thing in the world but forcing people to donate to them under threat of arrest (for not paying bridge tolls) is immoral.

bredren• 4 years ago

This reminds me of The Burning Man Organization.

“Non-profits” in general are very poorly understood and seem to slip under the radar of accountability at the governmental and board levels.

501c3 has the household name, “non-profit.” It is a case study of an extraordinarily well-branded idea and how that shapes perception.

My experience with these types of organizations and their governance puts me in a default defensive default posture. Too many have found out ways to exploit the capabilities.

At least with a regular corporate entity, there is no mistake the company is out to reward its ownership.

tootie3• 4 years ago

Malinvestment is a problem at any large organization. I don't see any reason to believe this is nefarious or unethical. Nor do I grudge Wikipedia for being to incredibly efficient at running their core business that they so easily outraise their needs. Raising money to grant to other organizations is a very common model in the charity world so it's hardly unprecedented either.

vesinisa2• 4 years ago

I think a distinction should be made between a foundation and a charity. A foundation uses an endowment to fulfill the agenda defined by its charter on the society. Only a small portion of the foundation's capital is used each year, as the foundation aims to be a more or less a perpetual organization.

A charity generally uses all of its annual income on its "cause", and needs to constantly raise more capital. Wikimedia sure seems to behave more like a charity than a foundation despite its name. I find this regrettable because it is probably the only non-profit internet organizations whose fundraising volume would allow it to behave more like a true foundation if it chose so.

mschuster913• 4 years ago

Wikimedia should first and foremost strive to secure the technical and financial continuity of the project by e.g. investing a lion's share of the donations to a distributing fund that provides perpetual passive income from e.g. stock market dividends.

Stock investment funds are a favorite American pastime, but when shit hits the fan you get wiped out pretty easily. No matter if you're looking at heavyweights like Facebook (-68% YTD) or even the S&P 500 (-19% YTD). With interest rates going up across the board, IMHO I think we're in even worse times for shareholder investors, simply because the free money well that drove the last ten years worth of "gains" has been turned off and won't be re-activated any time soon.

ptero2• 4 years ago

The poster mentioned long-term passive income, which to me is spot on. The strategy used to generate it can be debated, but the goal is very common and many methods, while not guaranteed stood the test of time pretty well. For example, look at university endowments and various privately-funded research fellowships that run for many decades, through booms and busts of the stock markets.

shubhamjain• 4 years ago

The original thread emphasized too much on a few grants, which I feel is a minor issue considering how small part of the annual revenue they were. Not surprised Wikipedia is able to defend it easily.

"Awards and grants" amounted to $9.8 million, of which $5 million (possibly $5.5 million) represented a grant to the Wikimedia Foundation's own Endowment held by the Tides Foundation. This leaves somewhere between $4 and $5 million for actual grants made to the community – a figure dwarfed by the Wikimedia Foundation's $50 million budget surplus in 2020–2021. There was no lack of money for grants.

The actual problem is that the Foundation reached its endowment goal, five years before the the deadline it set [1], and yet, they keep guilt-tripping and pretending as if they are running out of money. How's it not profiteering? They could be honest and add, "We have already reached our goal. But raising more could help us find more avenues to increase the world's knowledge," and they would be completely in the right. I bet fewer people would donate if they realized that they are not funding running expenses, at all.

Addendum: If you're considering donating to Wikipedia, I suggest you look into doing it for Internet Archive. The complexity of their project and running expenses is way more than Wikipedia, and yet, they just received 12% of the amount that Wikipedia got in 2020 [2]. They just have $4M in net assets, and yet, I have never seen them guilt-tripping regular users.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

[2] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943...

slim• 4 years ago

Also so much money + neutral image + an international network this broad, attracts the wrong kind of people

mellosouls2• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, I suspect it's a long time since wikipedia had a neutral image.

birksherty2• 4 years ago

find more avenues to increase the world's knowledge

No. People who visit and donate, only wants it to go to the site they are using and for its development. Not to some other things that they don't know.

If Wikimedia wants money for all these things, they should mention what are these exactly without hiding.

4/5 million is still huge amount.

akolbe12• 4 years ago

You're right, but that is what the post you are replying to was proposing: they should say what they are raising the money for.

Then people can decide, instead of being panicked into donating because they are made to think there is an urgent need for money "to defend Wikipedia's independence" or "to keep Wikipedia online".

dathinab• 4 years ago

No at least I find out quite appropriate of they spend less then 5% to support projects with similar goals as long as they have a surplus. I mean you are donating to the organization not the website and at least for me that had always been clear.

That the banners where misleading is IMHO they main issue with the secondary issue being the not so grate transparency for this external usages.

jasonlotito• 4 years ago

Can you provide a good example of someone doing this?

I saw the Wikimedia example, and it didn't appear to me that they were hiding anything. So I'd be curious to see an example of this being done well.

Edit: To be clear, I'm looking for examples like Wikimedia, where the donations are being used for multiple things.

ineedasername• 4 years ago

* No. People who visit and donate, only wants it to go to the site they are using and for its development.*

Not if it was clear the money was going to other avenues of increased knowledge.

Then the donator knows what they’re getting into and can choose accordingly. Nothing wrong with that.

systemicdanna• 4 years ago

That's exactly why I am not going to donate this year, and I donated annually for almost a decade now. I love Wikipedia, will support it if it gets in trouble. But I am not rich enough to donate to some random causes, especially if I find them wasteful and even ethically questionable.

akolbe12• 4 years ago

Well said indeed.

jrochkind16• 4 years ago

That was my thought too on reading; those grants are a pretty small portion of budget (not even a big portion of surplus) so don't seem like a big deal.

But if I understand it right, they have a $50 million surplus on a ~$150 million budget? Why are they still fundraising so aggressively in such a situation? (Under some circumstances, such a huge surplus leftover can even make the IRS suspicious of a charitable organization's tax status, although this may not apply legally to the particular kind of organization Wikimedia is).

akolbe12• 4 years ago

A $51 million surplus on a $112 million budget, to be exact:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWi...

Though in fact, the real surplus was nearly $90 million, because in addition, their Endowment, held at the Tides Foundation (and therefore not included in Wikimedia Foundation assets) increased from $62.9 million:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endow...

to over $100 million:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endow...

in the same year.

Note also that each year the Wikimedia Foundation pays at least $5 million into its Endowment. These payments are included in the Foundation's expenses:

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais...

LeifCarrotson• 4 years ago

Why are they still fundraising so aggressively in such a situation?

They've got many millions of users and billions of page views, so if all it takes is a little banner to bring in millions of dollars, and a little, slightly deceptive tweak to the language to bring in millions more...do you really expect them to decline that opportunity? What real, measurable incentives do they have to not fundraise? You can hardly blame those grant applicants when they ask their really, really rich friend for some support or a day or two of fundraising to achieve that support.

There aren't financial or legal consequences, especially for the smaller group doing the asking.

It's really hard, especially in 2022, at the level of a global multi-million dollar, multi-billion page view organization to make decisions on vague, difficult to measure concepts like ethics and reputation.

mschuster913• 4 years ago

But if I understand it right, they have a $50 million surplus on a ~$150 million budget? Why are they still fundraising so aggressively in such a situation?

If there is one thing that the COVID pandemic has shown us, it is that resilience is a very good idea - and that grave crises can easily last years at a time or yet another grave crisis comes up like the Ukraine invasion, followed by energy price explosions and insane inflation.

It is a decent idea to have at least five years worth of financial runway these days... you never know what is coming up (or well, we do, climate change, but that still leaves a host of other issues that can go badly wrong).

throwoutway• 4 years ago

so don’t seem like a big deal

The big deal is people being duped.

9.8M divided by $25 (my best guess on what an average person might donate) is 392,000 people being duped into giving $25 to something they did not intend to give money to.

The 30% surplus is just salt in that wound

ThePowerOfFuet• 4 years ago

I bet fewer people would donate if they realized that they are not funding running expenses, at all.

And there you have it.

dalbasal2• 4 years ago

I don't disagree with anything you said. I also think that wikipedia should adopt a much less cringey fundraising style.

However...

I feel like wikipedia tends to attract a highly disproportionate amount of criticism, especially about fundraising, budget inflation and editing/deletionism. In one sense, this is a good thing. Criticism and scrutiny keep organisations honest.

In another sense, there's a nihilism to it. Wikipedia is perhaps 100X more resource efficient than a Facebook. It's far more respectful of its users than any bigtech. It embodies otherwise naive ideals of the early web. It has performed way better than commercial peers in the face of the decade's misinformation and political fact wars... including journalistic ones. It keeps its nose much cleaner than big nonprofits like the Red Cross. All freely available to everyone, highly accessible, supported by optional donations. Wikimedia is a beacon.

FOSS has been tamed. The rivers of the WWW have been dammed. "Don't be evil" got fired. It feels like Wikipedia is subjected to a bigotry of higher expectations specifically because it doesn't suck. There's a crabs-in-a-bucket feel to it that disturbs me.

akolbe12• 4 years ago

It's resource-efficient because it relies on volunteer labour. The people earning the most money from that volunteer labour aren't even the Wikimedia Foundation, but the Big Tech companies who use Wikipedia and Wikidata content to populate Knowledge Graph panels (Google, Microsoft Bing), have their voice assistants read Wikipedia articles in response to questions (Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant), etc.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a partner of all these organisations. Amazon regularly donates a million to the Wikimedia Endowment, there is a little-publicised Google partnership ...

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_Wikimedia_Founda...

... the South Asian "Regional Partnerships" Manager moved to Wikimedia from Google:

https://archive.ph/jf3FT

... as did the originator of the Wikidata and Abstract Wikipedia projects, and the seed money for Wikidata came from Microsoft founder Paul Allen and Google:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

etc.

idiotsecant• 4 years ago

I hold Wikipedia to the moral standards of the old idealistic internet precisely because it's one of the last bastions of the tech world that I still thought of as 'pure'. I'm not going to judge them by the standards of the rest of the scumbag internet. I'm going to judge them by the standards of an organization i respect. If they want to degrade themselves back into the class of 'organization I wouldn't trust to have my email address' so that I judge them by those standards instead they're well on their way to doing so.

AtlasBarfed• 4 years ago

I know the AMerican library system isn't exactly awash in money, but why is Wikimedia not getting a huge amount of donations from the library budgets? It is practically the definition of the base intent of the library system brought into the internet age, and arguably is the internet's greatest achievement.

Sure you could start quoting things about undue influence, but I go into a library and don't exactly see lots of influence from the government on collection content, or censorship of encyclopedias. About the only political hotpotato I've seen about libraries is an occcaisional funding complaint by the ultra-small government wing.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 4 years ago

<<If you're considering donating to Wikipedia, I suggest you look into doing it for Internet Archive.

I kinda wanted to focus on this portion, because Wikipedia does not seem to face fresh round of lawsuits, while Internet Archive appears to be very much a target in sights of various copyright holders, who are unhappy over its activities[1].

[1]https://www.inputmag.com/culture/internet-archive-copyright-...

mcv• 4 years ago

If Wikimedia has too many donations for their own costs, maybe they should give some to the Internet Archive. It's certainly related to their goal of preserving information.

But more importantly: Wikimedia needs to be honest and transparent, including about what they're raising funds for. If their own costs are thoroughly covered and they're raising funds for others, they need to be honest about that, and not pretend that they still need the money. That's deceptive and completely contrary to their mission.

posterboy• 4 years ago

Addendum: If you're considering donating to Wikipedia, I suggest you look into doing it for Internet Archive

Wikipedia could forward a little sum if need be, technically?

GuB-42• 4 years ago

That's the big problem I have with these fundraisings.

They are using the exact thing that make most of us hate advertising: deceiving claims, annoying banners, and revenue-driven A/B testing. The only thing they don't seem to do (yet) is personal data collection / targeting. When I see them I can't help but think "how did these got through my ad blocker?" [*]

They don't have to do that, they can afford not to use typical advertising tactics and still get enough money for continued operation.

*: The reason I think Wikimedia fundraisers don't appears in most block lists is that as a rule, self-promotion is not considered advertising. Same reason why you can see ads for the latest Microsoft products when you go to microsoft.com.

23skidoo• 4 years ago

Wikipedia for almost the past decade has reminded me of those televangelists that would beg for donations to keep the lights on and that Uncle Sam was kicking the door down to seize their assets. Then they'd drive home in a brand new Cadillac.

whywhywhywhy• 4 years ago

a minor issue considering how small part of the annual revenue they were

It isn’t when their messaging acts like they’re gonna go under without your donation when in reality they have millions to burn on frivolities.

“Non-profit” tale as old as time, impossible to run an honest business when the grift depends on guilt.

tomashubelbauer• 4 years ago

I just wish I could donate directly to the devs working on Wikipedia and to the hosting costs. Same goes for Mozilla, actually. I want to support Firefox developers, but not Mozilla. I won't donate to either anymore even though I am a Firefox user and rely on Wikipedia a lot in my daily life as well. Maybe the devs should all set up Patreon or GitHub Sponsors accounts. I'd be happy to support them that way.

20after44• 4 years ago

Agreed, alternative funding methods and more decentralized organization structures are an area worth exploring further.

throwawayacc2• 4 years ago

I had a recurring donation set up for wikipedia. I really like it. It’s useful. But I hate woke politics. So, yeah, I no longer have that recurring donation.

I genuinely don’t understand why people feel the need to shove their ideology down peoples throat every chance they get.

theblazehen• 4 years ago

Can you elaborate on what woke politics they have?

mellosouls2• 4 years ago

The advocacy fund is linked in the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tides_Foundation#Advocacy_Fund

Tides Foundation is an American public charity and fiscal sponsor working to advance progressive causes and policy initiatives in areas such as the environment, health care, labor issues, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights and human rights.

While those policy areas are not in themselves necessarily negative, they have a clear political slant which is the ground associated with woke activism.

It's not obvious what it has to do with Wikimedia.

oefrha2• 4 years ago

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund (Warning: filled to the brim with pc vocab.)

That was painful to read. If I wanted to promote “knowledge equity” I would focus on education in low and middle income countries, rather than pouring money on affirmative action in the richest country in the world and throwing fuel on culture war in said country and elsewhere.

I used to donate a small amount annually. No more from now on.

mavhc• 4 years ago

So you'd suggest they gave money to, for example, Media Foundation for West Africa: The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) is a non-governmental organization dedicated to protecting and defending the right to freedom of expression, particularly for media and human rights defenders, throughout the 16 countries in West Africa

Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (US$250,000): The Arab Reporters in Journalism (ARIJ) is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in Jordan?

feoren2• 4 years ago

pouring money on affirmative action in the richest country in the world

Are they spending that much money in Norway?

NaturalPhallacy4• 4 years ago

I genuinely don’t understand why people feel the need to shove their ideology down peoples throat every chance they get.

They're in a cult and they don't realize it. Woke politics has every negative hallmark of a cult. Original sin, excommunication, heresy...

marcinzm• 4 years ago

I genuinely don’t understand why people feel the need to shove their ideology down peoples throat every chance they get.

My perception is that every major ideological group is doing this and has been since civilization started. Most people don't mind as long as the ideology aligns with their own ideology.

__s• 4 years ago

The major ideological groups which don't do this aren't talked about, which may cause you to think they aren't major

aasasd2• 4 years ago

Gotta say, when I read about how Bram Moolenaar, the author and maintainer of Vim, works sometimes to build schools in remote areas of Uganda and encourages users to donate to that cause—not once did I question how that is helpful or what he's doing with people's money.

return_to_monke• 4 years ago

I am not sure if you're supporting, or opposing what Moolenaar does here. But a large difference is, that, although i am not sure if there's any sort of transparent reports available on the project, they don't ask "donate so I can keep working on vim", they specify "Donate to help poor Ugandan children"

aasasd2• 4 years ago

That's what I'm saying, in part. Mr. Moolenaar's reports on his own on-the-grounds activities are quite clear (from what I remember now, a bunch of years later), and the goal of ‘build some schools’ doesn't make me wonder ‘what exactly does that mean’.

Moreover, the encouragement to donate to that charity is written into the license of Vim, and still I never went ‘ugh, why does he pollute the software with politics’ or anything like that.

CobrastanJorji• 4 years ago

They absolutely do say "To motivate Bram and others to continue working on Vim please send a donation." It's the second sentence on https://www.vim.org/sponsor/

They GO ON to say that they'll use the money to help kids in Uganda, which is great (both for transparency and the thing itself).

thepasswordis• 4 years ago

There is a difference between:

Hey guys when I’m not working on this thing I’m building homes for some of the poorest and neediest people on earth. If you want to help me here is a link.

And

HEY YOU USE WIKIPEDIA RIGHT? GIVE US MONEY TO KEEP IT GOING YA JERK (we will donate the money to orgs completely unrelated to Wikipedia and which exist to try and make people hate each other)

OJFord2• 4 years ago

He doesn't claim vim's going to stop working if you don't donate to that effort though.

Wikipedia's banner ads make it sound like it desperately needs support even to keep running as it is.

commandlinefan3• 4 years ago

build schools in remote areas of Uganda

That cause is a lot more noble than the causes that wikimedia supports.

scioto• 4 years ago

Seriously, why should I donate when they're moving the "excess" money outside the organization? _They don't need it._ Perhaps if there's some low water mark that they can set for funds under which they can start asking for donations again.

I won't be donating to Wikipedia again until I hear they're on the ropes, laid off a third of the staff, and may have to shut down. _Then_ I'll donate.

airhangerf152• 4 years ago

Honestly, why would you donate even then? It would be better to fork it; copy off all of the wiki into a new one and start fixing all the bias (similar to what InfoGalactic does) than try to fix that crumbling mess of a site. If we stop keeping garbage alive, new stuff will emerge. We need the innovation of the 90s back on the web.

RickJWagner• 4 years ago

Wikipedia has become politicized. It's really a shame, because it could have been (and was, I think) a great source of straight-up information.

No more. I trust Wikipedia as much as I trust Fox news or CNN or MSNBC now.

dhruval2• 4 years ago

I think it is still a great resource for non controversial subjects.

For eg. The math explanations are amazing

bombcar3• 4 years ago

Many even biased sources can be amazing sources, you just have to remember to recall the bias. Is Wikipedia likely to bias a math article? Probably not. Would Fox News incorrectly report a giant spool rolling down the road? Probably not.

The nice thing about bias is it's a form of laziness, and as such can often be easily noticed, and subsequently dismissed.

ThouYS• 4 years ago

lol, I won't donate to wikipedia this year. Why on earth do they give grants out anyway? The only thing I want is wikipedia.

hunter-2• 4 years ago

I stopped donating to Wikipedia after I learned that they were the organization behind the "Chimp selfie" lawsuit. I understood that my money was not going towards keeping the servers on, but instead in defending frivolous lawsuits like these.

In all frankness, I have no interest in letting Wikipedia die either. I just feel there are enough people who donate today that makes it easy for the foundation to do stuff beyond just keeping a Wikipedia on. Will probably donate again if their contributor pool ever shrinks.

Crosseye_Jack• 4 years ago

Got a source on that just because I’m interested in reading more about that “shitshow”.

My understanding of it was the images were put on Wikipedia/Wikimedia because they held the belief that the images were not copyrightable (as the photo was taken by a non legal person), the photographer threatened to sue Wiki over it but I don’t recall that going anywhere. But it was actually PETA who sued the photographer after he published the photos in a book claiming the monkey should have copyright on the images.

What im interested in is was Wikimedia actually behind the lawsuit (or was it a different case, as I said that whole incident was a bit of a shitshow)

Last I heard it never got a final judgement in court so it was never settled if the monkey should have copyright, my understanding is that the case was settled out of court were the photographer agreed to hand over a share of future earnings from the photos (copyright cases get expensive very quickly, they might have seen it as the cheaper option to exit the case)

But that’s just my understanding of what went down, would love to know more. I find it an interesting case esp as we move into the realm of AI creating art.

blululu• 4 years ago

I think Wikipedia funding lawyers to defend fair use interpretations of copyright is actually a very useful function to support the encyclopedia. I know it sounds stupid, but there are a lot of lawyers out there looking to make a buck off a stupid lawsuit, and copyrights on the internet are a pretty wide open field for this kind of nonsense. In order to defend things like fair use that should be obvious someone needs to pay the legal bills. This is a lot of what the EFF does and it generally strikes me as a rather important force in the context of American Civil Rights law.

jasmer• 4 years ago

Let's consider the good news here: we can have NGOs provide effective, foundational services for reasonable costs.

Some issues belong in the 'commons' due to elements of 'public good'.

I'm not making a political statement, this is just pragmatic reality.

If something like Wikipedia can exist without having to die due to lack of funding, well, maybe we can also do such things for 'search' and 'public messaging' (aka Twitter).

In this manner, we can forgo issues of 'total marketing surveillance' and having an excess of irrelevant ads for so many things which might be oriented towards public good and should not have artifacts of commercialization. (And I'm not even against Ads, just their ubiquity and irrelevance).

Let's not fret too much about $5M in 'goodwill' money sent out to Tides but contemplate the sliver lining here.

Of course, we should keep our eye on these things, Tides is maybe a benevolent actor, but they are also a political actor that sent money to Canada to support issues which were ultimately related to electoral outcomes.

chris_wot3• 4 years ago

I am aware that quite a few years ago the Australian chapter of the WMF had systemic rorting. People were paid to travel overseas and report on conferences. Instead, they disappeared, did not write any reports and used it as an overseas holiday.

This has been a problem for a very, very long time.

Stop giving money to Wikipedia. They don’t need it, and they don’t publicise what they spend it on.

bombcar3• 4 years ago

It's amazing to me that people presented with a very simple "travel for free and report on a conference" can't even be bothered to at least provide some simplistic report to maintain the charade.

chris_wot3• 4 years ago

Well, they completely got away with it. Absolutely no consequences whatsoever.

londons_explore• 4 years ago

I would donate to wikipedia if they would commit to becoming a smaller organisation, with a smaller staff.

10 fulltime staff should be plenty. ~5 developers/devops people to run the site and slowly make changes, and 5 marketing/branding/business/finance people for everything else that needs to be done.

Pay those 10 staff well, but cap it at that and don't aim to grow headcount or scope beyond being a great online encyclopaedia.

Ironically, they probably wouldn't need my donation if they only had 10 staff.

karencarits• 4 years ago

And perhaps a team to make innovations in the knowledge domain. Another comment mentioned wikidata, which is an interesting project to organize knowledge in a relational database. I would love to see the federated version where you can reference concepts in remote graphs, but the development is very slow. I wish they would prioritize such kind of projects

shp0ngle2• 4 years ago

I have no comment about the main article, but I agree about the other unrelated point below - that Commons is really start to show its age.

It’s kind of comical how YouTube and flickr is listed there as the “new boys on the block”, but I agree that there should be more development on making Commons easier to use.

Try to upload photos to Commons… they don’t even have phone apps and using the web uploader is really cumbersome.

(I also hate wikidata with a passion, but it seems like there is a push for this Semantic Web nonsense from the very top of wikimedia so what am I gonna do)

shp0ngle2• 4 years ago

maybe if wikimedia gave more money to development and less to random grants, it would be better. but I don’t know. This community stuff is always hard to pull off.

dhruval2• 4 years ago

Very interesting read

I donate every year as I get tremendous value from Wikipedia.

I am still inclined to continue, but will allocate more to other not for profits this year, as the foundation is just wasting money that can be better spent elsewhere.

yakubin• 4 years ago

The original thread: <https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633>

Just wow. I’ve been hearing about Wikipedia having a surplus of money for a while, it didn’t bother me. But after seeing what sort of nonsense they’re funding I’m cancelling my donations.

DeathArrow• 4 years ago

I won't donate to Wikipedia ever again until they will give an assurance of some kind that the money aren't going to third parties.

bacchusracine• 4 years ago

Isn't this the exact thing they went after Jim Bakker for? Raising too much money for a specific purpose and then taking the excess money and using it for other projects?

morbidious• 4 years ago

Wikipedia is known to have funded anti-India riots, and it has connections with an infamous anti-Hindu and anti-India propagandist, George Soros.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-qVpm_CHU

gadders• 4 years ago

It sounds like donation-laundering to me.

"People won't donate to unpopular Cause X, so we'll pretend Wikipedia is running out of money which is a more popular cause and pass on the donations."

thereddaikon• 4 years ago

How is this not fraud?

torstenvl• 4 years ago

It is. Soliciting donations under false premises is an extremely common form of fraud. But it almost assuredly won't be treated that way, given Wikipedia's general good citizenship plus a lack of political will to oppose anything in the name of "equity."

dncornholio• 4 years ago

The way they put up this banner on the website is so beyond me, I was never going to donate anyway. The banner on wikimedia is just disgusting. This big screaming banner is so out of place, It raised all my red flags. If they were true to them selfs, a small (permanent) link saying 'donate' would've been fair and more than enough.

ChoGGi• 4 years ago

The money I used to give to WMF has been going to Internet Archive instead, hopefully more people will do the same.

Edit: akolbe says it better than I could https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33403985

airhangerf152• 4 years ago

Why would you give to them?! They actively censor entire websites from their archives under political pressure. They have openly gone against their core values.

1970-01-01• 4 years ago

Time to change my Amazon smile recipient!

NaturalPhallacy4• 4 years ago

I've been donating to the EFF for years now. Sadly the ACLU is anti-civil liberties these days.

tiagod• 4 years ago

I have donated to Wikimedia in the past. I had been a bit annoyed for the last few years at how the money was being used and the declining state of the (volunteer) editor community.

A couple months ago I visited the site on an incognito session and got presented with this: https://i.imgur.com/HsjfAsn.jpg

Found it really scummy. A family member told me a few days later he donated because he thought the site was in risk, after being presented with the same text. This is someone who makes 600$ a month... Knowing this charity is getting hundreds of millions of USD *in excess* and is convincing people on the other side of the world who don't have much cash hanging around based on shaming and misleading statements, and that it's the charity that's supposed to be representing and taking care of what I consider one of the most important things on the internet... feels wrong.

BonoboIO2• 4 years ago

It’s all about the money, great save work place with a really nice salary. They don’t care a Bit about Wikipedia.

kapsi• 4 years ago

So that Twitter user started talking about Wikipedia funding the "culture war", and I stopped reading. I guess it's my own fault for reading what an anime avatar has to say.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

the transfer coincided with Amanda Keton's move in the 2019–2020 financial year from General Counsel of the Tides Network and CEO of Tides Advocacy to General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation.

I wonder what "coincide" means here. I think the most generous inference I can make is that they had a bunch of extra money lying around from all the excess fundraising they do, and Amanda Keton said "I know a worthwhile organization you could give some to." But, you'd assume that as general counsel she would be aware that that looks a little shady.

Of course, the even shadier conclusion you could jump to would be that she benefits from that grant, via her connection to the non-profit.

The fact that actions like this leave questions in people's minds is why non-profits should strive for transparency, and diligently avoid any possible conflicts of interest, which at the very least didn't happen here.

dandare• 4 years ago

Given the progressive/woke bias of Wikipedia, I am scared to ask what was that money really used for.

the-printer• 4 years ago

I mean with Obsidian v1 release who needs Wikipedia, get to blowing on your knowledge cartridges and start linking your thinking; amiright?

In all seriousness, I wonder if there’s an unbiased timeline of the organization and when and how things started to get hairy.

fleddr2• 4 years ago

I think there's a neutral technical aspect and a political aspect.

The neutral aspect is that if you have so much money (a surplus) that you start giving it away to secondary causes, you're being misleading. The begging messages clearly imply they're about to run out of money to run things, which seems opposite to reality.

So they should change the tone of the message, and provide more transparency about where the money goes to. It should be a basic donator's right to understand if the money is needed at all, and where it is used for. No matter from which political angle you're coming from.

As for the political angle, to each their own. I'd say most knowledge institutes are progressive and always have been. Importantly, moderately progressive or "classic liberal". Which is quite different from post-modernist, equity, "woke" type of politics. This last category far less embraced, and not just by conservatives.

The situation seems comparable to Mozilla. Many people would gladly donate to support the development of the Firefox browser but not neccessarily want to reward incompetent leaders or fund the running of a "indigenous intersectional BLM feminist blog" that does absolutely fuck-all for anybody.

chasd00• 4 years ago

i never realized how much money they have. I suggest everyone not donate until the page load time increases because they're having to scale back their infrastructure. I've always assumed donations went directly to bandwidth and servers.

ShakataGaNai• 4 years ago

Wikimedia gets a TON of money each year, way way way more than it needs to support "The Projects" (including salaries of developers). Yet the fundraisers still cry out like if you don't give them money, the site might go offline. Also most everyone at the WMF is not getting paid amazingly (seeing is how they are San Francisco based).

And I don't know how it is now, but back in the day (about 10 years ago or so) their spending internally was hilariously wasteful. It's been a while, but based on what news keeps coming out about them... I don't think it's gotten any better.

dang• 4 years ago

Recent and related:

Wikipedia is not short on cash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33174533 - Oct 2022 (482 comments)

The Wikimedia Foundation spends Wikipedia donations on political activism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33170710 - Oct 2022 (43 comments)

Related and less recent:

Poll of Wikipedians concludes: Wikimedia fundraising emails are misleading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32713978 - Sept 2022 (113 comments)

Wikipedia fundraising banners paused over weekend in response to complaints - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603858 - Dec 2021 (22 comments)

Ask HN: Is Wikipedia running out of money? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29523033 - Dec 2021 (28 comments)

Wikipedia is loaded, so why’s it asking for donations? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29402703 - Dec 2021 (251 comments)

Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27339887 - May 2021 (595 comments)

Should you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24569239 - Sept 2020 (74 comments)

Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24135871 - Aug 2020 (17 comments)

Wikipedia fundraising strikes again – an open letter to Wikipedia - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509582 - Oct 2017 (23 comments)

Wikimedia Foundation's runaway spending growth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15429067 - Oct 2017 (121 comments)

Wikimedia Foundation spending - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235 - May 2017 (409 comments)

Wikimedia Foundation Raises $20 Million From 1 Million+ Donors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3416127 - Jan 2012 (22 comments)

Lessons learned from wikipedia's fundraising banner design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908546 - Nov 2010 (37 comments)

Optimizing Wikipedia's Fundraising Banner Ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006438 - Dec 2009 (14 comments)

Others?

BonoboIO2• 4 years ago

Same as Mozilla Foundation ... they are kept alive by Google money, so Google can say that they have no monopoly on browsers.

Their side projects are money sinkholes. Would never give money to Mozilla.

fleddr2• 4 years ago

Required reading: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais...

renewiltord2• 4 years ago

Thank you. Cancelled.

ryan_lane• 4 years ago

Note that this post is submitted by the same troll who is constantly posting different variations of this same theme.

Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after “somewhat-viral” tweet

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