Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/08/28/wikipedia-donations-contributors-social-justice-charities/

by akolbe • 3 years ago

52 31 3 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

atoav3• 3 years ago

My first intuitive response was: "And so should the telegraph".

There is no way of being apolitical. What many perceive as apolitical is simply supporting the status quo. And quite frankly, if the political fronts can agree on anything it is that the status quo sucks.

weatherlight7• 3 years ago

Wikipedia's mission has always been about democratizing access to information. If they're directing funds to social justice causes, it's likely an extension of that mission. Social justice is about leveling the playing field, and what better way to do that than by improving access to knowledge?

Also, another point, Wikipedia has a large community of volunteers who can influence its direction. It's not solely up to Jimmy Wales or the Wikimedia Foundation.

An as per their financials, they publish annual reports and financial statements that anyone can access. The question of transparency might be more about public perception and understanding of these reports rather than the availability of the information.

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

I believe the distaste is with the donation banners begging for donations like they're going out of business while funneling funds to these campaigns that donors might not realize their donations are going to, versus keeping the lights on. If you have to "manage the facts" to get the donation volume you're after, that's the problem.

Perhaps allow for folks to provide a directed donation to Wikipedia proper, while also allowing unrestricted donations for the social stuff. Otherwise, you're no better than the Red Cross [1] [2], riding on your brand to raise funds while not delivering the impact your donors expect of you.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G_dBggzu-c

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...

(previously donated to Wikipedia, now directing those funds to the Internet Archive instead)

weatherlight7• 3 years ago

I get the concern about transparency and donor expectations. But let's not forget that Wikipedia's mission is broader than just 'keeping the lights on.' It's about democratizing access to information. Social justice causes aim to do the same by leveling the playing field. If you're donating to Wikipedia, you're supporting that broader mission, not just server costs.

As for directed donations, that's an interesting idea, but it could also complicate the operational aspects of running a not-for-profit. And if you're not comfortable with how Wikipedia uses its funds, redirecting your donations to another cause you support, like the Internet Archive, is a reasonable course of action.

Dalewyn2• 3 years ago

Social justice is about leveling the playing field,

Social justice is just a nicer term for anarchy, because it's justice as society (read: certain vocal minority groups) deems it. There is nothing consistent nor fair about it, because what justice is can differ from day to day depending on the mood of society.

Leveling the playing field, as you put it, is done by pursuing legal justice: Writing and passing legislation and judging all parties concerned before a court of law equally and fairly.

Neither have anything to do with democratizing access to information either.

weatherlight7• 3 years ago

Interesting perspective, but I disagree. Social justice isn't about anarchy; it's about addressing systemic inequalities that legal justice sometimes overlooks or even perpetuates. Laws are often a reflection of societal values, which can be biased. Social justice aims to challenge and change those biases.

As for democratizing access to information, it's directly related. Information is power. When you make information accessible, you empower people to make informed decisions, challenge biases, and even influence those very laws you're talking about. So, in a way, social justice and information access are two sides of the same coin.

mixmastamyk3• 3 years ago

Sounds nice, but doesn't excuse them from asking for money to support the sites then using ~98% of the money for salaries and pet causes.

Wiki{m,p}edia has some 'splaining to do!

1270018080• 3 years ago

Wikipedia has lasted this long without directly paying editors. Why start paying them just for the sake of it? Also, if you don't like how they are using money, don't donate. As long as it's not being used maliciously I don't see a problem. And yes, donating to racial and climate justice causes is not malicious, we really don't need a woke boogeyman culture war targeting wikipedia. Those have done enough harm.

politelemon• 3 years ago

I've read through this and I see no reasons given, just a gut feel that's not being articulated very well.

"nothing to do with" is a perception, it is not a reason. The parallels drawn in TFA remind me of Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla is talking about election standards [1], but that has nothing to do with Firefox browser. Should we ask them to stop and focus on the browser only?

There are many other orgs that also do multiple things, and stick their nose in where we perceive they should or shouldn't. Religious organisations routinely interfere in government and politics. Corporations lobby and drive public opinion. This is no different - an organisation is advocating for changes in certain areas. You may or may not agree with them.

I cannot fathom the reason for the focus on the Wikimedia Foundation. It is either that the author is seeking low hanging fruit, or is blatantly against the campaigns and seeks to stop them through a piece like this.

[1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/minimum-election...

Dalewyn2• 3 years ago

Should we ask them to stop and focus on the browser only?

Yes.

Mozilla is (or was, anyway) a FOSS organization, their primary and arguably only concern should be the software they develop and publish.

mixmastamyk3• 3 years ago

Ad hominem arguments are not compelling. Can't fathom how folks aren't appreciative of being misled over where their money is going?

kmlx• 3 years ago

I cannot fathom the reason for the focus on the Wikimedia Foundation.

for me what those wikipedia pleas are a bit fraudulent.

they’re asking for money using the founder’s name and face, almost always in a very dramatic fashion, but the money won’t actually be spent on wikipedia.

jacknews• 3 years ago

"Mozilla is talking about election standards [1], but that has nothing to do with Firefox browser. Should we ask them to stop and focus on the browser only?"

Yes. Or at most, the browser, and efforts to keep the internet 'open'.

jsnk• 3 years ago

There should be "forking" of articles in Wikipedia and allow different factions with different worldviews to present their versions of articles.

porkbeer• 3 years ago

Interesting, i like it, but also sounds chaotic for casual use.

charonn0• 3 years ago

So it has created a pot to gather up the overspill: an endowment, consisting of investments and cash. This is held and managed not by the Wikimedia Foundation, but by the Tides Foundation, a non-profit charity which funnels money to social justice causes and campaigns.

Is the Wikipedia endowment money used for Tides Foundation grants, etc? Or is the Tides Foundation just the fiscal sponsor?

This would seem to be a material detail.

amiga386• 3 years ago

It is concerning, but this is pretty much a rehash of what was said last year: https://nitter.net/echetus/status/1579777690454089729 -- what has changed since then to prompt this new piece?

This article ends a little disingenuously; of course Wikipedia is written by volunteers, and of course the server costs aren't a large percentage of its outgoings. Most of its outgoings on the core project that is "keep doing Wikipedia" is paying staff to fix bugs and implement functionality for the site, to support those volunteer editors.

Wikimedia does run campaigns to get people interested in editing, or drives to add or improve specific articles; much of this is language-specific and is done by the country-specific Wikimedia orgs rather than the main one. So it's not like they're frittering _all_ the money away, even if, yes, they seem to have made a number of grants that don't seem to fit with their mission.

zogrodea• 3 years ago

This essay from someone who has/had been actively editing Wikipedia for more than a decade is relevant. The point there is that there is a lot of unnecessary and superfluous spendnig by the Wikimedia Foundation on things irrelevant to what users use Wikipedia for, which is to find information and learn. He makes a convincing case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

That essay received attention before, but I only learned about it recently so it may still be useful information for others.

atoav3• 3 years ago

One thought: wikipedias most important resource isn't content or servers or the software — it is people.

This idea is probably hard to imagine for a writer of the telegraph, but wikipedia has a social space of contributers that it needs to manage in order to reach their goal of becoming a better encyclopedia.

So in order to understand wikipedia lets think about how we could make it worse. A good encyclopedia has relevant content that represents the reality of the world it is written in. Now historically the best way to stray from reality has been to rely on writers who have an uniform background in regards to geography, economics, gender, race and so on. Naturally everybody has gaps in their perception, everybody has misperceptions or cliches in their mind — unavoidable. If you however want them to end up in an encyclopedia you need to make sure those writing and editing all have the same gaps and misperceptions so they never get challenged.

That means diversity in writers and editors is a means to make it less likely their gaps and misconceptions align. So a certain degree of "social justice" is probably necessary for an encyclopedia if it wants to maintain a broad set of people, otherwise we would have social injustice, or the rule of the strongest and the strongest isn't automatically factually correct.

But that would make sense, wouldn't it.

nvm0n2• 3 years ago

The Wikimedia Foundation social justice efforts aren't related to the encyclopedia, that's the point of the article.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

I agree 'atoav's comment is very misleading for anyone unfamiliar with that fact.

If the Wikimedia Foundation's efforts were directed to making an ever better encyclopedia, more precise, more complete, factually accurate, from all possible perspectives, etc... then it wouldn't nearly be viewed so controversially from long time users.

Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns

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