Wikipedia doesn't need your money

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_chugging/

by iProject • 14 years ago

229 154 14 years ago

theregister.co.uk

thoughtcriminal• 14 years ago

I donated, but yeah, I'd like to know what the operating costs are.

Ianvdl• 14 years ago

There's some info in their 2012-13 annual plan (PDF): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1...

It's mostly just called "Expenses" and don't cover actual server operating costs specifically, if that's what you're looking for.

shrikant• 14 years ago

I donated as well (and got a bunch of others to do so, without any guilt tripping), but I don't really care what the operating costs are.

I (personally) price goods and services by the value they offer me, and not the cost of providing said goods and services.

smackfu8• 14 years ago

So if it turns out Jimmy Wales always flies first class... still don't care?

absconditus2• 14 years ago

If only they provided links to that information right on the front page of their site.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

gojomo• 14 years ago

There are details in their 2012-2013 Annual Plan PDF:

https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:2012-...

For example, on pp. 54-58, we see that their 2012-2013 plan expects to spend around $42 million, of which about $17.5 million goes to "Engineering". The largest area within engineering, about $6 million, is "Core Site Ops". The plan is for staffing to rise from 119 to 174 people over the year of the plan.

drcongo• 14 years ago

Andrew Orlowski alert!

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

Someone aught to tell Cory Doctorow. I know how impressed he was with Orlowski...

http://boingboing.net/2006/01/11/correcting-the-recor.html

ZeroGravitas• 14 years ago

Does anyone know why he's got such a bee in his bonnet about anything that works against the continued expansion of copyright?

I realise he's a journalist and so sells the copyright to his own work, but he's so aggressive about it I always assume there's something else going on, like some weird religious or political affiliation? Anyone?

justsee• 14 years ago

He seems close to Dominic Young, previously News International’s director of strategy and product development, who now runs http://copyrightblog.co.uk/ (intellectual platform or industry mouthpiece - you decide).

Dominic was a source for his piece railing against the "Don't break the internet" slogan [1].

I wouldn't really consider any of these Orlowski pieces journalism. He's clearly very close to certain industries (Content and Nuclear for instance) and seems to just write hit pieces for the industries he favours, relying on some intellectual sleight-of-hand and snark to woo readers to an industry point of view.

I suppose The Register is a channel to a particular educated, technical demographic and Orlowski uses his influece to try to shape the opinions of that demographic.

I've no idea whether he gets paid via other channels for his strident advocacy, and would actually prefer that it was a situation where Hanlon's razor is in play, because most of what he writes is ridiculous.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/09/breaking_the_interne...

midko2• 14 years ago

The article reads as if it was published in a tabloid, to put it mildly. Flashy headline, then looses the focus of the headline and glues together separate paragraphs some of which seem far from the topic because there's no point being made with them, like the paragraphs about WMF not listing all its donations anymore and the decision not to show ads. In fact, there are very little assertions made. Instead, the author seems to hope that by throwing some statements, references and numbers, the readers would be impressed enough and draw conclusions. Statements like the ones below are all stated without ANY conclusion or are a conclusion on it's own but with no arguments preceding it: A) "Earlier this year Wikipedia attracted criticism for its new-found enthusiasm for political campaigning - not a traditional activity for encyclopedias, where fairness and objectivity is part of the "brand"." , B) "All this has been met with dismay by the loyal enthusiasts who do all the hard work of keeping the project afloat by editing and contributing words - and who still aren't paid. For the first time, Wikipedians are beginning to examine the cash awards - and are making some interesting discoveries." + subsequently quoting the salary of the WMF's director (again, with no point made), C) "The Wikimedia Foundation hired a convicted felon as its chief operating officer to look after its books while on she was on parole. The executive's convictions included cheque fraud and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gunshot to the chest.", D) "The substantial contributions from Google leave the foundation open to the charge that it's lobbying for the agenda of large corporations by proxy."

A) forgets to mention the implications SOPA had on Wikipedia.org B) Does the author confuse how the product (wiki) works - volunteers contribute for free- and the fact people employed by a charitable organization still get paid? C) The author "forgets" to mention that person worked at WMF only for 6 months instead of making it sound that person still works there. And what's the entire point of this? WMF is corrupt and hence money disappears? I'll get back to this later. D) "open to the charge" ? Ridiculous, anything can be left open to any charge; the question whether there's a substantial reasoning and/or proof for such charge(which are >completely< lacking here) is a whole another matter.

Now, let's look at the main (and only) statement of the article - WMF is awash with money and does not need donations to operate. "operate" is key. If the idea is to keep paying electricity, servers and maintenance, then yes, the author is right. This can be inferred from the stat he gives about WMF having only 3 employees in 2007 and operating with $3m. (Of course, ignoring growth in usage and costs)

But why should that be the goal of the fundraiser? Should it not aim to make Wikipedia.org the product we need it to be? Hence all the money spent on improving editing tools (yes, even if that means paying a research grant, what's wrong with that?), improving the community and especially reversing the trend of less and less people contributing to the wiki? These essentially are maintenance costs of the main product, even if the bits themselves are new development. Look at the projected staff growth for next year in [1]. Almost all of the jobs are software/system engineer jobs.

And the bit about the lobbyist is hilarious! I'm actually surprised they didn't have one until this year (or maybe I'm misreading).

The facts in the article about how some of the raised money has been spent indeed raises questions about the WMF's efficiency (and as Argorak points out[2], even those aren't definitive). But that's about it. Claiming that the foundation is "awash" with money and no donations are needed is a very large leap. It currently has $27.7m in reserve. According to WMF's strategic plan [1], this can last the foundation for less than a year. In other words, every year the money raised are extending the life of the foundation by 1 year. I find this very close to what the fund raising message on Wikipedia.org conveys.

edit: formatting

[1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1...

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947370

snogglethorpe• 14 years ago

It's The Register, and The Register has Things They Hateses, e.g., Google, and apparently, Wikipedia.

On neutral topics The Register can be fun and even informative, but when it comes to Things They Hateses, no rumor is too unsubstantiated, no conclusion too tenuous, and no argument too bizarre to be crammed together haphazardly into a nasty little ball of hate and called "an article."

They Hateses It, and It They Hateses, and that's good enough for them.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

Apparently The Register think that because people don't get paid (and in fact are specifically not allowed to get paid), that the editors of Wikipedia are somehow being hard done by.

Seems ridiculous - very much a biased piece against Wikipedia, not well researched, and not particularly cogent.

tommorris12• 14 years ago

So, one thing that always gets brought up is "yeah, but what about those reserves?"

WMF have in the past said that they keep about six months of cash in reserve. And have for a few years now. Orlowski and some of the troll brigade get very antsy about this. I think it is... sound financial planning.

I don't know about you, but having a cash reserve is kind of a useful selling point if you are trying to hire programmers and engineers. "We're not suddenly going to go bankrupt overnight and leave you in the lurch" is something you actually need to be able to tell prospective employees if they've got families and mortgages and so on.

As a Wikipedia admin and volunteer, I'm actually mostly okay with how the Foundation operates. Some of the local chapters are probably a bit too bloated but the Foundation itself, I'm broadly okay with.

pwthornton• 14 years ago

As someone who has worked in the non-profit sector for several years, having a cash reserve is a best practice. Six months is on the smaller end. If you don't have cash reserves and fund raising falls short, you have to start laying people off, cutting programs, turning off servers, etc. Or if the global economy tanks and people stop donating, your whole non-profit may be in trouble.

Six months of cash to cover all expenses is a selling point of Wikipedia, not a detraction. I want to donate to and work for financially prudent non-profits. If anything, I'd like to see their cash reserves upped to more like a year or so.

easytiger• 14 years ago

Andrew Orlowski is a well known troll. Also on a personal level he's a complete cunt. I used to argue with him back and the day but there is no point.

His previous main argument against wikipedia was that anyone who uses it and supports it is advocating pedophilia.

Indeed when i , as eloquently could, disagreed with him in an email, he decided to publish snippets from my mail, with my name and email address on the reg. I had to contact the editor to get him to remove it and apologise for misrepresenting my remarks.

Feed not ye the troll.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

The best example of feeding the troll was when Pan released version 0.10.0.92 as "Andrew Orlowski Can Kiss My Ass". [1] This was in response to him flaming Gnome 2.0. [2]

1. https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2001-Oct...

2. http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2001101100220PSGN

Tichy2• 14 years ago

They hired a lobbyist? That means they are evil, right? What would they need a lobbyist for, it's not as if freedom of information on the internet is under any threats at all? Nothing to see here, move along.

And they sent some people on a vacation with a work background, and printed business cards? Is it not allowed to throw parties for staff of charities? So why not work related vacations?

Very shocking...

Argorak8• 14 years ago

Just one short detail to show how ridiculous and picking on details this article is:

How is covering Festivalsommer 2013 "highly questionable"? Thats a clever way do things!

Getting rights for pictures of artists is a long and messy process, so you best take them yourself and make sure that you are an accredited journalist, so you are actually allowed to publish them. For many german artists, there are no pictures at all. The project has already been tried on one festival last year (Wacken 2012) and they try to cover 30 festivals. Expecting 50 Bands per festival, this potentially yields 1500 pictures (more or less). For that, 18000 is a _steal_, especially expecting that volunteers provide their own equipment.

So, tl;dr: Wikipedia is more than a website, it is also a foundation[1] that tries to improve all aspects of the service in clever ways. This costs money as well.

[1] Actually, more then one, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. is something completely different. Another thing the Article misses: Wikimedia Deutschland has its own budget.

revelation• 14 years ago

Thats exactly the point why people are reluctant to donate. The budget for running Wikipedia the website is rapidly approaching single digit percentages while the foundation is hiring at startup rate.

Argorak8• 14 years ago

I agree that the foundation could do a better job at actually propagating that the running costs of wikipedia are not the server costs, but also the cost of governance and evolution and that alot of the results of that make wikipedia better in the end.

So the angle of advertisement may be improvable, but I still think that it is worthwile to fund all their other projects through donations.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

I'm not following. Why are people reluctant to donate? And why do you say that? The donation drives are quite successful!

_delirium• 14 years ago

A lot of those people are doing things like working on software and doing DevOps, which seems like "running Wikipedia the website to me". People complain that MediaWiki needs a visual editor that's easier for people to use, so Wikimedia hired developers who are working on that. That's pretty directly related to operational expenses, no?

People also want more frequent and better database dumps, scaling to account for more traffic and improve reliability, worldwide mirroring of the database servers to reduce latency across the world, a replacement of the increasingly crufty template language, etc., etc. All reasonable requests, but they require a staff of developers and sysadmins to implement.

davidgerard3• 14 years ago

>Thats exactly the point why people are reluctant to donate

The evidence appears to be against you on this claim.

smackfu8• 14 years ago

The issue is that wikipedia has necessary expenses (keeping the servers running) and optional ones (paying people to take photos of German music festivals). Yet all their guilt-tripping asking for money is focused on the necessary expenses. I'm sure that is more effective, but that doesn't mean I don't feel misled.

Argorak8• 14 years ago

That could have been conveyed in a much shorter article that doesn't discredit honest projects of community members. Also, I don't feel guilt-tripped. What do you expect? A multi-paragraph article on top of each page?

If you click through, for example in Germany, you get a pretty detailed explanation of where your money goes:

https://spenden.wikimedia.de/spenden/Ihre_Spende_wirkt

The largest part: support for volunteers. Isn't that what Wikipedia is all about?

varjag2• 14 years ago

Sorry, but €12 per amateur picture is not a steal.

Then there is a whole different issue of prioritizing resources while you get into projects like that. Why rock festivals? Why not illustrating Polka performers, or wurst wrappings, or carriages of subway park in Nuremberg? (Rhetorical, we all know rock festivals are fun)

Argorak8• 14 years ago

Who says that the pictures are amateurish and that amateurs are taking the pictures? Also, I don't expect them to take 1500 pictures, but 1500 usable pictures (one per act).

Please read through the linked statement in the article, there is actually a long text attached.

And yes, you have to prioritize. One of the factors is actual volunteers. There are people that volunteer for rock festivals and did a prototype that was well received. So why not let them do stuff that they volunteer for? Because Polka should be covered as well?

The article calls this "highly questionable". No, its a thought out decision that went through multiple levels of review.

ianstallings• 14 years ago

This has been one of my biggest complaints about wikipedia and I'm glad they're addressing it - media rights. The more pictures, video, and audio they own the better. When I was a kid I read the encyclopedia for fun and a big part of what drew me in was the images in them. I feel like that would really help the site.

nikcub• 14 years ago

> Thats a clever way do things!

A clever way of doing it would be to ask people who are already attending the concerts to submit their photos. Or, you know, asking the bands themselves.

Hiring somebody, buying them a camera, sending them to the concert to take photos is what I would classify as the least cleaver way of solving the problem.

Argorak8• 14 years ago

They are _not_ hiring someone. They are sponsoring community members doing the legwork.

The problem is that if you are not accredited to concerts, picture rights are very messy. Most of the time, concert entry with proper camera equipment is not allowed or - by buying a ticket - you waive rights to the picture. The easiest way to get usable pictures at concerts is to get accredited as a photographer. Also, bands of note and their labels usually don't provide pictures with open licensing as requested by wikimedia commons. The same goes for accredited photographers already present at the concert.

Please click through to the discussion of the project, all this was discussed before the grant was given. The inability to gather usable media is the core of the funding request.

zimbatm• 14 years ago

Seriously ? Merely clogging a bunch of maybe facts together doesn't make an evidence.

Every organisation is trying to grow and for that it's understandable that a non-profit will try to secure more funds.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

Ah, Andrew Orlowski. When I was administrator, at around the time that I started the Admin's Noticeboard and maintained the Wikipedia In the News section of the site (thank you Google News!), I noticed that he attacked Wikipedia on an almost weekly basis.

The man has an axe to grind. Not sure why, but just bear that in mind when you read his articles.

tomp• 14 years ago

What's wrong with that? As long as he's got arguments, there's nothing wrong with him focusing on an issue that he deems significant and educating people about the issue.

Nursie• 14 years ago

LOL. Read some more of his stuff, he's really, really good at rubbing people up the wrong way, and quite deliberately. His unwavering support for tougher IP laws would probably be funny if it didn't just wind me up sooooo much.

He's basically a sort of troll, AFAICT.

fatbird• 14 years ago

He's a British Drudge for the technology world. He's an inaccurate, rumour-mongering, slanderous/libelous troll. He's not someone with a pet issue offering useful critique, he's a vicious little ankle-biter who wants everyone else to hate what he hates because it drives traffic to his site.

toyg• 14 years ago

Orlowski is the reason I stopped reading El Reg. He's constantly negative on absolutely everything, from Google to Linux to Wikipedia to anyone-with-any-money-whatsoever, especially if based in California.

He's like one of those unmarried aunts who won't stop gossiping on other people's relationships because they don't have a life of their own.

wilfra3• 14 years ago

Jimmy Wales is very active on Quora and answers pretty much any question with his name in it (and it's "free" to ask him to answer) if anybody cares to post this. I was going to, but since the comments here seem to say the article is without merit, I wont.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

I'm curious as to what questions it actually raises? There was, a long time ago, someone who has now left as COO. The WMF (which the article consistently calls "Wikipedia") runs quite an open operation. Sue Gardener put in excellent processes into place and the organization is quite a tight ship by all accounts.

Probably there are some stuff ups. It's a non-profit. The business cards issue sounds like one of those. That's something that can happen with any organization, so not sure if that's enough to see some sort of nefarious scheme conning people out of their money...

Of all the issues that Orlowski could nit-pick on, he chose the most ridiculous. There's nothing to see here, just a bunch of assertions with no evidence or even earth shattering revelations.

Frankly, the article is a hatchet job. Bravo El Reg, a quality publication!

DanBC2• 14 years ago

I hate the Register and I haven't read the article.

So, ignoring that article: You have some knowledge of Wikimedia, and Wikipedia, and the foundation. What problems do you think those projects have, and how could they overcome those problems?

I ask in the spirit of learning, not bashing.

wilfra3• 14 years ago

>> I'm curious as to what questions it actually raises?

One could just post a link to the article and ask his opinion. I'm sure he would respond.

dkersten• 14 years ago

Quora is the new experts exchange. They even blur out answers like experts exchange did. I've never seen any other website do that!

wilfra3• 14 years ago

Somebody posted it. http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Is-Wikipedia-collecting-more-...

His response:

That article is typical of The Register - typical nonsense. The number of falsehoods in it is substantial, so in the interests of time, I will cover just a few of the highlights.

1. "The vast potential for advertising attracted venture capital firm Elevation Partners (whose investors include Bono from U2) to court Wikipedia" - at no point in our conversations with Elevation was there ever a suggestion that Wikipedia should take advertising. Indeed, Roger McNamee was quite adamant that Wikipedia should not do that.

2. "Bono also urged Wales to drop the volunteers and hire professionals instead." This is absolutely and utterly false. Bono has never suggested any such thing nor anything even remotely resembling it. He's always been in awe of the community and how it all works.

The Wikimedia Foundation (and associated chapters) are incredibly transparent about our spending, hiring policies and practices, etc. The idea that the Foundation should restrict itself to the tiniest possible budget just to keep the site running is frankly idiotic.

And the idea that the Foundation has steadily increased our reserve position is bad is also idiotic. There can be such a thing as having too large a reserve, but we aren't close to that level yet. One think we know our donors are interested in (because of their response to banner messaging) is that we keep Wikipedia safe - and that means, in part, being fiscally responsible and building up a cushion for the future.

DanielBMarkham2• 14 years ago

Yes, it's a hit piece, but that doesn't mean that the author doesn't raise some good questions.

What's the purpose of Wikipedia, anyway? Is it an online, open, encyclopedia? Or is it becoming some kind of quasi-political organization with tendrils everywhere?

There's one thing we are learning about the net: everybody wants to own the entire net. Whether it's Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, or Wiki, once you get so large you start thinking of the internet and your service as being the same.

Wikipedia has the money it needs to operate, yet still it grows. If anything, the bigger they get, the more demanding they are getting with asking for contributions. Why? I believe that's an excellent question, and investigating the answer is also fascinating. (As is watching the story continue to develop over the next 5-10 years)

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

Demanding? Questions to answer?

1. They put up a temporary site notice asking for donations. They don't advertise on the project, and their sole source of funding is though donations. Very demanding.

2. What questions, specifically, does the article raise in your mind? Note - I say "questions", and not vague and ill formulated doubts.

smackfu8• 14 years ago

The question it raises in my mind is how much of my donation is going to fund the servers and bandwidth and what they are always asking for money for, and how much is going to other things that I would not agree are worthy of my charity dollars.

cadab• 14 years ago

Just something about point 1, i donated last year and this, yet ive still received 2 emails this year (after this years donation) asking for another donation, plus you still get the massive banner on the wiki site.

smacktoward• 14 years ago

The site notices have steadily become larger and more intrusive over time, which imposes an increasing cognitive burden on the reader.

crististm• 14 years ago

Questions it raised in my mind: "Lobbying? Who are they paying and for what reasons?"

midko2• 14 years ago

I agree. Indeed, it's a very good question whether Wikipedia shouldn't just operate.

However, as I said in the other comment I made, this growth seems to be needed in order to maintain, "just operate", the achieved purpose of Wikipedia - online, open encyclopedia. The growth is needed because online, open encyclopedia is itself a moving target. The main problem, it seems (as pointed in the Annual Plan[1]), is the trend of fewer contributors with each year. If you read the comments at theregister article, all of them talk about the bad experience of editing a wiki and engaging with the contributor community. Now, I have no idea how true this is and how often this happens but the fact that there are fewer contributors each year remains. Wiki edits and the contributor community are the lifeblood of Wikipedia. If these and their quality are waning, then this will have a large impact on Wikipedia being an encyclopedia. Furthermore, to be a true encyclopedia, the quality of the articles needs to be as accurate as possible which certainly is a moving target. Investing into additional tools to better assess articles' quality certainly works towards this target.

Next, there is open and online. Part of the money goes towards broadening the reach of Wikipedia. Like making it available in the Global South via mobile for free, with no data charges (Wikipedia Zero). Or consider lobbying - if the foundation itself does not defend itself from acts like SOPA and thus remain online, who else should step in to WMF's interest? I think it's fair and very empowering to have people with very limited Internet access to at least Wikipedia.

With that said, the question changes. It is not about whether Wikipedia needs more money - it does - but it is about how much it needs, i.e is the foundation efficient enough while maintaining the target of an online open encyclopedia. revelation's comment[2] about hiring as a startup is quite a interesting comparison

[1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/2012-1...

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947473

DanielBMarkham2• 14 years ago

Yes. I think that some commenters thought I meant that whatever they are becoming is necessarily bad, when the point is that it's different. Might deliver a bunch of cool new stuff.

This is a story about mission creep, and growth, and what happens to internet locations that become extremely popular. Would it even be possible to stick to one simple mission? I kind of doubt it. If not, are they being "forced" into growth simply to stay alive (as you mention)? Do they morph into a more traditional charitable NGO? Do they end up as a political party, or a multinational coproration? Or something completely different? Why aren't they moving to more of a PBS model where they operate entirely off of investment returns?

It's going to be a fascinating story. We make a mistake by assuming that they are in complete control over how this thing plays out. In my mind this has much more to do with the internet and technology in general than Wikipedia in particular.

JoeAltmaier2• 14 years ago

I'm wondering about a class-action lawsuit to stop those ads claiming your donation is needed to keep it on the air. That's just a bald-faced lie. Is that permitted under fundraising laws?

Tichy2• 14 years ago

Wikipedia seems to do a good job (even if not precisely specified), but I wonder why no competition has emerged at all (or has there)? Why is there no Wikipedia that allows everything?

tommorris12• 14 years ago

There have been attempts. They've mostly failed.

A "Wikipedia that allows everything". Try it. It'd turn to shit really quickly.

People seem to have this idea that there was this golden age of Wikipedia where you could write everything, and then the EVIL DELETIONISTS took over. The fact is, huge amounts of what gets put up on Wikipedia is junk. Deleting it is a service to the reader in the same way anti-spam filters are to email users.

Articles need to be maintained. To be useful for readers, they have to be reasonably accurate, and in Wikipedia-land, we base accuracy on external sources. And if there aren't any external sources, how the hell can we even try and be accurate?

Fortunately, there is a solution: the rest of the web. Wikipedia has a constrained mission, namely the production of an encyclopedia. Outside Wikipedia, there is a big wide web where you can do whatever you like. Wikis that have explicit points of view, that are focussed on specific topics... all that kind of stuff.

sp332• 14 years ago

Wikia will host a wiki for you, you can put anything you want in it. http://www.wikia.com/Wikia

DanBC2• 14 years ago

There are alternatives that are more or less restrictive than Wikipedia; or that have more or less input from "experts" in the fields.

Wikipedia hit a sweetspot of lots of people entering lots of information which caused it to grow rapidly.

Early deletionism and care about what could be added meant that "Random Article" was a useful link - you'd learn interesting and useful stuff from clicking it. Now, not so much. There's just so much in Wikipedia that 'Random Article" will take you to some malformed stub about a teeny tiny little thing.

Today there's a weird mix of deletionism and inclusionism. It's luck and politics if the subject you're interested in is targetted by deletionists / inclusionists. (Note that I take no sides here. Inclusionism can be just as harmful for a good Wikipedia project as deletionism.

One thing I'd like to see Wikipedia try to do better is "A lead paragraph that anyone can understand". (Perhaps linked with better efforts for Simple English Wikipedia.) Unfortunately lead paragraphs are hotly contested and thus often pretty poor.

thwarted• 14 years ago

That's called the Internet.

haberman• 14 years ago

I definitely feel misled. The appeal gives you the distinct impression that without your donation they might not be able to keep the lights on. It talks about how many servers they have (and other costs, etc.) and implores you to "take one minute and keep it online another year." It definitely erodes my trust in them to know that they have plenty of money to operate.

rhizome• 14 years ago

As I've seen with every public broadcast channel in my local market, there appears to be a race to the bottom toward constant pledge-driving that may be endemic to the business model. That Wikipedia falls prey to it is not so much a structural flaw as a choice not to innovate on the funding front, and I believe a fact remains that people generally will not contribute to a perpetuation of the commons spontaneously.

znowi• 14 years ago

> the bigger they get, the more demanding they are getting

Is it not a common pattern for any company? They start small and innocent, with high moral values, impatient to take down the big nasty corporation. And soon enough, if successful, they fall pray to the fate of their past nemesis.

I think it is inevitable to turn evil at a certain threshold of growth. This is when moral values shift towards maximization of profit. And as company grows further and gains more social importance, it is a matter of time when it faces politics.

And if one's really lucky, it can grow to a point when it's too big to fail :)

gadders• 14 years ago

Not just companies. Charities and bureaucracies also suffer from massive scope creep.

luckystarr• 14 years ago

I'd rather they use my money to buy themselves more hard drive so they wouldn't have to delete as many articles.

I feel there are enough music and politician articles already on Wikipedia. The fringe articles are what would drive more participants to WP, were they not deleted.

smackfu8• 14 years ago

They sure are good at crafting that advertising message to make it sound like they are in dire straits to even pay the hosting bills.

Make it sound like a small org: "we have only 150 staff" ...

Lead with the necessary hosting costs, even if stuff like "programs" is where the money is being spent: "have costs like any other top site: servers, power, rent, programs, staff, and legal help"

Imply the whole project is on shaky ground: "take one minute to keep it online another year"

markdhansen• 14 years ago

I donated, yet I still see the annoying banner. How do I make it go away?

JoeAltmaier2• 14 years ago

That's my top pet peeve. Pay and still see ads? Removes a major incentive. I rememer long ago RealAudio introduced a constantly-rotating ad in their player. Paid for it -the ads remained! Had to ask for my money back, deinstall, never used it again.

tommorris12• 14 years ago

So, there's a reason for it. Namely, the way to implement that would require setting a cookie to say you've donated. And it'd be a cross-site cookie (because the payment is done on the Foundation site, not on Wikipedia).

The Privacy Policy is pretty strong on things like that: we don't set cookies unless there's a need to. Fortunately, you just click the 'X' button in the top-right hand corner and the banner will go away for the rest of the fundraiser... whether you've donated or not.

_quasimodo• 14 years ago

Wikipedia should allow per project/task funding, so you could dedicate your money to infrastructure, lobbying, single research projects or any combination of those.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

I believe you can do this via Wikimedia chapters.

gwern2• 14 years ago

Charities hate this. Ringfencing costs them a ton of money to track, exposes them to legal liabilities, does little good, is often entirely meaningless given the fungibility of money, and reduces flexibility. The way I put it would be this: if you don't trust them to spend your money well, why do you trust them to spend a restricted donation? Shouldn't you find a charity you do trust? There's so many out there, after all.

michaelochurch• 14 years ago

An easy way to monetize would be to capitalize on the black market for admin/sysop accounts. I bet politicians and corporate executives would pay for a properly leveled-up account.

philwelch• 14 years ago

Trust me, it really wouldn't be worthwhile.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

Not to mention they would be quickly exposed.

davidgerard3• 14 years ago

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundati...

tommorris12• 14 years ago

I have an admin account. It really isn't that big of a deal. It just means there's a few extra things I can do that non-admins can't. And when I fuck up, people shout at me more.

Really, that's all you get from it: more work and more drama.

Everyone else sees Wikipedia administrators as supreme overlords when in fact they are basically janitors.

yarrel• 14 years ago

Ah, Orlowski. He's still going?

Bless.

foobert• 14 years ago

Dear smart people, stop upvoting sensationalist articles like this. I know that you can read through it and understand it lacks real arguements. Dumb people are not actually reading it, they're just reading the headline and first paragraph and thinking 'IT MUST BE TRUE'.

Yes wikipedia is becoming more than just an online encyclopedia, because it NEEDS to.

arikrak• 14 years ago

I really think they should have taken the advertising route. A couple of google ads would have been enough to fund the site, and they would be less of a nuisance than they're fundraising ads.

In fact, I think if they had become a for-profit, they could have innovated more than they do as a non-profit. Quora and StackExchange show you can use user-contributed content in a balanced, but for-profit way. Imagine if Google had become a non-profit dedicated to an open search. We wouldn't have Gmail, Android or self-driving cars...

glomph• 14 years ago

If they had goole adverts they would have to follow google content guidelines. That would be awful.

edyang2• 14 years ago

If they ask for donations, it seems fair to know what their operating costs are as others have pointed out. As a point of reference, all of the non profits I donate to have annual reports that specify exactly where the monies go, and are audited. People will indeed donate if they believe the money is going to a good cause and there's adequate transparency. See Kiva.org and the job they've done in that area.

absconditus2• 14 years ago

Wikimedia provides all of this. See if you can spot it hidden on this page:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

edyang2• 14 years ago

lol epic fail for me. Thanks for that! Funny, I usually enter Wikipedia from search engines...

infoseckid• 14 years ago

"You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villan" -- given the contribution wikipedia has made to the world, personally I am ok paying $100/yr to fund their beer.

As for the people editing wikipedia - its similar to facebook users adding their "data" and Mark profiting from it all. Why should this be an exception?

esteer• 14 years ago

Here's the response from Jimmy Wales http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Is-Wikipedia-collecting-more-...

gcmartinelli• 14 years ago

Wikipedia gives me so much value US$50/year is cheap. I wouldn't mind if people there where getting rich building it. Although Corporate/Organizational transparency is always a good thing, and should be demanded.

bane3• 14 years ago

I'd consider donating when they get serious about the deletionist problem and stop pretending that the drop off in new contributions has anything to do with the absurd notion that wikipedia is exhausting the depth and breadth of human knowledge.

redthrowaway2• 14 years ago

So, in other 2005 news, The Register still hates Wikipedia. Honestly, I just don't get it. Sure, the culture can be off-putting. Sure, the donation drives can get annoying. But it's still a massive, eminently useful site run on a shoestring budget. The constant intimation that editors should be paid, a rather ridiculous assertion given the realities of open source communities, gives this piece the air of someone's personal gripe. It really does seem like someone set out to write a hit piece, then decided after what details to cherry pick in order to make it as hitty as possible.

One of these days, I'd be interested in finding out just what it is that makes The Register hate Wikipedia so much. The kind of vitriol you see from them is usually only matched by the Wikipedia Review, which leads me to believe that there's a jilted ex-editor somewhere on their staff whose mission is to expose the nasty, evil, free and open source encyclopedia to the world.

rtkwe• 14 years ago

$51 million isn't really a shoestring budget any way you cut it.

redthrowaway2• 14 years ago

Wikipedia serves more traffic than Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, or eBay. What's their budget?

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

The only one making potshots is Orlowski. Orlowski hates free culture in general, and is considered by most to be a troll, not a journalist.

spobo• 14 years ago

Just check his TED talk. http://blog.ted.com/2006/08/29/jimmy_wales_on/

He basically says it's dirt cheap to host and operate and that it's one of the best things about it.

At the time of the video their bandwidth costs per month was just 5000$ and one paid programmer.

Aka you don't need millions to run it. So I was a little baffled when I saw his first big campaign to raise money.

chris_wot20• 14 years ago

That was a talk from 7 years ago. Wikipedia experienced explosive growth at around that time, and the WMF (the organisation you donate to) have expanded their remit since then.

davidgerard3• 14 years ago

Back then the site also went down in a stiff breeze.

It's 2012 and "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that."

Jagat• 14 years ago

Jimmy Wales' response on Quora http://qr.ae/1A4iQ

"That article is typical of The Register - typical nonsense. The number of falsehoods in it is substantial, so in the interests of time, I will cover just a few of the highlights.

greenyoda• 14 years ago

You can see Wikimedia Foundation's latest IRS Form 990, which includes information about their revenues, expenses and salaries of key employees, here:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c0/Form_...

Additional financial reports can be found here:

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2012....

pebb• 14 years ago

I'll donate if they promise to never revert my edits again.

IheartApplesDix• 14 years ago

I got downvoted to hell for saying this is another ycombinator thread two days ago... I guess I jumped out in front of the bandwagon instead of on to it.

Wikipedia doesn't need your money

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