I have donated in the past, but then there were wild accusations, people saying it’s not needed, it’s to fund other things, and so on and so forth.
Yesterday I got the popup begging for a couple of euros, so what’s the status? Should I donate or is it a waste of time and money?
Cheers
Edit: Thanks for all the insightful posts! I’m jobless at the moment so just ten bucks this time:
Making a monthly contribution. Who knows where the money goes but I’ve never heard of a wiki project I disapproved of and there is a lot to like about what they do.
deleted by creator
I’m also curious about this. If there are any transparency reports, I’d love to read through that.
The Wikimedia Foundation are trying to implement some AI solutions (for helping humans, not write articles/information), which is likely quite costly, unless someone donates it. However, I imagine many others’ scrapers for AI are constantly demanding a lot from the Wikipedia servers since some years ago, probably resulting in increased costs. Hopefully the AI builders use a local copy of the torrent instead, but I fear they don’t…
I’m still happily donating though, as I think the Wikipedia Foundation are still doing a solid job, despite me not always agreeing with their decisions.
Next time you think about donating to a foundation, look at their CEO‘s salary, then think again.
513k seems pretty low compared to most private sector CEOs
And pretty high compared to what most donors have.
WhAtAbOuT!
That sort of remuneration isn’t compatible with their yearly donation pleadings… and that’s not even looking into the benevolent work of all authors which actually drives the value of that supposedly non profit. Other private sector CEO at least aren’t pretending…
If you don’t have good leadership then it doesn’t matter what the fundraisers do. It seems like the metric to look at here should be the average and median 501©3 CEO total compensation for similarly sized orgs and for whatever city they are headquartered in
How would you assess its size given that the bulk of the work is crowdsourced ? As for the city that’s awfully arbitrary… especially in these times where remote working is available and talents can be sourced from anywhere. Maybe it’s different in American companies but in Europe the leadership is generally shared across a number of executives. Or even broader. All in all I find it quite funny too see all the shielding when discussing Wikipedia’s ceo when any other ceo related discussion would have them hanged by popular demand.
the bulk of the work is crowdsourced
No. The WMF does not work on Wikipedia’s content. They focus on fundraising, hosting, software, legal, and the rare cross-wiki initiative.
Sorry, what is the actual thinking here? Anyone who earns more than you shouldn’t exist?
Without a highly paid CEO, wikipedia wouldn’t exist.
Without donations, wikipedia wouldn’t exist.
Therefore, if you want wikipedia to exist, you should donate.
My argument is that nobody needs 500k to do their job right and there is no justification for paying a manager five to ten times as much as an engineer, especially not on donation money.
I‘d rather give to a smaller project where the money actually ends up with the people who do most of the work.
there is no justification for paying a manager five to ten times as much as an engineer
The justification is, the market is competitive. If you want someone with the right skills, you need to provide them similar benefits to what they could receive elsewhere.
Suppose you only paid CEO’s and other management the same rate as engineers. Do you think wikipedia’s performance would be equal to what it presently is ?
Then go do that and stop loudly aligning with fascist goals of tearing down the last good part of the internet, weirdo
Criticizing top-down organizations where money flows up toward the least useful people being equated to fascism is fucking wild, bro. That’s like the most standard left take.
Tearing down Wikipedia is in direct alignment with Fascists’s stated goals, I’m not equating anything.
If you are against Wikipedia you’re with Trump and Elon.
Make good choices
Oh yeah, the guy who fights for fair wages, universal basic income, free healthcare and equal rights for everyone criticizes that your favorite „non-profit“ organization looks more and more like a for-profit corporation every year and comes begging while wearing a gold watch. He must be a fascist.
No one in this comment section is against Wikipedia. You’re making that shit up. We’re saying they don’t need your money, they can trim the fat off the top. They’re also one of the most well funded orgs in the world. It doesn’t take that much to host wikipedia.
If you think “hosting” is what it takes to run Wikipedia, we’re done here. Best of luck to you
As an editor, based on the difference she made in community–WMF dynamics, I would say that Iskander is really useful.
I think the thinking is that half a million is a disgusting amount for anyone to earn annually and I tend to agree with that.
If someone offered you half a million a year you’d take it.
If other people with similar skills, experience, and attributes to yours were making more than you, you would want more.
It’s not really that much money. Your local family doctor can make that much. Surgeons and medical specialists certainly can.
For perspective, 500k is effectively the same as zero compared to what the likes of Musk, Bezos and Ellison make from their assets.
You and this CEO are basically equivalent in wealth to those guys.
You can take issue with the remuneration here, sure, but this person doesn’t have anything close to the economy breaking amount of wealth held by the actually wealthy
They are the ones we should be focusing our energy on.
Be angry at wealth, not income. That’s what’s fucking everything up right now.
Be angry at wealth, not income
I can think that both are gross beyond a certain point.
Does she really need the donations I’ve been giving to top her up to that level? Or is 300K more than enough for anyone? It would certainly be more palatable to those giving donations.
I think that utterly ridiculous wages at C level generally have become normalised and the amount of people in this thread defending a half a million salary is clear evidence of that to me.
Both can be gross sure, but even the biggest CEO income is not causing systemic economic problems because it’s generally taxed somewhat properly and is ultimately tied to some amount of time and effort being spent (however little)
Wealth? Basically not taxed at all. Requires zero time and effort to make income.
What do people who make millions a year from assets do with that money?
Buy more assets, beyond a point everything they could possibly have as a living expense is covered.
What does someone with a lot of money do when bidding against people with less for an asset?
Drive the price up
This is why houses are expensive and will keep getting more so
This is why food is expensive and will keep getting more so
This is why energy is expensive and will keep getting more so
This is why everything is expensive and will keep getting more so
What happens then? Housing, food and energy is increasing something the non wealthy can afford.
Keep it up and the 99.9% won’t be able own a thing and will ultimately have no power to change that.
Concentrated wealth is an existential issue
Oh I agree that gross levels of wealth are the bigger problem by a country mile. We’re in total agreement there.
People earning half a million a year are still raking in money from earned wealth from excess money. I suppose my objections are twofold; that it’s a donations based organisation and that wages just shouldn’t be that high (and I grant you hers are at the lower level of many large companies C level packages).
Have you a nice dark mode plugin going on that I should have?
Dark Reader!
It’s great. In some rare cases it breaks a website though, then you need to deactivated it.
That’s super tame, though. A competent CEO is essential to an organization as important and as hated by powerful people as Wikipedia, and those cost a a pretty penny.
You gotta remember this is a massive website that doesn’t run on donations alone. It needs qualified people that have experience with websites of this scale.
Those people aren’t cheap.
Then pay the people who actually keep the website running. I bet they don’t earn half a million per year.
Who hires those people? Who gives them direction? CEOs don’t do nothing. They are overpaid in for profit companies, but this is probably what they should be making.
If you believe that CEO are doing that in vacuum you’re being very naive. They are for sure taking decisions but they take them most of the time based on shareholders constraints, external guidance or internal influences.
They don’t pay the people who do the actual work anything, though…
Did you think they run their servers using volunteers?
No I don’t but I think the articles are slightly more important, yet the writers get nothing.
The articles don’t get written without the servers running, and the writers are not forced to write them. Wikipedia is a free service to share information, so writers are using it as a service, not as an employee. They could have easily not used wikipedia.
Saying they should be paid is like saying developers should be paid for sharing their code on Github. What you actually want is to follow the FOSS model and donate to the Wikipedia writers directly, not expect the foundation to pay people who use their service for free.
I can download wikipedia to a usb drive and distribute via torrenting. The content is objectively more valuable than the website.
Where did that download come from? Who compiled all those written information into something that can be downloaded by you?
Try making a compilation of information directly through torrents from scratch and tell me how far you get with that. I’m sure you’ll find that most people do not want to go through that hassle.
You’re severely underestimating the value of making it easy to compile the information in the first place. And again, those information do not need to be compiled to wikipedia by the writers. They do so because of the value provided by the service.
The question is, do you think the writers will get paid any better by you sharing their work through torrents than through wikipedia? I don’t think so. If you actually cared about this, go and donate to the writers instead of devaluing the contribution of wikipedia in compiling these information.
Remember that there is a lot of anti-Wikipedia propaganda going around these days. Most “outrage” against Wikipedia is created and pushed artificially.
It’s just that one dude here
Ia it the.dude that’s downvoting everything here?
The website itself needs a really small amount of money. Most of the money goes for other stuff which might not seem useful to you.
They make it seem like they don’t have money but it’s quite the opposite: they increase their spendings based on their revenue. They have enough for many years.
Don’t donate to them. There are far better ways to spend your money than a foundation that doesn’t really do anything on Wikipedia and that still actively blocks anonymous proxies.
What other stuff? Blocking anonymous proxies is okay with me given the volume of bullshit posted by anonymous people everywhere else. Non-anonymised posting on a website wholly dedicated to facts and not opinions seems like a good thing.
Then you have to accept Wikipedia is not free. I’m personally not willing to give them my IP, and I’ve been actively prevented from editing, fixing and adding information on the website.
The sole knowledge that they don’t use the money to fund Wikipedia should be enough to understand that your donation is not needed. When you donate, you think you donate for the great content, and maintaining Wikipedia, but that money isn’t used for that, or at least in a very small proportion.
Wikimedia foundation doesn’t write articles and do very few moderation. Iirc there are less than 100 employees working on the site. They’re financially profiting from the volunteer work people do. Just like Reddit.
Free as in beer? It can be free, but as Heinlein said: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
The whole point of Wikipedia is that the “IP” is freely given, for the benefit of all. Keep in mind wikipedia editors are challenged to remain purely factual, so the idea that anything stated there could possibly belong to someone doesn’t exactly make sense. You can own the rights to a process, or a song, or own the right to produce something, but the composition of an object, the technology driving an innovation, or the background of music theory are facts, and statements around them are part of public discourse.
In the sense that media is present on Wikipedia, I believe I’ve never seen a commercially-licenced piece of media on the site. That’s why all the pictures of celebrities are weird public snaps.
Is the editing and content creation process messy? Sometimes corrupted? Yes. That’s humanity for you. We fuck things up. It’s up to all of us to keep us honest and continue to improve. Things can be irredeemable or fully captured by commercial interest, sure - that’s a Reddit situation and it can be abandoned. Wikipedia isn’t that, and it’s old enough to have proven it won’t be captured in that way.
I think maybe you’re confused on how nonprofits work? Plenty of nonprofits have paid employees who are working there expressly for money. Sometimes lots of money. Because living under a capitalist system involves trading your time for labor. How else would the site be maintained and kept running? Wikipedia is the 10th-most visited website on the entire internet. That it would run at all on the labor of less than 100 people is fucking incredible and something to be thrilled about! In comparison, Reddit makes the world much worse than Wikipedia and it runs on ~2,000 employees. So I would say that the Wikimedia foundation is definitely not just like reddit.
Free as in beer?
Free as in freedom, where everyone is welcome to access, contribute.
so the idea that anything stated there could possibly belong to someone doesn’t exactly make sense. You can own the rights to a process, or a song, or own the right to produce something, but the composition of an object, the technology driving an innovation, or the background of music theory are facts, and statements around them are part of public discourse
This is false. While facts are facts and no one owns them (except for patents), it’s the formulation that you own. Plagiarism is about this. I didn’t want to focus on the legal aspect anyways, the license behind contributions is well known and I have no issues with it.
Your entire comment is not on the subject that I was talking about. I’m saying that the Wikimedia Foundation profits from volunteer work while they do very little, and I don’t believe that’s fair. I would much rather donate to contributors than to the foundation.
You should also know that non profits are really often abused and a way to pay less taxes. Many of them act like for profits.
I do not have the means to donate to things that I care about. Most weeks, the difference between overdrafting my bank account or not is literally a few cents. I donate the $3.10 every time the pop up shows up on Wikipedia. I’m sure there are other organizations that need the money more, but I think Wikipedia is SO important, and so far has remained earnest in their behavior. Proud of you for donating what you could, glad I could help a little bit too.
Be well, friend
Hey, I remember a time when if I lost a 5€ bill, that meant I’d eat for 5 euros less that month.
We’ve got your back, take care of yourself and consider donating when you’ve come around and can do it without second thoughts.
Cheers and hang in there, it’s worth it!
I’ve increased the amount I donate since the campaign to discredit them has been in effect.
Maybe they aren’t perfect, but I don’t like the idea of a world without such a wonderful resource being freely available to everyone no matter their background or financial status.
I used it a lot as a student but couldn’t afford to donate then. I don’t use it directly a lot these days, but I’m sure indirectly it contributes to articles I read, & I can afford to donate now, so I try to pay it back & some.
Information is power, & those in/with power seem to currently be trying their best to bring everyone else down. Any small thing I can do to help prevent that is a win in my book.
In the current day and age of misinformation I think donating is more important than ever. It doesn’t need to be much.
Usually its the far right or tankies that hate wikipedia, it seems pretty neutral for the most part.
I was hearing that Wikipedia makes more than enough money from things outside of donations that it seems scammy to ask for donations the way they do from leftists before Trump’s first term.
I was hearing that Wikipedia makes more than enough money from things outside of donations
dumb question but how does wikipedia make money outside donations? is there merch somewhere?
Grants and they also have a for-profit venture in Wikimedia Enterprises.
Nope
they hate it, because it has all the info of everything bad that a republican/conservative, far right government did, and its very hard to deflect/ or deny the amount of evidence from it.
Reddit users and now lemmy users seem to have a riotous distaste for non-profits generally.
Wikipedia is one of the last, good parts of the internet, and it’s under increasing threat.
Nope
Wikimedia the tool is great, the foundation behind it, not so much
mind giving us some reasons for this position? not a critique, genuinely curious
Thanks for asking! The subject has been coming up for quite some time. I might edit this comment with more sources later on, because I’ve learned about this a few years ago and don’t keep a full list of my sources on me.
I have a few reasons for this:
- The Wikimedia Foundation (the entity that receives your donations) only uses a really small fraction of your donations for the Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. The rest goes into various non-essential spendings. [1]
- They’re not efficient about spendings. Each year they receive more, and each year they spend more, way more than they should compared to Wikipedia’s growth.
- The WMF doesn’t really do much on Wikipedia. All the writing and nearly all the moderation is done by volunteers.
- They block anonymous proxies, VPNs, Tor exit nodes from editing, even if you create an account. No exceptions for regular people.
This comment is still being modified, please wait 👷
TYVM
I find it valuable and worth supporting, so I donate a dollar a month. It’s not much, but I want to contribute (monetarily, in addition to editing)
I give small monthly donations to three things:
- Wikipedia
- EFF
- Internet Archive
It’s good to see Fediverse people actually supporting paying for something. Sometimes I think they want everything for free.
There are multiple factions. Some of us are happy to pay the people who produce the stuff we enjoy.
I don’t think people here mind paying for stuff I think it’s more that enshittification and subscription based business models should not be supported.
Exactly. We don’t just flatly refuse to spend money on anything. We expect a certain level of service and value for money. Wikipedia, though not perfect, is probably one of the most useful tools on the internet.
It’s not that I want everything for free, it’s that I want money to no longer be a factor in life. Like in The Orville.
(Star Trek too, I assume, but I’m not a Trekkie so I can’t confirm whether or not money exists in that universe.)
I’m another monthly donor. I use Wikipedia nearly every day and appreciate the effort that goes into maintaining it.
Which effort? 99% of it is volunteer work by people not at the wikimedia foundation
