That's the heart of the issue, right? Is the Wikimedia Foundation just supposed to run a website that is edited by volunteers, or is it supposed to also do other things that further the same goals as the actual Wikipedia? The foundation itself has the latter viewpoint, while I expect most people donating are just donating to pay for the former.
>the vast majority of your donation does go to maintaining wikipedia.
Who knows? Is there any good investigative breakdown of exactly what Wikimedia Foundation spends most of its income on? Does it have a huge admin parasitical attachment sucking the money away? I'm not accusing, just wondering myself. Perhaps someone knows about this.
> 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.
> I just thought my money went to maintaining Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, it's purpose and intent is...
"to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal." - Jimmy Wales, 2008
The grants work to serve that goal. Of ensuring that everyone has access to that information and can use it.
So, my question is simple, if they didn't send the money to these organizations, but instead, used it instead to improve only, let's say, the machines it's hosted on, but you and whatever country you were in couldn't access it, would you still give them money? Wikipedia still exists for everyone else, but you and your fellow countrymen can't access it.
Have you? Wikipedia doesn't accept money. Wikimedia does, though.
> I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world.
Necessary how? For what?
I donate to Wikipedia—as a Wikipedian. I've contributed a bunch of time editing content and doing lots of gnomish things to create value so that Wikipedia is a "great service". Millions of others have, too. But neither I nor any of the other people have anything to do with your donations.
Don't misunderstand: this is not a call-to-action for revenue sharing in the vein of the articles constantly appearing about the sustainability of FOSS; I'm not saying "give us a cut". What I am saying is that the Wikimedia fundraising tactics are thoroughly unnecessary to the actual production costs of Wikipedia that Wikimedia is responsible for.
Am I outraged? No. Do I recognize what WMF is doing as borderline slimy? Yes.
> People donating to wikipedia only want wikipedia, they are unaware of the other stuff wikimedia does.
On the contrary, Wikipedia itself has a lot of reliance on the other projects. For example, Wikidata solves the problem of interlinking Wikipedia languages and other projects when they're hosting content about the same real-world entity. In fact, this was Wikidata's MVP - the reason it got funded in the first place. It then took off from there.
Wikimedia Commons is a similar story - in addition to the obvious languages issue, there are a lot of concerns about media (such as licensing. enhancement etc.) that really are best addressed in a dedicated venue, with its own committed contributors. This has been very beneficial to Wikipedia itself.
You may be glad wikipedia has a lot of money, but are you glad wikimedia does? Are you happy with the proportion of your wikimedia donation that goes to wikipedia?
> 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.
>Really? how does wikipedia function then, why do lots of people create meaningful content in web for free?
I get the impression that sometimes it's barely getting by; very few months I see a banner at the top of its webpage suggesting that it's close to running out of money and pleading for donations.
(In fact, I don't really understand why their donation campaigns are so obtrusive, given that they could afford to receive 30% less even with their current level of spending. I guess it is understandable that they want to receive as much support as they can, but I wonder whether it really serves their long-term interests, as it probably sends the wrong signal.)
> a "funded by X" tag at the bottom
Wikimedia doesn't allow ads on its properties (which I think is very important), and I would say that advertising donors on articles would be against that goal. (Think about what happens when an article gets edited in a way that isn't approved by the advertised donor.)
The article asks Wales: "Worried about the accuracy of Wiki?"
His reply: "We make it as good as we possibly can, but we know it isn’t perfect. On the other hand, it’s pretty good."
Well, people need to understand that the Wikimedia Foundation – which Jimmy Wales founded and still is a board member of today – is a platform provider, just like YouTube or Twitter. As such, they don't really impact the quality of the content directly. That is all done by unpaid volunteers.
> And then we have wikipedia's budget priorities, which indicate that Wales et al seem to value creating cushy jobs for people who don't add much to wikipedia much more than just keeping the site running for as long as possible, by a ratio of around 10:1 (roughly).
I won't comment on your other points, but - Wikipedia is a non-profit. They can't just hang on to cash, they have to spend it somehow, and in a way in line with their charter. If they've already spent enough on servers, bandwidth, hosting, etc, where else will that go but to salaries? If you look at their financial reports (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/dd/2010-1...) you'll see their donations exceeded their planned amounts significantly, so they're hiring more people to balance that out.
>But donating to an organization that doesn't directly benefit Wikipedia in any way, that's where I'm much more doubtful. I'd much prefer they just advertised them in some way instead, like during their donation drives.
The biggest donation is going to a charity managing an archive. A place that has important documents that can be cited by, oh I don't know, an encyclopedia maybe?
> Thank god Wikipedia isn’t run like Stack Overflow.
Wikipedia isn't run like a business, but relies on charity. Wikipedia doesn't have to be profitable to exist so of course it isn't run like Stack Overflow, Wikipedia is backed by a foundation that gets plenty of donations. Maybe SO should adopt that model, but that's an entire different question.
If Wikipedia had to be profitable it would be a very different platform.
Both are crowdsourced (so are reddit, facebook and youtube), and the similarities stop there.
> I would stop very far from calling the work that was already done "terrible".
You already declared you weren't going to debate me on this point, so I don't know why you're bringing it up again, especially since you're not saying anything substantive.
> why exactly people who built a reference management software must be running Wikimedia Foundation?
Because they are philanthropically funded non-profit who build great academic/research software on a small budget while responding rapidly to user feedback.
If your objections center around the fact that WMF does a lot more than develop Wikipedia software, then you are missing the whole point of this thread: that WMF's primary contribution is Wikipedia, and almost everything else is secondary. So long as it's being funded by private citizens because of the value they get from Wikipedia, then this should be the focus. Yes, that means the people running Wikipedia conferences and local meetups will have less power.
They are volunteers. They do as much works as they want or don't want to do. Once you are the size of the Wikipedia there are tasks that need to be done, and you can't really relay on volunteers to do it in their free time.
> I would avoid donating to any such organisation myself.
Its your money.
I am just saying that its normal and expected in free and opensource communities to do that sort of things. Organize conferences, meetups, public awareness, handle the legal stuff and hire the core stuff that makes sure thing are running 24/7.
I think there's a disconnect in what people believe is the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation. The WMF is an ideologically-driven movement. It is much more than simply a benevolent public service. The WMF has social-justice based goals in the world, and the public-facing Wikipedia projects are simply the friendly face of this movement. They're building an endowment to keep the movement alive, not merely to keep the lights on for their server racks.
The most useful thing that a typical user can donate to WMF is their time. So edit a few articles and get involved with the process if you're so inclined. It's volunteer labor, over and above all else, that keeps the projects running. If you're a minor donor then you need to understand that your money goes to support the movement, not simply the service.
That's the heart of the issue, right? Is the Wikimedia Foundation just supposed to run a website that is edited by volunteers, or is it supposed to also do other things that further the same goals as the actual Wikipedia? The foundation itself has the latter viewpoint, while I expect most people donating are just donating to pay for the former.
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