Read this and then decide for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Right now, I'm leaning towards "no" on account of them allegedly being awash with money.
In the vein of alternative places to donate, consider your Fediverse instance(s). If you're a Linux user, a few pennies towards your distro of choice wouldn't go amiss either. (I'd also say archive.org, but someone else suggested that already.)
You may already be donating to these places, but this comment is also for the handful of other people who might see it, and like one of those arcade coin waterfalls, might trickle down into the conscience of someone who has cash to donate.
Fuuuuck no.
maybe redirect that to archive.org
I feel like they need it more... they've just been hacked and they might need more resources to upgrade their security.
But both are good causes. But make sure you have enough emergency funds saved for yourself first.
Edit: Another argument for archive.org over wikipedia is that wikipedia is mostly a text based site. archive.org , in contrast, can store photos, videos, software, and various media thay requires more storage. The entire English wikipedia is only about 100GB (excluding videos), but archive.org is probably in the Terabytes or more.
Their software collection alone has reached the petabyte mark: https://archive.org/details/software?tab=about
I don't anymore.
they do not need your money, and it's disingenuous of them to imply they do.
The manipulative aspect of their annual fundraisers is very unsettling.
here are some numbers from 2022:
https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-next-time-wikipedia-asks-for-a-donation-ignore-it/
they have at least 400 million in reserves now and the estimate is $10 million a year to maintain the site and pay all their employees.
their higher executives are each paid hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
they're not struggling to keep the lights on for the next half century.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2022-2023-annual-report/
They have approximately $80 million in cash, and it costs them about $100 million to pay their staff. They have $274 million in total assets, counting endowment investments.
It's extremely unclear where that site came up with $400 million.
I'm not sure why you'd link to a two year old opinion piece on it, when all of their financials are publicly available and provided without commentary.
They received cash in excess of expenses of about $6 million, and including non-cash assets their total assets increased by about $16 million in 2024.
Their CEO makes about $500 thousand a year, and the rest of their executive team ranges in salary from $300 to $100 thousand.
It's not a small salary, but it's not preposterous for one of the most visited sites in the Internet that also operates as a charity to have decently compensated executives.
They are not in financial trouble, but it's not accurate to say they can keep the lights on for the next 50 years.
Those salaries are not competitive. Not that they should be because executive pay is out of control, but they are also in no way extravagant and possibly too low or at least the bare minimum to retain any kind of decent talent to run the operation.
Looking at the profiles for the executives, you definitely get the feeling that they're either the sort that prioritizes "my work put good into the world and you don't need to squint to see it" over cash, so "yeah, that lets me live" is sufficient, or their seemingly going for a high score for number of "oh, nice!" organizations they can put on their CV, and the total compensation from them all is probably more than competitive.
"a two year old opinion piece on it,"
it's the first article that popped up with reliable numbers, but there are plenty of articles criticizing the amassed wealth of wmf while they're asking for money every year.
unsurprisingly, the WMF reports that WMF are spending their money responsibly and are barely managing to sustain themselves, while every journalist that looks into it confirms that WMF have plenty of money and have not needed to do these fundraising drives for years, and will not have to for decades.
$100 million is purely cash on hand, it doesn't take into account any otger WMF assets.
it's nice that you're excited about Wikipedia, and it can be a useful resource, but these are not contentious facts.
Wikipedia has plenty of money, they spend it irresponsibly, and every year they are taking and millions of dollars that they add to that stack.
important to note, Wikipedias value to the end users is contributed two and maintained by unpaid volunteers.
here's another good article;
https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-foundation-donate.html
I made sure it was also 2 years old because I think it's funny your ageist about facts.
I'll talk to you in 50 years and we can settle this.
first article that popped up with reliable numbera
Except...the numbers weren't reliable. Where did they get $400 million in cash from? That's just not a thing.
$100 million is purely cash on hand, it doesn't take into account any otger WMF assets.
It's $80 million cash, $274M counting all assets, like it says in the audit and my comment.
unsurprisingly, the WMF reports that WMF are spending their money responsibly and are barely managing to sustain themselves
Are you saying that their financial audit is fraudulent? "Wikipedia is committing tax fraud" is a pretty hot take, not gonna lie.
Their financial report also doesn't claim they're barely scraping by, so I'm not sure where you're getting that.
Wikipedia has plenty of money, they spend it irresponsibly
That's a different argument which you seemingly haven't actually argued. "They make enough money, here's some incorrect financial claims to justify it" is very different from "I don't think they spend money wisely, and need to change what they spend on".
it's nice that you're excited about Wikipedia, and it can be a useful resource, but these are not contentious facts.
I never actually made a statement for or against donation, I only pointed out that your information was incorrect. "$400 million cash" is a very different situation than "$80 million cash".
I'm gonna disagree very strongly that these are "not contentious facts", because they're not correct in the slightest. Being off by $320 million dollars strongly undercuts the credibility of an argument.
Honestly, I'm confused about why you seem so angry at Wikipedia.
Yes, I am ageist about facts. What a weird thing to take issue with. The financial state of an organization two years ago doesn't have as much bearing on if they should get donations as the current financial statement does.
Does this financial statement from 2006 feel just as relevant and make you want to donate to them?
That article is at least accurate in how it describes their financial situation. It's also kind of amusing that the author concludes that donation is reasonable:
So, bottom line: Should someone with financial means donate when they see Wikipedia’s banner ads running in December? It depends. In my view, people who volunteer a lot of time improving Wikipedia’s content have already made their “gift” and should feel no obligation. For everyone else, the calculus is personal. One volunteer suggested donating to smaller but allied organizations like OpenStreetMap, which provides map data that is used for Wikipedia pages. Other contributors said that even if Wikipedia is only indirectly supported by the WMF, the WMF is still the best-positioned organization to advance free knowledge overall by virtue of its scale and connections.
Clearly, Wikipedians are right to engage in vigorous discussion about how donations are solicited from visitors and to oversee how those funds are actually spent. For me, there’s also the small matter of the external environment. In recent years, Wikipedia has been attacked by authoritarian regimes and powerful billionaires—people who do not necessarily benefit from the free flow of neutral information. If $3 helps hold them off, then that’s coffee money well spent.
Yeah I no longer donate as well for this same reason. They are not hurting for cash
I heard it's for some legal reason that they still have to do funding drives. Maybe to maintain a certain status? I'm not sure.
To keep the money coming is a pretty good reason.
They use most of the money for other activities. I’d look towards those, if you don’t like them don’t waste it.
If you do, their e-mails asking you to donate again are a bit weird and manipulative. Their subject lines are like "FIRSTNAME - I've had enough", "Our final email" (got several of those), "It's non-negotiable".
I am not sure whether the wikimedia foundation actually needs money from individuals. From what I could find by searching "Does Wikipedia need donations", they seem to have plenty of money. I've also seen from people that after donating, they like to haunt your email inbox for more money.
I myself prefer donating elsewhere instead. In my opinion a good alternative is archive.org. It's hard to track how much they get sued, and now they even were hacked recently.
I donate a bit each year, and I wouldn't say they are bothersome. I get an email once a year where they ask if I'd like to donate again, not counting the receipt from the actual donation. It seems disingenuous to complain about the receipt.
Yeah I'll give em $20 some years and never got hit with emails. EDIT: just checked i have 2 solicitation in my inbox this year
You’re better off shooting your instance the money, but Wikipedia has remained a genuinely good quality company. If you want to give them money in recognition of this fact, no one sane will call you a dumb dildo with hairy feet.
You have my permission
I barely have two dollars to rub together and I still try to
I guess I'm probably overdue to make a donation myself
No. The articles are written by volunteers and will not be improved by your donation.
In theory, your donation does keep the servers running, but they have plenty of money to do that, and most of the money nowadays goes to paying way too many employees many of whom don't do anything very useful or important.
Yes
yes
If you can afford it, yes. If you use it, yes.
Maybe not each year. I mean, I donate a couple hundreds every few years because back in those days I certainly was not paying for a brand new printed encyclopedia every single year either ;)
Do you use Wikipedia? If so, yes.
i think it's mostly for maintaining the servers, the actual article writers are random people on the internet, who probably recieve no money
Yes.
You know how people will donate money to streamers if they do stupid stuff? If you can do that, you can do this.
I don't but I'm cheap
May I...... oh wait, not that.
Yes, yes you should donate.