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Comment by wyattpeak | Hacker News Reader

Frankly, if a nonprofit can't justify to laypeople why they should have money, they shouldn't have money.

My money is limited, the causes which can benefit from it are not. It seems to me the height of self-absorption that an organisation should expect donations over the many other worthwhile causes without justifying the benefit that money would bring.

Changes to editor tools and processes don't cut it. All of those exist in service of improving Wikipedia as a resource. If I can't see those changes as an end-user, I question whether any of them really mattered. Is a fantastic new user-friendly diagnostic machine justified in a hospital if treatment rates don't go up?

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Wikipedia's edits rates have been increasing very rapidly. Tools like those must exist in order to vet them and ensure that Wikipedia remains a trustworthy source. Its hard to see the benefits (nor am I sure how to ensure it shows) as the expectation is Wikipedia is always correct, but without them, the misinformation in Wikipedia would be much greater.

Between 2004 and 2018, monthly edits grew from 500k to 40M, an 80x growth. [1]

In the same period, expenses have grown from 25k to 80M, a 3200x growth. [TFA]

[1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2/#/all-projects/contributing/e...

Not claiming to know more than you about this but your point assumes that the changing cost of maintaining the project at scale has some proportional relationship to the number of edits.

As it has attracted global attention and ever more significant influence on people worldwide, Wikipedia's threats are likely more varied and insidious than they were in 2004. The cost of offsetting these threats may not relate to the volume of edits.

I certainly don't claim any domain knowledge, but the growth in expenses is so vast that I'm disinclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not, by the way, suggesting that a 3200x growth in expenses is inherently unjustifiable, just that it should in fact be justified.

Yes, agreed that it should be justified in the open.

Hmm, the long timeframe makes me wary of the comparison. The problem is, the comparison holds weaker and weaker over shorter timeframes:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_... Planned spending 2019 ~92mil

https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2/#/all-projects/contributing/e... - ~130% page edits growth 2012-2019 (~35mil expenses, a 260% increase)

https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2/#/all-projects/contributing/e... - ~80% page edits growth 2015-2019 (~65mil expenses, a 140% increase)

The rate of increased page edits is closer and closer to the rate of increased expenses. I personally don't think that's a convincing argument, because I haven't seen this massive improvement in tools to justify the extra costs(most of the extra expenditure doesn't seem to be on development, anyway), but I don't think the argument can be dismissed out of hand.

> Changes to editor tools and processes don't cut it. All of those exist in service of improving Wikipedia as a resource. If I can't see those changes as an end-user, I question whether any of them really mattered.

Honest question: How would we as end-users know if information quality went up due to work-reducing changes to editor and administrator tools?

Being pragmatic I agree that there needs to be some saleswork involved in actually getting donations, but I don't like that this is true. It has nothing to do with the quality of the job being done, but simply visualizations of stuff (representative or not) that potential donors want before opening their purse strings.

I don't doubt that the quality has gone up. I have rather more trouble believing that the quality has gone up 3200 times.

We can talk all we want about the nonlinearity of cost, but that's such an enormous jump that the idea that a, by your own suggestion, possibly unnoticeable increase in quality is worth the cost beggars belief.

Frankly, if a nonprofit can't justify to laypeople why they should have money, they shouldn't have money.

This is a joke, isn't it?

"Make Wikipedia better" is about as explanatory as "Cure Alzheimer's!" yet "Make Wikipedia better" is far more likely to be done and less likely to be funded than "Cure Alzheimer's!"

But here's an easy way to justify:

"Improve the moderation and content-editing tools to encourage more contributions," which has been the justification WMF has used for many recent projects.

It can easily be explained to you, but if that's your criteria, no foundation trying to cure any disease that isn't socially-caused should have your money.

I wouldn't donate to a charity which simply billed that they were aiming to cure Alzheimer's, either. I'd want to know what they'd accomplished so far, what they were planning to use the money for and, critically to the discussion at hand, if expenses seemed out of proportion with the activity I'd want to know why.

I don't claim in the parent comment that Wikipedia don't justify their expenses (although I don't think they do so sufficiently). I'm responding to the specific claim that there shouldn't be an expectation by donators to understand the benefit of their donation.

Process matters tremendously; it is essential to Wikipedia guarding against spam and bias.

To use your hospital analogy, diagnostic quality might be the difference between a hospital that works well, and one that carries our mostly unnecessary medical interventions.

"Frankly, if a nonprofit can't justify to laypeople why they should have money, they shouldn't have money."

You can't run a government by referendum.

While I don't know that I agree with the analogy between nonprofits and governments, I'm not suggesting that Wiki allow us to vote on actions. I'm responding to the claim in the parent that donators shouldn't expect to understand what benefit their money is bringing.

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