Comment by xscott | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xscott | Hacker News Reader

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I've donated thousands of dollars to Wikimedia over the years. Before I retired, I took frequent advantage of my company's policy for matching donations, doubling the amount I gave. After retirement, I set my "Amazon Smile" donations to go there. Maybe I'm bragging, but I just want to show I actually care about the topic.

I know children's cancer and other horrible things pull on more heart strings, but Wikipedia makes such a huge wealth of great information available to such a huge percentage of the world, including many poor people who might otherwise not have access to much education. Saving sick kids is kind, but there are lot of healthy kids who could use a leg up too.

I honestly don't value the other Wikimedia projects very much, and I'm sure there is waste in their policies and beuracracy, but assuming Wikipedia is only getting 10% of my donations, I still think it's great bang for the buck.

If there is a better charity, I'd like to know about it. However, this article reads to me as "Meh, you shouldn't really feel obligated", and I don't think it said much that was useful.

I wonder if some people that undervalue wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation turned 18 after 2000 (under 40 or so).

I remember when my family got an encyclopedia set (you'd buy them for a thousand dollar or so, in pre-90s USD, if you were lucky enough to be able to afford them). You'd get yearly updates (physical books, also) for a fee for changes to entries. Didn't have the cross references, the non-text media, the cross referencing, the convenience of external links to online sources....

It's been a huge boon for global knowledge. They are one of the most valuable human endeavors of my lifetime.

edit: support childhood cancer, too. There has been real progress. Family support (lodging, traveling) sometimes get second billing to research or medical care. They're all good. So help us, need in one place doesn't negate the need in another. I like St. Jude, there are a bunch of others that do profound good for the world.

Almost none of that money goes towards improving Wikipedia. A sizeable chunk will go towards unpopular software projects like Flow[1] and costly rebranding efforts against the community's wishes.[2] The article mentions an alternative, the Wikipedia Reward Board,[3] where the money (or other reward) would actually go to the person (or people) doing the editing work. Not every Wikimedia project has a reward board, but for the ones that do, you can make your monetary contributions go a lot further by using that instead of donating to the WMF.

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Collaboration/Flow_sati...

2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_open_letter_on_ren...

3. Wikipedia Reward Board: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reward_board

I would love for good contributors to be rewarded, but I'm not sure how you do that without people gaming the system and creating worse editor politics than there are now.

However, I am sure what happens if you don't pay the electricity and networking for the servers, or have a team of lawyers protecting the overall effort. Despite it's flaws, the current system is working well by my standards.

Not much of their budget is going toward hosting though -- in FY 18-19 it was ~$2.3M of their ~$91.4M expenses [1].

If we look back to 2005, Wikipedia was already one of the most popular websites on the internet, but their expenses were only $716k [2]. They were frugal back then!

I agree with the parent that the extra expenses are mostly superfluous. They have a ton of staff [3] and quite a few of their roles seem to be about promoting their brand or maximizing donations.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/3/31/Wikim... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/28/Wikim... [3] https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/

Did you read the part where it says that the people writing the content don't receive any of the donations?

And that the foundation's software initiatives have been largely innefective at getting more/better content? [0]

(I've also donated to Wikimedia in the past and contributed to Wikipedia itself)

[0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/...

I'm surprised people are surprised by this, speaking as an annual donator. The "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." implies it to me.

That's almost entirely what makes Wikipedia what it is, the idea that it's community maintained by volunteer contributors. If it's compensated, it completely changes the contribution culture and the identity of the site at the core. It still needs a legal team, professional staff, payroll, etc, too. I know they have other projects and that's fine by me, even if they don't succeed.

> Did you read the part where it says that the people writing the content don't receive any of the donations?

I did, but I think there's value in just sustaining the platform. I'm worried about perverse incentives and gaming metrics if you reward the contributors. I'm sure you can imagine that going poorly. And, even without rewards, there sure are a lot of good contributions.

> If there’s a better charity, I’d like to know about it...

Not saying it’s necessarily better or worse, but is worth considering– the Internet archive (ie they run the Wayback machine, among other services). I have donated to both. I feel strongly about archiving/storing all types of information- digital and non-digital.

There is a great amount of information that is lost or unable to be easily located due to 404 errors or servers going off-line (and the source of this issue is only getting worse)

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