
Wikipedia fundraising strikes again – an open letter to Wikipedia - krschacht
https://medium.com/@keithie/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia-you-can-do-better-3b03970c8df7
======
flavio81
I must say that this is a well-written article, regardless of the opinion,
resumed (TL;DR) here:

\- Requesting money to Wikipedia viewers is done so often it gets as annoying
as an advertisement-packed Wikipedia would potentially be.

\- If you have innovated previously (knocking down the traditional
enciclopedias), you can do innovate regarding the way yourselves fund the
Wikipedia foundation, instead of just implying that "the only way for us to
avoid advertising is for us to loudly ask our users over and over again for
donations." (author quote)

As pointed out, Wikipedia is part of the Wikimedia Foundation. I find
interesting that they apparently only rely on users for the source of income.

On the other hand, if they go for the regular "Foundation" or "NGO" way of
requesting money to institutions (which probably would include governments and
big companies), this might have a negative impact on Wikipedia's neutrality,
and I personally would prefer Wikipedia to stay as neutral as possible.

So it's not so easy to "innovate in funding"...

~~~
JosephLark
> Requesting money to Wikipedia viewers is done so often it gets as annoying
> as an advertisement-packed Wikipedia would potentially be.

I wonder, do many people here agree about this? I don't keep track, but feel
like I only see the fundraising messages 2-3 times a year. This is way more
preferable to me than seeing (probably multiple) ads on every page all the
time.

------
HarryHirsch
Wikipedia is being dishonest here. The infrastructure is doing fine,
thankyouverymuch, the hosting costs could be paid in perpetuity by taking the
cash reserves to the stock market.

But there is all the administrative overhead, outreach, Wiki for Women,
Wikimania conference, salaries for the staff in SF who would use their
Wikipedia experience to land a cushy job elsewhere - that's what the
fundraising is intended to support.

~~~
brian-armstrong
Doesn't this entirely miss the point? If they froze Wikipedia as it is and it
stopped keeping up with the times, it'd be significantly less useful. And
considering that Wikipedia is substantially losing editors and admins, any
attempt they can make to bring more in seems appropriate. There is likely a
critical mass of volunteers needed - fewer than that and you lose it all.

The approach theyve taken to this issue may not be cost effective, but it's
absolutely necessary.

~~~
HarryHirsch
The admin corps does need some kind of reform - the place is hostile to
newcomers, it doesn't use real-world expertise well (in academia we have
secretaries to keep the cranks away), competing interests and astroturfing are
an ongoing problem, nevermind the internal politics. The Wikipedia Movement
stuff that the donations pay for do not address any of these issues
meaningfully. The dropping admin and editor count would support this thesis.

~~~
brian-armstrong
We agree there for sure. I don't know how they could combat those issues more
effectively, but I wouldn't expect it to be free.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Wikipedia feels very insular, somehow. It's difficult to explain why, but I
think it's the strictly enforced anonymity and the insistence that real-world
identity does not matter on the site. It all reminds too much of institutional
politics in a second-rate undergraduate college.

It's not clear how more money can reform the encrusted structures. More
volunteers can't be the answer.

------
soneil
I feel like the author went to the effort of writing what I was too lazy to.

I don't want to donate to WMF simply because I don't want to confuse their
metrics into believing this current campaign is working. I've donated before,
I'll donate again, but this round has been so disgustingly crass, that I want
nothing to do with it.

------
Overtonwindow
I've always felt that Wikipedia is an interesting tool, but I don't have a
positive feeling about the Foundation, or the organization. There are many
problems with Wikipedia, and maybe I haven't looked enough for it, but I would
really love if Wikipedia would tie more of their fundraising to fixing these
issues. I would like to see Jimmy be more open about their spending, problems,
criticism, addressing all of that, and then saying here's why we're raising
the money, and here's what we're going to use it for, not just to line Jimmy's
pockets.

------
adrianmoses
They're doing fine
[https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2016-2017_Fundraising_R...](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2016-2017_Fundraising_Report).
Fundraising by donations is a numbers game. It can be annoying, but a lot of
people do give.

~~~
jessriedel
The OP isn't arguing that they can't raise enough money this way, he's arguing
that they way they are doing it alienates wikipedia users.

------
LaundroMat
Can't Wikipedia decentralise its hosting? Plenty of people would be happy to
donate a portion of their bandwidth and storage (I'm thinking of something
BitTorrent like). It would fit Wikipedia's purpose and lower costs
significantly.

~~~
ac29
Hosting is a minor expense (about 3% of overall expenses) [0]. They spend
nearly twice as much on "donations processing" expenses as they do on internet
hosting.

[0]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikim...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-
_FY15-16.pdf)

------
QAPereo
Wikimedia Foundation has _tons_ of money, most of which is spent on
salaries/administrative overhead, raising more money, processing donations,
and "awards".

It's not a scam, but it's a bloated tick on the ass of what could be hosted
and run for under $10mil instead of having over $91mil in the kitty, spending
$11 million on grants and awards, and almost three times as much processing
donations as hosting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-
ed)

Previous discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235)

------
Myrmornis
What an absurd and misconceived open letter. Wikipedia is a fantastic
resource, as the author acknowledges, and it's up to them how they raise funds
but thankfully another fantastic thing is that they are ad free. And this dude
thought it was worthwhile to spend an hour writing this letter because an
email from wikipedia slightly bothered his inbox one day? Does he not have
better things to do? Ridiculous first world problems and ridiculous looking of
gift horses in the mouth.

~~~
krschacht
I spent 10 minutes writing it. I simply replied to the email when I received
it in my inbox this morning. But the reason I offered this perspective is
precisely because I want to see wikipedia continue to succeed, and to thrive!
This is the same reason I donate to them. But I've heard many people complain
about their nagging about donations and I think they'd benefit from hearing
from an outsider on how they're increasingly coming across. They can do
better. I think highly enough of them to believe that honest critical feedback
would be valuable to them.

------
brudgers
Wikipedia has it's fundraisers. Medium has its claps and sign in with
TwitBook. I'd miss Wikipedia. Meidum perhaps not.

So long as Wikipedia does not start A/B testing a fake paywall like PBS has
been doing recently on my IP address with Ken Burns's _Vietnam War_ , it has
not violated my notions of working toward the public good.

