Ask HN: Do you donate to Wikipedia? Is their donation request motivating? - triyambakam
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s1t5
No. Their assets are increasing by tens of millions every year -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics).
They'll be fine without my $5.

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makx
Thanks for sharing this! I just donated a week ago after receiving yet another
email that made it sound like they're barely making ends meet. Now I feel
cheated.

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dack
it looks like they have some savings now, but wouldn't make it 2 years if they
stopped getting donations. it makes sense to me that they would continue to
fundraise unless they had an alternative recurring source of funding

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ekr
No. The biggest value that Wikipedia provides is the content. None of the
donations are going to the content creators, very little of them are going to
covering IT costs. And a lot of them are used for paying big Bay Area wages to
people in the foundation whose work I regard as highly peripheral to the core
value provided.

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RgueNkeScientst
What work do they do that you consider peripheral? I'm asking from a place of
ignorance.

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muzani
Not directly, only through Humble Bundle if given the option.

I don't feel that I need them to live; I appreciate TV Tropes more and that's
where a donation would go first. They are a nice luxury, but I opt for the
non-Wikipedia answers where possible, because Wikipedia tends to explain
things in a convoluted manner.

Plus they do make a lot of money and I feel the fundraising copy has been
misleading about that.

I feel that the Wikipedia model doesn't work as a non-profit. I'd be happy to
subscribe to some paid version where contributors get distributed a portion of
the earnings, ala Spotify. Right now, it feels like some contributors get
nothing, while some have a happy full time, full salary job. It's brought some
good to the world, and I'd like the Wikipedia staff to make above average
salaries, but it should be taken fairly out of everyone's pockets.

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foofoo4u
Absolutely. It's one of the small corners of the web that brings positive
value to the world ad-free. It's brought significant value to my life. I'd
like to see it continue, so I have a monthly donation towards it.

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ipi
I love wikipedia as much as anybody I have known. I currently don't donate but
would love to once my situation changes. Their donation request is the most
horrible one I have seen. They should definitely work on their tone and
presentation. Having said that I feel they shouldn't need to ask for donation
because they are basically providing the top search results for most of the
search engines and Digital voice assistants like Alexa and should be able to
have a stream of income from the big corps with out effecting their integrity.

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egorfine
Yes, for many years already. I don't need the request to be motivating, I need
the wikipedia to exist.

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kull
I do, I feel obligated to donate at least $5 per year as this is one of my
most visited sites. The internet would not be the same without wiki, and it
makes me feel like I am supporting the Internet by those small donations.

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Trias11
This impresses me just like a donation jar at a major bank begging customers
to donate money to some noble cause.

WTF? You really don't have enough money to support the cause?

Someone need to write Chrome extension to hide this.

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momackay
Yes, both time and monetarily. Why? Because it's one of the few informative
sites that's still free and I use it's services often.

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maps7
I have in the past but I probably won't again. It seems like they have enough
money and they can pay their staff more than I make.

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dragonwriter
> Do you donate to Wikipedia?

Content, occasionally.

Money? Not yet.

> Is their donation request motivating?

Well, obviously not sufficiently to cause me to give them money.

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imagetic
Save your donation for ProPublica.

