Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

Do you donate to Wikipedia? Why or why not?

Every so often I give a few bucks(far less than the worth of knowledge I got from it)

117 comments

Absolutely not. They have way more money than they can sensibly spend, keep begging for more as if they could barely keep the lights on (they could probably easily keep the core mission going with about 10% of the money they're getting), and then expand their spending to match the donations they collected.
They then created an endowment (i.e. a pile of wealth that generates enough interest to sustain them indefinitely), using both additional donations and some of the money given to Wikimedia (which reduces the apparent amount of money they spend and is not listed as money Wikipedia/Wikimedia has, as it is accounted for separately). The $100M endowment was planned to take 10 years to build, got completed in 2021, five years before schedule. Wikimedia also has a separate cash hoard of almost a quarter billion dollars.
It's actually all in their article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances
- Wow I didn't know about this, thanks for the reading! I always feel morally in debt for using Wikipedia without giving back much and assume they were struggling a bit to operate, but wow they have received millions of dollars already!
  edit: I'm still willing to donate though, and I just did, like I'm happy to pay for what I've learned from it, even if it doesn't mean much to them.
  
  They make it sound like they’re just about to close down, I’ve been sending them a few bucks every month for like a year and I feel a little bit slighted tbh
- This is the most interesting thing I realize(thanks to you) this week so far
- Yes. People won't understand the value of something until they lose it.

Yes, every month. Why? Because in my opinion it is one of the greatest collective projects of mankind (even with the flaws it has).
- I've never seen it like that. And I've never paid anything for it because I don't use it enough. I might change my mind now. Thanks!

Nope, I've donated to the internet archive because I have infinity more respect for them and they actually need more funding.
Wikipedia has more than they know what to do with, the money just falls out of their pockets
- Came here to say the same thing. The Internet Archive needs the money a lot more and are constantly battling legal threats. I donate to them every now and then. Librarians and archivists rule.
- They need it more since all these lawsuits they are facing

Giving 10 bucks a year, even though I use it very little. But sometimes it's just easy and quick to look something up or read an interesting article, and I know that there are many people (students, etc.) who rely on it more than I do and have less money to spend

Yup. $20 every year.
I just like that it’s there and I’ve used it a lot, and I want it to be there for the next generation.
Plus, they’ve maintained staying ad free, sub free, and bullshit free. I can’t think of another site that’s kept that level of decency.
- Basically the same here, £2 a month, and for the same reasons as you.

Yes, sporadically but usually once I year I give them a donation.
Wikipedia is an insanely valuable resource we as a society just take for granted, especially those that grew up with it. Instant access to nearly infinite information is an absurd luxury we have, and it's a resource I want to see continue without being tied to corporate interests or abusive government regulation.
It's never much mind you, but I try to contribute a little around Christmas time if I can.

I think once a year they show the donation banner, then I donate something like 10 dollars. I use Wikipedia almost daily, so I'm glad to contribute something.

I think Wikipedia is a valuable common good and should be maintained. Because I can afford it, I donate monthly, even if I only use it a few times each month.

No because I already donate to the EFF and Internet Archive and I figure that's enough. And apparently Wikipedia already has enough money according to the comments here
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics
  they could run an extra year on $0 of donations. Whether one considers that enough or not might be down to personal viewpoint.

I heard that the wiki foundation is pretty well off and the saleries they pay the executives are rising pretty fast. Havent donated myself but in principle I should, eventho the higher ups are earning this much.

Yes, and I even have it as an automatic scheduled payment so I don't forget. Even with its flaws, it remains one of the shining gems of the Internet, and a resource I use frequently in both my professional life and my personal one. I remember how it was to suddenly want to learn more about a random topic before Wikipedia and I don't want to go back.
I also donate to The Internet Archive.

No. I did donate once and then they illegally spammed my email for a year. I had to threaten them with a lawyer to stop. It was senseless.
- This happened to me as well. I just didn't go as far as the lawyer bit. I just sent all of their emails to spam for auto deletion.
- I donate to them sometimes depending on how money is, but yeah holy hell do they spam you once you donate. Just a non-stop stream of increasingly passive-aggressive emails.

I did once. Then I don't because Wikipedia is currently in a stable financial situation so I can donate to another entity that needs resources.

I used to do a regular donation ($5 a month or something) but then I found out Jimmy Wales (who was a figurehead of the site at that point) was a weird Ayn Rand libertarian and stopped.
- That sounds like an incredibly shallow reason to stop contributing
  
  Even if 99 percent of Ayn Rand followers are fuckheads, Jimmy Wales's actions separate him of them.
- Unless he's personally being enriched (as opposed to making a living), that wouldn't bother me. I have never felt the need to check. I donate because it's useful to me.
  I didn't buy a Tesla because that fucker is enriched af and I hate him and I can get other cars that serve me just as well. There's no (real) replacement or substitute for Wikipedia.
- So yet another example of an objectivist being ultra productively generous and benefitting society, and again it’s simply rejected by someone whose opinion of objectivism was formed by its opponents.
  People always talk about how it’s all about “I got mine” and yet every single one of her protagonists makes enormous self sacrifice for people they love.
  Contrary to popular misinformation, objectivism isn’t about “I serve only myself”; it’s about “I decide my own ideals”.
  And very frequently, the ideals of her hero characters include giving enormous gifts to others.
  Wikipedia is a great example of that same drive manifesting in reality: 100% contrary to the BS greed-only perception of what Rand was trying to point to, Wikipedia is a totally free resource for everybody, sustained entirely by voluntary funding.
  The way it’s in line with Rand’s thinking has nothing to do with selfishness and everything to do with the fact that the Wikimedia foundation doesn’t ask for permission it just creates and gives.
  
  I'm no objectivist but I find it funny you are just downvoted but no one has the effort to make a counter-argument 🤣

No, because I'm very poor.
- What if poor were defined by whether or not you give? What if you could become rich by giving some portion of your tiny amount of money away?
  
  what if instead of eyeballs we had cupcakes?
  
  Gee, wouldn't that be nice. To be clear I'm living below the poverty line right now.

Do you donate to Wikipedia? Why or why not?
I did and ever since have been rewarded with an endless barrage of "you gave once before so do it aga--a-a--aa-a-a-a-a-a-a-in" banners. Given the ecomonics of fundraising I wouldn't be surprised if donors were badgered more than non-donors.

It has an abominable political slant, so absolutely not. If there was a way to split the science/math/etc. segment from the rest of it, that one would totally be worth donating to.
- Could you elaborate? I've never heard of that. Although I don't donate to Wikipedia now.
  
  That can be a touchy subject because the slant of Wikipedia and the slant of Reddit are very similar, but with Reddit leaning more towards chasing frivolous headlines and Wikipedia leaning more towards, like, rehabilitating Nazis and the like. The short version is that Wikipedia is far to the right of consensus among even neoliberal historians on many subjects and you will see things treated as plain there that are relatively fringe views academically.
- Organizationally it’s had leadership with abominable politics. Jimmy Wales is a self-proclaimed libertarian. Katherine Maher was CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, then joined The Atlantic Council, and currently serves on the US Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. [edit: apostrophe’s]

I used to use it for free when I was broke. Now I give a little extra per month to hopefully offset that. It's invaluable to me. That and public radio.

I gave to them once or twice before the pandemic showed up. It was something I wanted to do, but never could since I was never financially able to.
I stopped once I found an article showing that Wikipedia is not hurting for money at all, yet they kept groveling for money. I think it also said the CEO/owner was keeping a lot of the money for themself which I was not a fan of.
- Wikipedia has an endowment that can pay for their servers for the rest of civilization. Meaning they have such a huge pile of stocks, that just the interest generated off of it can pay for everything.
  From what I remember, their parent company also has a fat stack of liquid cash that it’s just sitting on, so even if the economy implodes tomorrow and their endowment stops paying out enough, they can still run the servers as long as there’s electricity.
  Don’t bother donating money to already rich organizations. Wikipedia asking me for money is like if one of the Rockefeller kids started panhandling after getting choppered to the street corner. They have enough money to last them practically forever. While I value their contribution to knowledge, i also know my money can better help other organizations like the internet archive, who don’t have the benefit of an obscene endowment and are currently facing very serious lawsuits.

Absolutely. What a ridiculous amount of information for free, if you use it at all, it deserves $2-3 every now and then to keep it free. If someone buys it, they will fuck it up.

I can't realistically afford it due to various factors but if I had a proper "western" wage, I surely would donate.

Wikipedia is one of the great achievements of humanity and the Internet. Ofc I donate. If their management's salary is high -- that's good. It should be a well-paid job. Everyone should be compensated appropriately for their time. With money or (preferably: and) with the satisfaction that their job is important and appreciated.

I did once or twice. I also donated to Signal and couple smaller projects I used. I always plan to donate more but a man has to eat and fly on vacations to Canary Islands...

I used to, but then they removed crypto because of propaganda efforts by reactionary idiots masquerading as progressives. Now, I have no way to donate to them.
- I’ll be happy to donate on your behalf while taking 10% for the service.
  
  Honestly, they are pretty well funded and don't need the money. I just redirected my money to SciHub and Lemmy now.
- This exactly. But also because of my self interest. When they accepted crypto I was donating crypto, to encourage people to use crypto. Specifically monero, which they never accepted, but I used a transactional exchange to give them money from monero.
  Since they got political about how they accept money, I can in relationship be political about not giving them money. I support their mission. I just wish they'd make it easier to give them money
  
  My dudes, the fact that cryptos are fundamentally fucked and unusable by design is nothing to do with politics, it's to do with technology. You don't get to brush it off as "oh they're just being woke", it's a business decision necessitated by the fact that it's really annoying to get paid in crypto.
  There's a lot to say about this, but in this case specifically, the value of all major coins fluctuates massively, so if you accept them as payment then you have to look at it as getting paid with a speculative asset. It's like getting paid with a barrel of oil hoping that the price will go up. I guess some businesses would be willing to make that bet, but maybe not a 501c like Wikimedia.
  And the reason the prices fluctuate is because miners validators and holders straight up want it to, they want the price to fluctuate because they want to speculate and get rich, not actually use it as a currency. Even if normies were to require payment in stablecoins, enthusiasts don't tend to use those because the price fluctuation is part of the point.
  We could have a thread about it
  
  They do make it easy to give them money.
  They just don't want unstable scam bullshit where they have to go through the slog of going to an exchange, selling the coin, and cashing out.. hoping all the while it doesnt crash in the mean time. Everyone tried to cash in on it when it was hot, before the vast majority knew or realized that crypto was nothing but a pump and dump scam, and they all dropped it due to instability and the fact that its a scam.

50 euro a year. I was terrible in school and Wikipedia allowed me to learn independently and has enabled me to become who I am now.

Same here. I believe it's worth it, I can afford it.
I support not only Wikipedia, but also Signal and my local Mastodon-instance.

When I was younger my friend group got in a heated debate about something semantic for fun. The opposite side from me tried to prove their point by editing Wikipedia and showing it to me. They had to show a screen shot because it had changed back in the time they ran from the computer lab to the lunch room, I used this in my arguments every time we argued about it after that.

Yes, once a year or so. I've gotten a lot of value out of it and i like the idea of paying it forward for people who aren't in a position to donate

I've been donating to the Wikimedia foundation regularly since 2016 since I believe it's a resource everyone should have access to.
The Wikipedia is not perfect but, for several topics, it's a great starting point or recap. I've used it for science related queries and, even if the style is not uniform and some entries are hard to read, it is an amazingly useful project which doesn't get old (and the phone app is fantastic)

I do regularly.
Knowledge, removed!

Absolutely, I've been using it since my teens and it's been an invaluable resource to me.
I am planning on giving more monthly in the future once my finacial situation changes.
- You should consider giving a tiny amount that you can afford. Some people think that establishing outflows to charity reinforces a frame of abundance.
  Maybe you could do $1/mo
  (though I understand if your situation is such that the $1 might become $35 when it hits a negative account — in that case you gotta solve that first)

I do, at least once a year (nothing excessive), mainly because I use the website occasionally. It's the same reason I bought 'reddit coins' or whatever that used to be. I just wanted to contribute to a useful service, especially given that there is so much garbage out there

I did a few times but not in the recent years. I don’t know exactly why.

I have before, but I was crippled by a conservative pedo ran corporation called The Home Depot. So it's not in the budget currently. Hide yo kids if you go in there.
- May I ask what the story is there?
  
  Spread awareness wherever possible. Unless you approve of a billion dollar corporation that deals in trafficking and illegal firearm sales between managers at work. Hint: most states have a 20 plus stores. This one is the second largest and has 6 that's controlled by a ring.

I'm cycling through multiple open source projects, the last one was signal. I tried to donate to Mozilla once, but they have the worst UX on their form and I'm not giving them my money AND my data.

Among other projects I belive is beneficial to the world. It's Libre software and provides free (CC-by-SA) knowledge without making you a product. I only made a one time 3$ donation but I might donate more in the future.

I've donated once, but never again after i found out how they hoard the money and use it for all kinds of politically motivated stuff.
- I need more context.
  
  Me too, and preferably not "A youtuber said so"

Several times. I think now they have more than enough money so I haven't in a while.

Yes. As a frequent user, I donate $10 from time to time. I also use my editing rights to fix mistakes when/if I see them.

You can’t donate to Wikipedia, only to wiki media, which spends it on all kinds of shit.

Have just signed up for monthly donations (only £1.40)

Whenever they put that "Dear reader, if everyone reading this sent $X, etc" notice at the top of an article, I send whatever the amount they mention in the notice is.
I've only ever noticed it like 5 times since I started doing that a bunch of years ago - not sure if that means they don't ask that often, or if it means I don't visit them often enough to always see it.

Used to use them a lot as a student, so now that I can, I donate occasionally. I don't have a problem with them basically gaming the system like SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT said in another comment, and I'm aware of it.

Yes, I do 20USD/mo, I think, because I've taken up what I've been calling "Secular Tithing" in the last few years, and Wikimedia and its ventures were useful learning and research tools for my undergrad and highschool. Less so during my master's, but that's just how that goes.