I have in the past, but at this point I need my money more than they do, and even if I get a job where it becomes financially possible to donate, there are other organizations that need it more than Wikipedia
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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I used to donate, but I haven't for at least 10 years.
Their financing is public. They would have enough cash to keep the lights on for decades.
They've been investing to be reliant on donations in the future. I see a conflict of interest there and I'd rather have them be relying on donations.. especially since they have received enough cash to do so.
TL;DR, I'm happy to donate for running Wikipedia, not happy to donate for them to become a fund.
Read this and then decide for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
This is why I just block their fucking "we're in trouble and need your help" banners. Their income is public knowledge. They don't actually need help.
I do.
I think that it's one of the services that dramatically enhances both my online experience, but also the world's. And I'd rather have it donation supported than ad-supported or similar.
There aren't many services that I'll donate to, but this is one.
Right now, I'm leaning towards "no" on account of them allegedly being awash with money.
In the vein of alternative places to donate, consider your Fediverse instance(s). If you're a Linux user, a few pennies towards your distro of choice wouldn't go amiss either. (I'd also say archive.org, but someone else suggested that already.)
You may already be donating to these places, but this comment is also for the handful of other people who might see it, and like one of those arcade coin waterfalls, might trickle down into the conscience of someone who has cash to donate.
I do not. Not as long as Jimmy Wales is involved with it. I strongly disagree with his objectivist philosophy.
There are certainty worse places to send your money, though.
maybe redirect that to archive.org
I feel like they need it more... they've just been hacked and they might need more resources to upgrade their security.
But both are good causes. But make sure you have enough emergency funds saved for yourself first.
Edit: Another argument for archive.org over wikipedia is that wikipedia is mostly a text based site. archive.org , in contrast, can store photos, videos, software, and various media thay requires more storage. The entire English wikipedia is only about 100GB (excluding videos), but archive.org is probably in the Terabytes or more.
Their software collection alone has reached the petabyte mark: https://archive.org/details/software?tab=about
I don't anymore.
they do not need your money, and it's disingenuous of them to imply they do.
The manipulative aspect of their annual fundraisers is very unsettling.
here are some numbers from 2022:
https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-next-time-wikipedia-asks-for-a-donation-ignore-it/
they have at least 400 million in reserves now and the estimate is $10 million a year to maintain the site and pay all their employees.
their higher executives are each paid hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
they're not struggling to keep the lights on for the next half century.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2022-2023-annual-report/
They have approximately $80 million in cash, and it costs them about $100 million to pay their staff. They have $274 million in total assets, counting endowment investments.
It's extremely unclear where that site came up with $400 million.
I'm not sure why you'd link to a two year old opinion piece on it, when all of their financials are publicly available and provided without commentary.
They received cash in excess of expenses of about $6 million, and including non-cash assets their total assets increased by about $16 million in 2024.
Their CEO makes about $500 thousand a year, and the rest of their executive team ranges in salary from $300 to $100 thousand.
It's not a small salary, but it's not preposterous for one of the most visited sites in the Internet that also operates as a charity to have decently compensated executives.
They are not in financial trouble, but it's not accurate to say they can keep the lights on for the next 50 years.
Those salaries are not competitive. Not that they should be because executive pay is out of control, but they are also in no way extravagant and possibly too low or at least the bare minimum to retain any kind of decent talent to run the operation.
Looking at the profiles for the executives, you definitely get the feeling that they're either the sort that prioritizes "my work put good into the world and you don't need to squint to see it" over cash, so "yeah, that lets me live" is sufficient, or their seemingly going for a high score for number of "oh, nice!" organizations they can put on their CV, and the total compensation from them all is probably more than competitive.
Yeah I no longer donate as well for this same reason. They are not hurting for cash
I heard it's for some legal reason that they still have to do funding drives. Maybe to maintain a certain status? I'm not sure.
To keep the money coming is a pretty good reason.
I am not sure whether the wikimedia foundation actually needs money from individuals. From what I could find by searching "Does Wikipedia need donations", they seem to have plenty of money. I've also seen from people that after donating, they like to haunt your email inbox for more money.
I myself prefer donating elsewhere instead. In my opinion a good alternative is archive.org. It's hard to track how much they get sued, and now they even were hacked recently.
I donate a bit each year, and I wouldn't say they are bothersome. I get an email once a year where they ask if I'd like to donate again, not counting the receipt from the actual donation. It seems disingenuous to complain about the receipt.
Yeah I'll give em $20 some years and never got hit with emails. EDIT: just checked i have 2 solicitation in my inbox this year
You’re better off shooting your instance the money, but Wikipedia has remained a genuinely good quality company. If you want to give them money in recognition of this fact, no one sane will call you a dumb dildo with hairy feet.
If you do, their e-mails asking you to donate again are a bit weird and manipulative. Their subject lines are like "FIRSTNAME - I've had enough", "Our final email" (got several of those), "It's non-negotiable".
You have my permission
I barely have two dollars to rub together and I still try to
I guess I'm probably overdue to make a donation myself
No.
They use most of the money for other activities. I’d look towards those, if you don’t like them don’t waste it.
No. The articles are written by volunteers and will not be improved by your donation.
In theory, your donation does keep the servers running, but they have plenty of money to do that, and most of the money nowadays goes to paying way too many employees many of whom don't do anything very useful or important.
Yes
yes
i think it's mostly for maintaining the servers, the actual article writers are random people on the internet, who probably recieve no money
If you can afford it, yes. If you use it, yes.
Maybe not each year. I mean, I donate a couple hundreds every few years because back in those days I certainly was not paying for a brand new printed encyclopedia every single year either ;)
Fuuuuck no.
Do you use Wikipedia? If so, yes.
Yes.
You know how people will donate money to streamers if they do stupid stuff? If you can do that, you can do this.
May I...... oh wait, not that.
Yes, yes you should donate.
I don't but I'm cheap