Slashdot Mirror
A Mismatch Between Wikimedia's Pledge Drive and Its Cash On Hand?
Andreas Kolbe writes The latest financial statements for the Wikimedia Foundation, the charity behind Wikipedia, show it has assets of $60 million, including $27 million in cash and cash equivalents, and $23 million in investments. Yet its aggressive banner ads suggest disaster may be imminent if people don't donate and imply that Wikipedia may be forced to run commercial advertising to survive. Jimmy Wales counters complaints by saying the Foundation are merely prudent in ensuring they always have a reserve equal to one year's spending, but the fact is that Wikimedia spending has increased by 1,000 percent in the course of a few years. And by a process of circular logic, as spending increases, so the reserve has to increase, meaning that donors are asked to donate millions more each year. Unlike the suggestion made by the fundraising banners, most of these budget increases have nothing to do with keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free, and nothing to do with generating and curating Wikipedia content, a task that is handled entirely by the unpaid volunteer base. The skyrocketing budget increases are instead the result of a massive expansion of paid software engineering staff at the Foundation – whose work in recent years has been heavily criticised by the unpaid volunteer base. The aggressive fundraising banners too are controversial within the Wikimedia community itself.
I always thought that transparency should be right there in the banner. "Hey guys, we have 60M worth of assets but we need more because $REASON".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
That's the usual method of solving these problems. Wonder why no one is trying to do that if the fundraising is so controversial?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Big software projects need developers. Full time, accountable ones with a paycheck and an office. Mozilla feeds theirs with ad revenue, Linux has some corporate supporters who pay the bills.
MediaWiki, that drives Wikipedia, is really complex. And they need new features to support the site better, especially admin tools and backend tech.
But, at the same time, screaming in desperation when you're doing okay and just need support for your functionality means that when you are in trouble, no one can tell.
There is nothing "circular" about higher expenses leading to a need for higher reserves. It would only be circular if in turn the higher reserves led to higher expenses, which is not a point that you have made at all.
They still show those scary WIkipedia-is-doomed-without-your-help banners? LOL. I use Wikiwand now, so I don't see those anymore. What I disliked most about those banners is that once you donate, they don't go away. They keep hounding you for money! As part of my reward for donating, I shouldn't have to have your pledge drive shoved down my throat anymore.
Wikipedia is still a very usable web site. By comparison slashdot went commercial some time ago and has become less usable with each passing year. Similarly while the content on wikipedia has continued to improve, the content here has continued to get worse.
Someone could learn something here, I'm pretty sure.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Circular logic is assuming the truth of the conclusion as a premise. For example, "I know that everything I know is true because, among the things that I know, one of the things I know is that everything I know is true" is circular. "We like to keep a reserve equal to one year's spending. Spending increases, therefore the reserve has to increase" is not circular.
I would have donated, but you misspelled "unabridged."
> Wikimedia spending has increased by 1,000 percent in the course of a few years.
That could be a problem.
> Jimmy Wales counters complaints by saying the Foundation are merely prudent in ensuring they always have a reserve equal to one year's spending
Yes, a one year reserve on the low end of normal. You don't want Wikipedia to disappear when something bad happens, and SHIT HAPPENS. It's a top 10 web site, meaning it's in the big leagues with Google, Microsoft etc., except it's nonprofit. They may have to deal with stuff like Google is dealing with in Europe - disputes with multiple governments on the other side. You don't want Wikipedia to go bankrupt when some government or some company somewhere doe something stupid that costs the foundation $5 million to deal with and repair the damage.
> nothing to do with generating and curating Wikipedia content, a task that is handled entirely by the unpaid volunteer base.'
False. A large chunk of the budget is developing software for "generating and curating Wikipedia content". It's disingenuous to claim that developing tools for generating and curating content "have nothing to do" with generating and curating content.
Indeed, I've received multiple emails from ol' Jimmy again this year, one to a WP-specific email, and one to paypal. I don't care what your organization is, spam is spam, and unsolicited begging for funds qualifies just as well as any. I never agreed to allow them to contact me at my paypal address, they just scraped it from the time I did donate.
So Jimmy and WP can kiss my butt this year. Bah humbug to them.
So how long until they're in a perpetual state of fundraising, like PBS?
It seems like on PBS for every minute of actual programming you get two minutes of fundraising talk.... Now apply this to Wikipedia.
Want to read an article? Sorry, you must read this fundraising pitch first. Clicked a link? Sorry, here's another pitch for you.
An example of what they've done would be the recent Monuments project. They built a back end, complete with a Google maps API interface, to tell you exactly where they needed photos of which historic monuments, in relation to a given ZIP code. Based on that, I learned there was 200 year old farm house about a half a mile from my office, and I spent a productive lunch break driving over there and photographing it. Their website handled the upload, licensing, and then distributed the new photo to the Commons as well as the Monuments project. There were no errors during this entire process which means the entire thing was rigorously tested and properly coded. It was a painless user experience, if a bit dry because of the spartan aesthetics of Wikimedia, but my "generated content" was incorporated seamlessly into their project in about five minutes. That's good website engineering.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
You illiterate moron.
Ever seen a blood drive? It's all marketing. I Get an email in my work in-box at least once a week declaring the RedCross is X days away from running out of blood and people dieing on the operating table!!!
I used to volunteer at the redcross, I never saw them get "low on blood" lol. Most went into Biohazard disposal. But the fact of the matter is, if they don't scream "PANIC" at every possible opportunity, then no-one shows up at all. The actual use of donated blood has been declining at an insane rate... down over 30% from just a few years ago.
Doubt they have plenty of blood? They actually have had a surplus for years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...
They still need fresh blood, it expires rather quickly after all so please donate if you can. But it's not nearly as dire a situation as their ads proclaim. The same goes for wikipedia.
I also object to getting bombarded with annoying and often intrusive ad banners begging for money for extended periods of time when a site with the traffic of Wikipedia could probably get as much money with real ad banners in an order of magnitude less time.
I'd wager they'd get more money with one day a year of real ads than they do with their current weeks of begging.
...but the fact is that Wikimedia spending has increased by 1,000 percent in the course of a few years... most of these budget increases have nothing to do with keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free, and nothing to do with generating and curating Wikipedia content...The skyrocketing budget increases are instead the result of a massive expansion of paid software engineering staff...
So from this information alone, I'm not sure I see the problem. You have a very large website that I'm sure gets unimaginable amounts of traffic, operating for free and supported by voluntary donations, and their budget is increasing because they've hired engineers to keep the thing running. That all sounds reasonable enough.
I think if you want to raise a red flag here, you have to show that the software engineering staff is unwarranted, or that they're working on things that the donors don't want to see done. So how many engineers do they have, and what are they working on? It seems to me that they're doing a competent job, since you have a relatively large, complex, and popular website that doesn't seem to have a lot of serious technical trouble, as far as I can tell. I'm sure they've had to scale up their capabilities over recent years, which requires some development in making the site scale and handle large, sudden increases in traffic. It looks to me like they're doing more than just maintain the Wikipedia-- they have the Wiktionary, Wikiquote, something called "Wikidata", and a bunch of other projects that all seem like they're probably legitimate, even if I don't know what they are. In that context, I can imagine them needing to keep a fair number of engineers on staff.
So what's the complaint here? Do you think someone is embezzling money, or that they're just stockpiling money for no reason? Do you think that they're spending money in the wrong places, and if so, where you do think they're spending money, and where do you think they should be spending money? I think you need to give me something before I can figure out how to be outraged at all of this.
When presented with the factually-detailed and carefully-researched analysis by the ever mild-mannered Andreas Kolbe, the great Jimmy Wales takes to Twitter to respond that Kolbe has "achieved nothing in life". https://twitter.com/jimmy_wale... Keepin' it classy, as ever, huh Jimbo?
...wikipedia is also practicing blatant cavalier attitude in relation to global affairs, in effect undermining peaceful negotiations that are in process for years.
Yes, wikipedia, I am looking at you as regards adopting the self-imposed "Republic of Macedonia" name for the southernmost x-Yugoslavia legal entity, which in each and every representation-aware organisation is consistently referred to with a temporary name, as FYROM.
True, there exist rights of self-determination, however such rights exist in both sides of any border, therefore that is why there are international bodies that people can appeal to. At least, the people living around this little tomb, should also have some right of representation, no? : http://news.slashdot.org/story...
What's the solution to that issue? pay for a wikipedia/v2 with $100m, so that people get represented properly? that's just unbelievable!
As much as Wikipedia is to be admired for pooling such a vast collection of human knowledge, it also has to be feared of, for being representation-agnostic and being too easily victim of the tyranny of the masses (or, mass media, for that matter).
The Foundation "is", not are. It is one entity. You're not referring to all the people within the Foundation, you're referring to the Foundation itself. You even use the word "it", not them, to refer to the Wikimedia Foundation.
You use is when referring to a singular entity.
You use are when referring to more than one entity or a group, such as they.
From my observations, this is one of those points where UK and US English disagree.
Organizations are referred to as plural in UK English and singular in US English.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
A large chunk of the budget is developing software for "generating and curating Wikipedia content". It's disingenuous to claim that developing tools for generating and curating content "have nothing to do" with generating and curating content.
Except the software was already 90% developed back in 2003, when the Wikimedia Foundation came into existence. The additional software tinkering (if you had read the linked articles) has been for needless, non-working trinkets like Visual Editor (which the vast majority of editors hate) and Media Viewer (which 900 editors signed a petition pleading to the WMF to not force down their throats). Have you ever seen 900 vested Wikipedians ever agree on anything else?
Wake up, inform yourself, and discover that the Wikimedia Foundation is just a big scam to cover up the fact that less than 6% of the budget is needed to keep the Wikipedia sites running.
Question is: IS Wales correct? He very well *may* be on that note.
You're right, I suppose. Kolbe has achieved nowhere near the number of extramarital affairs followed by divorce that Jimbo has. So, Jimbo got him on that one alone.
That was the abridged version of the word.
Dont forget LiquidThreads. Which has been replaced by Flow, which will get replaced by something else, ad nauseum. It's basically a make-work program at this point.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
> Except the software was already 90% developed back in 2003
Oh BS.
The current software is absolutely nothing whatsoever like it was in 2003.
I say that as someone that joined well before 2003, and have been editing continually since then.
It is true that some advertisers may pull their campaign if they don't like the content, but a popular site will always generate enough interest from someone to cover operating expenses. No pandering or user tracking needed.
In fact, why not focus on educational content, like books on the subject related to the page? There are few other opportunities to promote specialized science/history books, and it would be in line with the mission of educating the world.
I wonder why there are no mirrors of wikipedia? Seems like someone could just resprout a read only copy without pledge nags?
I don't see much of it. And if I ever do, one right click makes sure I don't see it again.
Corporatism != Free Market
> > It's disingenuous to claim that developing tools for generating and curating content "have nothing to do" with generating and curating content.
> The additional software tinkering (if you had read the linked articles) has been for needless, non-working trinkets like Visual Editor (which the vast majority of editors hate) and Media Viewer
You, and many others, may be of the opinion that Visual Editor was needless, but to say the tool for editing content "has nothing to do with generating and curating content" is obviously false. It's a tool for editing (adding and curating) content. That's a completely separate statement from whether or not the implementation was done well (it was not).
Media Viewer is a "better" way to handle image content on the site. Again, you may feel that it's not needed, but to say that it has nothing to do with content is plain silly.
One can simply "take sides' and say anything and everything negative you can think of against "the other side", or can try to improve things by identifying the actual problems and stating exactly what went wrong in those areas.
Let's try looking at the possible issues mentioned and see where the problems actually are:
Spending has increased greatly: true
Maintaining a prudent reserve of 1 year operating expenses is excessive: false
Improving wikipedia's software systems doesn't help improve content in the long run: false
So we see there is one thing brought up that might really be an issue - the rate of spending increase. Having identified the actual issue to be addressed, we can then begin to address it.
Over here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/...
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The current software is absolutely nothing whatsoever like it was in 2003.
I say that as someone that joined well before 2003, and have been editing continually since then.
It's a shame that your memory is failing so much. From the Mediawiki website itself:
"New features were added [to Phase III software] in July [2003], like the automatically-generated table of contents, and the ability to edit page sections, both still in use today. The first release under the name "MediaWiki" happened in August 2003, concluding the long genesis of an application whose overall structure would remain fairly stable from there on.
There are no immediate plans for a Phase IV of the software. Instead, MediaWiki development now happens in smaller steps..."
So, they say that the overall structure has remained fairly stable since August 2003, and another major phase of the software is still not in their plans, eleven years later. But *you* say that the current software is "absolutely nothing whatsoever" like the August 2003 version. I wonder who should be believed?
I think you may find that some or all of the Wiki Loves Monuments tools were written by people outside the Wikimedia Foundation. Have a look at this page and its edit history. (WMF staffers typically have a "(WMF)" at the end of their user name.) Similarly this page. Many of the most useful software components remain volunteer-contributed.
It's difficult to argue with someone who believes that adding a diamond-encrusted, solid gold frame (in the shape of a trapezoid) to the Mona Lisa would be "generating and curating" artwork.
Bof. :) It's just typical Wales bluster and misdirection. He flatters you when you agree with him, and rubbishes you when you criticise him. I have experience of both from him. Neither really mean much.
> Wikimedia spending has increased by 1,000 percent in the course of a few years.
That could be a problem.
> Jimmy Wales counters complaints by saying the Foundation are merely prudent in ensuring they always have a reserve equal to one year's spending
Yes, a one year reserve on the low end of normal. You don't want Wikipedia to disappear when something bad happens, and SHIT HAPPENS. It's a top 10 web site, meaning it's in the big leagues with Google, Microsoft etc., except it's nonprofit. They may have to deal with stuff like Google is dealing with in Europe - disputes with multiple governments on the other side. You don't want Wikipedia to go bankrupt when some government or some company somewhere doe something stupid that costs the foundation $5 million to deal with and repair the damage.
> nothing to do with generating and curating Wikipedia content, a task that is handled entirely by the unpaid volunteer base.'
False. A large chunk of the budget is developing software for "generating and curating Wikipedia content". It's disingenuous to claim that developing tools for generating and curating content "have nothing to do" with generating and curating content.
That's a fair point – I meant it in the sense of actually researching and writing the text that appears in Wikipedia. And I did say "most" of these budget increases had nothing to do with that. For example, they are not using money from donations to have medical experts check the thousands of medical articles in Wikipedia for accuracy: that to me would be active content curation. Those tasks are left to volunteers, or, in one or two cases like the Cancer Research UK initiative, people funded by others.
What I do think is reprehensible is raising the spectre of ads in the fundraising banners. By all means say that Wikipedia is ad-free and relies on donations – that's perfectly true – but don't imply that donations are needed to keep Wikipedia online and ad-free for another year, making everyone think that if not enough money comes in they'll have to pull the plug, or there will be ads by the end of next year. And that's a mainstream criticism within the Wikimedia movement. Just look at the Wikimedia mailing list discussion. The person speaking there is this guy, a veteran volunteer, GLAMWiki coordinator and former vice-president of Wikimedia Australia.
Wikipedia is a business. Donations to it should be viewed by the donor as paying (although voluntarily) for service. It's not like giving money to the Red Cross and then finding out some administrator make a million $ per year. The staff can use the donations for anything it chooses. If you don't like how they are spending the money you give, don't give and don't use their product. This whole open source movement has created the idea that all software should always be free for anybody. Unless you always have an army of software engineers who want to use their talent for no pay (thus decreasing the value of that talent), then you have to pay something to get quality stuff. While you might get something for nothing for awhile, I doesn't work over the long haul.
I'm a high-functioning sociopath. You're just a paranoid nut.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Is that Wikipedia is not and does not need to be a stunning marvel of technology. The brilliance is in the concept, not the implementation.
The most talented people in the organization are likely the backend guys who have to make the scaling, redundancy, and infrastructure work on what should be a shoestring budget. Anything on that scale requires extremely gifted and creative people, especially if you can't just throw money at it. Although given a couple years I could certainly do it for an annual upkeep cost of less than two million.
Granted, if it were my brainchild and succeeded to Wikipedia's degree I'd probably give myself a permanent position and an overgenerous salary along with half a dozen other key people who made it happen. That seems fair to me. If our capitalist society thought it was fair for Bill Gates to be the richest man in the world for a few clever business tactics that resulted in windows being widespread the Wikipedia creators should at least have a comfortable life without having to worry about accounting for productivity. And so long at it weren't at the expense of Wikipedia itself I would be okay with a portion of my donation going to the ones who made it possible for this thing that is so valuable I'd volunteer to pay to keep it to exist at all. But even if you give 6 guys $250k/yr that is only $1.5m.
Thinking of the global scale of Wikipedia, the type of data it houses, the kind of bandwidth likely required, etc. I'd think $5m would be a very solid operating budget.
> 's a shame that your memory is failing so much.
It's a shame you don't actually edit, and just whine about it.
> . I wonder who should be believed?
Maybe the guy with 7500+ articles and an FA that uses his real name that anyone can verify in seconds.
> What I do think is reprehensible is raising the spectre of ads in the fundraising banners
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Spectre. Really.
I'll be happy to return to editing Wikipedia. Could you get my account unblocked? Either "Thekohser" or "MyWikiBiz" will be fine.
As for the "who should be believed", that was a reference to two choices, neither of which was me. (My real name is Gregory Kohs, by the way. Any cursory search for "thekohser" would lead you to that in a jiffy.) Anyway, I was saying that I would trust the Mediawiki history found on the Mediawiki website more than I would trust your personal memory or interpretation of the development of the software since August 2003.
Regardless, I want to thank you for publicly displaying this "I wrote a Featured Article so I can shit on you" attitude that is so prevalent with Wikipediots. You're exactly the reason why participation on the project is in decline for the past seven years.
(I would tell you how many Wikipedia articles I've written in the past several years, but my non-disclosure agreement with clients prohibits my doing that.)
I think you may find that some or all of the Wiki Loves Monuments tools were written by people outside the Wikimedia Foundation. Have a look at this page and its edit history. (WMF staffers typically have a "(WMF)" at the end of their user name.) Similarly this page. Many of the most useful software components remain volunteer-contributed.
Kolbe, you are killing me! LOL... so the API software wizardry that is cited above as a great reason to donate more money to the gaping maw of the WMF, was actually written by volunteers who are completely apart from the developer boondoggle at the WMF?
Someone just got pwnd.
Sorry guys, $50M at an extremely modest return of 3% taxed at 30% is STILL $1,000,000 per year or $87,500 per MONTH, and that's WITHOUT digging into the principal.
If you can't hire and run a fleet of servers, sysadmins and corporate types to make Wikimedia go on $87k/mo, you're negligent.
Wikipedia doesn't need any more money, it needs to get real.
Tee hee. Don't you know that the hired financial advisor for the Wikimedia Foundation produced only a 1% annual return on the investment capital, between 2013 and 2014? How much did the stock market go up in that time? How much did investment-grade bonds return? They even invested in munis, even though non-profit organizations typically don't benefit from the tax-exempt nature of those returns, because they are ALREADY a tax-exempt organization!
How is it that the WMF is so negligent and inept at EVERYTHING it touches?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Yeah, but I have written 2 FAs, so I'm allowed to, Maury. (And I have more edits than you.) :P
I hope not, but it's starting to feel like it. According to the WMF statements , they have (Approx) $60 Million in assets, and spent $45 Million a year, of that, $20 Million went into salaries, $5 Million into awards and grand, $2 Million on conferences and travel and $12 Million on "Other Operating Expenses".
They spend $2.5 Million on hosting and the content is created by the community for free.
Each year they're making more money then the last and what have we seen from it? There seems to be a lot of people not doing a lot of work over there.
What is important in wikipedia? Obviously the content. The content is essentially provided by volunteers. The pages design is nothing special. Google provides the search. What does the WMF do? They host the content, and they are making millions while essentially doing nothing productive. Sure they must pay for bandwidth and hosting the data, but this is really very little compared with the money they spend on other things. The pages are each very lightweight. The full content of Wikipedia probably does not exceed a few TB. In today's age, any large company would be happy to host WP for nearly free in return for the goodwill it would generate.
I admit I feel cheated by the WMF intrusive, blatant and disrespectful grab for donations.
AdBlockers can remove spammy posts such as yours, which is something hosts files can not do.
Seeing the world in such black and white terms doesn't speak too highly of your mental stability. I know, I know, now you'll go find all my posts and pretend to be different people comparing me to a monkey or something else. I really don't care - it's rather obvious it's you, as your stream-of-consciousness-barely-sane writing "style" quickly points out.
Hosts files have their use, and so do things like AdBlocker and other browser plugins/extensions. Sane people see that, why can't you? Oh, right... I get it now.
It seems like all of these articles trying to dig up dirt and spread controversy about Wikipedia come from wikipediocracy.com. It also seems like they are a very small group. All mentions of wikipediocracy in this comment section prior to this submission (under my default filter settings; forgive my laziness) are from two users, and one of them, the primary one, is the article submitter. I just have major trouble buying anything from a source whose entire mission is to criticize Wikipedia. That kinda just screams bias. This content is always coming out of wikipediocracy. I can't recall the last article posted to Slashdot critical of Wikipedia that didn't include a link from them. It feels like they are just trying to use the visibility of getting their submissions posted to Slashdot to build controversy. It isn't hard to write up a summary and get it accepted by Slashdot just by knowing to write a summary in the accepted style. People don't click the links often because it isn't very interesting, they just note "wow, people sure sound upset at Wikipedia" and don't notice that it's always this small group of people....