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Wikipedia Exceeds Fundraising Target, But Continues Asking For More Money (theregister.co.uk)
Reader Andreas Kolbe writes: The fundraising banners on Wikipedia this year are so effective that halfway through its December fundraising campaign, the Wikimedia Foundation has already exceeded its $25 million donations target for the entire month, reports The Register. A few weeks ago, Jimmy Wales promised that the Wikimedia Foundation would "stop the fundraiser if enough money were raised in shorter than the planned time". But there's no sign of the Foundation doing that. When asked about this more recently, a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson remained non-committal on ending the campaign early. The most recent audited accounts of the Wikimedia Foundation showed net assets of $92 million and revenue of $82 million. None of this money, incidentally, pays for writing or checking Wikipedia content – that's the job of unpaid volunteers – and only $2 million are spent on internet hosting every year.
n/t
It isn't as if the people who create anything of value, i.e. the article writers, are paid. Can't Jimmy Wales pay for his own three martini lunches?
A professional admin team would largely eliminate many of the problems Wikipedia has with its various cabals.
is to have a buffer, and not live "paycheck to paycheck" so to speak. I don't understand why people find it so hard to understand.
So where does all of the money go??
So the internet's cesspit of ill researched unfounded disinformation is pissed that one of the most successful projects of the last decade in advancing human knowledge has a healthy monetary buffer?
I sense jealousy.
But fair play to The Register, I frankly thought it was dead already, they've done well to keep such a useless publication going even this long.
Hosting is not Wikipedia's largest expense. Salaries are. They spent $32 million on salaries. Total expenses were $67 million.
Even considering all of the expenses, their net income was positive $16 million last year.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
For the amount of good that this foundation does for the public, making information and truth more accessible, and policing the content in an open and rigorous way, I say let them collect as much donations as people willingly donate. It's hard enough to get people to donate -- who would refuse if the donations kept coming in.
Sure, be transparent and honest about when you've exceeded the goal for the month (or set the goal higher), but frankly, I don't understand why you would criticize when one of the most valuable services on the internet today attempts to build more of a financial cushion for itself (and not through lying or deception or serving up users / others' content for cash, how refreshing).
Learn to understand who are your friends and who are your enemies in this world, people.
. . . . .where, if you're lucky, 10-15% of proceeds actually go to the cause. . . .
or vice-versa
"We already make millions auctioning off your default search engine, can you please donate some money?"
Kind of ironic that an organization who's sources are mostly payware, is demanding money so you can continue to read "freeware".
People will donate because Wikimedia has given them wonderful access to information, images, and other media. My parents bought a rather flawed encyclopedia when I was younger, probably for about $100. That's many hundreds in "today's money," so it only makes sense to support the wiki. P.S. I've contributed several articles and images along with my checks.
Sorry but they dont need that kind of cash. Not without having staff that actually do anything.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
During the year ended June 30, 2016, the Foundation entered into an agreement with the Tides Foundation to establish the Wikimedia Endowment as a Collective Action Fund to act as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to ensure a base level of support for the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. The Endowment is independent from the Foundation. On June 29, 2016, the Foundation provided an irrevocable grant in the amount of $5 million to the Tides Foundation for the purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment. The amount is recorded in awards and grants expense.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
I'd prefer not getting the pop-ups now that the goal has been met - but if the money is still flowing in it's dumb of them to not capitalize (heh) on the desire to give to build up a larger buffer (and have fewer fund-raisers in the future).
A professional admin team would largely eliminate many of the problems Wikipedia has with its various cabals.
Yes it would. But a professional admin team would use up most of the money that is currently going to other people.
net assets of $92 million and revenue of $82 million. None of this money, incidentally, pays for writing or checking Wikipedia content – that's the job of unpaid volunteers – and only $2 million are spent on internet hosting every year.
Which is exactly why you should never give money to them.
No worries, it is just Jimmy Jo Bob and his inner circle trying to pull in a few more bucks. Those Scientology membership fees are steep.
Their website technology is a joke.
They can keep asking, but they don't need one dime of my money.
Perhaps Jill Stein is their new fundraising director
People writing articles - Unpaid.
People writing scientific papers - Unpaid.
People doing product reviews and testing - Unpaid.
Fan groups of products and software, modding stuff - Unpaid.
One day, everything is UNPAID. Why pay money to you if you're willing to do it for free?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
" Dear readers in Canada, time is running out in 2016 to help Wikipedia. To protect our independence, we'll never run ads. We're sustained by donations averaging about $15. Only a tiny portion of our readers give. If everyone reading this right now gave $3, we wouldn’t need to fundraise for years to come. That's right, the price of a cup of coffee is all we need. If Wikipedia is useful to you, please take one minute to keep it online and growing. Thank you. "
Devil bunnies! I snort the nose! Lucifer! Banana! Banana!
Ah yes, the world according to the Lumper King—kneel before my great Rod of Lumpership, and despair. (Midas kneels, and despairs, but in truth, he was pretty unhappy already.)
Nonsense aside, I do dearly wish there was a way to eliminate all the not-notable endowed chairs from a certain online encyclopedia.
I really don't need it shoved in my face that some academic is presently the Angela Anais Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell chair of Behaviour Psychology in the Department of Quarterly Expectations Surpassed, Lothlorien Memorial Campus, Big Smoke U, Paris, Texas.
How I quaver! Shall I kneel and kiss your ring, or merely sit here enraptured and stroke your ermine robe? Decisions, decisions.
Notable chair: Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. All the others, not so much.
I desperately wish some enterprising soul would create an article with the title "List of notable named chairs". (Unfortunately, I can't create this myself, because I would list only one, and my "list" would immediately be deleted as a knee high to a discarded lipstick stain.) If anyone out there can think of two other noteworthy named chairs, this is obvious, low-hanging fruit.
That concludes today's second installment of "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other", with Wikipedia and the college system mentioned in the same breath.
I donate to Wikipedia regularly, if nothing else, to make sure the server / bandwidth costs are paid.
When I filled out the survey, I did answer that the banners were not too much. The only other thing I can think of is some kind of graphic that shows where they are on their budget for upcoming costs (kind of like those charity drive thermometer graphics).
Wikipedia's fundraising activities seem to get more obnoxious every year. This year I got a nasty-gram from "Jimmy Wales" asking why I haven't given my annual donation yet.
I already did, dumb ass, but I submitted it from a different e-mail address this year. But, hey... if you're going to give me an attitude about it, I certainly won't bother donating next year.
I think Wikipedia just invented a new form of in app payment: pay us money and we'll stop nagging you for money.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Just add this line to the block list of your favorite ad blocker (uBlock origin, ABP, ...)
wikipedia.org###centralNotice
It is not included by default because EasyList doesn't consider self-promotion to be advertisement. I do.
If you don't like Wikipedia or how it raises money, you don't have to use it. How some people are so critical of a free service that no one is forced to use or pay for seems odd when you think about it. Come up with something better.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Hey, super sport cars aren't cheap, and Jimmy Wales likes to buy a new one every week.
Wikimedia have posted an update on the Wikimedia mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pi...
"This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million in record time. This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how much support we have from people all over the world. Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to continue to fundraise more in the month of December, for the following reasons: [...]
Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few more days. We would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before making an end-of-year push in the final couple days of the year. (Many people choose to give at the very end of the year, and they are expecting to hear from us as usual -- so it is an opportunity to give people who plan to give the easiest means to participate)."
(Follow link for full text of the WMF statement, including their spending rationale.)
The author only mentioned the hosting fees. Total expenses are approx. $53 million (FY2015).
Asking to help keep Wikipedia free by donating money. I knew if I had donated any money it would destroy their mission by making it not free! Come on people if we all join together and NOT donate we can help Jimmy with his goal of keeping Wikipedia free!
I give them $5 a year and I feel like I get my $5 worth. I don't give a shit what they do with my $5, as long as it doesn't go to Trump.
Christ! I've donated the price of a semi decent bottle wine for access to the greatest coherent body of knowledge ever assembled. The value of this information is truly priceless and yet available to the whole population of the planet. I feel that this is a bit of a bargain and would urge people to think what a poorer place the world would be without this service.
ahh, the old fashioned cronyist, bloated charity. The allure of easy, high salaries corrodes the old and the young. Much like how silicon valley tech CEOs have been searching for cheap employees.
Install uBlock Origin; it blocks their begging spam nicely. (You have to manually add it, but it works.)
These comments are so full of ignorance it's not even funny—I thought I had wandered into /r/the_donald or something. The few sensible people posting have pointed out that there seems to be an extreme lack of transparency, and no one is quite sure where all the money is going. This is a fair point and needs to be addressed by the Wikimedia Foundation. This does *not* automatically mean that they are somehow wasting this money, giving its employees lavish salaries, or anything of the sort. It means we do not know. No amount of ridiculous theorising will change that. We need to be able to trust our non-profit organizations in general, and such a great, important organization like Wikimedia in particular. Just because we don't know something doesn't make them this evil villain. If we uncover some impropriety, *then* we can demonize them. Until then, I'm making a (small) donation and also demanding more transparency. I encourage others to do the same.
I'm one of the comparatively few editors of Wikipedia who gets paid for my editing work. It only makes sense that as a "thank you", I should send a token of financial appreciation at fundraising time. Yet, when I try to send the Wikimedia Foundation a donation, they return it to me within the hour.