Wikimedia Foundation Nabs $3 Million Grant To Improve Accessibility of Free Commons' Content (venturebeat.com)

As with other Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wikimedia Commons (a repository of free-to-use media assets, including photos, audio clips, and videos) is funded through donations, and the organization has now received $3 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic body set up in 1934 by the former president and CEO of General Motors. From a report on VentureBeat: With $3 million in the coffers, the Wikimedia Foundation says it will embark on a three-year mission to link assets on Wikimedia Commons with Wikidata, the organization's crowdsourced knowledge base. The upshot of this endeavor will mean that photos, videos, and all the rest will be much easier to find and, crucially, it will be "machine-readable" which opens up a wealth of opportunities to automate the process of integrating content into third-party services, such as apps and services operated by museums, galleries, and libraries. On the flip-side, this will also make it easier for third-party bodies to donate content to Wikimedia Commons while automatically including existing metadata, bypassing the need to manually label media.

Comments

Lining Jimmy Wales' pockets

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they need grants if they have tens of millions of dollars in cash reserves? Instead of a grant, how about a federal investigation to determine where the money is actually going? Jimmy Wales doesn't need to line his pockets any more than he already has.

Re: Lining Jimmy Wales' pockets

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been allegations that Jimmy Wales misused Wikimedia's funds. In fact, Wales' own Wikipedia page mentions these allegations. Wikimedia does have massive assets, most recently valued over $91 million dollars. Furthermore, as per Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation's revenue has exceeded its expenses in every year of operation, dramatically so in recent years, by around $20 per year. It certainly does call into question the constant nagging for money and how that money gets spent -- including the over $65 million in expenses for 2015-2016. But, as usual, you just want to get angry and yell at people.

Re:Lining Jimmy Wales' pockets

[hey!]

Instead of a grant, how about a federal investigation to determine where the money is actually going?

Or... you could read the audited financial statements which Wikimedia posts on its website. It's not that hard.

The financial statements paint a picture of a financially healthy organization. Very healthy. But having solid financials is not a crime. The thing that sticks out about these financials is that Wikimedia has a huge amount of cash on hand. Now it's normal for charities to keep more cash on hand than a for-profit business. If you're Proctor and Gamble, well, things would have to get pretty bad before people give up on buying soap. You can count on future cash inflows. If you're a charity those cash inflows are a lot more volatile, so you keep more on hand.

How much? Well, normally a well-run charity keeps enough current assets to run for six months; Wikimedia has about eighteen months. However you have to take into account that Wikimedia is growing rapidly. It was almost 25% larger in FY 2016 than it was in 2015. It's normal in this situation to have more cash reserves than one that is a stable size.

And note -- we're talking cash or cash equivalents held by the foundation, not Jimmy Wales personally. If you look at the foundation's IRS 990 form, Jimmy Wales gets $0 in compensation from the foundation either in salary, in-kind, or (important to check as this is a common dodge) compensation from related organizations. The highest compensated executive is Lisa Tretikov, at $308K. Fundraising expenses, overhead, and executive compensation are all quite low for a charity with $82 million in income, 70% of which is spent on program (also a very good metric).

Charity Navigator gives Wikimedia Foundation a 91/100 combined score for transparency, accountability, and financial management. This puts it in the top tier of charitable foundations, roughly on par with the American Heart Association. Kind of like the charity equivalent of a blue chip stock. Your local food bank is more like a growth stock; if things go as planned your donation will have a bigger impact, but if things go south your donation may just go to pay off the debts of the defunct organization.

So when Wikipedia asks you to chip in $5, should you? There's no simple answer. Wikipedia won't go away if you don't, but on the other hand it provides something you probably use every day. In general a healthy charity will manage without your donation, but it still can't manage without any donations.

Re:Lining Jimmy Wales' pockets

[Aaron B Lingwood]

Save the investigation. Look here.

Internet Archive is also Important...

[martiniturbide]

The Internet Archive will became the backup of all the knowledge in the world. I think it is also important to donate to that project / library. https://archive.org/donate/

Re:If they would simply the crappy CC licenses....

[Aaron B Lingwood]

If they would simply the crappy CC licenses....then more people would be able to use their content.

The alternative is returning to the old method of finding a contact for the content which normally involves a whois lookup and several phone calls, then hoping the entity is big enough to have licence terms drafted.

Having licenses named things like BY-NC-ND means you simply cannot use the content without doing research.

Ten seconds at Creative Commons Licences should be adequate research

Even then, it can still be impossible to use content because of morass of words in the mess that Lessig made the decision to create instead of just making something simple.

Morass of words!? CreativeCommons' most complicated licence weighs in at 87 lines. Microsoft's most basic licence for Win 10 Retail weighs in at 191 lines and only covers one product

We had to stop distributing CC learning materials since our lawyers couldn't guarantee that we wouldn't get sued since BY-SA isn't clear on what in the hell it requires.

Firstly, no lawyer, ever, can guarantee you won't get sued - regardless of which licencing scheme you are using. Secondly, if your lawyers can't decipher a BY-SA, then you need better lawyers. Thirdly, if it was true that the CC licence was an unreasonable risk, you knew who the creator was (BY) and could have simply contacted them for clarification or an alternative licence - as your lawyers should have.

Overall, you appear to be attempting a FUD campaign (or are a giant pansy). I publish and redistribute plenty of CC works without much difficulty in the interpretation of, or fear of, the associated words or pictures.

Re:Tldr; Hand-to-mouth would make them shut down

[hey!]

Well, that's close, but there is a limit to how much cash equivalents you want to keep on hand. The reason is opportunity costs. At some point the marginal value of another month of security is less than what you'd get from putting that cash to work in a more productive (although less liquid) investment.

The board has stated they want to keep at least a year of operating expenses on hand as cash. Apparently the board sees Wikimedia as particularly vulnerable, and I suppose if you're in the business of legal blackmail someone with an eighty million dollar war chest isn't an attractive target.

Amassing a giant cash reserve is an unusual treasury management choice, but it's not an ethical red flag. . When you enrich yourself off a charity you do it by transferring assets out of the charity, not let them pile up. That shows up as low program spending, high overhead, and high salaries. Wikimedia has none of those things. It just has mountains of cash.