Every so often I give a few bucks(far less than the worth of knowledge I got from it)
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
Very similar feelings here.
For people looking for some further reading on this subject, there is a well known wikipedia user’s article about this with some history of this problem of unchecked spending:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
some other internet knowledge repository’s you should consider donating to:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve donated while living below the poverty line. And it made me feel pretty good, as a matter of fact. I funded the development of four organic gardens in central america, and I helped support Doctors Without Borders missions all over the globe. Felt damn good to know I could still help others way further below the poverty line than me.
How did you do that and, you know, still afford basic necessities? I already lean on donations from others to survive. Or was that your situation too, you just “re-donated” a bit.
I was not in the extremely unlikely scenario where the basic necessities cost exactly as much as my income.
A person is either ahead or behind. The probability their income and their expenses actually match, down to the last dollar, is vanishingly small.
Whenever you find in your life that you have no options, you can be sure you are hallucinating that state of affairs.
Read Elie Wiesel’s Night for an exploration of just how deep freedom goes.
Well, I’m behind. Book recommendation noted, I wonder if my public library could track down a copy.
Do you want a pat on the back?
Edit: also fuck off. How about you donate to Canada plus while you’re at it.
I don’t need a pat on the back because I have other far more valuable forms of satisfaction in my life, which I can provide myself.
Pats on the back are for adult children who think all the good in life comes from others’ recognition.
If you really want to make me feel grand, you could say something like “You know what? I’ll try donating $5 despite being poor, and I’ll let you know how it goes”.
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 🤣
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.
