They are actually getting too many donations, many times more than they need to run wikipedia. There was and is a big conflict about the unsustainable growth of donations to the foundation and its questionable use of those funds.
Wikimedia Foundation (the org behind the Wikipedia and similar projects) does get more donations than their operational cost, but that’s expected. The idea is that they’ll invest the extra fund[1] and some day the return alone will be able to sustain Wikipedia forever.
Although, some have criticized that the actual situation is not clearly conveyed in their asking for donation message. It gives people an impression that Wikipedia is going under if you don’t donate.
Others also criticized that the feature development is slow compared to the funding, or that not enough portion is allocated to the feature development. See how many years it takes to get dark mode! I don’t know how it’s decided or what’s their target, so I can’t really comment on this.
They publish their annual financial auditions[2] and you can have a read if you’re interested. There are some interesting things. For example, in 2022-2023, processing donations actually costs twice as much as internet hosting, which one would expect to be the major expense.
they’re a non profit, so their either banking money in a proverbial “war chest” or they’re just nabbing donations to be used in the future, for large expansions or what not.
It’s an interesting problem to have, being a non profit entity.
Remember, if you donate to the WMF, they will use that money to enforce “WMF global bans” against users trying to make useful contributions but who once looked at the wrong people funny.
One of the earliest global bans was against user “russavia” - research him and you’ll know what I’m talking about. After that I stopped following Wikimedia internals because it was 100% clear that they were now just completely arbitrarily banning people.
Banned user Russavia edited two of the oligarch articles. He was a very active administrator on Wikimedia Commons, who specialized in promoting the Russian aviation industry, and in disrupting the English-language Wikipedia.
After finally being banned on the English Wikipedia, he created dozens of sockpuppets. Russavia, by almost all accounts, is not a citizen or resident of Russia, but his edits raise some concern and show some patterns.
In 2010, he boasted, on his userpage at Commons, that he had obtained permission from the official Kremlin.ru site for all photos there to be uploaded to Commons under Creative Commons licenses. He also made 148 edits at Russo-Georgian War, and 321 edits on the ridiculously detailed International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both of these articles were, at one time, strongly biased in favor of Russia.
Idk, when you’re using Wikipedia as a tool to push Russian propaganda, it seems fair that you’d be banned. That’s not what Wikipedia is for. He’s free to start russopedia.ru or whatever if he wants to do that.
and 321 edits on the ridiculously detailed International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Both of these articles were, at one time, strongly biased in favor of Russia.
Wikipedia cares more about bias than* ridiculous details, especially when the ridiculous detail is there to put bias into the article
reads almost like it’s talking about the situation at hand having been extensively and thoroughly documented to the point of it being impossible to “be wrong” to me
I think their point was that since he got Russian government permission to use Russian gov media, and he wrote a very detailed (although very biased in favour of Russia) article, then they think he is receiving assistance from the russian government to push Russian propaganda.
I thought this was gonna be about Wikipedia finally shutting down because nobody donates
They are actually getting too many donations, many times more than they need to run wikipedia. There was and is a big conflict about the unsustainable growth of donations to the foundation and its questionable use of those funds.
Wikimedia Foundation (the org behind the Wikipedia and similar projects) does get more donations than their operational cost, but that’s expected. The idea is that they’ll invest the extra fund[1] and some day the return alone will be able to sustain Wikipedia forever.
Although, some have criticized that the actual situation is not clearly conveyed in their asking for donation message. It gives people an impression that Wikipedia is going under if you don’t donate.
Others also criticized that the feature development is slow compared to the funding, or that not enough portion is allocated to the feature development. See how many years it takes to get dark mode! I don’t know how it’s decided or what’s their target, so I can’t really comment on this.
They publish their annual financial auditions[2] and you can have a read if you’re interested. There are some interesting things. For example, in 2022-2023, processing donations actually costs twice as much as internet hosting, which one would expect to be the major expense.
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Policy:Wikimedia_Foundation_Investment_Policy ↩︎
https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2022-2023-annual-report/#toc-by-the-numbers ↩︎
Similar to Mozilla (but not from donations but instead of its millions paid to it by Google)
Huh, now that is a truly interesting bit of information.
An interesting bit of information without any sources at all…
As is good and proper on Lemmy
Providing sources is probably a lot more common on Lemmy than anywhere else
idk man, i’d probably bet money on scientific papers,
Lol obviously I meant places where random users post content
i mean, technically the authors posting papers are going to be pretty randomly sampled.
they’re a non profit, so their either banking money in a proverbial “war chest” or they’re just nabbing donations to be used in the future, for large expansions or what not.
It’s an interesting problem to have, being a non profit entity.
Remember, if you donate to the WMF, they will use that money to enforce “WMF global bans” against users trying to make useful contributions but who once looked at the wrong people funny.
Who’s trying to making useful contributions but got banned, and what were they banned for?
One of the earliest global bans was against user “russavia” - research him and you’ll know what I’m talking about. After that I stopped following Wikimedia internals because it was 100% clear that they were now just completely arbitrarily banning people.
Idk, when you’re using Wikipedia as a tool to push Russian propaganda, it seems fair that you’d be banned. That’s not what Wikipedia is for. He’s free to start russopedia.ru or whatever if he wants to do that.
An encyclopedia calling an article ridiculously detailed is… interesting.
Kinda burying the lede on that complaint…
Wikipedia cares more about bias than* ridiculous details, especially when the ridiculous detail is there to put bias into the article
I read it as adding a bunch of superfluous details that were biased.
reads almost like it’s talking about the situation at hand having been extensively and thoroughly documented to the point of it being impossible to “be wrong” to me
I think their point was that since he got Russian government permission to use Russian gov media, and he wrote a very detailed (although very biased in favour of Russia) article, then they think he is receiving assistance from the russian government to push Russian propaganda.
You could have just said you’re upset that a Russian propagandist was banned. Would have been quicker and more honest lol.
Great. Making generalizing statements based on ONE case from over 10 years ago, which was - at best - debatable (see other response).
To be fair, they were asked for an example and they gave one. I’m not saying I agree with them but this feels unfair to say.
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