Wikipedia Is 'Doing Very Well Financially', Says Co-Founder Jimmy Wales (phys.org) 69
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said this week that the free online encyclopedia is in good financial shape, although increasing mobile phone use may cut into future donations. From a report: "We are doing very well financially," Wales told AFP ahead of Vivatech, a Paris tech fair for start-up companies. "We spend less than we bring in every year," he said. Wikipedia had "never been really good" at attracting major donors, with most of its money coming from people each giving around 15 euros ($16.80) in endowment money, he said. Wikipedia has published nearly 350 million articles, and has clocked up more than 190 billion views over the past 12 months. But Wales also said he feared a threat to Wikipedia's business model from increasing use of mobile devices coupled with personal assistant applications like Apple's Siri. "We see a rise of people using Wikipedia in ways that don't involve websites," he said. "We love that but you don't come to the website and see the (request for donations) banner. We haven't seen any impact yet but we worry, we think we should raise money."
Then why does he beg every time you go there? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you love that people are not seeing the donation banner, take it down. Idiot.
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Well, he does not *Currently* have it up.
Not that he wont put it up again, if he feels wikipedia needs more money for some reason or other, mind-- just that he does not currently have it up.
If you ask me, he seems to enjoy having it up, with how often he does have it up. Seems like several times per year he just decides "oh, we need more money-- Gimme!!" and slaps that overly intrusive, and entirely too verbose banner on all over the place.
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Well, he does not *Currently* have it up.
Doesn't he? It comes up for me. Literally a third of the page, with a big red border. Maybe it only comes up in certain regions?
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I haven't seen it since I blocked it. So I couldn't verify if I wanted to..
Re:Then why does he beg every time you go there? (Score:4, Insightful)
and slaps that overly intrusive, and entirely too verbose banner on all over the place.
I feel like that's better than a string of ads that are also overly intrusive and too verbose. It's also a reminder that as a community, we can each give a little to produce a lot. I usually give them $10 a year, and I rarely use the site. But I'm one of these people that seriously loathes ads, so I like to give support to those that don't push them down your throat.
How to parse English when syntax is complex (Score:2)
If you love that people are not seeing the donation banner, take it down. Idiot.
The phrasing in the summary was possibly ambiguous.
He loves that people come to the site on mobile devices, AND, separately, he points out that the mobile device viewers don't show the banner, but the love for "the rise of people using Wikipedia in ways that don't involve websites" is not transitive, and therefore does not encompass loving people not seeing the donation banner.
then stop asking for money (Score:1)
yarp
Do well? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Do well? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they want to keep doing very well financially.
Re:Do well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they want to keep doing very well financially.
True, but "very well" has always been a massive understatement. When donations significantly exceed costs year after year, the stridency of the demands for donations are not justifiable.
Looking at their 2018 statement, for example, they had $104M in revenue, nearly all donations, and spent $81M. But that doesn't really tell the story, because they waste a lot of money. Well "waste" is too strong; most of what they do with it is probably beneficial -- but little of it has anything to do with running Wikipedia, which is what the donors think they're donating for.
What donors think they're donating for is mostly Internet hosting, but the hosting costs are actually pretty small. In 2018 they spent $2.3M on hosting, so about 2% of what people donated went to what they thought they were donating for. They spent $38.6M on salaries and wages. They do need to pay engineering staff to maintain and develop the various Wikimedia sites, and they need legal and office staff, etc. Still, the number seems a high to me. Then there's the $13.6M they spent on awards and grants. I expect these awards and grants are generally good things, but I'm pretty sure they're not what people think they're donating for.
I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia, and many of the related Wikimedia sites. Open, freely-accessible and crowdsourced information, textbooks, etc., are an enormous boon to humanity, particularly to the poor. But I do not donate to Wikipedia any more, because I think their donation drives are misleading. Very little of what you donate to Wikipedia supports Wikipedia. I might actually be willing to donate to many of the other things the money is spent on... but they tell me I'm donating to Wikipedia.
I also think scare tactics about the possibility that Wikipedia could go away are underhanded, and ridiculous. There's no way Wikipedia is going away. Even if the foundation was unable to buy hosting there are plenty of organizations who would step up to host. The big cloud providers would be happy to host it for free for a little goodwill and a tax deduction. 190B views over 12 months works out to just over 6k queries per second. That's nothing to big hosting systems, especially since 99% of those views are static page retrievals. And they could easily work deals with Akamai et al (again almost certainly at no cost) to provide the static retrieval cache, making the remaining dynamic wiki system quite small and therefore cheap to host -- and I suspect they could easily get universities and governments to provide the hosting required for that.
I like Wikipedia, and would be happy to support their work, but find their approach to donation demands to be sleazy.
Wikipedia DOES NOT need your money, they have TONS (Score:2, Informative)
Wikipedia is saving enough cash year over year to swim in it like Scrooge McDuck. What are they planning to do with all that cash?
It just keeps piling up. They now have ~$134 MIllion in net assets.
Look at the surplus they are running each year. They are collecting about $20 Million more than they need to operate every year. And operational cost is likely not carefully controlled with that much excess money flooding in.
Net assets at end of year
2018: $134,949,570 ($21.6 Million added)
2017: $113,330,197 ($21
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It's called planning for the bad years.
Planning is good. Insisting that the sky will fall now if donations don't roll in right away while sitting on a pile of cash that would allow operation for five or six years even if donations stopped entirely is just lying.
If they'd like to ask for donations to build up their endowment fund so that they can operate in perpetuity even in the event that donations stop entirely, I'd be find with that. I might even give them a thousand or so, because I think that endowment would be a very valuable benefit t
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It's called Endowment. Nonprofits consider these vital. Funds cover: major investments, recovery from disasters, keeping the lights on when the economy (and donations) crashes, and when major donors or volunteers leave/die and need replacing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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This hundred million is a loss for the community if a better wikipedia with hookers and blackjack rises, every donor switches and wikimedia keeps draining their fund on inane stuff like their image viewer instead of passing it forward.
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I like your wikipedia, where can I donate?
Re:Wikipedia DOES NOT need your money, they have T (Score:4, Informative)
It's called Endowment
If they want to change the donation request to "Build up our endowment!", then I'm good with it. And I'd even donate. But that's not what they say.
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The only underhandedness is yours.
First, https://wikimediafoundation.or... [wikimediafoundation.org] is a lot more accurate than your crap. 40% of their money went to the site, not 2%. 34% went to the community activity: tools for contributors, grants, training, legal defense. 14% for admin and governance (the company itself) and 12% for fundraising.
Second, look up endowment. Here, I suggest the wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Taking in 104 and spending 81 isn't profligate wealth, it's a couple months of extra. And w
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The problem is each year they make a plan to spend more money, then go on a massive begging campaign to cover that spending. Then when the massive begging campaign exceeds it's goal they make a plan to spend even more next year. Their spending has ballooned from 3,540,724 in 2007/2008 to 81,442,265 in 2017/108, about 23 times greater.
The "internet hosting" line item has grown from 537,204 to 2,342,130 , about 4 times greater.
The "wages and salaries" line item has grown from 1,147,679 to 38,597,407 about 33
Re:Do well? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only underhandedness is yours. First, https://wikimediafoundation.or... [wikimediaf...tion.or...] [wikimediafoundation.org] is a lot more accurate than your crap.
My source is the Wikimedia Foundation Independent Auditor's Report: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Second, look up endowment
If they want to build up an endowment, fine. They should say that's what they're doing. But they don't say that.
Taking in 104 and spending 81 isn't profligate wealth
Depends on what you spend it on.
Oh, and no wiki is static pages, but certainly not Wikimedia
Yes, wikis are dynamic. But 99% of Wikipedia page loads are not. It's extremely cacheable; only a small fraction of interactions actually need to hit a database.
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Or, use SafeScript or w/e equivalent for your browser.. And block the element.
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Because they could always be doing weller. There is no such thing as "enough money".
Re:Do well? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they can find new and exciting ways to waste more of it on bullshit multimedia presentations nobody wanted, instead of on moderators and administrators who could curtail edit wars.
They said they didn't need $, yet they beg yearly (Score:4, Informative)
Ever year now they have a big campaign telling us information is doomed forever unless everyone donates $10+ to Wikipedia, and how dangerous it will be if we don't give them money so that they can remain forever. Any article you try to read has a massive huge ad on top of the screen about how big of an emergency it is and so on.
Yet I remember something like 10-15 years ago they had a request at the top to donate money. If you went to the more info section it said something about how they had plenty of money and could survive quite a while on what they had. That the donations would just be a goodwill thing to help them last even longer. Now they act like if you don't donate $10 the instant you read the article the website might disappear and knowledge will be banned from everyone on the planet for the rest of eternity.
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why? Can't you just use an ad blocker?
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UBlock Origin or whatever it's called may block the banner. Adblock Plus definitely does not.
Most charities have a buffer (Score:2)
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I posted this as another comment...
But do they really need a $134 Million dollar buffer?
Sure, their operational costs are high... because they're spraying cash all over the place.
Do you think it really costs $81 Million dollars a year to run WIkipedia? And that the having the cost for running it grow by $21 Million dollars a year (each year) is normal?
Net assets at end of year
2018: $134,949,570 ($21.6 Million added)
2017: $113,330,197 ($21.5 Million added)
2016: $91,782,795 ($13.9 Million added)
2015: $77,82
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it makes sense to have a fairly large buffer to cover the hosting costs (which must be enormous).
2018 hosting costs were $2,342,130, about 2% of 2018 donations.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/6/60/FY17-18_-_Independent_Auditors'_Report.pdf
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Ever year now they have a big campaign telling us information is doomed forever unless everyone donates $10+ to Wikipedia, and how dangerous it will be if we don't give them money so that they can remain forever. Any article you try to read has a massive huge ad on top of the screen about how big of an emergency it is and so on.
Yet I remember something like 10-15 years ago they had a request at the top to donate money. If you went to the more info section it said something about how they had plenty of money and could survive quite a while on what they had. That the donations would just be a goodwill thing to help them last even longer. Now they act like if you don't donate $10 the instant you read the article the website might disappear and knowledge will be banned from everyone on the planet for the rest of eternity.
Which is why I discontinued my donations after I found out how much they really have, I was getting so annoyed at the "sky is falling, we're about to go bankrupt" tone of the donation banners.
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Oh god, what and who the fuck is Aryan? Asking as a person who was originally called the original Aryan... you know... a descendant of Iran.
Re:Limited Advertising Done Correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertising would easily compromise their integrity. (Or compromise it more, I suppose.)
Seeing Coke ads on a Pepsi wiki page seems fairly benign on the surface; but it would put it in the mind of the user that Coke may be paying for edits to Pepsi's page. Even if there are protections against such a thing happening, it would look pretty bad for Wikimedia.
Even if you are being careful; if it looks like an ethics violation, in the eyes of the public it is one.
Licensing to Big Businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no reason why big business like Google, Apple and Microsoft shouldn't be paying Wikipedia for "API Access" for serving up their data.
Google charges for API Access to it's crowd-sourced data, like reviews and map contributions, Wikipedia should too. But only to massive organizations like those mentioned.
$1 / million for the API or something (Score:2)
Something like $1 per million queries to the API might be okay - first ten thousand free.
No need to get into the mess of defining what a big business is - if you're doing millions and millions of queries, it costs a couple bucks.
A potential problem is big business can just download the data and query their own copy millions of times. No way to track that.
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That's part of it. (9% of costs) (Score:2)
Server load / bandwidth used is certainly a consideration. That's about 9% of the costs of running Wikipedia.
Also, it seems reasonable that a company making hundreds of millions of dollars displaying Wikipedia content ought to pitch in a grand to help the project they rely on. If they are getting paid for Wikipedia content, it's only fair that they contribute toward the cost of providing that content.
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There is no reason why big business like Google, Apple and Microsoft shouldn't be paying Wikipedia for "API Access" for serving up their data.
I think it's totally fine for them to charge a small fee for organizations that put large loads on their servers.
It's very important to keep in mind, however, that the Wikimedia Foundation does not own the data. The data was contributed by millions of individuals, who all own the copyrights to their contributions, and only grant a license to Wikimedia to use it under the Creative Commons ShareAlike license. There is absolutely nothing wrong, legally or morally, with Amazon downloading a complete copy of
Oh goodie (Score:1)
Now I can put that $10 in my coffee jar. I'm saving up to buy my future grandkids a copy of a 6-bookshelf-foot-long printed encyclopedia.
Yet each year they harass us for more money (Score:2)
There needs to be a donation boycott (Score:1)
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Misplaced hostility (Score:2)