[HN Gopher] Wikipedians are rebelling against "unethical" Wikipe...
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Wikipedians are rebelling against "unethical" Wikipedia fundraising
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Author : akolbe
Score : 403 points
Date : 2022-11-15 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| You can read Wikimedia's financial statements here:
| https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/#a1-...
|
| I'm completely fine with how they use their money and will
| continue donating as long as Wikipedia remains a valuable
| resource for me. I do not care much that Wikimedia is not
| directly Wikipedia and that they spend more money than Wikipedia
| would alone.
|
| This feels similar to the Mozilla vs Firefox "why is Mozilla
| spending money on other things" argument.
|
| I will continue donating to Mozilla, Wikimedia, and the Internet
| Archive because I think they're all doing important work beyond
| their core products. I don't have to pick one or the other, I can
| give to all of them.
| noasaservice wrote:
| I hopped onto Mastodon, and threw money at our local instance
| (infosec.exchange)
|
| Right now, they're seeing loads of x10 and above. And since
| Mastodon is inherently noncommercial, I'm glad to support the
| instance im on.
|
| And it's so much more peaceful there. Fake viralness doesn't
| exist. Re-toots (re-tweets) don't exist as a intentional design
| ideal. And its chronological. No re-loading to see more forced
| psychological viral garbage for more forced interaction.
|
| So far, it's calmer and much more pleasant than I had thought
| possible.
| greatgib wrote:
| So dad that no one looks like to be willing to fork
| Wikipedia/wmf.
|
| I would be happy to make a donation to it and have the original
| wmf rot.
| rippercushions wrote:
| There are countless Wikipedia forks. To a first approximation,
| they all suck.
|
| The Spanish Wikipedia had a considerable mutiny around 2011,
| when all admins quit en masse and moved to their own fork, but
| looks like they gave up the ghost around 2016:
|
| http://enciclopedia.us.es/index.php/Plantilla:Art%C3%ADculo_...
|
| The only successful wiki fork I'm aware of is Wikivoyage (a
| Wikimedia project) from Wikitravel, which was bought by a
| company that proceeded to cram it full of monkey punch ads and
| alienate its entire userbase.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It would need software to support governance by the volunteers
| who actually maintain it, rather than what exists now.
|
| These "benevolent dictatorships" all devolve into regular
| dictatorships after the benevolent dictator leaves (or finds a
| new partner who promises to make them rich), and the ivy MBAs
| show up with top tier salary expectations and a vision for what
| to do with the brand that has little or no relationship with
| what the brand became successful doing.
|
| It's of course a collective action problem. The reason that
| wikipedia can be plundered for cash (such a precious thing, so
| much management risk) is the same reason Elsevier and others
| can collect billions on the backs of unpaid researchers and
| reviewers.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Funny thing is that Wikipedia used to run on fully sponsored
| servers at least in the European region, provided by educational
| organizations.
|
| But they left because they wanted to be independent and they had
| plenty of sponsorship money anyway. And they still do. They get
| much more from business and government than they'll ever get from
| us.
|
| Like the other poster above I also donate to archive.org instead
| which really does need it.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Link to the actual discussion:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I'm not a fan of the links to Twitter not because of the recent
| insanity but because a Twitter discussion is frequently
| fragmented, paywalled, vacuous, etc. It's usually a rung up
| from Reddit but that's not saying much.
|
| As for Wikipedia, I regret giving them money in the past
| because i get endless breathless emails from Jimmy Wales now. I
| see their situation as tragic because with distributed teams
| and hiring people who are deeply motivated I'd think they could
| get dramatically better $ productivity than anybody else if
| they were willing to transcend their volunteer model and feed
| some money to Wikipedians to improve the product.
|
| I'm reminded of the social entrepreneur Paul Glover who was the
| founder of
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Hours
|
| and frequently wrote "poison pills" into the bylaws of
| organizations he founded to prevent the "skim 90% of the money"
| situations that frequently cause successful NGOs to become
| separate from their constituents. For instance any organization
| he founded had a rule that the organization would never own a
| building.
| btrettel wrote:
| Do you have a link or reference for details on Paul Glover's
| "poison pills"? I couldn't find much with a quick Google
| search so I don't think I have the right keywords.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Unfortunately, "personal communication". He told me about
| them.
| Aachen wrote:
| Any pointers on how this worked then? Usually whoever
| owns the business simply decides what happens to it, is
| this some sort of "I reserve the right to take back the
| business for 10% of its value" clause when selling it?
| Wikipedia hasn't been sold so not even that would work
| here.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| These were written into the bylaws of non-profit
| organizations. The board could have amended these, but I
| think these boards were closely watched by the community
| and it would have been very visible that this had been
| done.
|
| The point is that a NGO should recognize that NGOs by
| default go bad in a highly predictable way and should be
| organized to resist this.
| [deleted]
| steve_john wrote:
| nivenkos wrote:
| https://nitter.net/echetus/status/1579776106034757633 - that's
| all you need to read.
|
| They're funneling tens of millions of dollars of donations into
| the US culture war.
| [deleted]
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| What's this "US culture war"?
| GameOfFrowns wrote:
| >What's this "US culture war"?
|
| Post-modernist deconstruction of what is viewed as "white
| people culture" (meritocracy, high-trust societies,
| traditional gender roles and family) inspired by the
| _Frankfurt School_ [0] of philosophy and older concepts[1].
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Ah, so a racist dogwhistle?
| Spivak wrote:
| God this shit it tiresome, giving money people doing social
| justice isn't funneling money into some "culture war" -- _at
| best_ you could say that the groups involved see the greatest
| opposition to their mission is political but these groups aren
| 't political except as a means to an end. They would, (and do,
| I'm part of one) support politicians on both sides of the aisle
| so long as they support their mission.
|
| You would be surprised how amenable Republicans at the local
| level, who don't have to keep up appearances on Twitter, are to
| social justice -- doubly when someone in their family is a
| member of one of those disadvantaged groups.
|
| You don't get to say "I don't like this so I'm going to say
| it's political and then demand you stay out of politics."
| Literally everything is political.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Would you feel the same way if Wikimedia funded groups acting
| against social justice?
| antihero wrote:
| No because there's a difference between doing good and
| doing bad, even if that's subjective.
| 988747 wrote:
| "Social justice" is the opposite of justice, and
| therefore evil :)
| ars wrote:
| You didn't think that through, did you? It's almost
| impossible to define good vs bad without it being
| subjective.
|
| You killed someone. That's bad. Except they were dying of
| a terminal disease, so now it's good. Except you still
| killed someone, so that's bad.
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| There is. Bad is doing what you want, good is doing what
| I want.
| Spivak wrote:
| Depends, is the funding literally just for "fuck these
| people in particular who have social justice missions" or
| do you really mean "donating to groups whose missions I
| don't agree with and who in due course end up opposing
| social justice groups." Because the former is just mean
| while the latter is fine.
| majjgepolja wrote:
| See I am not American and don't care about American culture
| war, Republican Democratican, or whatever you guys are using
| as an excuse to burn down buildings.
|
| It's plain wrong to put banner ads in third world countries
| like Brazil and India, sounding like wikipedia doesn't have
| money to run their servers.
|
| It's plain wrong to funnel that money to executives.
|
| People who make wikipedia great aren't even involved with
| this. They have enough money to run servers, and a potential
| donation doesn't create additional content. They are trying
| hard to hide that fact with some clever wording.
|
| This is textbook example of __dark pattern__ which highly
| privacy focused people love to point out when a bootstrapped
| startup collects telemetry data from their little
| application.
|
| The Wikipedia fundraising effort is sounds like a metric
| driven C suite executive desperately trying to make charts
| "stonk".
| p0pcult wrote:
| Quoting from your source:
|
| >In the west, an advanced industry of NGOs, charities, and
| foundations has evolved which funds so much of the weirdness in
| our daily lives. A caste of activist-professionals have
| emerged, which inevitably capture any non-profit with spare
| cash. This is what is sometimes called The Blob: a powerful but
| inconspicuous force that has given us the dysfunction of the
| 21st century
|
| Foolish me, I thought it was Gilded Age-level income
| inequality, and its subsequent funding of authoritarianism that
| was giving us the dysfunction of the 21st century. Good thing
| we have this crack journo to tell us it's...
|
| _checks notes_
|
| ...Non-Profit Organizations!
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| The thread you provide is overly alarmist. Wikipedia giving a
| few millions to social justice groups isn't "funneling" much
| first compared to political financing as a whole, and is not
| "culture war."
|
| I would urge people looking at this thread to think about the
| idea of "culture war," who is selling and profiteering from
| making it a front page issue (it's not).
| subradios wrote:
| Wikipedia is not a PAC, they are not NARAL or LPUS or YAF or
| Center for American Progress.
|
| It isnt alarmist to notice that Nice, Professional, Educated
| people have been guiding institutions that are ostensibly
| neutral (Wikipedia, or at risk of being spicy, the ACLU)
| taking great pains to support a worldview that is popular
| with only 8% of the US population, let alone the population
| of the world (https://hiddentribes.us/). They are doing so at
| the expense of their stated mission, in Wikipedia's case -
| this means taking money that could be used for hosting
| endowments, translations, original research and using it to
| forward the worldview and cultural dominance of a very small
| group.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| It's a conflict of interest, no matter your politics, when an
| organization is supposed to be a neutral purveyor of
| knowledge. (unless I somehow misunderstood the purpose of
| Wikipedia, which is possible)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Wikipedia is NPoV but that doesn't mean their funding org
| has to be.
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| Knowledge acquisition is not neutral per se. Wikipedia's
| goal is to be a peer-to-peer encyclopedia. It's not, and
| never will be perfect.
|
| The best thing you and I can do, instead or beyond
| donating, is to read Wikipedia and point out places with
| issues, if not become editors outright.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Just want to point out that "neutral" doesn't always mean
| apolitical, even though it may be convenient to think so.
| Hypothetically, if in a two party system there is a "burn
| and ban the books" party, and a "let's really not burn the
| books" party, the moral obligation of a neutral purveyor of
| knowledge is to do everything in its power to stop the
| "burn the books" club. How Wikipedia is interpreting that
| can be questioned, but not the fact that it should try to
| further the cause for its existence.
| disintegore wrote:
| I love the idea that neutral means "status quo" and not
| the absence of bias, which is far from being the status
| quo in most cases.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Neutral would be "let's burn _some_ books. " I'm not
| arguing that burning books is good, but it is certainly a
| stance biased to one side.
| yifanl wrote:
| Neutral doesn't mean be contrarian to everybody.
| joemazerino wrote:
| So far, I've seen both sides of the aisle look to ban
| books -- but only one of the sides is banning books
| targeting children sexuality.
| scythe wrote:
| I think it's a pretty bold exaggeration to go from
| "banning books from school curricula" or even "from
| school libraries" to "banning books period". Conservative
| attempts to restrict sex education are misguided, but no
| books are actually being banned. Personally, I tend to
| feel betrayed when I'm warned of a horrible thing
| happening and investigate to find out it just isn't so.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Can you please provide an example of one of these books
| that is "targeting children sexuality"?
|
| A title will suffice.
| Natsu wrote:
| Not OP, but most of the controversy has been about age
| restrictions on the books "Gender Queer: A Memoir" which
| contains images of graphic scenes of gay sex and oral sex
| as well as a girl encouraged to "taste" herself by her
| own siblings or "Lawn Boy" which describes a man talking
| approvingly to his friend about having oral sex with a
| grown man when he was only in fourth grade. I'm not aware
| of any 'bans' per se, but the books have been removed
| from some school libraries or made subject to age
| restrictions.
|
| There was another list going around that was said to be
| satire that people retweeted seemingly unironically:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-book-bans-
| schools-...
| p0pcult wrote:
| Based on your descriptions, it's hard for me to conclude
| that these books are "targeting children sexuality" as
| the OP put it. Teens are--shock of shocks!--sometimes
| sexually active, even by choice. My brother was sexually
| active in the 4th grade. Is it that weird for literature
| to represent those kinds of experiences? I can see where
| one would make it generally unavailable to the very
| young, or maybe only with parental permission, but does
| this seem like a project to "turn kids gay" (as alleged
| by some one star amazon reviews)? No, lol.
| Natsu wrote:
| > My brother was sexually active in the 4th grade.
|
| I think a lot of people would find 9-10 years old a bit
| young for sex. One is also generally not a 'teenager'
| until 13 and indeed many of the age restrictions are for
| materials like these books with respect to pre-teens.
| p0pcult wrote:
| I think 9-10 years old is a bit young for sex. Did my
| brother? Apparently not! No one was making any claims
| about the ages of teenagers, just providing an anecdote
| that consensual sexual activity (insofar as two 4th
| graders can consent) can happen at ages where us older
| folks think it is inappropriate.
|
| Age restrictions are arbitrary. Are there some 16-year-
| olds I'd trust more with a vote than 25 year olds? Yes.
|
| In any case, and to reiterate my prior point, none of
| this seems to be "grooming" or "pedophilia."
| fallingknife wrote:
| If I donate to Wikipedia, I expect that my donation will go
| to Wikipedia, not to unknown external groups. That's a bait
| and switch. According to the twitter thread, $22.9 million
| was given in such grants. That's almost 10x what Wikipedia is
| paying for hosting. That's not "funneling." That's taking the
| whole pie.
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| It's a donation, not an investment. There is no obligation
| on Wikimedia's part to do specific actions on your behalf.
|
| You can expect money to be used in some ways, sure, but
| it's not like WM uses 50% of your donation on vanity
| projects.
|
| Personally, I wish WM would invest more in the quality of
| non-English articles. French "toponymie" sections tend to
| be brigaded for whatever reasons for instance. French
| linguists wage wars apparently.
| gadders wrote:
| It may not legally meet the definition, but it feels like
| fraud.
| trothamel wrote:
| Sure, but there's also no obligation to donate to
| Wikimedia in the first place, and it's quite reasonable
| to decide that if the organization is flush enough with
| money that it can donate it to outside organizations, it
| doesn't need more. (And it certainly shouldn't imply it
| needs more to keep the lights on.)
| fallingknife wrote:
| You're right. They don't use 50% on vanity projects. They
| use way more than that. Their donation income last year
| was around $150 million and their hosting costs were $2.4
| million. Let's say their necessary engineering / admin
| cost was $20 million (a massive overestimate). That's
| >80% on BS.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| > Let's say their necessary engineering / admin cost was
| $20 million (a massive overestimate)
|
| On this site, you will find many who will breathlessly
| insist that the only way to run a website at scale is
| through top tier engineering solutions developed by teams
| of highly paid engineers. I am not sure why the calculus
| changes so much for a non profit. Elsewhere in this
| thread, someone noted that they have $8 million in
| processing fees just for their donations.
|
| I have no idea what is the right number they should be
| spending, but I know their costs are much higher than
| servers and bandwidth.
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| I think you misunderstand what Wikimedia is and does.
| It's not just Wikipedia and hosting. It is also a lot of
| research into their Wikidata free knowledge database
| (look it up) for instance.
|
| It requires a lot of people and core knowledge to develop
| and run. To some extent Wikimedia is a research company
| too.
| nyolfen wrote:
| a semantic web holdover project that nobody has heard of
| or uses is tens of millions of dollars per year?
|
| it is sad to say, but it is obvious that the general good
| name of the wikipedia project is parasitized by nonprofit
| sector careerists.
| [deleted]
| Jackim wrote:
| Their 2021 personnel costs were nearly $70 million, plus
| another $12 million for consulting. Their awards and
| grants budget was about $10 million.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Their engineering/devops/pm personal costs was $70M?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is genuinely interesting to me[1]. Is there a better
| listing available somewhere else?
|
| Programs totals are: $69,371,450 I was expecting to
| administrative totals to be higher: $11,531,675
|
| [1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_s
| alarie...
| seanw444 wrote:
| And if they pay tons of other foundations that aren't
| them, with the money I donated to them, then they're not
| getting my money anymore. Or probably a lot of peoples'.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > It's a donation, not an investment. There is no
| obligation on Wikimedia's part to do specific actions on
| your behalf.
|
| Certainly.
|
| But WMF's banners begging for donations strongly imply
| otherwise. It's deceptive.
| AJ007 wrote:
| If the money is being sent elsewhere, it means they are
| receiving more than they can manage. That changes the
| fundraising message. If a friend said please help me with
| my medical bills, then you later find out a portion of
| the money was spent on something unrelated, you are
| either going to give them less money the next time around
| or nothing.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _That changes the fundraising message._
|
| And this is exactly the problem everyone has had with
| Wikipedia's WMF-fundraising messages for years.
|
| Any banner that says "This donation is needed for
| Wikipedia" is objectively false.
|
| Wikipedia itself does not need donations.
|
| And the WMF isn't even spending 50% of those donations it
| does receive on Wikipedia.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > There is no obligation on Wikimedia's part to do
| specific actions on your behalf.
|
| That's the whole point of nonprofits?
|
| From Wikipedia (ha!):
|
| > Key aspects of nonprofits are accountability,
| trustworthiness, honesty, and openness to every person
| who has invested time, money, and faith into the
| organization. Nonprofit organizations are accountable to
| the donors, founders, volunteers, program recipients, and
| the public community.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > There is no obligation on Wikimedia's part to do
| specific actions
|
| Uh, people have gotten in a _lot_ of trouble in the past
| for claiming to raise money for specific causes and using
| that money for something else. I 'm guessing Wikimedia is
| on the legal side of this fairly gray area, but as a
| blanket statement, you're mistaken: Wikimedia is very
| much under a specific legal obligation to use funds
| collected through charitable fundraising for that
| charity.
| clnq wrote:
| I don't think most of the donors know the money is used for
| things other than Wikipedia and that Wikimedia is very well
| off. This is an even bigger ethical lapse than funnelling money
| into charities people might not agree with.
| [deleted]
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| It feels a bit cherry-picked... and I counted $500k of examples
| listed. The more I read of the rant, the more I felt that the
| author is trying to manipulate me.
|
| > Unfortunately, the lab experiment went horribly wrong,
| killing the poor creatures before the research could be
| concluded
|
| Feels like there must be more to the story... and was a million
| dollars spent on this? Or more like $5000? Again, feels like
| they're trying too hard to incite outrage. (Perhaps that's the
| way on Twitter)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Well, there is money on the line. Lots of money based on the
| statements linked in parents post. If I were to read it
| cynically, I would comment that someone, who was expecting to
| see a donation did not so they decided to start an all out
| information war with Wiki over this.
|
| That said, even if cherry picked, the example provided is
| sufficiently damning for me to refrain from donating if it
| was determined to be true ( I am not a donor to that cause so
| I have no horse here ).
|
| <<Feels like there must be more to the story..
|
| I agree with this wholeheartedly. There is a concerted effort
| to go after Wiki for one reason or another. The situation
| they find themselves in is not new, but has only recently
| became an issue in public eye. And I am saying this as a
| person, who is leaning towards saying 'Wiki does not NEED
| more money; other charities should get a slice'.
| scythe wrote:
| The referenced essay, "Wikipedia has cancer", is far more
| detailed and less emotionally charged (title notwithstanding)
| than the Twitter thread:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C.
| ..
|
| I suggest interpreting the Twitter thread as trying to
| convince you to read the full article.
| stefan_ wrote:
| But it isn't, the original "Wikipedia has cancer" article
| has no connection whatsoever to these "culture wars"
| screeches. This Twitter thread is trying to tie it's
| critique over $500k of the hundred million budget to a well
| established _different_ criticism to leech off legitimacy
| for it 's partisan-infested shitposting.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| There's a firefox extension called "Defund Wikipedia" which works
| very well to block these messages.
|
| I personally use Britannica.
| henearkr wrote:
| That reminded me of donating to WP this year. Done.
|
| I don't care what their fundraisings are, I just know that they
| deserve a donation now and then.
|
| (Also, they employ more than 500 people, and this is consistent
| with their donations volume, so I don't think they are burning
| money for nothing.)
| charles_f wrote:
| I don't mind giving to Wikipedia despite the recent
| controversies, what I can't bear is regularly giving them money,
| and receiving messages titled "We've had enough", clearly
| designed at guilting me into giving more. This is abusing
| psychology, which is probably effective, but unethical. I have no
| doubt they feel in the right to do so given their mission.
| Wrongdoing for the right reasons is still wrongdoing.
| theylovezmw wrote:
| I've been a stubborn Wikipedia defender and donator for the past
| couple years, but this new fundraising banner style is the first
| time Wikipedia has begun to lose sympathy for me. I hope to see
| much less of this in the future
| yucky wrote:
| For those who don't know, Wikimedia's donations are used to fund
| some nefarious things, since their endowment is run by the Tides
| Foundation[1], one of the most politically active and heavily
| biased organizations in the US[2]. And since the Tides Foundation
| is a _Donor Advised Fund_ , it is able to act as a dark money
| vehicle used to fund causes indirectly, hiding the source of the
| funds.
|
| Here is how it works. Let's say (hypothetically) that Wikimedia
| wanted to use our donations to fund the eradication of
| Palestinians from Israel. If they fund something like that
| directly, people would know about it, and many donors might stop
| giving money to Wikimedia. Most people making donations expect
| that money to be used for the maintenance of Wikipedia. However,
| Wikimedia can give some of that money to the Tides Foundation
| with instructions on how to disburse it. Tides doesn't have to
| disclose who's money is used for what.
|
| Your donation --> Wikimedia Foundation --> Tides Foundation -->
| Bad things that only Tides knows about, and which Wikimedia
| doesn't have to disclose
|
| Ta-da! Dark money charities.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tides_Foundation#Wikimedia_Fou..
| .
|
| [2]https://www.activistfacts.com/organizations/225-tides-
| founda...
| yAak wrote:
| "Bad" and "nefarious" things... that's some pretty heavy
| assumptions and value judgement.
|
| The lack of honesty and transparency is definitely cause for
| concern, and makes me hesitate to donate, but it feels like you
| have your own dishonest agenda.
| magicalist wrote:
| That article says the endowment is _managed_ by Tides
| Foundation. I can see how that would make you suspicious given
| your objection to their other work, but the
|
| > _Your donation -- > Wikimedia Foundation --> Tides Foundation
| --> Bad things that only Tides knows about_
|
| pipeline you cite seems invented by you and doesn't have
| anything to do with who is managing the endowment? It's still
| Wikimedia's endowment.
| yucky wrote:
| You can read more in their financial filings, which is part
| of what this thread is about:
|
| >" _The Foundation has an agreement with the Tides Foundation
| that established 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. From fiscal years ended June
| 30, 2016 through June 30, 2021, the Foundation provided
| irrevocable grants in the total amount of $30 million ($5
| million per fiscal year) to the Tides Foundation for the
| purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment._ "
|
| Money from donors, given to Tides, disbursed into the ether.
| solardev wrote:
| That's just how money works, isn't it? When you buy something
| from Amazon, Jeff uses a lot of it to destroy governments and
| cities. When you fill up at the gas station, Shell uses it to
| lobby against climate policy. When you donate something to even
| the best most amazingest nonprofit, their employees get paid,
| and then spend the money on the dark causes they care about
| that you may not.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The difference is that in all of those cases the money has
| been earned as the cost of work done. The non-profit's
| employee is spending the money they earned for work done.
| This is different from the non-profit itself making the
| donation because that wouldn't be part of the operating cost
| of the non-profit itself.
| solardev wrote:
| Companies make donations and lobby and such too. I don't
| see the difference.
| yucky wrote:
| If I pay a company for a widget, I expect only that
| widget in return.
|
| If I make a donation to Wikipedia to ensure it can pay
| for its infrastructure, that is what I expect them to do
| with the money. I don't expect them to funnel my donation
| through dark money vehicles to fund causes I have no idea
| they're even funding and that I may or may not want to
| support financially.
|
| Do you see the difference?
| a_shovel wrote:
| > Wikimedia's donations are used to fund some nefarious things,
| since their endowment is run by the Tides Foundation
|
| > Tides Foundation is an American public charity and fiscal
| sponsor working to advance progressive causes and policy
| initiatives in areas such as the environment, health care,
| labor issues, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights
| and human rights.
|
| > Among the most unbelievable "projects" of the Tides Center is
| something called the Institute for Global Communications
| (www.igc.org). IGC is a clearinghouse for Leftist propagandists
| of all stripes, including living-wage advocates, anti-war
| protesters, slave-reparations hucksters, and a wide variety of
| extreme environmentalists.
|
| When do we get to the nefarious part?
| boppo1 wrote:
| >extreme environmentalists.
|
| I'd be pissed if my $5 went to a Just Stop Oil kid throwing
| tomato soup on a Van Gogh. I'd call that kind of switcheroo
| nefarious.
| JTbane wrote:
| Yep, or gluing themselves to the floor of a VW factory
| a_shovel wrote:
| I'm not asking if misleading people about donations is
| nefarious (I'd call it "dishonest" personally), I'm asking
| if you think the causes they donate to are nefarious.
|
| Judging by the deep partisan slant on [2], "extreme
| environmentalists" could mean literally anything.
| yucky wrote:
| > Judging by the deep partisan slant on [2], "extreme
| environmentalists" could mean literally anything.
|
| You can say the same for the generalities that Tides uses
| to describe their mission. "Immigrant Rights" for
| instance could mean anything from helping legal
| immigrants get access to resources, to funding caravans
| of illegal aliens from Central America through Mexico and
| into the US to make false asylum claims. Depending on
| which type of immigrant rights we're talking about,
| support will vary greatly. That goes for every single
| claim they make, so without seeing the actual specific
| programs it's hard to make a clear judgment, which is by
| design.
|
| But more importantly, if people want to donate to those
| types of causes they should do so directly, not have to
| worry about donations made to Wikipedia being funneled
| into these sorts of things. If it's not legally fraud, it
| should be.
| yucky wrote:
| Is it not nefarious to direct donations meant for one thing
| (keeping Wikipedia running) and secretly direct it to be used
| for other things that the donors may or may not even agree
| with, much less want to give money for?
| fluoridation wrote:
| Yup. To generalize your point, any time a charity donates
| its own donations to another charity it's liable to run
| into some sort of ethical issue.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Here's the page of The Tides Foundation, in case anyone is
| curious: https://www.tides.org/
|
| Here's the Wikipedia page on them:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tides_Foundation
|
| (which some might claim is biased, because of connections to
| the foundation)
|
| Here's a page that contains some more information about
| controversies, as well as some numbers on grant recipients:
| https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/tides-foundation/
|
| (which others might claim is also biased, because of Capital
| Research Center)
|
| As a European, I don't really have a horse in this race, but
| the whole foundation doesn't strike me as one that's too
| extremist, but maybe that's because I'm also left leaning by US
| standards, or haven't read into it too deeply. That whole "dark
| money" thing is perhaps the most objectionable aspect,
| otherwise it seems like a mostly progressive social justice
| movement.
|
| Either way, I suggest people familiarize themselves with the
| foundation themselves and come to their own conclusions. Thanks
| for bringing it to our attention.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Seeing news like this makes me sad initially because it feels
| like every "decent" tech company out there (Mozilla, Wikipedia
| come to mind) keeps getting sucked into culture wars that
| distract from their core missions.
|
| Take a step back, and you realize that it's actually a very very
| positive thing to see this kind of news. We're seeing it because
| Wikipedians are not OK with this behavior, and they're trying to
| signal that to the folks running the show. I hope they listen
| more than Mozilla's management.
| [deleted]
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"keeps getting sucked into culture wars that distract from
| their core missions."
|
| I am conflicted because I believe in the Unix philosophy of "do
| one thing and do it well". Yet, from a 'culture war' standpoint
| the winning strategy _appears to be_ intersectionality and
| saturating the movement 's messaging in as many organizations
| and institutions as possible.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Winning what?
| plgonzalezrx8 wrote:
| And what exactly "winning" means to you?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Shaping public perception and forcing subjects to be
| discussed in realms not typically political or
| traditionally considered polarized.
| noobermin wrote:
| Wait, I didn't see anything in the thread about this at all?
|
| EDIT: I've really really searched, where is the culture war
| topics everyone in this thread is talking about? This sounds
| like editors being upset about fundraising banners since WMF is
| financially well off.
| akolbe wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpos
| t/2... and
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
| noobermin wrote:
| This is not linked immediately in the twitter thread or in
| the rfc that I see when I click the link on twitter. The
| rfc understandably is long, so there's a lot to read and
| this equity fund is not one of the key focuses of the OP,
| so I still don't understand why it is being discussed here.
|
| Potential explanation: was the link changed?
| akolbe wrote:
| No, the Knowledge Equity Fund was the topic of another
| recent viral Twitter thread by @echetus that someone
| mentioned here in this discussion a few hours ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33609524
| EnKopVand wrote:
| What culture war? Is this some American thing?
| seltzered_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#2014%E2%80%93prese.
| .. - not necessarily just an American thing, but as an
| American it does feel that way when talking to friends in
| other countries and seeing memetics carry different meanings.
| EnKopVand wrote:
| Maybe I'm ignorant but I still don't really understand it.
| There is a picture of some protest with someone wielding an
| actual Nazi flag... Which is pretty fucked up, but it's
| also sort of hilarious to see it next to someone wearing a
| hippie straw hat, another person wearing a bicycle helmet
| and then, what I am assuming is another ultra right wing
| idiot with a viking shield.
|
| I'm Danish, I wonder what that those people would do if
| they knew that the viking culture they are appropriating
| was actually pretty "liberal". Homosexuality wasn't an
| issue, neither were mixing races or religions. They just
| recently discovered an Islamic Viking lord in Sweden.
|
| Anyway. If one side of the "culture war" is Nazis, then why
| is it a war?
|
| Don't get me wrong. It's not like we didn't have our share
| of village idiots who thought Bill Gates put Microchips in
| the Covid vaccines and thought the Face Masks were the end
| of democracy here in Denmark, but the vast majority of
| people who thought that Face Masks were stupid still wore
| them with the reasoning that they wouldn't hurt, even if
| they didn't help, and basically everyone above 18 got
| vaccinated.
|
| On a side note, I do wish our own village idiots would come
| up with their own conspiracies though. I mean, why couldn't
| our Queen be behind the Microchips instead of Bill Gates?
| fghjs wrote:
| > _Seeing news like this makes me sad initially because it
| feels like every "decent" tech company out there (Mozilla,
| Wikipedia come to mind) keeps getting sucked into culture wars
| that distract from their core missions._
|
| Do you know if there is a good write-up anywhere of exactly why
| these organisations keep getting captured by this ideology?
|
| It feels like it just came out of nowhere and took over, and we
| are all expected to agree with the whole thing, otherwise we
| are labelled as bigoted, evil, etc.
|
| I know it's associated with being politically on the left, but
| personally, as a left-winger in a more traditional (class-
| based, economic) sense, I am baffled as to how it's been
| quietly switched to all this woke gibberish. I certainly didn't
| see it coming.
| svieira wrote:
| Any movement that believes they can immanentize the
| eschaton[1] is going to use any and all means at its disposal
| to do so. If all truth is relative [2] and competing lenses
| bring different goods (<aside>but from what absolute
| perspective do we call them goods?</aside>) then having more
| of them is IMPORTANT, right?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanentize_the_eschaton
| [2]: https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-bias/
| GameOfFrowns wrote:
| >I know it's associated with being politically on the left,
| but personally, as a left-winger in a more traditional
| (class-based, economic) sense, I am baffled as to how it's
| been quietly switched to all this woke gibberish. I certainly
| didn't see it coming.
|
| The word on the street is that this has been pushed by the
| people who control Wall Street and mainstream media to
| subvert the Occupy Wall Street movement and the class war
| momentum it was gaining before and in 2011.
| Multicomp wrote:
| I don't claim to know, but this article may be part of a
| start? It was an interesting read to me.
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-
| of-o...
| knaekhoved wrote:
| The dynamic here is fairly straightforward. When you have new
| growth industries like tech, there are a lot of badly-protected
| resources available. There is a class of people (often called
| the "professional managerial class", or "PMCs") who specialize
| in moving in and consuming these badly-protected resources. The
| most successful tactics for this kind of strategy come from
| leftist thinkers in the mid-to-late 20th century, so most of
| these people come from leftist backgrounds. That's why mozilla,
| wikimedia, etc. always have their resources parasitized towards
| hard left-leaning causes - because those people have the best
| institutional capture tactics.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's not just furthering the culture war; they've even funded
| an organization (SeRCH) that's all about peddling unscientific,
| unencyclopedic woo-woo (about their "intersectional scientific
| method" and "hyperspace") to vulnerable minority folks who are
| trying to get involved with real, actual science. An outrageous
| betrayal of Wikipedia's core mission.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Can you provide links to any of this? I'm also unable to find
| any org called SeRCH, perhaps I mis-spelt it.
|
| edit: I repeat my request more strongly. I've looked more and
| even "intersectional scientific method" gets almost nothing
| except a couple of posts on twitter claiming the same and a
| website https://battlepenguin.com/politics/wikipedia-is-a-
| source-of-... which doesn't back anything up - are you
| affiliated with either of these?
|
| I am wondering if you are deliberately spreading FUD
| jmcphers wrote:
| Parent post is on target. Here is the website for the SeRCH
| organization:
|
| https://www.vanguardstem.com/serch
| zasdffaa wrote:
| and where is the 'unscientific, unencyclopedic woo-woo'?
|
| And where is the evidence it's related to wikipedia?
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > And where is the evidence it's related to wikipedia?
|
| To WMF. Right there on their webpage. They are proud of
| it:
|
| https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia
| -fo...
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Brill. It's only taken an hour to get the first solid
| piece of info. Now, where's the "unscientific,
| unencyclopedic woo-woo" and hyperspace?
| zasdffaa wrote:
| mxmfldp wrote:
| That's part of the culture war, "intersectional" in this
| context is an academic term rooted in the postmodern
| philosophy at the center of far left ideology.
| Intersectionality in the sense of Foucault posits that ways
| of knowing, like science, are socially constructed (along
| with other norms you may have heard about, like gender
| identity) and since they are socially constructed they are
| culturally relative. Since cultures are all equal in value
| under the ideology of intersectionality, traditional ways of
| knowing are considered equal to those held up by Western
| society, like science.
|
| You see, science is actually eurocentric, so supporting other
| ways of knowing is choosing the side in the culture wars that
| says we trust science because it's white and society is
| racist, therefore we must find a new "intersectional"
| scientific method
|
| I'm so sorry I explained this. I don't have the energy to
| find citations since my posts on HN always get flagged but I
| assure you that funding choice is absolutely part of
| furthering the culture war lol
| yjp20 wrote:
| That's a pretty severe mischaracterization of
| intersectionality in general. Intersectionality refers to
| the fact that you can't analyze human experiences as linear
| terms (being black, being a woman) and that you must
| consider the effects of being some combination of
| categories. As an example, intersectionality claims that
| being both black and a woman brings separate challenges
| than the additive combination of being black and being a
| woman.
|
| That's all there is to intersectionality, any conclusions
| you make beyond that are your interpretation of
| intersectionality, not the general consensus of the "far
| left".
| omginternets wrote:
| >That's all there is to intersectionality
|
| That's really not "all there is" to intersectionality.
| You are repeating the motte-and-bailey of far-left
| ideologues wherein you fall back on the official/original
| definition of the term, conveniently ignoring that its
| meaning has changed over time, and has been coopted.
|
| To be clear: I'm being charitable in my interpretation,
| and assuming you are not intentionally doing this.
| dcow wrote:
| Don't play coy. Intersectionality is a framework for
| dismantling the status quo. From wikipedia:
|
| > Crenshaw used intersectionality to display the
| disadvantages caused by intersecting systems creating
| structural, political, and representational aspects of
| violence against minorities in the workplace and
| society.[15] Crenshaw explained the dynamics that using
| gender, race, and other forms of power in politics and
| academics plays a big role in intersectionality.
|
| It's not _just_ the idea that multiple identities can be
| at play at once. It's a tool in the postmodern toolbox.
|
| Nobody even needed intersectionality to explain the idea
| that humans can't be reduced to a single identity (that's
| just common sense) until 3rd wave feminists convinced us
| as much in the first place.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| Is there any evidence that common sense is either common
| or sensical?
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Lots of businesses have a front of the house (customer-
| facing roles) and a back of the house (warehouse, etc.).
| In the South, many businesses only hired white people in
| the front of the house, and only hired men in the back.
| You argue that it's "just common sense," but it was
| widely accepted that these practices were neither neither
| racist nor sexist because the business does hire some
| women (in the front) and some black guys (in the back).
| But if you were a black woman, you were shit out of luck.
|
| It might be obvious now, but it took intersectional
| thought for people to begin to acknowledge these less
| overt forms of discrimination.
| NateEag wrote:
| > It might be obvious now, but it took intersectional
| thought for people to begin to acknowledge these less
| overt forms of discrimination.
|
| It really didn't. I was raised in conservative
| evangelicalism and was never exposed to "intersectional"
| thought, but it was obvious to me that someone in
| multiple disadvantaged categories had it worse than
| someone who was only in one of them.
|
| It was also obvious to me that any hiring system which a
| priori debarred a given category of people at the start
| was discriminatory.
|
| Intersectional thought undoubtedly has helped some people
| figure these things out, but it really isn't necessary to
| understand these problematic behaviors and situations.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-intersectionality/
| clarifies how the notion of intersectionality is
| generally interpreted in a Foucaldian way by most people
| who engage with it. This "interpretation" is not just
| parent post's but widespread enough to call it a
| consensus.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| You're going to quote James Lindsay, the guy who refers
| to critical theory as 'race marxism'? This source is so
| biased Ma'at's feather never had a chance.
| dcow wrote:
| Lindsay is an academic and his arguments are out there
| for you to rebut if you wish. Attacking his character
| doesn't dismiss his ideas even though the left wishes as
| much.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| It appears many do not know the actual definition of _ad
| hominem_. The definition of the term is out there to be
| looked up.
| [deleted]
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| Foucault and Duchamp are the two boogeymen of the 20th and
| 21st centuries.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| > socially constructed (along with other norms you may have
| heard about, like gender identity) and since they are
| socially constructed they are culturally relative.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-construction-
| natur...
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-institutions/
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social/
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-ontology/
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-knowledge-
| soci...
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-ontology/
| bildung wrote:
| That's false I fear. Intersectionality hasn't much to do
| with Foucault. It's a framework for analyzing multiple
| levels of discrimination occuring at the same time (say for
| someone having both a physical disability and mental
| illness). You could have just linked to wikipedia ;)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
|
| IMO there's quite a bit to criticize in that approach, but
| calling it postmodernist relativism doesn't really fit.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| Here's a sample of real life I've found through SeRCH
| Foundation (the entity that WMF is reportedly channeling
| my money to) website:
| https://conversations.vanguardstem.com/a-practical-guide-
| to-...
|
| _This [intersectional] approach requires both student
| and mentor to acknowledge that true professional
| development, incorporating belonging, requires
| affirmation, not assimilation._
|
| (The other striking example of _affirmation, not
| assimilation_ I've seen in a textbook for future school
| teachers enrolled in SFSU credential program. There was a
| chapter in the textbook on how to recognize signs of a
| student belonging to a youth band culture - and how to
| _respect and affirm_ it. No, I am not kidding.)
| dcow wrote:
| Foucault is often considered the father of the ideas that
| underpin intersectionality, at least in the academic
| sense.
|
| Check out his wikipedia and read the section _Influence
| and reception_ , specifically _Critiques and engagements_
| > _Social constructionism and human nature_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
| dcow wrote:
| This post checks out. Roughly. The problem isn't with the
| idea that there can be other ways of knowing out there to
| explore, it's with the total rejection of science because
| it's somehow innately white and thus undeniably racist.
| Even if you believe knowledge is entirely socially
| constructed, to dismiss one construct simply because of the
| perceived social identity (remember race is a construct,
| too) of it's progenitors is where it leaves the realm of
| academia and becomes part of the culture war zeitgeist.
| stevewatson301 wrote:
| Rather ironically, it would imply that Muslims in the
| medieval age weren't doing "science", and therefore the
| Wikipedia article on it[1] is inaccurate and should be
| removed.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_I
| slami...
| bergenty wrote:
| melagonster wrote:
| can you offer more information? I am interesting about this,
| but quickly search did not display anything related.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| theserchfoundation.org They reportedly have a YouTube
| channel with long boring videos about their silly stuff.
| zwily wrote:
| It's great that the WP editors seem mostly united on this. It
| won't matter though, WMF wants their money and will get the
| banners in the end.
| joemazerino wrote:
| Agreed. I cut my Wikipedia donations out when I learned how
| they were spending my money.
| asah wrote:
| well... it seems mathematically inevitable: they have to
| constantly avoid corruption, so if there's a (say) 2% chance
| per year then over 30 years then there's a 45% chance of going
| to the dark side.
|
| the society solution is similar to how the body fights diseased
| cells: sure, try to avoid the corruption but also setup systems
| to replace corrupted companies/institutions.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Wikimedia has also grown its headcount exponentially over the
| past few years. They have almost 1000 staff per linkedin,
| including a large HR/recruiting team. They're obviously setting
| up for growth. Which leads me to believe they'll abandon their
| mission and invest heavily into the culture wars.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I don't go to wikipedia.org anymore, and use my browser to
| redirect all links to Wikiless.
|
| Regardless of the reason, if a page I'm going to doesn't display
| the content I reasonably expected it to have, I consider that
| page broken, and try to find a replacement as soon as possible.
|
| The cognitive load of cookie banners, newsletter prompts,
| paywalls, tutorials, and so on, is just not acceptable to me, and
| I choose to leave all of it on the other Web, the AOLWeb and
| FacebookWeb, the one which I rarely access, mostly by accident.
| The GoodWeb, the one with the content and fast, lightly formatted
| pages, is where I stay.
|
| I vote with my browser, only allowing JS selectively, choosing to
| close the tab whenever the AOLWeb rears its head, using various
| proxies on the rare occasion AOLWeb has anything I actually want,
| clipping anything useful into my cliplog for others to access
| more easily.
|
| It's refreshing, let me tell you.
| dncornholio wrote:
| The begging banner always have left a bad taste in my mouth. A
| small link on the bottom of the site 'donate' should have
| sufficed.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It wouldn't earn them as much money.
|
| The begging banner is deliberate, it is a data-driven marketing
| campaign, not unlike more traditional internet ads. A good
| thing about Wikipedia is that they are transparent about it, if
| you care to look. [1]
|
| Now, the question "do they need that much money?" remains.
|
| [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising
| BrainVirus wrote:
| Wikipedia is one of the worst things that was ever launched on
| the web. Many people say that it's reliable, except in cases of
| controversy. That's a spin. A more honest way of describing it is
| that it's a system designed to accumulate trust by providing
| people with trivial information and then spectacularly fail them
| when the information is critically important for some society-
| wide issue. The failures aren't unfortunate mishaps, they are
| inevitable by design.
| fluoridation wrote:
| I'd say it's foolish to turn to an encyclopedia, which by
| definition is merely meant to impart knowledge not much deeper
| than introductory, for information of _critical_ importance.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| many posters here have no problem with Wikimedia/Mozilla/etc
| redirecting the money to political activists.
|
| I'd just like to remind you what happened when Brendan Eich had
| donated $1000 _of his own damn money_ to a cause _you_ found
| disagreeable.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| aftbit wrote:
| Sorry, I'm out of the loop on this one. What happened?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| He was appointed as Mozilla's CEO in March 2014, it turned
| out he had donated a whopping $3000 to movements against gay
| marriage in 2008 and despite promising to support LGBT causes
| at Mozilla, he was effectively forced to step down in April
| 2014. These days he runs Brave, which isn't flawless but is
| doing relatively well.
|
| Which is in somewhat stark contrast to some comments here
| which seem to be suggesting that Wikipedia's donations are
| fine because they're only ~$500k.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Brendan Eich donated $1000 in 2008 to support "Prop 8" in
| California. Prop 8 was a constitutional amendment that
| required the state to only recognize marriage between one man
| and one woman.
|
| In 2014, this donation came to light after he was appointed
| CEO of the Mozilla Corporation. Much outrage ensued and Eich
| was more or less forced to resign.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| ... and California Prop. 8 passed by a majority of voters
| in 2008.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8
| tuukkah wrote:
| ... and the courts struck it down as unconstitutional:
|
| > _In August 2010, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that
| the amendment was unconstitutional under both the Due
| Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth
| Amendment,[6] since it purported to re-remove rights from
| a disfavored class only, with no rational basis._
| [deleted]
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| What?
| ddevault wrote:
| No one was upset that he donated from his own money. It was
| never portrayed as a breach of fiduciary duty. What upset
| people is that he's a homophobe. No one wanted to work for him,
| have the fruits of their labor used to undermine theirs or
| their friends' human rights, or use software stewarded by a
| homophobic leader.
| socialismisok wrote:
| Again with this?
|
| WMF gives a small fractional amount to some causes some people
| disagree with. Nearly every charity I donate to imperfectly
| spends their funds.
|
| The question I have is: reading the title of this post, how many
| wikipedians are taking this "rebellious" stance? How many
| wikipedians don't care or don't notice?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Would you be fine if the WMF would give a "small fractional
| amount" to causes you oppose? If you agree that WMF should be
| able to give money to other people, you need to agree they give
| money to people you oppose, otherwise your morale boils down to
| "But He's Our Son of a B**"
| socialismisok wrote:
| I'm sure they do give to causes I oppose. They are still a
| net good.
|
| I'm not sure _any_ charity I donate to doesn 't give to
| causes I oppose in some degree.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It isn't an issue of a 'fractional amount'. According to their
| 2021 financial statements that vast majority of the money they
| raise goes to salaries and wages to run 'programs'- work
| activities separate from the maintainance and management of the
| website Wikipedia. Note that these salaries are entirely
| separate from general and administrative salaries and
| fundraising salaries that might be more directly related to the
| health of Wikipedia.
|
| These salaries (which is where almost all the money wiki raises
| goes) are used to fund these kind of projects:
| https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/
|
| I'm sure these projects are goodwork, but when people see a
| banner add on wikipedia, a plea from wikipedia to keep
| wikipedia alive, and then click the button to support wikipedia
| they aren't purposefully supporting writing software to detect
| harassment in online communities, increasing the diversity of
| the volunteer pool, suing the NSA to stop internet
| surveillance, etc etc...
|
| Wikimedia has access to a pile of money and they're growing
| their mission to match the pile of money. Unfortunately the
| size of that mission will always outpace the size of the pile
| of money, and it's a never ending feedback loop. giant 'mega-
| corp' charities are rarely as useful as smaller, mission-
| focused ones. I don't want the EFF to fight child poverty -
| that's what UNICEF is for. If the EFF started to do that
| tomorrow I would have to question how well focused and
| effective their leadership was.
|
| I have been a regular donator to Wikipedia but after the last
| round of HN articles prompted me to read their financial
| statements I regret to say that I won't be again until they
| sharpen their focus.
|
| I suspect the average donator to Wikimedia and the HN audience
| are a pretty big overlap - I think wikimedia has a huge problem
| here, even if we assume that it's just one of perception. If
| they opened their books and were a little more transparent with
| how program funding at wikimedia works to demonstrate that this
| money is in fact pushing wikipedia forward I would consider
| restarting donations and I'm sure other people would as well.
| Macha wrote:
| s/small fraction/many many more times than it spends on
| wikipedia, while claiming wikipedia is the thing being funded/.
|
| I even agree with many of these causes (possibly all, but I've
| not researched them all), but Wikimedia is advertising a
| specifically scoped project and then actually running a meta-
| charity
| socialismisok wrote:
| Do those things help Wikipedia? Like, if more people receive
| a stem education worldwide (especially in areas not well
| served today), doesn't that improve the health of Wikipedia
| in 15-20 years as we see the beneficiaries of those programs
| reach adulthood?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is an interesting if. Is there an indication that any of
| the ancillary grants by Wiki actually fund "stem education
| worldwide (especially in areas not well served today)"?
| 613style wrote:
| The simple point is that the fundraising banner is
| intentionally misleading. People believe they are donating
| to the cause of keeping Wikipedia online and significantly
| less than half of their money is going to that.
| pilgrimfff wrote:
| Gee, I wonder how Wikimedia could make this practice
| ethical?
|
| Maybe actually tell people it's going to those causes
| instead of Wikipedia?
|
| Naaaaaaaaah
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| It's an extremely inefficient way of going about it. If
| they wanted to improve the health of Wikipedia, they could
| directly hire people to do that, and results would happen
| sooner.
| yakubin wrote:
| It's not "causes some people disagree with". It's diverting
| money, which was donated to support an encyclopaedia, to anti-
| scientific nonsense. It's diverting money to the antithesis of
| the cause it was donated to. It's like Greenpeace funding an
| oil drilling company.[1]
|
| I used to donate every month. After discovering it I stopped.
|
| [1]: Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be totally surprised.
| loeg wrote:
| > WMF gives a small fractional amount to some causes some
| people disagree with. Nearly every charity I donate to
| imperfectly spends their funds.
|
| WMF's disagreeable outflows are like, 70-95% of their spending.
| tompagenet2 wrote:
| This is an organisation that seems to endlessly increase its
| costs when what I think many of us want is the ensured
| stability of Wikipedia. This does not cost $150m a year.
| socialismisok wrote:
| How much does it cost? And how much does it need to save to
| be able to operate in perpetuity? And how much should it be
| giving away to ensure that there's an environment of well
| educated people who can continue to tend to its needs in
| future generations?
|
| I'm assuming you don't have the answers, I certainly don't.
| I'm also assuming they have a pretty good sense of what those
| answers are.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| One of the comments states:
|
| > Wikipedia's servers cost around PS2 million a year. WMF's
| assets are over PS230 million. See the 2021 Audit Report.
| If the existing assets are invested, then Wikipedia could
| run till the end of time and live comfortably off the
| investment returns with plenty to spare. However, WMF staff
| costs are nearly PS68 million, and there's money thrown
| around in all directions, very little of which has anything
| to do with Wikipedia itself. The fundraising has nothing to
| do with keeping Wikipedia going, it is about making WMF
| richer and more powerful.
| socialismisok wrote:
| Ok, but servers are a small minority of their expenses.
| They pay 6 million a year in donation processing fees, 88
| million in wages and benefits, 12 million in operating
| expenses, 16 million in professional services (presumably
| contract work), and 3 million in depreciating assets.
|
| All told their expenses are 145 million a year, of which
| 10% is "awards and grants".
|
| Focusing on the server costs is like saying an engineer
| only writes code. It takes much much more than servers to
| make a site.
| xu_ituairo wrote:
| I think part of what people are upset about and pointing
| out is that these wages and operating expenses are far
| greater than they need to be, and have been inflating
| near exponentially.
|
| Probably a huge amount of fat and bullshit jobs able to
| be cut without affecting the Wikipedia service at all.
| socialismisok wrote:
| The point I'm making is that they don't know that. It's
| all armchair CEOs. They don't have the information that
| WMF has, they aren't privy to the problems WMF faces.
|
| You think if WMF could run with half the expenses they
| have today but not lower income they'd just choose to run
| the way they do? I guarantee you they are looking at cost
| cutting daily, like every other corporation.
| adammarples wrote:
| Do you think WMF are actively trying to cut their own
| salaries? Or to increase them?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > The point I'm making is that they don't know that.
|
| We have a pretty strong indication though, since
| Wikipedia ran with significantly leaner staff not long
| ago, and Wikipedia wasn't fundamentally much less useful
| then compared to now.
|
| If you look at the financial reports, in 2012[1] they
| paid almost exactly the same in internet hosting fees and
| other operating expenses as in 2022[2]. However the
| salary expenses ballooned to ~6.7x (adjusted for
| inflation).
|
| [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/0/
| 09/FINAL...
|
| [2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/
| 26/Wikim...
| Macha wrote:
| Was Wikipedia much less good last year when they spent
| $116m? 5 years ago when they spent $70m? 10 years ago when
| they spent $30m?
|
| What are they doing 6x more of compared to ten years ago?
| 80% more of since last year?
| tompagenet2 wrote:
| There's a huge jump there. I don't agree that the average
| person donating to Wikipedia through these ads thinks
| they're donating to "ensuring there's an environment of
| well educated people", above and beyond providing a
| neutral, comprehensive and universally-editable
| encyclopaedia.
|
| You're absolutely right I don't know how much it costs to
| operate in perpetuity. If your point is about building up a
| trust that's a great idea. I can't see anything in the plan
| about this: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Found
| ation_Annual_...
| socialismisok wrote:
| The average person is donating to the concept of
| Wikipedia. "I like this site, I'll toss them a couple
| bucks". They probably don't care how it's allocated at
| all.
|
| Like all donations, it's an abstraction - you donate to
| the thing you see, but behind the abstraction is a
| complex bit of machinery you do not understand.
|
| I donate to the world wildlife fund. I assume my
| donations help wildlife both concretely and abstractly,
| and that they continue to keep the WWF operational. I
| have no idea where my $50 actually goes, nor do I
| particularly care.
|
| Same with Doctors Without Borders, or whatever else.
|
| I assume charities know better than me their needs and
| finances.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| <<I have no idea where my $50 actually goes, nor do I
| particularly care.
|
| I hate to say this, but I think this is one reason why we
| anecdotally read reports of lottery winners relatively
| quickly returning to their original predicament. Some
| people are terrible at allocating resources. For
| Wikipedia, of all places, to take advantage of that is
| mildly.. well.. evil.
|
| <<behind the abstraction is a complex bit of machinery
| you do not understand.
|
| Not all people operate like that. Some like to understand
| where their money is going. If it is doing good, that is
| great! Can I see how you do it? Wait. This financial
| statement says you are not doing nearly as well as you
| just told me you did. Can you explain it to me?
|
| It is a very different mindset. I restrict my donations
| to occasional EFF and IA, but I primarily focus on
| donating my time ( the nature of those varies as I am
| still searching for a way to make actual impact ).
| Aachen wrote:
| > I'm assuming you don't have the answers, I certainly
| don't.
|
| Yeah you do: this is all in their financial reports. You
| can see exactly what it costs and what is needed.
| (Presumably that's what everyone reads before deciding to
| believe a random cry for money in an online banner ad.)
|
| The costs for servers (with developers/admins that maintain
| them) are a tiny tiny fraction of the income. I'm fully in
| favor of also funding further development instead of only
| maintenance, but just look at the kind of things that more
| than half of the money goes to.
|
| I last looked at this 2-3 years ago but simply from the
| fact that they're still collecting even more money annually
| than they already did 3 years ago (and the banners are more
| obnoxious if nothing else), they apparently have decided to
| do the opposite of starting to spend more appropriate and
| sustainable amounts.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > How much does it cost?
|
| Surely no more than $20m/year. Hosting costs are $2m/year.
| $18m/year is plenty for the remaining staff you actually
| need.
|
| If you look back through their accounts you can see that it
| _did_ used to cost much much less than it does now.
| socialismisok wrote:
| 18m/year pays for maybe 40-60 engineers. An engineer
| might get paid 150k, but their salary doesn't include the
| cost of buildings, facilities, insurance, benefits,
| payroll, etc etc etc.
|
| But then you aren't paying for legal, hr, recruiting,
| admins, leadership, data center workers, etc.
|
| To say nothing of the global operations teams you need to
| ensure Wikipedia is compliant with local laws.
|
| 18m to run Wikipedia would be absolutely threadbare.
| cypress66 wrote:
| Wikipedia expenses were around that in 2011. What
| significant improvement has Wikipedia had ever since, now
| that it spends 10x more? There's more content sure, but
| that's the volunteers work.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > An engineer might get paid 150k
|
| There's zero reason for Wikimedia to be paying SV
| salaries. Nor do they need 50 engineers.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| The concern isn't that they are 'imperfectly spending the
| funds'. It's that they are at best lying by omission in their
| fundraising efforts.
|
| No reasonable person who donated in response to a 'help keep
| wikipedia online' prompt would expect the money to be spent
| funding 'STEM as a tool for social justice'.
| socialismisok wrote:
| If you rephrase that as, "10% of the donations we receive go
| to small grants in service of equity and education" I think
| most reasonable people would say, "oh, ok, I think most big
| charities do this".
|
| WMF passes 10% of it's donations on to small projects and
| grants. A small number of those are focused on, e.g., racial
| equity.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| What is surprising about all this is that it wouldn't take much
| effort at all to get fed up and fork Wikipedia. Surely Wales and
| company understand this danger.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This would be a disaster and is the worst possible outcome -
| you don't end up with a new, better wikipedia. You end up with
| two crappier versions of wikipedia.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Look up "Network Effects" ... ironically, probably on Wikipedia
| tpxl wrote:
| What happens when the network of editors moves over to the
| new Wikipedia? The old one becomes stale and dies.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That won't happen because of network effects. Nobody wants
| to edit a site that nobody else reads.
| [deleted]
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Networks don't move, individuals do. But individuals tend
| not to leave a large network for a small one.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Networks can connect. Old and new wikipedia can be
| connected together to share edits.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > the network of editors moves over to the new Wikipedia
|
| oh please yes
| return_to_monke wrote:
| Even if the networks will move over, a lot of links won't.
| Search engines won't put results from
| "VeryFreeCompletelyTransparentWiki.com" as a first
| result/Sidebar, they will put Wikipedia because the large
| user base can effectively prevent vandalism. Wether that's
| a good thing or not is up for debate
| umanwizard wrote:
| It's sad that such a wonderful resource as Wikipedia is owned by
| borderline scammers.
| [deleted]
| Illniyar wrote:
| I stopped giving money to wikipedia a few years back. It seemed
| that as their endownment continued to grow their pleading became
| more desperate.
|
| This rubs me the wrong way. I want my money to go to wikipedia,
| with the amount of money they now have my donation will go to
| side projects. That's not what I want to donate to, and also not
| what they are advertising in their banner.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I'm willing to give a little leeway with donations. I'd rather
| have Wikimedia run a surplus or embezzle the money than see
| Wikipedia having to count every penny. I pay $17 for Netflix and
| I also donate $17 for Wikipedia every month. My Wikipedia
| "subscription" is hands down the one I'd keep if money was tight.
| remram wrote:
| I don't think anyone is opposed to your informed decision, the
| problem is that the fundraising banners don't give the
| information you and I are acting on. They are lies.
| [deleted]
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Wikipedia is and continues to be the best resource on the web. I
| really don't care to armchair run their parents organization.
| I'll continue to donate and hope that they know what they're
| doing.
|
| I think HN gets too tunnel visioned on the technical side of the
| project. Look at how many comments reduce Wikipedia to it's
| "hosting" costs. There's more to running an organization than the
| servers.
|
| All large organizations experience waste and spend some money
| poorly. It's basically an operating expense at scale. The net
| value creation tends to still be positive.
|
| I believe there's more to running a successful global
| comprehensive and free encyclopedia than hosting. To keep the
| content and community vibrant, to expand into new languages and
| communities. These things probably require more than just
| "hosting". I don't know what's required but I'll continue to
| donate to WMF and hope for the best.
| [deleted]
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Part of the danger is that the excess of funds is used to
| create permanent costs (e.g. hiring more people than needed,
| running on more servers than needed, creating more management
| layers than needed) that then become a danger to the
| organisation if there are ever lean times. It's very easy to
| increase costs, and very difficult to reduce them safely.
|
| This gets exacerbated when the management get all excited about
| their pet projects and reroute funding & resources to those
| instead of the main thing that the funds were supposed to be
| for. Mozilla is the classic example of this - the Firefox team
| is not a priority when the funds get low, because of the
| various hare-brained projects the management have come up with.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The issue people have is less what Wikipedia does with the
| funds donated to them, then _how they advertise_. If you advert
| suggests you are about to go under, but in reality you are
| spending money left right and center on various other
| charities, with only vaguely related mission statements, then
| you are taking advantage of the god will of your donators,
| _that_ is the problem here.
|
| >All large organizations experience waste and spend some money
| poorly.
|
| Sure and if their advertising was in any way honest about their
| financial situation people would mind much less.
|
| Personally I would never donate to an organization which
| repeatedly claims to be at the brink of collapse, while
| managing very significant amount of funds and investing them
| into vanity projects. If I wanted to donate money, why wouldn't
| I donate to anything else?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > If you advert suggests you are about to go under, but in
| reality you are spending money left right and center on
| various other charities, with only vaguely related mission
| statements, then you are taking advantage of the god will of
| your donators, that is the problem here.
|
| This, totally. That's the reason for me too.
|
| They do good work but the way they ask really ticks me off.
| And it's been like this forever, when they still featured the
| sad-sam Jimmy Wales pic.
|
| They do great work but I'll rather give to archive.org that
| also do amazing and important work, need it a lot more and
| don't cry about it so much.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| This is a misframing of the issue here. It's not that we should
| only consider hosting costs, I'll eagerly concede this straw
| man argument is indeed poor.
|
| The issue is that relative to other projects WMF runs,
| Wikipedia is more popular and also inexpensive to run.
|
| Fundraising to users of the popular product, while diverting
| the funds raised to ancillary products is already misleading by
| itself.
|
| Making urgent claims that the popular product may suffer
| without funds, when diverting those funds elsewhere -- now it's
| not just misleading but gives me a strong stench of being
| unethical.
| njovin wrote:
| > Making urgent claims that the popular product may suffer
| without funds, when diverting those funds elsewhere -- now
| it's not just misleading but gives me a strong stench of
| being unethical.
|
| This reminds me of the emails the various US political
| parties send out around trending issues, ex. "You need to
| send us $5 TODAY to keep [opposing party] from [doing
| something that's in the news]." Obviously this money goes to
| the party fund and not to fighting the specific issue they're
| campaigning on and the wording of these is overly alarmist.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Wikipedia is a precious thing. I want to support wikipedia. The
| vast majority of the money that goes to the WMF supports
| salaries and wages for 'programs' but there is no further
| breakdown publicly available, other than to say that those are
| not general, administrative, or fundraising wages related to
| the core mission.
|
| The WMF does a lot of interesting and good work, and I have no
| doubt much of it is vital to the mission of wikipedia, but they
| amount of money it consumes with zero transparency makes me
| wonder if it's being spent effectively. They need to open the
| books of the foundation so that people can be confident again
| that they're supporting useful work and not vanity projects of
| fund administrators who have an enormous pile of money to throw
| around.
| blululu wrote:
| Since WMF really cranked their fundraising popups into high
| gear ~6 weeks ago people have been posting articles here
| protesting about the foundation and on every thread there is
| someone who takes this standpoint. It's your money, but this
| attitude also strikes me as being very stubborn when confronted
| with the possibility that your charity is being wasted.
|
| The critique is not merely administrative bloat or waste. The
| critique is about the magnitude of these problems. There is
| always waste but WMF has more than comparable non-profits like
| Internet Archive and when you have board members kicking large
| sums of money around to their other non-profits then there are
| questions of a serious ethical breach. The critique is about
| the deceptive nature of the WMF ad campaign. The critique is
| about how the WMF does very little of the actual work in
| running Wikipedia but takes the lions share of the cash from
| the community of volunteers. The critique is pretty detailed
| and well articulated and it is not simply a technical objection
| that anything beyond servers is a waste. This representation is
| of the critique is pretty unfair given how much thought and
| effort people have put into spelling out their case against
| WMF.
|
| Again it's your money but I would strongly suggest doing your
| homework before defending the WMF.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| > Since WMF really cranked their fundraising popups into high
| gear ~6 weeks ago
|
| WMF cranks their popups every year around this time. I
| haven't found them to be any more obtrusive this year than
| every other year.
|
| > The critique is about how the WMF does very little of the
| actual work in running Wikipedia
|
| That's fair, I just disagree with the critique's I've heard.
| Most commentators are taking what I consider to be a very
| narrow view of what it means to "run Wikipedia."
| kemayo wrote:
| > Most commentators are taking what I consider to be a very
| narrow view of what it means to "run Wikipedia."
|
| The people who're most up in arms about it tend to focus on
| just the hosting costs, without considering the cost of
| paying even a skeleton devops crew, let alone paying for
| ongoing development (of which the WMF funds at least a
| pretty solid majority).
|
| Reasonable people can disagree about whether the WMF is
| spending its money correctly, of course, or whether it's
| overspending on otherwise-necessary categories. I dislike
| the implicit argument that we shouldn't pay people to work
| on open source projects, though.
| dangerface wrote:
| Seems reasonable for wikipedia to want more money year on year
| every one wants to see the platform grow. Obviously they need to
| cover more than just hosting costs trying to do anything for the
| public good results in you getting sued by every company thats
| trying to commercialise that good.
|
| That being said the lack of transparency is alarming why not be
| public about it all? Sure some will use it against you but the
| people that actually care and fund them won't really care what
| its being spent on as long as the quality of service remains
| good.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > every one wants to see the platform grow
|
| No I certainly don't. Why would you like their "platform" to
| grow. They should stick with the core mission of running
| Wikipedia.
| loxdalen wrote:
| I love this part in the discussion information section:
|
| > If there is a consensus that the banners are not appropriate to
| run but the WMF tries to run them without implementing the
| required changes then our proposed method to enforce the
| consensus is for Common.css to be modified to prevent them from
| appearing.
| wl wrote:
| Last time something like that happened (MediaViewer), the WMF
| added superprotect and locked local admins out of editing it.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Surely the WMF has to be careful not to alienate their
| community though - the wiki can be forked at any time and if
| enough high priority editors went, they could potentially
| lose control...
|
| edit: ... or not. It seems like there have been attempts at
| munity before (Spanish Wikipedia) and they haven't succeeded.
| bombcar wrote:
| The vast, vast, VAST amount of Wiki users just go to the
| domain name, they give absolutely no cares or thoughts to
| the fights behind the scene.
| thraway3837 wrote:
| There is nothing about "intersectional scientific method"
| anywhere on the internet or on the org's website.
| https://www.vanguardstem.com/serch.
|
| Non profits (WMF) grant money to programs that directly or
| indirectly affect the content of all products offered by the WMF.
| It's not just Wikipedia. There are grants that goto volunteers to
| increase editorship/authorship of non English Wikipedia or in
| countries and culture where Wikipedia does not have as many
| articles.
|
| Calling this culture wars and simply saying "the money doesn't
| goto hosting" is low complexity thinking that fails to account
| for all the things the foundation does.
| p0pcult wrote:
| https://conversations.vanguardstem.com/hotsciencesummer-faq-...
|
| >What is the intersectional scientific methodology? The
| Intersectional Scientific Methodology (ISM) is the concept that
| your identities and experiences influence your science. We
| coined this term in our peer-reviewed article. You will need to
| address how your project incorporates embodied observation,
| embedded context, and/or collective impact in the additional
| information section of your proposal to be eligible for a
| boost.
|
| This isn't nearly the bogeyman people would have you believe it
| is. One's "identities and experiences" can easily influence
| _which_ questions they are and aren 't addressing
| (intentionally or not). None of this "intersectional scientific
| method" seems, however, to degrade the scientific method
| itself.
| darksaints wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like people are just trying to find something
| to disagree with. It is absolutely true in the social
| sciences. Eugenics anyone? There are mountains of shit
| science out there that is rooted in the bias of the
| scientist.
| tomp wrote:
| Almost everyone that has kids actively practices eugenics
| (unless you literally have unprotected sex with literally
| everyone).
| p0pcult wrote:
| "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human
| population to increase the occurrence of heritable
| characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely
| by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human
| race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as
| unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century,
| especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the
| Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews,
| disabled people, and other minority groups."
|
| uhhhh, no.
| tomp wrote:
| Funny enough, it's the Jews that extensively practice
| eugenics these days.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim
|
| _> Its objective is to minimize, and eventually
| eliminate, the incidence of genetic disorders common to
| Jewish people, such as Tay-Sachs disease._
| whatshisface wrote:
| The OP was just saying that most of the non-ineffable
| things about love are natural selection, and that what
| the eugenicists wanted was already happening naturally.
| Nature is cruel after all.
| p0pcult wrote:
| "actively practices" is the polar opposite of natural
| selection.
|
| To wit: "Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural
| selection", contrasting it with artificial selection,
| which in his view is intentional, whereas natural
| selection is not."[1]
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
| [deleted]
| woooooo wrote:
| Five years ago it was just some crazy college kids, pay them
| no mind, now they have institutional control of HR
| departments and college administrations. Scientists in
| academia have to write proper ideological statements about
| how "woke" they are in order to research fluid dynamics.
|
| Until this kind of thing gets successful pushback, we should
| assume they'll continue to reorient institutions around the
| culture war and there will be no outbreak of common sense.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I had to write one of those to apply for an institutional
| HPC job in the last year or so.
| p0pcult wrote:
| ...and?
| pinewurst wrote:
| Didn't get the job, but it was ok. If I was being
| primarily judged by how performative I could appear on
| paper, it was a pretty dubious evaluation. I took a much
| better job. :)
| p0pcult wrote:
| >If I was being primarily judged by how performative I
| could appear on paper, it was a pretty dubious
| evaluation.
|
| Completely agree. It seems as if a lot of people here
| assume that a potential bias statement is the only factor
| being used to make hiring/funding decisions. I suspect it
| is has a marginal impact. Further, somehow, people
| extrapolated this from an addendum to the scientific
| inquiry method to something that is going to make or
| break careers.
|
| Anyway, thanks for responding to my question for more
| information, rather than just downvoting it!
| pinewurst wrote:
| I took it as "have you stopped beating your wife?" e.g.
| implicitly implying that'd I'd be hiring unfairly - with
| "fair" defined in a specific fashion having nothing to do
| with the job tasks.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Isn't that a pretty cynical take, though? Like, who wants
| to hire a co worker who can't pull weight, or uses scarce
| resources?
| [deleted]
| dangerface wrote:
| > Scientists in academia have to write proper ideological
| statements about how "woke" they are in order to research
| fluid dynamics.
|
| This isn't new you have always needed to give a good reason
| why your research should be funded. The funding should be
| used to progress human knowledge or contribute to your
| community, save lives etc.
|
| The days of righting "fluid dynamics is cool $500k plz"
| aren't behind us they simply never existed.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Knowing, acknowledging and accounting for one's own biases
| is just good science.
|
| You wouldn't use a thermometer that was always 10C too high
| to measure and reports temperatures, without pointing out
| that the thermometer has a 10C bias, would you? Why would
| you oppose introspection about oneself and one's own
| potential biases in knowledge production?
| 4bpp wrote:
| When all the biases one is asked to acknowledge and
| account for are biases against one specific political
| movement and its symbols, this is an isolated demand for
| rigour (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-
| isolated-demand...) and not necessarily good for science.
| To adapt your thermometer metaphor, if there were two
| types of thermometer in circulation, one 10C too high and
| one 10C too low, would demanding that people constantly
| remind each other, and where possible correct, for
| thermometers that output a temperature that is too high
| (and perhaps labelling any reference to the low-balling
| ones as dangerous misinformation by people who have a
| vested interest in high readings) actually improve the
| quality of scientific output? On the meta-analysis level,
| the opposite might happen, if the biases used to cancel
| out on average and now one of them is left standing
| unopposed.
| p0pcult wrote:
| And which biases, specifically, are asked to be accounted
| for? My count on that page is zero.
| [deleted]
| subjectsigma wrote:
| 1. That's not what is happening here. There's no
| intention to use this to make science better.
|
| 2. Even if it was, some people are assumed to be "biased"
| based on silly things like the color of their skin or
| what gender they are. The bias-checking process is
| biased.
| p0pcult wrote:
| This comment says a lot about your worldview, but not
| much about anything else.
| systemicdanna wrote:
| It's not about biased tools though. I would use a device
| invented by a Nazi scientist.
|
| In fact we all benefit daily from scientific discoveries
| made in oppressive, violent, bigoted regimes.
| woooooo wrote:
| Explicitly enforcing biases towards a particular
| ideological project is not "unbiasing", though, it's more
| bias.
|
| Maybe I'm engaging in FUD and these people will be
| content with some minor efforts towards restraining bias,
| but in my experience it's never enough.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Maybe I am missing the part where is says there is a
| particular ideological project beyond better science?
|
| You act like bias isn't actually a problem in science,
| but when I think back to the number of studies recruiting
| on campus at my Highly Selective Undergrad Institution
| (TM), and cross reference that with the student
| population, it's really easy to understand the claims
| that science is WEIRD[1].
|
| [1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/05/weird
| woooooo wrote:
| You're describing a very legitimate sampling error
| problem. I'm describing forced ideological conformity.
| Both exist in academia today.
|
| If, in the spirit of the proposed "bias declaiming
| section", a social scientist made a point of saying that
| they're systematically biased against conservative and
| white/rural viewpoints, how do you think that would go
| over? Pat on the back for introspection?
| arrrg wrote:
| I think so, yeah, sure.
|
| Why don't you think so? "Our own academic perspective
| limits us e.g. in our survey design and language, making
| it harder for us to connect with our respondents" is
| something I heard and learned over and over and over
| again.
| woooooo wrote:
| That's different. Your phrasing is politically neutral
| and could even be interpreted as centering blue-favored
| groups.
|
| My contention is that any "unbiasing" which said "we are
| going to lean conservative to counter our innate liberal
| bias" would not be welcomed.
|
| (I'm a liberal, btw, I just believe in calling a spade a
| spade. Don't call one-sided activism "unbiasing".)
| knodi123 wrote:
| > about how "woke" they are in order to research fluid
| dynamics
|
| If someone asked VanguardStem to fund a fluid dynamics
| project, what are you imagining they would have to say in
| order to pass the ISM criteria? This concern comes across
| like hyperbolic fearmongering.
| woooooo wrote:
| It's a real thing. UC does it and other institutions.
|
| In order to be considered for a job, you lead with a
| "diversity statement", this is looked at before your job
| qualifications even, and there are right and wrong
| opinions to put in it. "I want to treat everyone equally"
| is a Wrong Opinion.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That they would work to promote diversity and a
| commitment to diversity with whatever managerial power
| they ended up with as a part of the position.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Oh, yes, there's the aforementioned hyperbolic
| fearmongering.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're calling that fear mongering, it's
| perfectly normal. Where don't you have to voice a
| commitment to diversity? I guess startups without HR?
| jwond wrote:
| How is it fearmongering? Mandatory "diversity statements"
| are a growing trend in academia.
|
| It's been discussed on HN before:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33053149
| jl6 wrote:
| > " A STEM creative is anyone interested in and thinking
| about questions in STEM, period. We use the term STEM
| creative to highlight and emphasize that one does NOT need to
| be a "scientist" in order to launch a #HotScienceSummer
| project. You don't even need a STEM or any degree!"
|
| It seems like a science engagement project rather than an
| attempt to do actual scientific research.
| hagy wrote:
| Yes, and if their banner ads for donations focused on that then
| many of would be more comfortable donating. Our concern is
| their deceptive ads that give the impression that Wikipedia is
| struggling to pay the bills for serving Wikipedia.
| noobermin wrote:
| Sorry to ask in multiple places, but people keep discussing
| this but this isn't talked about at all in the OP. Was the link
| changed?
| kemayo wrote:
| "Wikipedians are rebelling" is a bit overstated. We're talking
| about a discussion thread which 35 people have commented in, not
| universally in opposition, versus the ~120k users[1] who've made
| an edit on English Wikipedia in the last 30 days.
|
| (Fun trick: use _this_ URL to turn on the summary headers that
| 're why I know how many people are in the discussion:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos... )
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
| akolbe wrote:
| The discussion has run for less than 24 hours; and of those
| (now) 37 editors, only three (3) have left a comment saying
| they are okay with the banners as they are.
|
| Good URL trick. It helps to be a staffer. ;)
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:DLynch_(WMF)
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| It looks like your account is using HN primarily if not
| exclusively to post about this one cause. That's not allowed
| here--it runs against the intended purpose of the site, which
| is intellectual curiosity.
|
| Single-purpose accounts are by definition repetitive and
| repetition is bad for curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?date
| Range=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), as is any form of
| predictability. For this reason, we ban single-purpose
| accounts. Needless to say this doesn't have to do with the
| merits of your cause; it just has to do with the mandate of
| this site.
|
| I'm not going to ban you right now but if you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| diversify your posts to HN and adjust so that you're using it
| in the intended spirit, we'd be grateful.
| 22c wrote:
| > It looks like your account is using HN primarily if not
| exclusively to post about this one cause.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=akolbe
|
| Looking at akolbe's contributions with the strongest
| plausible interpretation of what they've said, and assuming
| good faith, it doesn't look that way to me.
|
| Also looking at akolbe's profile we see that they are
| deeply connected with Wikipedia, so it makes sense that
| some of their posts would involve stories about Wikipedia
| (presumably, they'd have more insight about what's
| happening at Wikipedia than the average reader).
| [deleted]
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| I have been donating annually around $50 or less for the last ten
| years. I was quite surprised to get an email from
| jimmy@wikipedia.org last month suggesting I increase my donation
| to $250.
|
| I'm planning to not donate at all this year, (instead to Internet
| Archive) based largely on discussions I have read here at HN. But
| I thought the request to suddenly increase my typical donation
| five-fold was pretty outrageous.
| Watchwatcher wrote:
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Everything online is gamed to a greater or lesser extent. I
| would expect an average HN reader to inform their opinion
| based on available data.
|
| What are those _some_ cesspool topics?
| [deleted]
| macksd wrote:
| So your own comments can be more informed, you're commenting
| on TFA where those HN discussions are aligned with what the
| actual Wikipedia contributors think. And those comments
| started after several very well-sourced articles on the
| Foundations finances were shared.
|
| Do you have anything more HN-caliber than that to share with
| us?
| lzooz wrote:
| Telling someone not to waste money doesn't seem bad financial
| advice no matter how you slice it.
| Watchwatcher wrote:
| Assuming the choices theyre making, based on HN comments,
| are good choices.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| If you think not donating to wikipedia is such a bad
| decision, then why don't you try explaining why you think
| that?
| leereeves wrote:
| Are you saying we shouldn't donate to Internet Archive? Why?
| Watchwatcher wrote:
| No, I said HN is a cesspool on some subjects and that you
| shouldnt use it to make financial or political decisions.
| fasterik wrote:
| If "cesspool" means "something you disagree with" then
| that's not good advice either. Reasons can be evaluated
| independently of the source of information. Good advice
| can come from anywhere.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| It really is. I guess their analytics predicted they'd gain
| more in income from certain people than they lose in offending
| people.
| sussmannbaka wrote:
| please do donate to the Internet Archive! right now up until
| the end of the year, all donations are matched 2-to-1 and the
| money actually goes towards the service while Wikipedia is
| overfunded and you're basically only bankrolling the
| foundation.
| sct202 wrote:
| Since we're on the topic of less than transparent
| fundraising, matched donations are also usually misleading.
| For the most part the matching donors are already planning to
| donate up to a certain amount regardless of other donations,
| and if the match from other people comes up short they'll
| donate the amount they planned to anyways.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Yes, but it is the kind of white lie that I think is
| morally ok? If people get a thrill out of "free money" and
| charity X gets more funding, not the worst thing in the
| world.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| That's how it starts. Pretty soon you're clandestinely
| funding woke causes and undermining decades of trust:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611094
| knodi123 wrote:
| > woke causes
|
| I wonder what, in your estimation, makes a specific cause
| a "woke" one?
| Alupis wrote:
| I am not the parent comment here, and I do not know
| specifically what they meant. However, I will say, it
| would not be the first time a charitable donation ended
| up going to lining pockets instead of doing the good it
| was intentioned for.
|
| The BLM scandal and all the mansions is just one of the
| most recent examples that come to mind.
|
| All of these huge companies and thousands of individual
| donors giving money to what they believed to be a just
| cause - only to end up buying mansions and sports cars
| for the organization leaders.
|
| Another older example was the Red Cross shinanigans in
| Haiti.
|
| These sort of things erode trust in opaque charitable
| organizations.
| knodi123 wrote:
| It's fine to accuse a charity of corruption. But when
| someone uses "woke" in that sense, I doubt that's really
| what they're trying to convey.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Interesting, this isn't the first time I've encountered
| comments feigning ignorance of the meaning of "woke".
|
| In any case the surrounding threads have copious
| examples.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I would interpret that as a genuine personal inquiry.
| "Woke" has become a nebulous word used to define whatever
| bogeyman the author feels threatens their way of life.
| Maursault wrote:
| > "Woke" has become a nebulous word used to define
| whatever bogeyman the author feels threatens their way of
| life.
|
| I don't think that is accurate. "Woke" still retains its
| original meaning of "aware of racial discrimination," and
| its subsequent generalized meaning of "aware of social
| inequalities." What happened was very similar to what
| happened with the word "liberal," which also retains its
| original meaning, namely, "tolerant," in that those
| threatened by equality or inexplicably opposed to
| awareness of inequality inscrutably use it as a
| pejorative. This doesn't make a lot of sense because
| "woke" used pejoratively strongly signals, "I am a racist
| and/or sexist and/or opposed to equality and/or opposed
| to awareness of inequality."
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I think that is an accurate take. I have just observed
| "woke" to indicate any manner of positions with which the
| author disagreed (eg environmental protection).
| patrick451 wrote:
| > This doesn't make a lot of sense because "woke" used
| pejoratively strongly signals, "I am a racist and/or
| sexist and/or opposed to equality and/or opposed to
| awareness of inequality."
|
| You're confusion is imagining that we care that's what it
| signals.
| knodi123 wrote:
| It's difficult to guess what you're trying to convey
| here. Are you saying that you don't care if you represent
| yourself in a way that makes people around you assume the
| worst? Or you are racist/sexist and proud of it? Or
| you're so into the team-sports aspect of american
| politics that you just use those words in the same way
| as, like "Pats suck, go Bears!"?
|
| Honest question - I've heard people using that line in
| all of those contexts.
| knodi123 wrote:
| I didn't say I don't know what it means. I asked YOU what
| it means to YOU.
|
| The way I use it, it means "alert to injustice in
| society, especially racism". But I suspect a lot of
| people on a certain political team use it to mean
| "liberal and stupid". There's a wide range of uses of the
| term, which is why I asked.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Meant in a merely descriptive way to describe the new
| breed of lefty extremists. In other words a bit of both
| of your meanings. This is a prime example of folks who
| think pushing their identity politics is a higher
| priority than ethics, and have gone a bit too far. This
| seems to happen with every movement, even well-
| intentioned ones.
|
| Not meant pejoratively outside of how poorly this current
| example speaks of the movement.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33610704
| Eupraxias wrote:
| Does it make it better to say "political"? I'm fairly
| sure that is the implication.
|
| For anyone considering donating, read this first:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611094
| [deleted]
| nulbyte wrote:
| This is not true in my experience. Matching donors donate
| up to the amount they state if, and only if, you received
| the donations to be matched. While there may be some nice
| donors who will donate above their pledge, it is in no way
| something the organization can count on. If a donor makes a
| pledge to match, it's solely up to the donor whether they
| donate above and beyond.
| iso1631 wrote:
| on the flip side a donor planning on donating $1m anyway
| may be persuaded to allow them to use it as a "matched"
| donation to try to get another $1m out of others.
| [deleted]
| MrPatan wrote:
| Is that the internet archive that archives everything except
| for his niece's dumb tweets?
| drdeca wrote:
| I thought that allegation was shown to be made up?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I think charitable organizations with resources
| have this down to a science, and probably know that approach
| will get them more increased donations than it will lose them
| donations.
|
| I think it's a science of manipulation, and would hope that
| eventually it will bite them... but these sciences of
| manipulation are very effective. And pioneered by the
| industries that many of us work in, with all the A/B testing
| and funnel management etc. So if we want to point the finger...
|
| There are organizations that I like and appreicate, but stopped
| donating to after they started spamming with me with 5-10
| emails a _week_ asking for increased donations, when I was
| already donating to them! I stopped. Even though I like the
| organization and think they do good work. but I bet they have
| correct reason to believe this spam will net them increased
| donations over all.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Non-profit charities are required to file tax paperwork, and
| there are many scrapers for the information.
|
| See https://www.charitynavigator.org/ or
| https://www.charitywatch.org/
|
| Charity Navigator can be overly generous with their composite
| scores, but you can drill down to the specifics.
|
| E.g. that WMF takes 25% of donations off the top for
| admin/advertising expenses:
| https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703
|
| As opposed to, say, the Atlanta Community Food Bank, which
| operates with <5% overhead:
| https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/581376648
|
| If you're going to donate, make sure they're actually going
| to the cause.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I really like much of the IA's past work, but this latest
| battle with the publishers is just ill advised. If people
| worked long and hard on something, they deserve the right to
| prevent it from being given away for free.
| nix23 wrote:
| Copyright protected work can only be lend for one person at
| the time.
|
| >If people worked long and hard on something, they deserve
| the right to prevent it from being given away for free.
|
| So FreeSoftware/OSS people don't work hard?
|
| I think Ricard Stallman made a really good presentation why
| today's copyright is unfair for small authors but really good
| for the "harry potter".
| tsegers wrote:
| > So FreeSoftware/OSS people don't work hard?
|
| That's not a fair conclusion from the parent comment at
| all. Software developers _do_ have the right to prevent
| their work from being given away for free. Them _choosing_
| to develop FOSS is them voluntarily waiving that right.
| nix23 wrote:
| And most of the small authors think that copyright should
| not be longer then 5 years, the only one's against it are
| the big publishers, so as a small author you cannot
| choose if you want at least a bit money.
|
| But yeah its not a completely fair comparison.
| dcow wrote:
| No they don't. Period. We'll be a healthier society once we
| get past the idea that you can, well, own ideas.
| healsdata wrote:
| What alternative model for funding the creation of said
| "ideas" would you propose? If everything is free as soon as
| it exists, how do we ensure equitable access to creation?
| rjh29 wrote:
| That runs counter to the entire concept of a library. Which
| is what the Internet Archive is.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Authors get paid for library books. (They often cost quite
| a bit more than the same book sold to an individual.) An
| author/publisher can choose not to sell to a particular
| library if they really want to.
| adamc wrote:
| They do, but publishers have been tightening the screws
| on libraries too.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| This is not generally true in the USA, where the "first
| sale doctrine" gives libraries (or anyone else) the legal
| right to buy an ordinary consumer copy of a physical
| printed book, and lend it out (for free or rent) as many
| times as they want, without the permission of the
| copyright holder and without paying them an additional
| fee.
|
| In the USA, if any library pays more for a "library"
| price, that's voluntary. They have the complete legal
| right to buy an ordinary copy from any consumer channel
| that will sell ot them (new or used re-sold) and lend it
| out. And this is not a special right of things classed as
| libraries, it's a right anyone has. Traditionally, when
| it comes to physical copies, anyway.
|
| In other countries, the "first-sale doctrine" does not
| exist, and this may not be true. I think in Europe
| libraries do pay "licensing" fees to be able to loan out
| books, that get redistributed to copyright holders based
| on use statistics, sort of how _music_ playing licensing
| _does_ work in the USA too. So argument here about
| whether libraries really do this or not may just be
| confusion over the fact that things really do work
| differently in different countries.
|
| I suppose that gives us the opportunity to compare... has
| the right to loan out legally purchased books without
| licenses damaged the incentive to write books in the USA
| compared to Europe? Like even back in pre-ebook days? I
| suspect not.
| hadlock wrote:
| Libraries pay more for "library binding" copies of books,
| when available
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| They may choose to, because they are willing to pay more
| for the longer-lasting binding. Or it may help them
| remain on good terms with publishers. While I'm
| technically a librarian, I haven't worked in this area or
| at an institution where it's relevant for a long time
| now, so actually don't know personally how common this
| is.
|
| But if libraries choose to pay more for a better binding,
| that is because of their determination that the value is
| worth it to them, not because there is any law that says
| they must to give more compensation to copyright holders.
| Nor is it proportionate to how many times they lend out
| the book or anything.
|
| In the USA libraries are completely legally allowed to
| take a copy they bought legally anywhere at all,
| including a used booksale from someone else, and loan it
| out as many times as they want, without needing a license
| or to make any additional payments to original copyright
| holder. I am so so positive of this (although I am not a
| lawyer).
| jacobolus wrote:
| Libraries pay the ordinary retail price (or less from a
| bulk discount). They sometimes buy books with (more
| expensive) sturdier binding, expecting it to be used more
| heavily.
|
| Authors cannot stop libraries from buying their books and
| putting them on the shelf.
|
| Or are you talking about ebooks?
| healsdata wrote:
| The current legal issue around the Internet Archive's
| library came to a head because IA decided to remove
| restrictions on lending. They changed from the "we have one
| copy, so we lend one copy" model that libraries follow to
| "we have a one copy, so everyone can have a copy at the
| same time" for a period of time.
|
| Had they not done that, the publishers knew they faced an
| uphill battle because of the first-sale doctrine. But once
| Pandora's box was opened, the publishers saw their chance
| to stamp out the whole thing by arguing "well they did it
| once, what's to stop them from doing it again?"
|
| IA made a well-intentioned but ill-advised decision.
| r053bud wrote:
| So libraries should not exist?
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Authors get paid for library books. (They often cost quite
| a bit more than the same book sold to an individual.)
| leereeves wrote:
| Why would libraries pay more for books when the first
| sale doctrine allows them to lend any book?
|
| Perhaps you're thinking of e-books.
| kixiQu wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_binding
|
| This comment thread gets to be part of today's lucky
| 10,000. :) (https://xkcd.com/1053/)
| function_seven wrote:
| Sure, but the author isn't seeing a dime more because the
| library decided to pony up for the better book binding.
|
| The point is that authors' revenue from books sold to
| libraries is the same as what they get from a retail
| sale.
| ta_408E996 wrote:
| There are "library editions" of many books that have
| stronger binding to better hold up to many people reading
| it. These editions cost more.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I still toss wiki a few bucks now and then (even though I hear
| they are flush with cash and have been for a while) just
| because I use and enjoy it so frequently (and because I think
| it's a valuable source of information for everyone, generally),
| but I too have started giving more to the Internet Archive. Its
| founder Brewster Kahle is a wonderful person. Some choice
| excerpts from from his wiki:
|
| "Struck by the immensity of the task being undertaken and
| achieved: to store and index everything that was on the Web,
| Kahle states: 'I was standing there, looking at this machine
| that was the size of five or six Coke machines, and there was
| an 'aha' moment that said, 'You can do everything.'"
|
| "Knowledge lives in lots of different forms over time," Kahle
| said in 2011. "First it was in people's memories, then it was
| in manuscripts, then printed books, then microfilm, CD-ROMs,
| now on the digital internet. Each one of these generations is
| very important."
|
| "It's not that expensive. For the cost of 60 miles of highway,
| we can have a 10 million-book digital library available to a
| generation that is growing up reading on-screen. Our job is to
| put the best works of humankind within reach of that
| generation."
| cxr wrote:
| > I still toss wiki a few bucks now and then
|
| A small favor to ask: can you avoid using the word "wiki" as
| casual shorthand to refer to Wikipedia? It falls in the same
| territory (or nearby, at least) as someone who doesn't know
| better saying "Java" to refer to JS (JavaScript).
|
| NB: I have tried to word this as politely and non-derisively
| as I can think to. If you have any improvements, please let
| me know.
|
| PS: Thank you for 1. your support of Wikipedia, 2. your
| support of the Internet Archive, and 3. the signal that you
| send by pulling back from #1 right now, when it makes a lot
| of sense to do so.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| Note that when you add "wiki" to a query on Google, you
| typically get a Wikipedia link first.
| philwelch wrote:
| Depends on the query. The top result for "Star Trek wiki"
| is Memory Alpha, which is the Star Trek wiki. "Crusader
| Kings wiki" returns the official CK3 wiki, followed by
| the CK2 wiki, followed by a Wikipedia link.
|
| If you Google things that don't have their own wiki,
| though, you do tend to get Wikipedia.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| this is like asking me not to call the encyclopedia
| britannica "the encyclopedia" since there are many other
| encyclopedias in existence
|
| sure wikipedia is one wiki, but there's nothing ambiguous
| about "look it up on the wiki"
|
| edit: lol ok fine I'm wrong, let me amend to, "wiki is an
| easily disambiguated term depending on the context of the
| subject, and if the subject is not your internal work
| project or self hosted fan site, you probably want to look
| it up on wikipedia.org"
| dmonitor wrote:
| >there's nothing ambiguous about "look it up on the wiki"
|
| When someone says "look it up on the wiki" I assume they
| refer to a wiki specific to the topic at hand.
| groestl wrote:
| Which will prompt me to ask: what wiki?
| chungy wrote:
| > this is like asking me not to call the encyclopedia
| britannica "the encyclopedia" since there are many other
| encyclopedias in existence
|
| If you have a physical set and it's the only encyclopedia
| in the house, it might be fair. I've never heard anyone
| generically refer to Encyclopedia Britannica as simply
| "the encyclopedia" outside of this circumstance.
|
| > sure wikipedia is one wiki, but there's nothing
| ambiguous about "look it up on the wiki"
|
| Hard disagree. With thousands of specialized wikis and
| in-house corporate wikis, it can never really be assumed
| to mean Wikipedia specifically, unless you're already on
| Wikipedia.
| lkrubner wrote:
| "but there's nothing ambiguous about "look it up on the
| wiki"
|
| That is ambiguous. I would assume you were running a
| personal wiki project, and you meant that, or you meant
| the wiki at your place of work. This isn't like "flexing
| on the Gram" -- most people don't run a personal
| Instagram, so if you're flexing on the gram, as the rap
| lyrics say, then I can guess what you mean. But most of
| us use wikis at work, so we all deal with a large number
| of wikis, so simply saying "wiki" is ambiguous.
| Maursault wrote:
| > It falls in the same territory (or nearby, at least) as
| someone who doesn't know better saying "Java" to refer to
| JS (JavaScript).
|
| I don't mean to offend you, but this is a poor analogy.
| Java and JavaScript are hardly related, the former a
| programming language developed by Sun employees and first
| implemented by Sun, and while the latter did involve
| collaboration with Sun by Netscape and used Java-like
| syntax, the JS name is more marketing than having any
| relation to Java. But more importantly, neither is a type
| of the other.
|
| "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of _wiki_ and _encyclopedia_ ,
| and Wikipedia is, in fact, both of these things and the
| most well known, the largest and by far the most used
| implementation of wiki[1] ever.
|
| > can you avoid using the word "wiki" as casual shorthand
| to refer to Wikipedia?
|
| It's really ok that nearly everyone does this, and what
| you're asking is like asking New York Times employees to
| stop calling nytimes.com "the website." I would not be
| surprised if 99.9% of all wiki implementation ever is
| actually Wikipedia, iow, there are lots of wikis, but most
| of them, by volume, are Wikipedia.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
| mgdlbp wrote:
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOTWIKI
|
| _" Tree's leaves are turning pretty colors. I think Tree
| looks nice today."_
| Maursault wrote:
| Please cease referring to your vehicle as "the car," or
| "my truck." It has a make and model and it is not all
| cars or all trucks. Also, when speaking of air travel, do
| not refer to this transportation as "a plane," nor "the
| plane," but instead, for example, "Boeing 737 Flight
| _xyz_. " Do not ever, ever say you are taking a train,
| cab, uber, or bus. Do not ever go "home" again. There are
| lots of homes. Be specific, as continuing to speak this
| way is inaccurate, ambiguous, grammatically incorrect and
| confusing.
| cxr wrote:
| This comment is full of false equivalences. In fact, it
| contains only false equivalences.
|
| What you just wrote is a decent argument against anyone
| taking issue with someone saying "the wiki" or even
| "my/our wiki" where it makes sense to. With respect to
| the topic at hand, however, that makes it a total
| strawman, because no one is taking issue with those
| things. Shortening "Wikipedia" to "wiki" is nothing like
| exercising the grammar of the English language to
| construct ordinary sentences involving "the bus" or "my
| truck".
|
| Please don't make bad faith arguments like this. It
| stands out especially when it comes from someone who's
| first remarks were an objection to the Java/JS example on
| the grounds of category error.
|
| Shortening "Wikipedia" to "wiki" would be like shortening
| "Burger King" to "burger".* It shouldn't be done, and it
| shouldn't be controversial to bring it up. It was a
| polite request, after all.
|
| * or if that example bothers you, shortening "Taco Shack"
| to "shack", to use an example that will withstand any
| criticism that Burger King is not a burger, whereas
| Wikipedia is a wiki--which (again) doesn't even matter in
| this case, since we're not claiming any faux pas over the
| appropriate use of "a wiki" or "the wiki" or "our wiki"
| or "some wiki", etc.
| nix23 wrote:
| >instead to Internet Archive
|
| Having always donated to EFF, OpenBSD and FreeBSD but i
| completely forgot IA, will do that this year too.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Thanks!! I donate to FreeBSD too, and it even runs my daily
| desktop. Thanks to people like you who keep it funded.
| nix23 wrote:
| >my daily desktop
|
| Samesame ;)
| pugets wrote:
| I was hoping someone could help me understand. The objective of
| the Wikimedia Endowment[0] is to invest until the profits fully
| fund Wikipedia, expenses, as is the case with most endowments.
| According to Wikipedia's financial statements[1], their spending
| balloons by tens of millions of dollars each year.
|
| 2015-2016: $66M
|
| 2019-2020: $112M
|
| 2021-2022: $146M
|
| Assuming a modest return of 5%, isn't it the case they would need
| billions in their endowment to fully fund Wikipedia?
|
| 0: https://wikimediaendowment.org/
|
| 1:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statis...
| jjice wrote:
| Not sure where their spending goes so I'm not going to comment
| on that, but assuming a 5% rate of return (for example), they'd
| need 20 times their annual spending to be fully funded by their
| endowment. Ever million that's added is 20 million more needed.
| Conversely, every million saved is 20 million less that's
| needed. Ballooning is not the way, but maybe they'll level off?
| No idea - I don't run the business or care to dive into their
| expenses. Just wanted to highlight the double power of reducing
| their expenses in this case. I'm sure they understand that
| though.
| [deleted]
| woofcat wrote:
| Wikimedia != Wikipedia
|
| The hosting bill is $2,704,842 per year, and the work is done
| by volunteers.
| ff317 wrote:
| The "Internet Hosting" line doesn't mean what some seem to
| think or imply it does. There's a ton of non-volunteer work
| that must happen to make any use of that hosting bill
| (software + infrastructure engineering teams, and obviously
| lots of other departments a functioning organization should
| have). There are valid debates to be had about how Wikipedia
| asks for and uses donations, but trying to imply that it only
| takes ~$3M/yr to "run" Wikipedia and the rest is useless
| bloat is hyperbolic fantasy and completely unhelpful.
| dlubarov wrote:
| While that's true, the majority of WMF's staff is not
| performing essential functions like IT. [1] shows lots of
| staff in fundraising, design, brand, marketing,
| communications, and advocacy type roles.
|
| I think WMF's budget history [2] also proves that it's
| possible to run Wikipedia with much less funding. E.g. they
| spent $2m in 2006-2007, vs $146m in 2021-2022. They were
| already a top 10 website in 2007 (per Alexa), so things
| like traffic growth wouldn't explain that much of their
| budget growth.
|
| [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_
| has_C...
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Okay, so how much does it cost to run "core" wikipedia?
| akolbe wrote:
| This is what the Wikimedia VP said in 2013:
|
| https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-Ma
| rch...
|
| "WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with
| very minimal staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host
| a high traffic website on an absolute shoestring. But I
| would argue that an endowment, to actually be worthwhile,
| should aim for a significantly higher base level of
| minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of
| magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare
| survival, but actual sustainability of Wikimedia's
| mission."
|
| Revenue goal for the current year has been set at $175
| million. The WMF more than doubles its expenses every
| five years:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financ
| ial...
|
| This is not about keeping Wikipedia online - it's about
| financing the growth of the Wikimedia organisation.
| Donors by and large are left quite unaware of this fact;
| they mostly think Wikipedia is in some sort of trouble.
| baud147258 wrote:
| then to which the money donated go? I mean considering it's
| money raised using banners splattered all over Wikipedia,
| specifically saying Wikipedia and barely any mention of
| Wikimedia
| rippercushions wrote:
| _Editing_ Wikipedia is done by volunteers. The sysadmin
| /operations staff is paid, and so are the Mediawiki
| developers building out stuff specifically for WP.
| neilk wrote:
| There are paid administrators and developers, but also
| unpaid ones too.
|
| Yes, there are volunteer sysadmins, some with the exact
| same authorizations as WMF employees. With modern
| infrastructure as code, they can even contribute to how the
| site is deployed.
|
| Some projects have good crossover between paid and
| volunteer Wikipedians. But the WMF tends to do the heavier
| lifts, even if sometimes they are ideas the community isn't
| interested in.
| giantrobot wrote:
| As the sibling comment points out, assuming Wikipedia's
| endowment sees 5% returns, it needs to be $54 million _just_
| to cover Wikipedia 's hosting expenses. That doesn't cover
| any other Wikipedia/Wikimedia expenses like their full time
| staff or other OpEx.
|
| If the endowment gets less than 5% returns it needs to be
| that much larger to cover expenses.
| xu_ituairo wrote:
| Yeah, and they already have a lot more than 54M in the bank
| akolbe wrote:
| Per this page
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment the
| Endowment at the Tides Foundation held over $113 million
| in January of this year. That is the latest data
| available.
|
| The Wikimedia Foundation itself reported assets of $239
| million in addition to that, as of June this year:
|
| https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3
| AWi...
| [deleted]
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