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The Wikimedia Foundation, which controls Wikipedia and other popular MediaWiki projects, has met its "December sprint" fundraising target:
This week the Wikimedia Foundation smashed through the $25m target it had set for its "December sprint" – with a full 15 days of the month left. On December 3, Wiki's globetrotting figurehead Jimmy Wales promised that as soon as the Wikimedia Foundation met the target it had set for its traditional year-end fundraising drive, it would cease making the intrusive appeals. "We would still stop the fundraiser if enough money were raised in shorter than the planned time," Jimmy Wales promised on December 2. But there's no sign of the Foundation doing that, yet.
The WMF has now raised $25,530,943.01 in December, and $51,182,044.37 this year. That means it's on course to smash 2015's fundraising record of $53,756,012.58. [...] "It's important here to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation has nothing to do with writing or checking the content of Wikipedia. All that is done by unpaid volunteers," writes former Wikipedia Signpost co-editor Andreas Kolbe in a detailed analysis of the WMF finances.
Although the fundraising appeal states alarmingly that your cash is urgently required to "keep Wikipedia online", this is not the full picture. (As a WMF staff member admitted in 2014: "The urgency and alarm of the copy is not commensurate with my [admittedly limited] understanding of our financial situation".) Each year, the Foundation raises far more than it costs to operate the site, estimated at $3m a year. The clue comes in the full quote from the WMF, that cash is needed to "keep Wikipedia online and growing". The Foundation's own reports reveal what exactly it is that's growing.
That is one rich beggar.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday December 17 2016, @08:05PM
i find the "just a quick word" and "if everyone gave 50 cents right now" and all the other versions of the begging messages to pestering, annoying and harrassing.
Apparently many people are gullible. News at 9.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @09:55PM
Username checks out.
Meanwhile I'll take a straight-up beg over sneaky big-data tracking my ass and selling my info any day of the week.
For all its flaws, wikipedia is one of the best things about the net. Find something else deserving to shit on, there's a near endless supply to choose from.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 17 2016, @10:49PM
The thing is that they've been doing these drives for years, but they have more money than they need to cover the expenses. In 2015 they had an extra $25m after expenses. The drive itself is rather pointless as they've got a huge amount of money stashed for future use.
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=11212 [charitynavigator.org]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday December 18 2016, @01:58AM
It also burns good will. You can only hear "we're desperate" so many times before it becomes white noise, even without knowing about the surpluses.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @08:15PM
I used to consider donating them money, but I realized more money won't help them (less might though).
If they were trying to keep their operating costs down, I might contribute to their opensource software efforts (Improve their caching layers, or help them get off of PHP), but the don't seem to be spending a significant part of the money on things I care about.
If they were developing wiki serving software unikernels in C++ (include OS!), that would be cool, or if they were working on censor resistant collaborative editing, or distributed consensus I would support that.
If they were working with universities to help get people to know how to edit and improve Wikipedia I would support that.
However the plea for money is not associated with any intended use for the money, and they have far more money than their operating costs. Its a big claim about how they don't have ads right next to the PayPal and Amazon branded buttons to donate. Really, no ads?
I really value wikipedia and wikimedia, and that's why I'm not donating money to them. They don't need it and would be better off without it. If they convince me otherwise fine, but for now I see no reason to donate.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Saturday December 17 2016, @08:18PM
The reason I don't donate to them is that they have no shortage of money. They already have enough money to fund operations for years to come without any additional funding. So, what's the point of giving them more?
There are plenty of other worthy causes out there, even if you restrict it to similar ones, there's still a ton of other ones available.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday December 17 2016, @08:32PM
It's the same deal with the Mozilla Foundation. Sure, they spend a few million here and there on worthwhile development of Firefox and other projects, and help to prevent a browser monoculture even as their browsers have fallen out of favor. But a lot gets thrown at the wall or funds complete bureaucratic bullshit.
The difference is that Mozilla wastes hundreds of millions of search deal dollars rather than begging (AFAIK). Wikimedia misrepresents their need for cash to fleece the public. As we can see, they are partially transparent about this, and they've also demonstrated how little money it takes to run one of the world's most visited websites (to be fair, a lot of traffic is text, but they have images and videos as well).
Luckily for Mozilla, they have secured a tremendous amount of funding [arstechnica.com] from the dying husk that is Yahoo! If they invest and save some of that money, they could continue to exist perpetually, and they have a good chance of inking some search deals after 2019.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 17 2016, @08:37PM
To clarify, the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation are essentially interchangeable. All the money made by the Corporation gets funneled back into the Foundation, which controls 100% of the Corporation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @10:04PM
> They already have enough money to fund operations for years to come without any additional funding.
That's bullshit. Their operational costs are upwards of $65M/yr. [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, I know, you don't think its spent wisely. Easy to say for someone with no actual responsibilities.
Go ahead, keep your money, but don't pretend you are doing it out of any sort of principled objection. Its just the same old internet ignorance and nihilism. Wikipedia is one of the internet's greatest successes, bitching that its flawed is to forget that nothing of any significant value is even close to flawless.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 17 2016, @10:40PM
This is from a few years ago, but if they were lying about needing money then, why should I believe them now?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_chugging/ [theregister.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:06PM
"Lying" lol.
Ok, clearly you've made up your mind independent of unbiased analysis.
A bitch piece by the register is pretty hollow justification, but whatever you need to hang your hat on so you can feel sanctimonious.
Enjoy your facebook, snapchat, g+ and all the other data silos that sell your privacy without permission in exchange for you having a place to post scraps.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Sunday December 18 2016, @01:47AM
As the other AC pointed out, I'm dead on here. That's an obscene amount of money for a nonprofit to have on hand. There's just no excuse for them to be engaged in the heavy handed fundraising when they aren't having any budget or income problems.
Save it for a time when they have less than a year's worth of funding squirreled away.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:14PM
Just look at their financial statements: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report_-_FY15-16.pdf [wikimedia.org]
They have over $90 million in net assets and $81 million in revenue, with $77 million being donations. Their expenses are $66 million, with $11 million being "awards and grants" and $32 million being salaries and wages broken down as following.
Programs administrative Fund-raising Total
24,189,343 4,917,307 2,607,311 31,713,961
Worth noting, if you do the math, the average salary is around $150,000. I could get more specific, but the 990 is unavailable. The biggest growth, year-over-year, is in the salaries of employees however.
(Score: 1) by snmygos on Sunday December 18 2016, @01:20PM
$32 000 000 for salaries is a big amount for a site that is entirely maintained by benevolants. Some guys here must be very rich.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @09:48PM
I contribute, so I don't feel the need to give any money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @03:17AM
Get people to edit wikpedia? Ahahahaha
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @10:41PM
SoylentSpew raised $2,439 in sex months.
I pledge never to give, because fuck you, that's why!
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Saturday December 17 2016, @11:47PM
Wikipedia is done, the editors are being driven out be a small cabal of obsessive rulebook lawyers who have essentially taken over. Wikipedia had no defenses against SJW entryism because Jimmy is an SJW himself. Their tech is obsolete. Time to move future efforts over to the fork at Infogalactic: the Planetary Knowledge Core [infogalactic.com]. They are still a new and growing project so contributors should find a much more receptive hearing for pitching in and helping it surpass Wikipedia.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Sunday December 18 2016, @06:51AM
How is that one more resilient against entryism, astroturfers, and shills?
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday December 18 2016, @04:56PM
First off, game designers are designing it. if anyone understands what players can do to the best thought out rule systems....
Second they admit the problem up front. They also realize that simply changing the faction in control is no solution. Read their design documents, they have some good ideas cooking to deal with a problem Jimmy won't even admit exists.
Third they reject the premise behind the 'no original content' rule, where everything on Wikipedia is, in theory at least, sourced, footnoted and backed up by some legacy media source. But if the legacy media is part of the problem that doesn't work.
The bottom line rule for Infogalactic is facts must in fact be factual, opinion and analysis marked as such and the plan is to provide multiple perspectives on the same facts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:09PM
onion address can haz?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday December 18 2016, @11:34AM
Thanks for that link, I hadn't heard of infogalactic.
I would not donate to Wikipedia because they were pissing me off with their "deleted for not being notable" bullshit. Looking up obscure stuff is what an encyclopaedia is for, and it's not like they would save much money by deleting a bunch of text files.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 1) by Wong McGregor on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:46AM
... just another rationalization for censorship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @11:35PM
Check out conservapedia.com, no SJWs ever.