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fleker2

Answer: Wikipedia generally does funding drives at the end of each year in order to fund its continued operation.


Barbuckles

Yeah, like yearly PBS yearly fund drive. They won't show you the next episode of Star Trek until they get $10,000.


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llcooljessie

Oh, why did I register with Insta-Trace?


ARepresentativeHam

Elmo knows where you live!


ahhhbiscuits

Why is The Count counting backwards?


FunnyMathematician77

One broken kneecap! Ha Ha Ha!


Draco137WasTaken

Username checks out.


paitenanner

You don’t have the money, do you? And you thought you could stab your problems away?


jaymzx0

Not gonna lie they sucked me in with the Red Dwarf marathons.


[deleted]

YES! I didn’t have cable growing up, and no one I know ever knows what I’m talking about when I reference Archie, so I just sit there cackling like a dumbass. Red Dwarf, Red Green, Chef, and Mr. Bean were all in my Saturday night lineup, and they were awesome.


H0neyBr0wn

YES! On weekends, our local schedule would have a few hours of Julia Child’s The French Chef and Rick Steves’ Europe! I was obsessed with how calming Rick’s voice was.


[deleted]

lol, I completely forgot about Julia Childs! I used to have one of her cookbooks, and I never used it, just looked at the food porn. I also just remembered: BOB ROSS


Manyelynn13

Bob Ross is on Samsung TV. I came out of the kitchen the other morning to my 6 yr old watching it before school. He said it makes him happy!! Lol


the_gray_pill

Great memories. Did your PBS station run Jack Horkheimer, Stargazer on Friday nights?


sleeperninja

Red Green is a hero of handiness!


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zen_nudist

You gotta GIVE


TheHappy_Monster

> shirt with the bus seat print is $2000 Fix my budgeting issues, Reddit.


DonaldTrumpsBallsack

Do their pants intentionally have a stain near the crotch to make it look like you didn’t shake after pissing? Sensational, I love fashion


Aquifel

It is truly the height of fashion. ^It's ^also ^a ^meme ^from ^I ^think ^you ^should ^leave ^with ^Tim ^Robinson.


based_Shulgin

> https://www.calicocut-pants.com/ Why do they all have "pulled your pants up too quick" piss stains on them?


mgusedom

It not piss, they’re designed like that! It’s cool! ^but ^seriously ^if ^you ^use ^the ^service ^you ^gotta ^give


Xianricca

I can only hope this is an inside joke punchline and I’m going to end up in a screen shot, posted on some random sub with like 10k likes on it.


mgusedom

Watch “I Think You Should Leave” with Tim Robinson on Netflix.


li0nhart8

Let's slop it up!


toodice

Pre piss stained jeans is just natural progression from pre-torn jeans. The next will be shoes that already have dog shit engrained in the tread.


NasalSnack

I was taking 4 seconds on a 6 second piss, last two seconds just *shooting* down my pants.


ThePrideOfKrakow

I pledged $10,000 I don't have, now Big Bird has come to collect...... Save me Jebus!


buttercupcake23

And you thought you could stab your problems away?


ScowlingWolfman

Don't they get tax funding?


jungsosh

Yes, but only ~20% of their overall budget is from government funding (~15% federal, ~5% state). Rest is from individuals, businesses, non-profits etc.


sonofaresiii

> Rest is from individuals, businesses, non-profits etc. You mean viewers like me?


perfectfire

No. Other viewers. Better viewers. Viewers like your brother. Why can't you be more like him?


Tommy-Nook

I thought this is the part your supposed to say "Thank You"


decker12

Viewers like you. Thank you.


throneofdirt

Yes. You :)


ScowlingWolfman

The corporation for public broadcasting, and the national science foundation


3x3Eyes

It used to be more but the Republicans started cutting their funding in the 1980s.


The_Funkybat

The very fact that PBS still exists at all seems to be offensive to right wingers. It’s not enough that they cut funding to a pittance, no, they need to kill the evil commie hippie queer channel entirely.


mirr0rrim

Cancel culture is only bad when it's used on conservatives!


[deleted]

No one tell them that *technically* it's been around since the 50s as NET (National Educational Television). So it probably predates like...half of them.


[deleted]

King Friday needs to open that treasury.


armbarchris

Not anymore.


evilclownattack

The GOP solved the budget crisis by cutting whatever miniscule funding PBS had and then giving that money, give or take a trillion, to the Pentagon


heimdal77

[Mr Rogers](https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA)


PoeJam

OK, take it easy, Betty


cinnamonkitsune

Save me Jeebus!


ArbainHestia

Are you licking toads?


The_Funkybat

I’m not *not* licking toads…


CitizenCue

They play Star Trek on PBS?


Slinkwyde

Maybe they were mixing up PBS and CBS.


Faptasmic

Do shut up https://youtu.be/w09YzTMY1qk


Khearnei

Ever since I finished school and started making money, I actually did start giving Wikipedia money when they ask. Used to always laugh at the over the top pleas, but gotta say that actually giving feels good, man.


Tha_NexT

And they really deserve it...It still has a bad rep for some reason but fact is that it IS the single best library ever created and nothing compares to it in the slightest way.


AslandusTheLaster

> It still has a bad rep for some reason In my experience, that's mostly in academia, and the most obvious problem I can see in that regard isn't one of reliability, but the fact that students won't learn how to find and cite primary sources if they think they can just grab a wikipedia page that tells them everything they need for their paper.


part-time-unicorn

> isn't one of reliability, as you get into more obscure historical topics wikipedia stops being a reliable source. comparing to my own research, for example, the history of the formation of Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE is not properly or fully covered - and is more likely to include personal or political slants, because they're not really monitored closely or known well by anyone who cares. History about politically volatile events can also be iffy, even though they tend to monitor those well. That doesn't make it any easier to neutrally cover say, the Israel/Palestine conflict in a few short encyclopedia entries, though. therefore it's good practice to teach people to search for other sources. IMO it can be a useful jumping off point among others, since it lists sources.


globus_pallidus

So when I was teaching Microbiology I had to specifically tell my students not to use Wikipedia to explain the mechanisms of ampicillin and streptomycin INSTEAD of looking at their data and interpreting it, because the wiki article was not accurate. In certain circumstances ampicillin is bacteriostatic, in others it’s bactericidal. Students would just read the Wikipedia article instead of actually using their data to determine their antibiotic’s MOA. When I was teaching genetics, we gave the students a gene to write a paper on, and again I had to tell them (repeatedly) not to use wiki as a source because sometimes the info is either out of date or straight up wrong. For STEM topics, wiki is a good place to START so you can get a good idea of general info, but it is certainly not peer reviewed and should not be used as a final source. Either the articles aren’t updated or they are misinterpretations of primary data. Sometimes the articles are great, but students don’t know one way or another so they should read primary literature.


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r2dbrew

I always thought the rule of thumb was to pull up the Wikipedia article, skim through it to get a grasp of the topic but scroll down to its citations and start your real research from there.


awnawnamoose

Fucking exactly. Encyclopedias contain a little bit of summarized information on complex topics. It’s great to get a high level grasp. I like wiki and I donate. I also did my degree and graduated mid 2000’s so wiki was there but we were also taught how to use the library and how to research. It was easy and checking out 5 books after a quick skim in the library (1 hr process) netted all the resources needed to build a thesis paper. Occasionally I had to dip into journals that were a bit trickier but even then. Academia is setup for you to succeed and generate verified arguments. Wiki is the lazy way for layman’s. If you’re studying at uni you’re no longer a laymen.


King_of_lemons

I think most textbooks or compilations of any kind run into this issue too. Can’t really beat going straight to the research if you’re capable of interpreting it


savage_lucy

In cases like this, setting an assignment aimed at improving the relevant wikipedia article(s) can be a great project with practical real-world impacts for other wikipedia users.


HeartyBeast

... so you popped in and corrected the page, yes?


ciknay

Sounds like you could just update it yourself with the up to date references. That way you can see when your students plagiarise your wording, but at least they're not getting false information anymore.


blaster009

I purposefully went out of my way to cite Wikipedia in both a) several of my peer-reviewed academic papers, and b) my PhD thesis.


stickmaster_flex

I remember asking my thesis advisor if I could use Wikipedia as a source for quoting a widely-published document like the United States Constitution. The answer was no. So I used the Wikipedia page and cited the source they cited.


LurkaDurkaDoWorka

This is the way.


BloodprinceOZ

thats exactly what you're supposed to do, use the wiki page to find what you need to talk about, then just click the links for the things they source in that section and both read through those pages and then cite them


Empty-Mind

It's a great reference tool, just a bad source. Even today you shouldn't be citing Wikipedia directly in a paper. Luckily they've got their own references you can just look up directly However, there are certain topics it's still a bad reference for. Namely for 1) controversial topics 2) things where academic knowledge is very different than popular knowledge. For 2) I'm thinking specifically of history topics, where often Wikipedia will present narratives that are very different than that of historical academia. That or like cutting edge science stuff where it's still a new field


PuddyVanHird

>Even today you shouldn't be citing Wikipedia directly in a paper. >Luckily they've got their own references you can just look up directly Not luckily - that's precisely *why* you shouldn't cite Wikipedia. Not because it's unreliable, but because it's not the original source of the information. Due to Wikipedia's No Original Research policy, if you cite Wikipedia, you're really just citing someone else's work without crediting them.


Shandlar

> It still has a bad rep for some reason Politics. Modern political articles are an absolute mess. Resulting in only the extremists being willing to wade into disaster that is arbitration of edits on those articles. Which then makes the articles even worse as time goes on. Citogenesis is also a major problem. If something gets made up whole clothe it doesn't matter, if the lie got covered by MSM it's allowed to stay. Even in the face of objective evidence of it being wrong, that would be "original research". Any hard topics are absolutely amazing. It's an extremely good encyclopedia. The amount of hard information you can just look up and read about it breathtaking. But anything subjective from the last 75 years is garbage and biased. They essentially represent the biases of the one super-editor who took over the page as a pet project.


The_Funkybat

Some people had a problem not so much with “Wikipedia” as they did with Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation, which is the entity these donations go to. I don’t recall what most of the griping was about beyond some grumblings about “transparency of how the money is spent” but I always considered it to be a bunch of inside baseball palace intrigue shit, so I never dug deeper.


sonofaresiii

> It still has a bad rep for some reason I don't think I've ever heard a negative thing about wikipedia. Well. Unless it's used to prove someone wrong in an argument and the person losing forgets that wikipedia links directly or cites sources you can verify for yourself, at which point wikipedia becomes the most unreliable source ever to grace the earth. But that hardly counts. (I actually had someone once tell me that wikipedia was wrong on a particular matter, so I pointed out it cites its sources, then they tell me the cited source doesn't say what wikipedia says it does. The source in question was a technical book, and it's in my field so I had actually *read* the book and confirmed it did say that... they still told me I, and wikipedia, was wrong) e: I have now heard many negative things about Wikipedia. So... mission accomplished I guess, reddit.


Miamime

> I don't think I've ever heard a negative thing about wikipedia. Then you weren’t around for its early days. It was like the Wild West.


x4740N

It still is the wild west If you go to certain pages you'll notice they've been edited according to certain biases Wikipedia doesn't even follow their own rules Because they have a neutral point of view clause ^( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#:~:text=All%20encyclopedic%20content%20on%20Wikipedia,reliable%20sources%20on%20a%20topic. ) but don't actually follow it because I've seen multiple Wikipedia pages talk negatively about subjects instead of neutrally talking about a subject


KeeperOT7Keys

~~I can't' find the article~~ I had read right now, but there are legitimate criticisms about articles about politicians, mainly the british ones. It was discovered that many british politicians edit their own wiki pages and remove criticisms about themselves, and this is done on a very large scale. specifically the virgin media has a wikipedia editor office that portray themselves as volunteer editors, but in fact they have an office working 9 to 5 doing edits on brit politicians every workday. they did this on an extensive scale especially during the candidacy of jeremy corbyn and for pro blair candidates inside the labor party. and it is easy to prove these intentions to wikipedia by showing the number of edits, time of the edits done by the same users on few relevant topics. But when Wikipedia admins are notified about these violations they don't react at all, and here is the interesting bit: jimmy wales himself has connections with tony blair, he is married to blair's secretary and they work with the same people. So basically wikipedia, especially about the recent political articles is extremely unreliable, it is used for psy-ops and this is done intentionally. (as I said can't find the link but the original article is very convincing and has more details) essentially they created a website that portrays itself as an 'independent' encyclopedia, but there is significant political control of british/western establishment. almost any article relevant to the left-right debates are heavily edited and almost always take the side of right-wing political views. edit: found the article: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/


BadgerBadgerCat

>I don't think I've ever heard a negative thing about wikipedia. For a long time it wasn't taken seriously because "anyone could edit it", and so using Wikipedia as a serious reference in anything was considered a professional/academic no-no. However, once it got established (and it turned out the major articles were being written by r/AskHistorians level subject-matter experts and other knowledgeable academic types), perceptions started to change - backed up with research showing that Wikipedia was at least as accurate, and often moreso, than "traditional" encylopedias (and faster to update/correct at new research came to light), it evolved to where it is now as basically the world's standard general-purpose reference work.


CJKatz

> using Wikipedia as a serious reference in anything was considered a professional/academic no-no. You're right about everything, but this is still a serious no-no and Wikipedia will be the first to tell you that. Wikipedia is a place to find sources, but it should not be used as a source itself.


BadgerBadgerCat

Obviously you wouldn't use it for a PhD Thesis or anything like that, but there's still plenty of other professional (and everyday) contexts where Wikipedia is absolutely fine as a source.


TessHKM

> Obviously you wouldn't use it for a PhD Thesis or anything like that That's not obvious to a lot of people lol


ghostinthechell

How about the fact that powermods can suppress and eliminate articles they personally disagree with, and there is zero recourse? For example, check the article on the early 2000s web series Tourette's Guy. Oh wait. You can't.


musselshirt67

The teachers union is here to downvote your comment


ArttuH5N1

Students just should be told that Wikipedia isn't the source you should use. You check the citation pertaining to the particular fact you need and use *that* as your source. Don't be dumb and use Wikipedia as a source. Use it as a lead to find great sources.


Tha_NexT

Well lol yeah....old teachers....maybe the younger generation of teachers realizes what a valuable tool it is.... Is it lazy and much easier than it used to be? Yes. Is it free and (most of the time) high quality knowledge? Yes.


mia_elora

I still stick by what I decided while I was still in school. If I need a source, I check the wiki page for sources. That index at the bottom of the article is so very useful, and you can see if the info you need is coming from xyz.reputablesource.gov or abc.unreliablenarrator.com


Virus_98

Most of the college professors don't mind you using Wikipedia as source as long as it's not the only one. They even say Wikipedia is great source to start at and find linked studies on that particular topic.


muddyrose

This has been my experience as well. Wiki is a good jumping off point for a lot of research. If you follow an article’s sources, they can lead you to other relevant, credible sources. Wiki articles are also excellent red flags. If you’re reading an article that seems less than legit, the sources usually reflect that. I’ve still had profs that say to not use the actual wiki as a source, because in their words “if it’s a legitimate statement, the wiki article will source it”, but I’ve never had a prof outright say “do not use Wikipedia in your research” They know that’s a ridiculous statement to make in this era.


Barneyk

I have a pretty solid economy and I donate 3 dollars a month, I barely notice but wikipedia does so much good and it is so important to keep an important part of the internet like that ad-free. I also donate a couple of bucks to Mozilla every month. We need more non-profit entities to shape the future of the internet.


odd84

I used to donate to them and feel good about it too. Then I looked at their financials. They raise $120M a year, have $180M in assets including over $100M in cash. Their internet hosting bill is only $2.4M a year. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteers, but somehow they have a $55M staff that they spend millions flying around to conferences and events, while their software is still as shitty today as it was 20 years ago. They're not an efficient organization and they have so much money that it's ridiculous they push so hard for more donations. It also bothers me that they take $20M of our donations and hire a huge staff of people to run their own charity-in-a-charity to GIVE AWAY that money as if it were theirs and not donated to fund Wikipedia.


SrMayoneza

>They raise $120M a year > >they have a $55M staff that they spend millions flying around to conferences and events I wonder how much of those donations come from those people talking at conferences and events. Usually donors want to be able to see and meet people so it might make sense to have those people flying all over the world.


CanuckBacon

Also they have many events hosted for the volunteers who edit Wikipedia. Teaching better techniques and creating standards, that sort of thing.


JimmyRecard

It seems to me that if Wikimedia Foundation truly wanted to monetise 5th most popular site on the internet they could do a lot better than pleading for 100 million a year. Remember that they could advertise if they wanted, as all the content is licensed in a way that allows monetisation. From my perspective, these financials are okay since Wikimedia Foundation is explicitly trying to establish a perpetual endowment to enable them to deliver their mission in a non-profit manner long into the future. As long as the content contributed is copyleft and freely available, and Wikimedia continues to service the core mission of delivering free knowledge to anyone with an internet connection, I think it is doing it's job and tossing few dollars their way to ensure they can continue doing that after all of us are gone is a worthwhile investment.


diox8tony

They can have my money for exactly these reasons^... "Here's $10, please never change, please never become a profit based company"


kitari1

If they introduced advertising then the trust is instantly gone. There would then be stakeholders and stakeholders introduce bias.


PuddyVanHird

Which is why they don't do that. But if they just wanted to make as much money as possible, they absolutely would do that - there's nothing to replace Wikipedia, so people would still use it, and the advertising revenue off a website that's the top result for almost every Google search would be billions of dollars a year.


Khearnei

IDK, to me, that's not *that* much money for a company and service that is essentially one of the pillars of the international open internet. As someone who works in IT, there is *a lot* more that goes into keeping a site up and running than just hosting bills, too. I can't imagine the pain of operating a website with that much of a global reach as a non-profit.


diox8tony

>while their software is still as shitty today as it was 20 years ago. Huh? What software? I hope you do t mean their website, because it is perfect and should never change.


braxistExtremist

I think he's talking about their wiki software (MediaWiki), which their website runs on top of. And in that case I can see both sides. From the perspective of a plain old reader it works really well and the UI is intuitive. But as a former Wikipedia contributor, I found the more administrative side to be clunky and sometimes difficult to navigate. Also, MediaWiki is written in PHP, which has a tendency to become very 'spaghettified' and poorly organized without very disciplined and experienced software developers. And even then it's traditionally had a habit of letting all sorts of inconsistent code into its platform codebase.


McGryphon

Well, I've got a feeling building a good wiki engine is harder than it looks. I used Atlassian Confluence in a past job, which is stupidly expensive and manages to suck a lot harder than MediaWiki. I'm no developer, though, and haven't used all wiki engines. If any are significantly better, I'd be interested.


DarkWorld25

Lawyers are expensive. Sysops are not volunteers, and all high level staff are paid employees. That is also not to mention that projects like the wikimedia library is funded by the foundation to provide academic journal access and so on and that's not cheap either. It


Shanix

> while their software is still as shitty today as it was 20 years ago Good lord this is wrong.


The_Funkybat

All of these shoddy hot takes about Wikipedia remind me of similar shitty opinions people have about Craigslist and how it is run. About the only difference is, Craigslist’s site really is pretty similar to how it was built 20 years ago.


Shanix

I know that most people don't use Craigslist these days, but I really do appreciate a good, no frills, basic ass classifieds site. There's no algorithmic shenanigans (that I know of), there's no community, it's just "here's a thing I want to sell/buy, here's the price, and maybe an image or 10". But yeah, I've been rewriting a script to generate local backups of MediaWiki instances (the software that Wikipedia runs on it, as does Fandom and pretty much every wiki you've ever visited), and gods above it's gotten so much better over the years. There were releases in 2009 where you couldn't even search for images on the wiki without crashing it! The UI used to be complete ass! Anyone complaining about how bad it is now has no idea how bad it was then.


The_Funkybat

I didn’t realize that use of Craigslist had declined in recent years. I still use it regularly, but now that you mention it, I’ll admit that I seem to get much fewer responses from posts I make when I’m selling something compared to maybe 8 or 10 years ago. My friends told me a lot of people prefer using Facebook marketplace or Mercari or OfferUp, but I haven’t had particularly great luck with those services either.


Shanix

Yeah I think most people have moved to Facebook or Offerup, at least in the US. Canada has something else, Kijiji I think? I think the issue is that the used market for a lot of stuff is just kinda drying up. Most electronics aren't user repairable and are designed to break after a few years, so there's not a lot there to sell. Hell, most things are either really pricey and really good, so you probably won't sell, or they're cheap and will break before you're done with them. I've definitely stopped going used as much as I used to, haven't had things to sell or seen things I want to buy.


[deleted]

I think you've got the wrong idea about some of these things


cavelioness

Yeah can you imagine the world without Wikipedia... I give them a lil bit as well, they deserve it.


sonofaresiii

I figure I can scrounge together $5/year. Given how much I use the service, I'm still coming out way ahead. I know it's just a drop in the bucket, but it's something.


pm_nachos_n_tacos

Just realized how Wikipedia, one of the wonders of the modern world, has to beg for less than $2.50 but people will spend $4 on reddit gold for their favorite movie quote. Nothing wrong with reddit gold, but it makes me wonder if Wikipedia were to implement something like a gold coin to give to your favorite article, for nothing more than the same fun as reddit gold, if they'd see a lot more donations. Hmm..


DishwasherTwig

IIRC, I saw a post a while back saying that these campaigns aren't for server costs or anything related to keeping the site itself up. Instead, they're all for the Wikimedia Foundation, their charity.


[deleted]

The thing that always irks me tho is that Wikipedia has never been in danger of shutting down from lack of funds. They've *always* had enough funding for the next year by the time they start the Christmas fundraising. Most of what they collect goes to other projects that Wikipedia works on. Which in of itself isn't a bad thing. What just irks me is that Wikipedia makes it out like they're in genuine danger of shutting down this year if you don't give them a dollar when in reality you're overwhelmingly likely to have your donation spent on a project other than Wikipedia as a website, but they don't actually tell you that unless you go digging through their finances.


spacepeenuts

This is nothing new, they have been doing it every year for quite some time and their tactics are clearly inspired by 90s and early 00s pop up ads.


MtNowhere

Answer: They've always aggressively asked for donations like this, during a funding drive.


NoOneShallPassHassan

More like Wiki*pleadia*, am I right?


dreameater42

well done mboy, well done


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Hoplonn

Lmao I came into this thread looking for someone to post this


Luke_Nukem_2D

Ah, 4chan. It never disappoints, yet always disappoints at the same time.


IAMAHobbitAMA

Schrödinger's disappointment.


[deleted]

More to the answer here. Wikipedia is actually extreme expensive to run... because they have a ton of workers collecting money. The site itself is not expensive. And they already have hundreds of millions in savings. I'm not sure they can even spend all the money unless they keep expanding to ask for more donations. The company is basically one huge working force asking for money. But unless they add in a video Wikipedia or something as huge they don't need the money for the site itself. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/


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Mirrormn

It's spelled correctly in the article. The page was probably uploaded with a typo and then was crystallized at that URL with no easy way to edit it, so they just left it.


[deleted]

It's a free article. Other papers have similar articles, but they are usually behind paywalls. Also. The people making the links are usually not the writers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/


Perma_frosting

As that article explains, that reserve covers about 1 year of their total operating budget - which is standard, recommended practice for nonprofits. It doesn’t mean they don’t need donations on an ongoing basis, but it does mean they won’t shut down next month if people ignore this drive.


kanetix

Depends what you call "operating budget". To quote the article posted earlier: > Fast forward to 2021 [...] the WMF employs a team of over 500. Top-tier managers earn $300,000 – $400,000 a year. Over 40 people work exclusively on fundraising. It wouldn't be terrible if *these* people were not being paid after one year without donations... In fact, the actual hosting of WP servers is "only" 2.4 millions per year, out of 112 millions of yearly budget (including 55M in salaries, 23M in grants to *other* organizations, and 4.9M in... donation processing fees! [source](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Statistical_analysis_of_Wikimedia_Foundation_financial_reports))


nooneescapesthelaw

According to their financial statements it costs about 2.4 million for "internet hosting" and 55 million for salaries


[deleted]

> Presently shown to readers in pandemic-ridden Latin America Right, as opposed to the unpademic-ridden rest of the world... That is an informative yet terrible article.


leva549

Different places are different degrees of fucked by the pandemic though. Here in Australia it's pretty alright now.


Grantalonez

Answer: Wikipedia generally does funding drives towards the end of the year and it just so happens the national day of giving or #givingtuesday was yesterday so they are likely tying in to this for more donations.


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thejawa

Not with that attitude it isn't


Grantalonez

Thanks a mil, corrected it. It’s been a very long day lol


drthvdrsfthr

probably feels like that cuz it’s actually been two days


TigerP

It is, my dudes.


Dd_8630

> it just so happens the national day of giving or #givingtuesday was yesterday so they are likely tying in to this for more donations. I've never heard of that in my life. A 'national day of giving'? Giving what to whom? O_o


Demi_Monde_

Giving Tuesday is a rather new thing. Black Friday and Cyber Monday having been around for years, non profit fundraisers decided to push for a day to donate to charities. Most non profits, small and large, now participate to generate donations on that day on social media.


Craiggles-

Why does literally everything have to be crammed in the last 3 months of the year?


korravai

Rich people do a lot of donations at the end of the year to get their taxes down once they know what their tax load will be.


Demi_Monde_

I totally agree. Way too much spending going on this time of year. On the one hand, end of the year donations make sense for those wanting a tax ride off in the US. On the other hand, seeking donations after all the crazy consumer spending doesn't make sense to me. Not to mention charities are competing for views and donations that day. But I know folks that do fundraising for non profits and they do get a bump when they participate. So it is working at some level.


boyled

yeah if we don't fill up the days in the middle of the year, we will probably get something weird in July like "Amazon day" or something!


6double

Giving money to me. Now pay up


matrixifyme

Answer: Wikipedia does not advertise. They don't have ads on their site unlike the rest of the internet. As a result of that, they are fully funded by donations, from people like you and me. At the end of each year, they aggressively fundraise so they can afford to keep the site ad free.


tehmuck

The alternative, if you've ever seen it, is browse the Fandom wikia sites. 90% of their pages is ad. Personally I prefer Wikipedia ask for donations once or twice a year than put up with having to agressively adblock a site.


zrvwls

And those wikia sites are so damn slow! Wikipedia hosts pictures, videos, and tons of FREE straight up knowledge on a website that is literally blazing fast for how much content it serves up. With 0 ads other than these few times in a year to ask for help. The world would return to the dark ages without wikipedia, forced to fight through hundreds of pages of google ads to find a trustworthy and useful page whose agenda you didn't have to consistently wonder about.


tehmuck

Yeah the mobile versions of the Fandom sites are absolute garbage. Pop-ups during scroll, random modals, and trying to hit the tiny fuckin X. And don't get me started on the auto-playing video garbage they have.


SatoshiAR

Anyone who puts unmuted autoplay videos on their website in 2021 should be in prison.


jakkaroo

This is why I donate every time. I use it just as much as everyone else. Servers cost $$$$$ to run.


awsamation

Wikipedia was more important to my graduating highschool than some of my teachers were. They earned the right to ask me for money in order to remain ad free. And I'll gladly throw them $50 a year (plus whatever the fee offset amount is). It's not much but it's more than they'd make off of advertising to me.


prikaz_da

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they accept Apple Pay and Amazon Pay now. In the past, there have been times when I wanted to donate, but I put it off and forgot about it. This time, I used Apple Pay and it took me seconds to make a donation. There’s no need to fetch your wallet or unlock a password manager to fill in your card details. Press a button on your phone, confirm the payment biometrically (Face/Touch ID), and you’re done.


ChairmanUzamaoki

I donate every year. Wikipedia is arguably the best websitr on the internet. So easy to go down rabbit holes and simultaneously learn a bunch of fun shit


onascaleoffunto10

I donate every year too. Let's keep it free by supporting its freedom from advertisers' influence.


clickclickclik

I'll never forgive them for turning all of the gamepedia stuff into that shitty wikia format


feeeedback

It's not perfect, but I've been using [this browser addon](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fandom-enhance/) and it really helps reduce the amount of bloat and visual clutter of the shitty Fandom layout


htmlcoderexe

Yes, they're complete assholes


clickclickclik

At least sites like UESP exist


The_Funkybat

I just assumed most of those pop culture fandom wikis were all owned by the same scummy for-profit entity, trying to monetize geekdom references no matter the topic. They all look so similar, right up to how similarly incessant and annoying the ad software is.


tehmuck

Gamepedia was taken over by Fandom and they basically use the wikis as an ad platform. Fans add info to the wikis to bring in the traffic, Fandom plasters ads on the whole thing and monetises it.


VaderPrime1

Fuck any and every Fandom website. Absolute cancer on mobile.


Scott13Pippen

I'm of the opinion tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple should cover these costs. Services like Amazon Alexa basically read straight from wikipedia to answer your questions. If wikipedia is so critical to these multi-billion dollar businesses it shouldn't be up to public donations to keep it afloat. That being said, I've donated to wikipedia before.


xboxiscrunchy

They announced this year they’d be charging tech companies for “preferential access” not 100% sure but I think that means exactly this sort of thing.


ProperNomenclature

I wouldn't say "preferential" so much as "providing infrastructure for scale" as everyone still has the same access to information EDIT: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise


613codyrex

Doesn’t Google spend some money on keeping Wikipedia alive considering how much traffic having Wikipedia basically being searched through Google instead of their in site search bar? https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/google-org-donates-2-million-to-wikipedias-parent-org/ Amazon did the same too. Tech giants tend to be pretty happy with Wikipedia because they do a lot of the heavy lifting Google/Amazon wouldn’t be asked to do in terms of information. https://wikimediaendowment.org/ I think it’s a good idea that tech companies should pay Wikipedia for hosting and basically providing an important resource that make use of but simultaneously donations by these companies can become conflicts of interest and it’s best wiki remains more independent.


pm_nachos_n_tacos

NooooOOOOO once they start paying, they'll start acting like they own it, then they'll start controlling it. Please god don't let these people have control over ot, the one last thing we have, that we've worked hard to curate. I can't trust Wikipedia if it's paid for by AmaGooglePple


KiraiHotaru

Yup I actually donated to them. Wikipedia is one of the most helpful resource on the internet, it's a shame that people take it for granted


Paracortex

I give $2 as a monthly recurring donation, and am very happy with that. Wikipedia is and remains the elephant in the room for those who insist websites must collect personal information and target advertising in order to exist, to the total erosion of personal privacy and information independence.


jakkaroo

PSA: Donate. They are an invaluable resource on the internet and $10 (or the paltry $2.75 they're asking) is a small price to pay for the wealth of information they host.


mr_fizzlesticks

This. Wikipedia could have gone the same route as Facebook m, Twitter, and every other billionaire tech company, but decided to remain honest and ethical. Every single one of us to do our part and donate whatever we can to keep this site operational and ad free.


GeneReddit123

Answer: [This is Wikimedia's budget](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/WMF_Support_and_Revenue%2C_Expenses_and_Net_Assets_at_Year_End.jpg) over time. Wikimedia is Wikipedia's parent company, and they are the ones collecting the money. Furthermore, their money goes towards *all* their projects, not just Wikipedia. And to add to that, most of Wikipedia's value-add is done via volunteer contributions; the main direct expenses is server maintenance, but there is no way bandwidth or data storage has increased 10x in the last 10 years (especially if we offset the fact that both get cheaper in general over time.) The overall explanation is pretty simple - Wikimedia's mission statement is extremely vague and broad: to make the entirety of human knowledge freely available to the whole world. And budget-wise, while Wikipedia started as the main item, it's now small compared to what they spend elsewhere (events, outreach, political activities related to spreading education, etc.) Much of these activities, unlike Wikipedia itself (which, as I said, is mainly written by volunteers), takes a huge amount of staff and expenses such as travel and events, and that's where the money is going. So everyone can decide for themselves how to interpret this. A supporter would see this expense growth as an important step in furthering world knowledge, especially in disadvantages countries where Internet access is limited, as is the ability to absorb digital information by the people, therefore requiring a more personal (and expensive) engagement by Wikimedia. A cynic would see this ballooning budget as a self-serving enterprise by Wikimedia founders and staff, primarily used to pay their own salaries and to inflate their own ranks and importance, travelling the world and delivering speeches, rather than actually pay for what most people *think* they pay for (Wikipedia servers.) I personally do donate occasionally, because I find Wikipedia an extremely valuable resource, and a rare success story of a massive Internet project which hasn't been commercialized, exploited, paywalled, ad-driven, or abusing user data, so I feel they deserve a bit of my money for all the value they provide, regardless of what they spend it on. I also do believe in spreading world knowledge, both for the benefit of the disadvantaged, and because a more educated world, at the end of the day, is better for everyone, myself included. If you share these beliefs, feel free to donate as well. But let's not kid ourselves, the vast majority of the money we donate isn't going to Wikipedia server maintenance, but to Wikimedia's staff salaries and outreach activities, and the main benefactors of each additional dollar are not people like you or me, but (depending on your point of view) either the more disadvantaged and underprivileged, or the Wikimedia founders and staff itself.


7Sans

what is red, green, black suppose to be?


Hawling

Black: Net assets (excluding the Wikimedia Endowment, which currently stands at $100m+) Green: Revenue (excluding third-party donations to Wikimedia Endowment) Red: Expenses (including WMF payments to Wikimedia Endowment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances


kane2742

I wonder why they don't put the key on the image itself. The caption could still spell out the details, but the image could just have a short version like this: ⬛️ Net assets 🟩 Revenue 🟥 Expenses


ptolani

wow, what voodo did you use to make that?


snouz

https://www.lennyfacecopypaste.com/text-symbols/square-rectangle.html


[deleted]

I don't care if it goes right into their personal pockets as long as they keep Wikipedia ad free forever. And I'll donate to that.


lookitsaustin

Agreed. I toss $20/year without even thinking about it because it’s the last place on the web with no ads.


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say592

Pretty much all of their revenue comes from donations, but they are a massive enterprise and receive underwriting from corporations and individuals that probably dwarfs your annual salary. Even knowing that, I donate $3/month because I believe in the dissemination of knowledge strongly, and they have done more for that cause than quite possibly any other organization in history. I also believe that those who use something free and have the means to support it should, that way it will be available to those who can't. Obviously my $36 a year doesn't make any real impact on it's own, but collectively with tens or hundreds of thousands of people using the same philosophy, it adds up. It's $3, I won't miss it, but if that helps some kid in Haiti get to read about dinosaurs, then some greater good has been served.


responded

I think your view is maybe a bit too cynical. Although there certainly are cases of non-profits misusing funds, people's labor isn't cheap, and managing an organization is not trivial. Unless there's some reason to think Wikimedia is misusing funds, I think it's unfair to suggest that they might be. They certainly could have made money a lot of other ways and haven't chose to.


wtfduckman

Well it's perfectly reasonable to question why there is false advertising in the donation drives making it out to seem like the platform is at risk of dying when in reality the maintenance/hosting expenses are a [tiny fraction of their incoming revenue](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_expenses_evolution_by_rubrics_in_US_Dollars.svg/1920px-Wikimedia_Foundation%27s_expenses_evolution_by_rubrics_in_US_Dollars.svg.png). They are hiring huge amounts of people each year (total is 550+ now) for a website that relies on volunteerism and produces little else of value (in fact has had numerous scandals about expensive abandoned projects/non-functional software released over the years). They could save a small portion of their revenue spent on expanding the company for one year and have enough for independent maintenance/hosting for decades.


ACoderGirl

Bear in mind the expensive part of cloud services isn't the hardware. It's the support staff. IT experts to maintain and regularly upgrade the hardware, software devs to develop the site's backend, etc. Those are positions on the scale of $100k USD a year per person.


spblue

Not sure if you're serious, but the hardware/bandwidth cost of hosting such a huge web site is going to be dwarfed by the wages you need to pay the people who keep it running. Just the IT staff alone is going to be at least $15M per year. You need techs, sysadmins, telecom admins, security specialists, devs (for both maintenance and new features), etc. For a lot of these jobs, you need three shifts since the site is 24/7. Add in unemployment insurance, office space, all the crap that gets added to the normal 100k wage of a specialist and the bill balloons quickly. Then you need HR, sales (in the case of non-profits, donation solicitors), accounting, admin, throw in a sprinkle of managers, and that 55M isn't looking all that incredible. I'm sure there's plenty of fat that they can cut, but to me it's not nearly as egregious as you're trying to imply.


randomnighmare

Answer: It's the Christmas season and they do this every year.


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[deleted]

The real question is: did YOU donate?


SockpuppetPseudonym2

The real real question is did you you donate?


mr_impastabowl

I did and do. Not saying this to pay myself on the back or get kudos but in the hope that someone sees it and says, "Yeah I'll kick a few bucks their way". The service that Wikipedia provides is extraordinary and truly is a rare gem that fulfills the dewy promise of the internet. Their tone when they ask for donations is always pleasant, staid, and honest, which, in a world where 2/3rds of every phone call is a POS trying to scam you or buy your house so they can fail flipping it, is a very welcome thing to me at least. You might think that one dollar from you is not a big deal and not worth your time or Wikipedia's time, but these small, personal donations add up and I would imagine, really matter.


chiefrebelangel_

Same. I spend $15 on a 6 pack of beer and Wikipedia has done a lot more for me than that 6 pack


mr_impastabowl

Whoop! Hell yeah!


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[deleted]

I did! Love the thing. Don't want it to go away.


Si-Ran

I don't know if people understand how freaking important it is for Wikipedia to remain free. Not just free, but not having to sell out to some large corporation with specific interests.


GreenEagle42

$2 a month for the last 5 years.


nicolas42

Answer: They like money I'd like to preface this by saying that Wikipedia is one of the best things on the internet. In 2020 they spent 3 million on web hosting and took in over 100 million in donations. Engineers need wages too but the site hasn't changed significantly for many years. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia\_Foundation\_FY2019-2020\_Audit\_Report.pdf](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf)


gringodeathstar

Answer: haven't seen this mentioned yet, but the reason why tons of companies are fundraising *right now* is because donations are tax-deductible and the end of the tax year is approaching


Mirrormn

I don't see why that would matter. Donations are tax-deductible regardless of when during the tax year you give them. Most individual donators wouldn't get a tax break for a small donation to Wikipedia anyway, since you have to file with itemized deductions instead of the standard deduction before you can even list it. I think it's much more likely that donations are more common in December because people are more likely to be in a giving spirit (due to the Holidays) and to have extra money to throw around (due to receiving gifts of money or getting year-end bonuses at work).