4 Dec, 2014
On a routine visit to Wikipedia today I was greeted with a
huge fundraising
banner that covered half of the page. Really, click the link to see
how huge that thing was.
DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS: This week we ask our readers to help
us. To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads. We survive on donations
averaging about $15. Now is the time we ask. If everyone reading this right now
gave $3, our fundraiser would be done within an hour. Yep, that’s about the
price of buying a programmer a coffee. We’re a small non-profit with costs of a
top website: servers, staff and programs. Wikipedia is something special. It is
like a library or a public park where we can all go to think and learn. If
Wikipedia is useful to you, take one minute to keep it online and ad-free
another year. Thank you.
Let’s go through this line by line:
DEAR WIKIPEDIA READERS: This week we ask our readers to help
us. To protect our independence, we’ll never run ads.
What is the point of a site saying they don’t want to show
ads, then covering up 50% of the screen with a request for money? No serious
for-profit site would consider giving up 50% of the page to an ad. It’s
insane. At least this year’s fundraising banners don’t have Jimmy Wales
staring out at the reader like Big Brother. Now, I respect Wikipedia’s non-ad
stance. They can’t very well make money on a site that was created through the
free labor of its contributors, but for God’s sake show some decorum.
We survive on donations averaging about $15. Now is the time
we ask. If everyone reading this right now gave $3, our fundraiser would be
done within an hour.
Money is not an issue of survival for Wikipedia. According
to its latest
annual report, The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the charity that controls Wikipedia,
has $51 million in cash reserves ($28 million) and investments ($23 million).
No-one can seriously claim that an organization that has $51 million in the
bank is in “survival” mode.
Yep, that’s about the price of buying a programmer a coffee.
Note the focus on programmers. But programmers don’t make
Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s core software is essentially unchanged since 2001 when
the project started. Since then Wikipedia’s programming efforts have been a
disaster. The Visual Editor (a tool that would allow WYSYWIG editing) was a failure.
Editors still edit using tags and arcane code to create their edits. The
recently introduced Media Viewer is universally hated. The people who really
make Wikipedia are the unpaid volunteers, but hey get nothing from donations.
Nothing, while programmers who don’t have a clue get paid. Is that really where
your money should go?
We’re a small non-profit
This is a flat-out lie. The WMF is not a small non-profit.
It raised $46 million in donations last year and has 215
staff, over 130 of whom work in the Engineering and Product
Development department. Yet all of the money spent on programmer
salaries has produced no measurable change to the site’s quality.
These programmers take up a huge amount of the foundation’s $20 million spent
on salaries, salary payments that rose $4 million since 2103.
The closest WMF gets to creating content is the almost $6
million was spent last year on awards and grants — mostly funding international
and regional staff and workshops to celebrate Wikipedia, such as Wikimania.
These grants have been described as “corrupt” by the WMF’s ex-director Sue
Gardner. who said, “I believe the FDC [Funds Dissemination Committee]
process, dominated by fund-seekers, does not as currently constructed offer
sufficient protection against log-rolling, self-dealing,
and other corrupt practices.” Oh dear.
with costs of a top website: servers, staff and programs.
The same KPMG report says that Wikipedia spent $2.5 million
of its budget on hosting, almost unchanged since 2013. A closer look at the
reports line items shows that the WMF spent almost $684,000 on furniture.
That’s almost $3200 per employee. Your donations are going to golden
chairs.
Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a
public park where we can all go to think and learn.
I guess parks and libraries would be a lot less popular if
you had panhandlers at the doors. Especially panhandlers who have more in the
bank than you.
If Wikipedia is useful to you, take one minute to keep it
online and ad-free another year. Thank you.
More weasel words. Wikipedia is already useful without the
extra donations, and even if donations stopped tomorrow it would still be able
to stay online, continue on cash reserves for years (with some salary
cuts).
Just don’t
Don’t donate to Wikipedia. It doesn’t need the money, and
anything you donate will not go to the people who actually created the pages
that you like. It doesn’t even go to the admins who help check the content. It
doesn’t go to content creation at all.
Your money goes to a group of incompetent programmers
and a management team that jets around the world for “outreach”. When they are
not jetting around they sit in their golden chairs, wondering why they
only made less than 1% return on the $51 million they have in the bank.
That’s right, they can’t even invest the money properly.
The WMF’s bloated staff of do-nothings want to be
rewarded for the value that they did not create. They are laughing all the way
to the bank, while they try to guilt you into giving more so they can do even
less. If you really want to help the WMF, give it less money so that it is
forced to do more with less.
Whatever…
If you don’t want to read about how Newslines compares, stop
reading here.
Here at Newslines we don’t have break your experience to beg
you for money we don’t need to give to people who don’t deserve it. Our tiny
engineering team (me and three part-time subcontractors around the world) have
created a modern, multimedia content creation system. It wasn’t that difficult
or expensive. The core WordPress software is created by a great team of
committed open-source developers. Our writers don’t have to use arcane tags,
they don’t have to go through a post approval process that Beelzebub would have
been proud to invent. Our writers are the people who drive this project forward
and should have tools that make their lives easier.
And one of the best ways to show respect is not to give out
some crappy badges and pats on the back, but to give them money. Over
the past few months we have paid out $25,000 to hundreds of content
creators for 25,000 posts on thousands of topics. Many of our writers have made
thousands of dollars, that they can spend in the real world.
In the next few weeks we are adding a revenue share
system that will allow our writers to earn much more. When we make money from
ads we split the revenues with the people who deserve it — the writers and
editors who actually took the time to write and create the content. That’s only
fair.
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