Every now and then I’ll get an email from someone higher up in Wikipedia asking for a donation. I don’t really mind a tenner but I don’t know if it pads the pockets of corporate management or actual contributors. Also, are they really short of money or is this tugging at emotional strings a play at something else? I wish Wikipedia survives but there’s a lot of projects I need to donate to and I have a budget.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    Wikipedia makes most of its money from donations, with some money coming from other sources like commercial API access. It consistently raises more money than it spends and has been building an endowment. However, that income mainly comes from the fundraising drives.

    Wikipedia has an endowment, but it isn’t enough to run the website for more than a few years.

    In terms of expenses, the largest expense is in having staff to run the various websites and foundation. Charity auditors rank the foundation highly on expenses, so the foundation is likely not overpaying staff.

    Wikipedia needs donations to survive, but it isn’t struggling. If you feel like you have better things to donate to, it is probably ok for now.

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    They set themselves up that way. They do so saying that if they were properly sponsored, the “sponsors” could influence their bias, as if they didn’t succumb anyways.

  • lattrommi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    I made an account and did a one time donation for $2.50. This removes the website donation banner. As long as I’m logged in, I do not see those messages. I get an email about donating once a year, possibly twice. Infrequently enough to be unsure of how often it has happened. If I ever see the donation banner on the website, I know I am logged out. So I can’t answer your query about the corporate aspect but I can say that the heartstring tugging can easily be solved with a one time donation for a small amount. You can do a custom amount for a donation so theoretically it could be for $0.01 or your lowest fiat equivalent.

  • Quik@infosec.pub
    0·
    14 days ago

    Wikipedia will keep running, even if you don’t donate. The Wikimedia foundation (which runs Wikipedia) gets a lot of donations and fund a ton of other stuff apart from Wikipedia, so you’re donation will rather have a chance to decide if these keep running.

    • Findmysec@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      I need to look up what else they sponsor in case there’s something important for me there

  • immutable@lemm.ee
    0·
    14 days ago

    Lucky for you the wikimedia foundation files annual reports https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2022-2023-annual-report/

    I think this is the latest one available.

    As to whether they need your money or not I’m a bit conflicted. They have raised and spent more and more money every year. They have a lot of money and some have argued they spend it poorly.

    On the whole though, besides asking for donations, they have maintained their goal of being ad free. If you’ve ever used a fan wiki for a video game or hobby you have likely experienced how bad a wiki larded down with ads can be.

    I think for myself as someone that has worked as a software engineer for my entire life building out massive infrastructure that is on a similar scale to Wikipedia, I don’t really know how they justify such high development spend when the tech isn’t really evolving very much. I’m sure it’s not cheap to host, so that spend is fine by me, but I’m not sure what all they are building. That doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile, I just have a hard time imagining it.

    I would encourage you to look at numbers and decide if they make sense to you. Also people have written on the subject, so some googling will likely bring you to more opinionated pieces than my own.

    • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      If you’ve ever used a fan wiki for a video game or hobby you have likely experienced how bad a wiki larded down with ads can be.

      A bit of an aside, but breezewiki.com is a great open sourced way to get away from this (their internal search doesn’t always work, but a search engine search for fandom name + breezewiki should do it)

      • Badabinski@kbin.earth
        0·
        14 days ago

        You’re an absolute hero. I’m easily irritated by ads, and fandom has driven me to genuine rage a couple of times when I’m on mobile and only have DNS-based adblocking some of the time. It’s a wiki, for Christ’s sake, so why does it need so, so many ads‽ It’s just static content most of the time!

        edit: to provide more context, this is a frontend for fandom wikis that strips out the bullshit.

          • Badabinski@kbin.earth
            0·
            14 days ago

            I do, but certain Android browsers don’t support plugins. I have to use a specific browser for compatibility reasons with some work shit (I do on-call stuff). I need that to just work, so I can’t use, say, Firefox for Android. I use multiple browsers on computers, but I just can’t be bothered on my phone. That leaves me with DNS-based ad blockers. Those work almost as well, but only when I’m home or VPNed home. I don’t want to use a hosted service for privacy reasons, and I don’t want to expose a DNS server on the internet. This means that when I can’t VPN or I forget to, I get fandom rage. I’m sure I could do something to address this, but I have bigger fish to fry right now. The nice ad-free fandom frontend sounds like a great compromise to me.

        • LwL@lemmy.world
          0·
          13 days ago

          If you want to hate them more, there were cases of wikis moving off the site and fandom just deciding to restore the content after the maintainers deleted it, claiming everything written on the site is their property. Absolute shithole and I refuse to use it if there are alternatives.

        • M500@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          13 days ago

          I hate fandom so much. Their site is very annoying on mobile.

  • Microw@lemm.ee
    0·
    14 days ago

    They rely on donations, that part is correct. Are they in constant financial need so they are forced to ask users so often to donate? No, they are not.

    Also keep in mind that while the server and developing costs of Wikipedia are one area of spending, Wikimedia spends money on a host of projects. Some of them you would probably consider more important than others.

    • Findmysec@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      Yeah I need to look at the list and check if there’s something important for me in there

  • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
    0·
    14 days ago

    I don’t think they are running inefficiently. I do think they have more than enough money to keep themselves going for many years to come. Also, the lack of inclusiveness in the editing is the reason I don’t donate. Nothing like making an article contribution only to have it quickly reverted by some control freak editor from the inner circle. Wikipedia is not actually what it claims to be. It’s slightly more open than a real encyclopedia, but not much.

    • LostXOR@fedia.io
      0·
      14 days ago

      After reading the first few paragraphs, I can understand why that site was deprecated by Wikipedia as a source. It’s a very opinionated article.