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by hug 2669 days ago
You may find my attitude unpleasant: What I find unpleasant is a large organisation deliberately deceiving users into thinking that the resource they consider valuable is underfunded, when really they are spending those donations on side shows that these people don't even know exist, let alone want to use. WMF are like the Internet charity version of Susan G Komen.

With regards to the usefulness of Wikipedia versus Wiktionary, I like to think about their impact on the world.

Wikipedia: Eclipsed every online encyclopedia, massively, and most print encyclopedias in most degrees, and is a huge source of knowledge to a great many people who otherwise would not be able to have access to that knowledge.

Wiktionary: Is another dictionary.

It's hyperbole, sure, but it ain't by much.

That said, if you like Wiktionary enough that you want to donate to it? More power to you. I don't, particularly. And y'know, maybe this is an elitist attitude that stems from the fact that I speak English and English dictionaries abound. So grant me that I may be mistaken, and let me say "hey, also, throw in all of the hosting for Wiktionary into what I want to donate for as well, and I will be fine with it." If that's the case, then there's still a good 75% of any donation I make funding things I, yes, "don't give a shit" about. Lemme tell you, Wiktionary isn't exactly a large expense on the WMF books.

I regularly donate to a fair number of charities. If I have to donate $100 to WMF to get $20 of value of Wikipedia, I won't. If I could donate $20 to WMF to get $20 of value to Wikipedia, I would. Even if 5% of my donation went elsewhere, that would be fine. It doesn't, so it's not, and I will continue putting my charitable contributions somewhere I think they will be used to more effect.

3 comments

I don't think they where ever Wikimedia Foundation staff paid to work on Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikisource Wikispecies, Wikinews and Wikiversity. So, these projects cost to the Wikimedia Foundation the hosting (probably around ~100k/year at most) and some other small cost (trademark, some community support). Wikidata is developped by Wikimedia Deutchland that is an other organization than the Wikimedia Foundation and has its own fundraising. So, I believe that if you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation nearly all your donation is going to Wikipedia.
Yes, totally agreed. Wikimedia is over funded, yet they beg for donations all the time, and then go spending our money on tens of side projects that have no clear direction, purpose, or goal.

Edit: That branding research is another avenue for wasting our donation money.

When you spend money on a Google product, half of the money goes to buy hovercars for the founder. Does that make it bad spend?

Komen does nothing of value except give people expensive happy feelings. It's not in the same league.

My secret superpower is that I don’t pay for any Google services.