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by 8260337551 1726 days ago
Infrastructure isn’t free. Happy to donate to Wikipedia on a yearly basis. And the emails are only once a year.
7 comments

Wikimedia spends like 95% of their money on stuff that isn’t Wikipedia. They’re a classic bloated NGO, where they have some initial mission they can do efficiently but they keep asking for money way down the diminishing returns curve.
>they have some initial mission they can do efficiently

Because the initial mission is still, by and large, done by volunteers and unpaid editors.

Wikimedia is a bloated leech

Are other people only having a single email per year?

This year I've had three (two in September, both from donate@wikimedia.org, and one from jimmy@wikipedia.org in October saying 'We've had enough').

That's part of the problem - they have way more money than needed to run the infrastructure, but when they beg for more, they make it sound like they might not have enough to keep the lights on.

They're very firmly on my "do not give money to" list, together with Mozilla (donations go to everything EXCEPT Firefox development, which isn't made particularly clear when you donate, and much of their other stuff isn't worth supporting IMO).

They don‘t need the money tho. They have enough money, I believe, to run without raising anymore money for 1.0-years.
If only it were once a year. Every quarter I get a whole thread spread out over a couple weeks. "Did you see our last email?" "There's still time to save Wikipedia!"
Hey I came across your comments pertaining to AWS confidentiality agreement. I just got an offer from AWS, would love to chat! Dont see your email on your profile
Congrats on your first post. Welcome to HN.
Food isn't free either, but I haven't been sending Bill Gates money every year to help him buy his own food.
I didn't know Gates ran a non profit that provided you with food/content/whatever on a daily basis. Not sure in what other scenario this comparison makes sense.