Well the Wikimedia foundation does indeed not need this amount of money for wikipedia.org alone, they have copious amounts of money and their “asking for donations” is in some countries straight up “Wikipedia will shut down if you don’t pay” and seeing that as questionable behavior is absolutely ok.
Some of their staff are paid pretty high salaries ($300-400k), but its still nothing like what most business executives get paid and not much of their total costs. And while they have a lot of money right now, that could quickly change if people stop donating. Its best to be on the safe side with such a valuable resource.
On the other hand, I see the Internet Archive as just as valuable or more, and I think it deserves a lot more money and attention than it has been getting. Of course it doesn’t have to be one or the other, I just think that Wikipedia gets a disproportionate amount of donations compared to the Internet Archive.
Video is in German but it has subtitles, its a in depth analysis of it.
Internet Archiv is absolutely great and nowadays probably worth more than Wikipedia when it comes to information. I wouldn’t want to be in a world without a Wikipedia, but what Wikimedia does is sketchy often.
Wikipedia is great, and they do have real operating costs, but hosting all the data is about 2% of their budget. All the admins and editors and contributors are volunteers. Most of the money is spent on projects not related to the encyclopedia and donations to miscellaneous social groups.
Well the Wikimedia foundation does indeed not need this amount of money for wikipedia.org alone, they have copious amounts of money and their “asking for donations” is in some countries straight up “Wikipedia will shut down if you don’t pay” and seeing that as questionable behavior is absolutely ok.
However… WE WITNESSED A MURDER.
Some of their staff are paid pretty high salaries ($300-400k), but its still nothing like what most business executives get paid and not much of their total costs. And while they have a lot of money right now, that could quickly change if people stop donating. Its best to be on the safe side with such a valuable resource.
On the other hand, I see the Internet Archive as just as valuable or more, and I think it deserves a lot more money and attention than it has been getting. Of course it doesn’t have to be one or the other, I just think that Wikipedia gets a disproportionate amount of donations compared to the Internet Archive.
https://youtu.be/d9UgRIPWP4w?si=gm8v6wCvQ7vLzo34
Video is in German but it has subtitles, its a in depth analysis of it.
Internet Archiv is absolutely great and nowadays probably worth more than Wikipedia when it comes to information. I wouldn’t want to be in a world without a Wikipedia, but what Wikimedia does is sketchy often.
I endorse this post.
Wikipedia is great, and they do have real operating costs, but hosting all the data is about 2% of their budget. All the admins and editors and contributors are volunteers. Most of the money is spent on projects not related to the encyclopedia and donations to miscellaneous social groups.
Their accounting is public: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation