zlacker

>>nickpa+(OP)
Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely useful.

For what it's worth, Charity Navigator gives them 4 out of 4 stars with a 98.33/100 rating: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703

Meanwhile eg the American Cancer Society gets 73/100 and spends more on fundraising than WMF's entire budget, so oncologists can snort blow off hookers in Vegas, but nobody cares.

>>ripper+m8
I don't get the outrage either. It's almost like people want Wikipedia to be barely scrapping by which isn't good. Having some money in your reserves is fine.

>>rany_+v9
I agree, but with a warchest of $400m, their budget can seemingly be funded at 2.5% withdrawal per year, so there may be no need to ask anymore. (Though personally I'd rather they spent even more and had more full time editors and researchers improving the site.)

>>peterc+kl
> more full time editors and researchers

By "full-time" you mean paid?

Researchers can't contribute to Wikipedia at all, unless the "research" consists of a literature review.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

And if there were full-time paid editors, I'd stop editing immediately, and instead contribute my efforts to the fork that would inevitably result.

>>denton+qn
Yeah, I didn't mean original or scientific research, more working on missing citations, integrating information from newly discovered original sources, or maybe even attempting to discover such original sources. I guess Wikipedians prefer to call this editing!

With the foundation's resources and clout, someone working on their behalf may be able to get better access to many source materials.

And if there were full-time paid editors, I'd stop editing immediately

So, I'm guessing you know a lot about Wikipedia.. but aren't there already full-time paid editors, just not from the foundation? I struggle to believe there are not well funded interests out there investing money into improving Wikipedia (whether such improvements are objective or subjective) in the same way that some tech companies fund, say, programming language core teams.

>>peterc+Tx
Sure, there are paid editors performing PR services on Wikipedia (both above-board, declared, and flying under the radar, undeclared).

What the WMF does do at times is fund community "organizers" trying to get unpaid volunteer editors to work on its content. See e.g.:

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/09/22/join-the-organizer-lab...

Direct editing paid for by the Foundation was tried once, with bad results:

https://thewikipedian.net/2014/04/02/bats-in-the-belfer-a-be...

>>akolbe+cB
Interesting story in that last link, thanks.

I guess what I was thinking more of was philanthropic organizations paying mathematicians, geologists, and various other types of academic to improve the quality of Wikipedia's entries on a full time basis. Maybe I am being hopefully naive about the allocation of capital though, and thinking merely the sort of things I'd like to fund if I were a billionaire.. ;-)