Every so often I give a few bucks(far less than the worth of knowledge I got from it)
Yes, every month. Why? Because in my opinion it is one of the greatest collective projects of mankind (even with the flaws it has).
I’ve never seen it like that. And I’ve never paid anything for it because I don’t use it enough. I might change my mind now. Thanks!
Yup. $20 every year.
I just like that it’s there and I’ve used it a lot, and I want it to be there for the next generation.
Plus, they’ve maintained staying ad free, sub free, and bullshit free. I can’t think of another site that’s kept that level of decency.
Basically the same here, £2 a month, and for the same reasons as you.
Yes. But not very much as I am still a student.
I think Wikipedia is a valuable common good and should be maintained. Because I can afford it, I donate monthly, even if I only use it a few times each month.
When I was younger my friend group got in a heated debate about something semantic for fun. The opposite side from me tried to prove their point by editing Wikipedia and showing it to me. They had to show a screen shot because it had changed back in the time they ran from the computer lab to the lunch room, I used this in my arguments every time we argued about it after that.
I’m cycling through multiple open source projects, the last one was signal. I tried to donate to Mozilla once, but they have the worst UX on their form and I’m not giving them my money AND my data.
I find Wikipedia invaluable. I’ve been donating $5/month for a number of years now.
I did a few times but not in the recent years. I don’t know exactly why.
I did until they stopped accepting my donation method. Fools
Absolutely not. They have way more money than they can sensibly spend, keep begging for more as if they could barely keep the lights on (they could probably easily keep the core mission going with about 10% of the money they’re getting), and then expand their spending to match the donations they collected.
They then created an endowment (i.e. a pile of wealth that generates enough interest to sustain them indefinitely), using both additional donations and some of the money given to Wikimedia (which reduces the apparent amount of money they spend and is not listed as money Wikipedia/Wikimedia has, as it is accounted for separately). The $100M endowment was planned to take 10 years to build, got completed in 2021, five years before schedule. Wikimedia also has a separate cash hoard of almost a quarter billion dollars.
It’s actually all in their article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances
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Yes. People won’t understand the value of something until they lose it.
Wow I didn’t know about this, thanks for the reading! I always feel morally in debt for using Wikipedia without giving back much and assume they were struggling a bit to operate, but wow they have received millions of dollars already!
edit: I’m still willing to donate though, and I just did, like I’m happy to pay for what I’ve learned from it, even if it doesn’t mean much to them.
This is the most interesting thing I realize(thanks to you) this week so far
I’ve been donating to the Wikimedia foundation regularly since 2016 since I believe it’s a resource everyone should have access to.
The Wikipedia is not perfect but, for several topics, it’s a great starting point or recap. I’ve used it for science related queries and, even if the style is not uniform and some entries are hard to read, it is an amazingly useful project which doesn’t get old (and the phone app is fantastic)
I used to give $39 every few months, but like Solomon, it became too bendable by higher powers, something I mean generally and in more ways than one, so I now advocate it just adopt ads or something.
If they adopt ads, it’ll not be long before the articles themselves are influenced by who their advertisers are. Can’t offend Advertiser A, so let’s just delete that line in the article about them.
I think it’s important that it remains ad free.
That brings me to the issue I was referring to though. It’s already influenced. The advertising catch-22 isn’t the only way to fall into this trap.
No. I did donate once and then they illegally spammed my email for a year. I had to threaten them with a lawyer to stop. It was senseless.
I donate to them sometimes depending on how money is, but yeah holy hell do they spam you once you donate. Just a non-stop stream of increasingly passive-aggressive emails.
This happened to me as well. I just didn’t go as far as the lawyer bit. I just sent all of their emails to spam for auto deletion.
Nope, I’ve donated to the internet archive because I have infinity more respect for them and they actually need more funding.
Wikipedia has more than they know what to do with, the money just falls out of their pockets
They need it more since all these lawsuits they are facing
Came here to say the same thing. The Internet Archive needs the money a lot more and are constantly battling legal threats. I donate to them every now and then. Librarians and archivists rule.
Do you donate to Wikipedia? Why or why not?
I did and ever since have been rewarded with an endless barrage of “you gave once before so do it aga–a-a–aa-a-a-a-a-a-a-in” banners. Given the ecomonics of fundraising I wouldn’t be surprised if donors were badgered more than non-donors.
