Is this the same person who every now and then appears on HN utterly outraged by Wikipedia's fundraising?
I donate to Wikipedia.
And I am glad they have lots of money. I do not feel outraged about it, I feel happy about it.
I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world.
Wikipedia is a great service, it should be valued. They should not always be living close to the edge of going out of business. How they spend their funds raised is their business.
This anti Wikipedia person is really annoying and I wish they would stop their crusade.
EDIT: it seems the outraged guy is a right wing Murdoch journalist. Enough said, it all adds up. I still remember how Murdoch ran a successful campaign here in Australia to sink the planned national fibre to the home broadband network - 10 years down the track we never got our national fibre network. These guys hate tech, especially free information services like Wikipedia and national broadcasters like the ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Murdoch wants to own it all and hates free.
"Wokepedia". This guy certainly has an axe to grind. Looks like urging people not to donate is in fact a right wing attack on Wikpedia - "The Daily Telegraph" of course being a Murdoch newspaper.
"Writing for The Daily Telegraph in May 2021, Orlowski said that the Wikimedia Foundation was "flush with cash" and passing money to the Tides Network, which he described as "a left-leaning dark money group"; he referred to Wikipedia as "Wokepedia" in an allusion to the term "woke".[24] In another article for The Daily Telegraph, in December 2021, Orlowski said the Wikimedia Foundation's urgent fundraising banners on Wikipedia were "preposterous" given that it held assets of $240 million and had a $100 million endowment, and the Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director had said in 2013 that the Foundation could be sustainable on "$10M+ a year".[25] In August 2022, Orlowski claimed that Wikipedia had "become a tool of the Left in the battle to control the truth", referencing the recent controversy over Wikipedia's definition of a recession.[26]"
Slight correction - Telegraph isn't Murdoch. It's owned by the surviving billionaire Barclay brother [1]. If anything though it's even more biased than any Murdoch paper (eg in the UK The Times).
I'd wondered whether it was a clever ploy to GET me to donate to Wikipedia/media/whatever, what with all the comments ranting in right-wing style. Kind of like Nike or whoever, gesturing to causes they don't really do anything to support, in order to goad political rants against then and elicit a larger backlash and more money they'd have had if they kept quiet.
HBomberguy has a good video on the subject. You can use people ranting about 'wokeness' to make money, and while it's amusing and gratifying to indulge that 'ha, I showed you, I don't agree with your ranting against this thing!' it's engaging in pseudo-political behavior that's in a sense wasted. Throwing more money at Wikipedia isn't really helping them be more woke, it's helping them be better at using that to ask for money.
I'm not actually going to give them money today but that's because I gotta tend to my own affairs: if I had a bunch extra I'd send some Wikipedia's way on the grounds that at least they're annoying the right people?
Just checked here: The BLM org I donated was not this one you linked, but i'm seeking this one specifically to make a new donation, just because your bad faith argument.
It's relevant because he's not really disclosing his motivations. He clearly has other reasons for disliking wikipedia but he fails to disclose them in this article.
How are his motivations relevant to how wikimedia spends donations (and thus whether you should donate)?
If wikimedia was actually spending all donations on blackjack and hookers for execs, would it matter that the person reporting it was reporting it because he really hates wikis as a concept?
So when an oil company writes a report on the viability of solar power then that doesn't affect how we should view the report?
His motivation absolutely affects how he reports on this issue. He's not a neutral observer and so he picks and chooses which facts he includes and puts his own spin around the issues.
> So when an oil company writes a report on the viability of solar power then that doesn't affect how we should view the report?
But why do you think it does affect how you view the report? Because the company is likely to lie, right? So you should perhaps examine the report more carefully. But that has nothing to do with the report's factuality. It may affect how likely it is to be true, but once you've determined it to be one or the other, who reported it is completely irrelevant.
Likewise, if Wikipedia is in fact dishonest when it asks for donations, and you first heard that completely true fact from a Nazi, are you going to conclude that actually it was false all along? In other words, is your reality determined by the opposite of what your political adversaries say?
Are you saying 1.9M is only the cost of the hardware, excluding the cost of bandwidth, power, etc.? Then what's the actual number? The misreporting is only relevant if the actual number is meaningfully different.
EDIT: And I insist, all that's relevant is the error itself. The political affiliation of the person who made the error shouldn't matter.
An editor or author can, in a biased way, choose to disclose things that are all true, but incomplete, thereby giving a false impression of a larger picture. I think it is absolutely in the consumer's (of any given text) interest to understand the potential biases of the content producer, even if all of the content itself is "facts".
Are there any examples of such facts being incompletely disclosed, or are we just assuming their existence without further analysis based on the writer's political affiliation?
His "track record" has nothing to do with whether his claims are true, either.
Either his claims are factual, or they aren't.
If they are not factual, they should be refuted, but appealing to his "motivations" or "track record" is not a refutation. It is an ad hominem attack, i.e., a logical fallacy.
You can claim completely true things, while also omitting other completely true things that radically change the situation. Examining whether or not someone is presenting facts in order to argue a political stance vs neutrally reporting is an important and basic media literacy skill.
No one has said it's a refutation but it's entirely relevant and not an ad hominem at all - unless you think that his record is something to be ashamed of?
As I said above:
> So when an oil company writes a report on the viability of solar power then that doesn't affect how we should view the report?
> His motivation absolutely affects how he reports on this issue. He's not a neutral observer and so he picks and chooses which facts he includes and puts his own spin around the issues.
The point in contention appears to be whether or not Wikipedia funnels donations to left-wing causes.
The truth of that claim has no causal relationship with his opinions. I mean, obviously someone who disagrees with funneling donations to left-wing causes would be more likely to complain about it, or even possibly make something up. But that in itself has no bearing on whether the claim is actually true.
Does Wikipedia funnel donations to left-wing causes or not?
You have presented no evidence one way or the other. Instead, you have attacked his "motivations" and "track record". That is a textbook ad hominem.
"The Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Equity Fund is a new US$4.5 million fund created by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2020, to provide grants to external organizations that support knowledge equity by addressing the racial inequities preventing access and participation in free knowledge."
The issue isn't "Wikipedia" having lots of money and using it to run their site. It's Wikimedia having the money and using it for stuff that has no direct connection to Wikipedia.
From a Twitter thread on a scientific research project funded through Wikimedia:
> In deciding who to fund, the key criteria was use of the Intersectional Scientific method. Everything else - a scientific background, data - was optional. What could possibly go wrong?
> One of the projects was into spatial learning in the California Two-Spot Octopus, for which the researcher got 12 hatchling octopuses.
> Unfortunately, the lab experiment went horribly wrong, killing the poor creatures before the research could be concluded.
Have you? Wikipedia doesn't accept money. Wikimedia does, though.
> I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world.
Necessary how? For what?
I donate to Wikipedia—as a Wikipedian. I've contributed a bunch of time editing content and doing lots of gnomish things to create value so that Wikipedia is a "great service". Millions of others have, too. But neither I nor any of the other people have anything to do with your donations.
Don't misunderstand: this is not a call-to-action for revenue sharing in the vein of the articles constantly appearing about the sustainability of FOSS; I'm not saying "give us a cut". What I am saying is that the Wikimedia fundraising tactics are thoroughly unnecessary to the actual production costs of Wikipedia that Wikimedia is responsible for.
Am I outraged? No. Do I recognize what WMF is doing as borderline slimy? Yes.
Your (bad) attempt to be clever notwithstanding, my comment makes it clear that I'm not referring to donating money. That's not true of the person I responded to. Try again.
Ah, you're right. I thought it was ironic that you made the same mistake the previous comment did, but that isn't the case. It wasn't clear to me the first time I read your comment.
Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation are not the same thing. The author’s sentiment is pretty common among the large number of volunteer editors who make the bulk of what makes Wikipedia valuable. You can find people of all sorts of political affiliations who edit Wikipedia and feel like the WMF fundraising schemes are insulting to their contributions to the project and put the whole project at risk. If Wikipedia were a business then fine, they could do as they like but it is also a community and the public facing behavior of
WMF has serious consequences to that community.
You can view the history of of submissions and comments on the wikipedia has cancer article to see how many of the posters have a long history of submissions that clearly indicates they're different people, and not just one single person with a grudge.
Not everyone shares your opinion on high pressure misleading sales as a persuasion method being acceptable.
Could you elaborate on that? I really don't want to believe this is true, WMF is clearly being manipulative and a world where being manipulative is necessary sounds...extremely dystopian.
I agree with everything. To be fair though, the banners are pretty manipulative. They also make you think that Wikipedia is broke and they need urgent funding, which they don't. They almost lie to you so you donate. Explain that you need donations to do more cool stuff with wikipedia and everything's fine. Just be honest.
You may be glad wikipedia has a lot of money, but are you glad wikimedia does? Are you happy with the proportion of your wikimedia donation that goes to wikipedia?
Exactly. If you value something, pay for it. It’s a way of sending resources to an organization so that it can continue to do more of what you value. I remember When my parents bought World Book so we could have it on our shelf at home. It had absurdity less information and was vastly more expensive.
I use Wikipedia a few times a week, my kids use it, I am happy to pay for it, and to give them some room to fund new related efforts.
About your edit: "we never got our national fibre network". I'm confused. No trolling. What about NBN (National Broadband Network)? That has spawned 100s of new ISPs that rent bandwidth on your amazing new national backbone and resell to retail customers. From afar, it sounds like a great national investment. Do I misunderstand?
For the record, you aren't donating to Wikpedia, you're donating to the foundation. And the cost of running Wikipedia is generously less than 10% of donations per year.
Why do they need 550 employees? I think it's fair to question what the foundation has decided to do with your donation, because basically all of your donation goes to the "not-Wikipedia" parts.
But yeah the fact that this was written by some radical right-winger makes sense. The weird red-scare stuff at the end was so out of place, I should have realized it was by a right-wing propagandist, they have to shove that tripe into everything.
I donate to Wikipedia.
And I am glad they have lots of money. I do not feel outraged about it, I feel happy about it.
I do not feel outraged that they use whatever persuasive tactics that they use - this is necessary in the modern world.
Wikipedia is a great service, it should be valued. They should not always be living close to the edge of going out of business. How they spend their funds raised is their business.
This anti Wikipedia person is really annoying and I wish they would stop their crusade.
EDIT: it seems the outraged guy is a right wing Murdoch journalist. Enough said, it all adds up. I still remember how Murdoch ran a successful campaign here in Australia to sink the planned national fibre to the home broadband network - 10 years down the track we never got our national fibre network. These guys hate tech, especially free information services like Wikipedia and national broadcasters like the ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Murdoch wants to own it all and hates free.