Comment by such_a_casual
10 years ago
Wikipedia is a pretty shady organization. For years they have used server costs as one of the main reasons (and in the some cases the main reason) why people should donate. But their finance reports paint a very different picture. Their server costs reflect a very small percentage of their overall costs. They ask for way more money than they actually need. More money is spent on "investments" and fundraisers than is spent on the cost of maintaining the site. Some people have also alleged purposeful backlinking to their for profit sites. That is, adding and replacing links in wikipedia pages to point to websites that the wikipedia founders profit from. So using wikipedia as an example of "genuinely altruistic" motivation is a stretch. The founders of wikipedia do not benefit directly from their work, but they certainly benefit indirectly and through false advertising.
> Wikipedia is a pretty shady organization.
Wikimedia. They do a lot more than just the encyclopædia.
> For years they have used server costs as one of the main reasons (and in the some cases the main reason) why people should donate. But their finance reports paint a very different picture. Their server costs reflect a very small percentage of their overall costs.
Server costs are not the only thing they need to spend money on. Consider their budget for 2015-2016:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...
40% of that is spent on engineering. Someone needs to maintain MediaWiki.
~6% is spent on legal - they're a large site that has to deal with copyright issues, they need lawyers. ~15% is spent on administrative costs, as if you employ lots of people, you need to manage them.
> They ask for way more money than they actually need.
They could run on a leaner budget, yes, but it's not as if the other money they get is wasted. More money means they can hire more engineers to work on the site and improve it, for example.
> More money is spent on "investments" and fundraisers than is spent on the cost of maintaining the site.
Looking at that budget, they spend more on Engineering than on Community Engagement, Grants, Advancement, and Communications combined.
> Some people have also alleged purposeful backlinking to their for profit sites. That is, adding and replacing links in wikipedia pages to point to websites that the wikipedia founders profit from.
Could you provide evidence, or at least a credible source?
So you are going to ignore everything I said to talk about what you want to talk about? cool.
Wikipedia's financial statements are easy to find and they provide them for you: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010....
I'll go over my first point, and you can decide whether you want to continue to ignore my actual statements:
1. They use server costs to plea for donations. This is deceptive and dishonest advertising. In certain years, wikipedia abused the public's perception of server costs as their main selling point. Even when server costs are not necessarily their main selling point, they are more often than not the very first cost listed on their advertisements.
http://regmedia.co.uk/2012/11/28/wikipedia_chugging_fullsize...
If you were to poll wikipedia donators, what % of wikipedia's total costs would they think are server costs if they are going by wikipedia's advertisements?
In 2010, wikipedia states they received the following in donations: $14,490,273
They list "internet hosting" costs for that year as: $1,056,703
< 7%
In 2011, wikipedia's stated they recieved: $23,020,127
with "internet hosting" costs of: $1,799,943
< 8%
Please stop twisting my words out of love for wikipedia. Wikipedia deceives their users about where their money is actually going and asks for MILLIONS of dollars more than they actually need.
To quote from the screenshot you linked of a typical Wikimedia Foundation advertisement: [1]
"We ... have costs like any other top site: servers, power, rent, programs, staff and legal help."
I count six costs listed there. Doesn't look like "pretty shady" advertising to me.
Also, "internet hosting costs" in the financial statements isn't all the money spent on IT-related costs. For example, computer equipment is counted as an investment which then depreciates. In the 2011 financial statements you linked, Wikimedia spent $3.2m on computer equipment and $1m on depreciation (though depreciation would also include things like furniture). [2]
You also haven't provided any evidence for your claim Wikimedia promotes "purposeful backlinking to their for profit sites".
Finally, although it's an imperfect way to analyse charities, Charity Navigator gives Wikimedia Foundation 93.5/100, an excellent score. [3]
1. http://regmedia.co.uk/2012/11/28/wikipedia_chugging_fullsize...
2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/ac/FINAL...
3. http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...