Comment by esyir
3 years ago
For a charitable/non-profit organization, providing them with funding way above their needs is counterproductive. As seen with Wikipedia, in the presence of excess money, costs proceed to grow uncoupled to the progression of their core mission.
As charity funding is effectively a closed system, excessive contribution to Wikipedia is to the detriment of other charities, with minimal net benefit.
I think their needs are genuine, if we want more of Wikipedia and more of Wikipedia services, it requires investment.
If you think one charity is more deserving your money than Wikipedia, then you are free to decide that with your resources.
You decide how to spend your money and Wikipedia decides how to spend theirs.
Resource allocation is not a solved problem and it is inherently political.
If you're working in the field, you have a perspective of what resources you need to do the job properly and it's always higher than what people outside the field believe.
Were the situations reversed (you were Wikipedia), would you believe what you do today?
If you could do it cheaper, why aren't you?
Are you really suggesting it's not possible for an organization to misallocate funds, or that it is not possible to determine if an organization is misallocating funds without running the same organization or a substitutable replacement organization?
Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia) can be the best in its class without the Wikimedia foundation being beyond criticism. 99% of what makes Wikipedia great was already there a decade ago, with exponentially less cost.