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Comment by andrewmayne | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for your notes.

1.) I didn't say Wikipedia has 5 billion uniques. I said it gets 5 billion visitors. In ad sales a visitor is different than a unique. I changed it to "visits" so avoid the confusion.

2.) Tax deduction makes the perception of something's cost free.

3.) If you can still get a product without paying for something (i.e. tipping) the price is either what you ask for ($5) or nothing. That's the definition of price uncertainty.

4.) I pointed out the problem in using NPR as a model. Federal grants and family endowments are not the best model for a blog...

5.) A donation accepting site can suggest scarcity, but the questions is how compelling will it be? PBS and NPR offer content in a very limited channel space. Most blogs and podcasts do not.

Best,

Andrew

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In ad sales a visitor is different than a unique.

Source? I was under impression that a visitor means a visitor and a visit means a visit. Surprised to see it being used the other way.

Tax deduction makes the perception of something's cost free.

That's just a baseless statement. I can find you any number of people who don't perceive that way. Who are the people that bear the perception? What is their percentage among the populace? How do you know the answer?

1.) I pulled the figure from WolframAlpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=wikipedia+monthly+visit... Which is based on Alexa.

2.) Every charity makes it a point to spell out that donations are tax deductible. The reason is to make the donation appear cost-free.

Number two sounds like a non-sequitur. Do you have a source for that? No doubt they say it to increase the appeal of donating, but I have never heard that it's specifically to make it appear cost-free. It's not like car dealerships offer "cash back rewards" so you think you're getting a car for free.

In all seriousness, what does "tax deductible" mean to you?

> In all seriousness, what does "tax deductible" mean to you?

I think that it means that I get to deduct it from my taxable income, just like my mortgage. It's a deduction (unless I'm subject to one of the various phaseouts or am better off with the standard deduction).

Do you think that people think that the $5k standard deduction reduces their taxes by $5k? (I forget the exact amount because I itemize.) If not, why do you think that they're confused by the phrase "tax deduction"?

There's a huge difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit. I suspect that most people who pay taxes understand it.

It means I can deduct it from my income. You are confusing it with a tax credit.

If you think there are legions of taxpayers who don't get this, you are mistaken.

You're making things up at this point. I suggest you revisit how you arrive at conclusions and what constitutes evidence - you're hurting yourself by not being able to tell correct from desired.

When can I meet your polite alias?

That was the polite one.

Imagine that you meet a person who is terribly confused about logic and evidence to a point where he takes any random anecdote or even a lack of one and reinterpets it as data backing his preconceived notions. Now imagine trying to set this person straight and help them out of this trap. Do you think he would resist the change and take it as a personal affront? Well, there is always a slight chance that it will help.

> 2.) Every charity makes it a point to spell out that donations are tax deductible. The reason is to make the donation appear cost-free.

If they do, they're engaging in fraud because deductions aren't credits.

Seriously - what is the basis for your claim as to their intent?

Regardless of what you are referring to, you are still using this number as if it were unique visitors. You say "multiply your total audience size by .00124" (total audience size is number of unique visitors). Then you say "That comes to about 8 million people" (people are unique visitors). You're still doing your math based on the assumption that 5 billion unique people visit Wikipedia each year.

Your math as it stands is impossible, and you're still using it to support your argument. Even if you assumed every internet user in the world uses Wikipedia, that means that the average donation per user would be 0.003875, more than 3 times your estimate. With more reasonable math (and taking into account that Wikipedia does not fundraise 24/7 and is not aggressive) you can see that the average visitor is likely to donate an order of magnitude more than you're claiming.

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