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Comment by commitpizza | Hacker News Reader

Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that a lot, probably most, goes to pushing woke politics?

2021 the hosting costs were $2.4 million and they spend well over $100 million each year.

If they were to use their funds to actually drive the site they have enough to fund it for years to come. Most of their funding goes to stuff that has nothing to do with Wikipedia. This is yet another example of an org that has been taken over by political extremists that don't care about the core product and ruins everything.

I am a bit upset about it because I used to donate monthly until I learned about how they actually used the donations. I think this is a very important topic and urge that everyone that donates to Wikimedia stop immedietly.

View on HN

After reading some of the comments in the arbitration process discussed on this page (see: “Administrator desysopped after RfA comment, arb case in progress”) I would find it hard for anyone to argue, with a straight face, that the most active members of the community do not lean towards a common political ideology.

Whether that influences the quality of the articles, particularly new ones, I cannot say; I was banned as an admin and editor years ago and have zero desire to return. (Although I am wondering if I might enjoy working on some of the non-English wikis, having seen that their communities seem far less internally combatative.)

FWIW, here's the comment that led to Athaenara getting desysopped, and it amounts to a direct personal attack on an admin candidate for the sole reason that they're trans: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&diff=prev&oldid=...

I'm pretty sure you'd get banned here on HN for saying that as well.

> FWIW, here's the comment that led to Athaenara getting desysopped, and it amounts to a direct personal attack on an admin candidate for the sole reason that they're trans:

If females are underrepresented among admins, and the comment is factually correct in saying that the representation of women consists mostly of trans women, isn't the trans status of the candidate directly relevant to whether you actually are improving representation? I'm not sure how pointing this out qualifies as a personal attack (which isn't to say the comment isn't problematic in other ways).

Suppose black people are underrepresented among admins, and in trying to increase that representation, they nominate a transracial person who was born white but identifies as black, wouldn't their transracial status be a relevant consideration?

Transracialism isn't as widely accepted, despite the fact that both gender and race are "social constructs", and I think this makes it clear that "trans" status can sometimes be relevant in such questions. If they can be considered for a role because of their trans status, then they can also be rejected from a role because of their trans status.

> and the comment is factually correct in saying that the representation of women consists mostly of trans women

It's almost impossible that that could be true based on demographics (50% vs around ~0.5% for women vs trans women)

> It's almost impossible that that could be true based on demographics (50% vs around ~0.5% for women vs trans women)

It would be almost impossible if admin membership were drawn completely randomly from the population. It would also be impossible for over 80% of computer science graduates to be male given the same assumption. Computer science is observably dominated by males though, therefore perhaps membership isn't drawn completely randomly from the population in either case.

I'm not privy to the demographics of Wikipedia's admin membership so I don't know if the comment in question is factually accurate, my point is only that it doesn't follow from the comment alone that it's prejudicial against trans people or that it constituted a direct personal attack.

At least, it's not more prejudicial than accounting for race or gender in a positive context, since some people think any consideration of these factors, positive or negative, is unjustly prejudicial.

Not impossible if you're actively selecting for that and discriminating against those born as women.

I can simultaneously think that’s an abhorrent comment while also pointing out that the vast majority of the arguments (on both sides) regarding her ban were based on her beliefs, not her actions, which is counter to how these processes are supposed to unfold.

I think her action here is to represent her beliefs by submitting an oppositional vote based purely on her ideology and not the actions of the candidate. It makes sense that the ideology is also debated?

Why is it an abhorrent comment?

I strongly doubt that HN is a place that would ban you for being transphobic.

This comment section has proven you right. HN: We don't tolerate mindless repetitive criticism of programming languages, we do tolerate mindless repetitive criticism of people.

(I'm referring to the manual reduction of the rank of an article mocking go)

I believe the complaint was that the female representative team had a majority of trans people, so less of a personal attack and more of a general comment about the team.

> I would find it hard for anyone to argue, with a straight face, that the most active members of the community do not lean towards a common political ideology.

I believe it, but then let's not pretend it is otherwise. Let's not have people fund projects under the false pretence of keep servers online.

> Whether that influences the quality of the articles, particularly new ones, I cannot say

With zero intention of doing so, over time, people's political ideologies will bleed into the content. The organization itself will become more and more hostile towards opposing views.

The neutral topics themselves still have merit, but I suspect not for much longer. We no longer can have an article about master-slave buses without bringing up slavery [1], for example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Master/slave_(technology)#Ter...

I mean, in an article about terminology I would expect to see how is that terminology evolving, and it is undeniable that a lot of entities are moving away from it. Doesn't matter whether you and I agree on the move or not, but it's a reality and it's appropriate to discuss it in that article.

Also, Wikipedia has a lot of pride in being factual, avoiding judgements of value, and backing with already established sources. I think that makes it really hard for ideologies to bleed into content.

Honestly, it seems like one of the main [1] motivations for anyone participate on Wikipedia is to push some ideology or another. I know they theoretically have rules against it, but those are invariably enforced inconsistently and/or only against the most blatant cases.

IMHO, some prime Wikipedia skills are finding bureaucratic cover and being deliberately mute about your motives.

[1] though not only, another big one is obsession

For reference, here's the comment that was deemed sufficient grounds to be desysopped.

> # '''Oppose.''' I think the domination of Wikipedia's woman niche, for lack of a better term, by males masquerading as females as opposed to welcoming actual, genuine, real women who were born and have always been female, is highly toxic. Go ahead, "cancel" me, I don't care. – [[User:Athaenara|Athaenara]] [[User talk:Athaenara| ]] 00:44, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

The important context here is that this is a direct reply to a trans person's application to become an admin on Wikipedia. In other words, they're not objecting to trans ideology or something, they're specifically telling a Wikipedian that they can't be an admin because they're trans.

Except the debate on the ban (which is what I was referring to - the reply itself is pretty much indefensible) became a referendum on ideology rather than a legitimate discussion on a ban due to a harmful action.

>males masquerading as females

Trans people are not masquerading as another gender.

I think she using "male" and "female" to refer to sex. In which case, this would be a true statement, regardless of one's opinion on the validity of 'gender identity' as a concept.

You are still missing the point. Trans people living their real gender don't masquerade, it's the opposite.

Isn't the purpose of the hormone treatments, surgeries, etc. so that someone of the male sex can appear as if the female sex, or vice versa?

Kinda. It's different for different people. Many trans women take hormones hoping they'll help them look like a typical gender-conforming cisgender woman.

One other really common reason is that they are deeply upset by and experience dysphoria due to the effects of masculine puberty, and use hormones and surgery to match their body to how they feel it should be. It helps them feel comfortable in their own skin.

I saw a comic from a trans woman once who had recently started hormones, who noticed she had a miserable mood for a few days every couple of weeks for no apparent reason. She marked them on her calendar and found that it was always the couple of days before her HRT shots. She switched from shots every 14 days to every 10 days, and that fixed it up. So it seems that for trans people, HRT isn't just cosmetic, but has a direct effect on mental well-being that's independent of any noticed physical changes.

But not as a masquerade but to align the outer to the inner.

"male" and "female" refer to sex, not gender

Unless they're used in a discussion specifically about human biology, "male" and "female" can be assumed to refer to gender. The terminology isn't neatly separated, unfortunately.

Are you sure? My impression from common usage is the opposite. It's normally referring to biology, except under certain circumstances.

It depends on context. A discussion about "female singers" would probably be referring to gender.

It's useful to have an adjective equivalent of "man" and "woman", so people use "male" and "female" to mean that. My main point isn't to establish one meaning as more common, but to point out that there's not one "correct" meaning. Terminology around sex and gender are not neatly divided and it's not always easily determined what meaning people are using.

> In humans, the word female can also be used to refer to gender.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gender_identities

> Male is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male

> Female is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female

From your links

>In humans, the word male can also be used to refer to gender.

>In humans, the word female can also be used to refer to gender.

A male with some pills and makeup doesn't become a female.

The emperor's new dress doesn't make him a woman.

Isn't being female due to your sex at birth and not your identifying gender?

It's the same as saying a tomato is a fruit. Words have contextual meanings. Not that I'm a fan, I like things more defined.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gender_identities

This is BS.

What an elaborate argument.

>In humans, the word female can also be used to refer to gender

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female

>In humans, the word male can also be used to refer to gender.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male

How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"?

What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting?

Which political extremists have taken over?

What is ruined?

>What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

Pushing for global use of the US's anachronistic racial science over more nuanced alternatives such as ethnicity/nationality

Could you provide some examples? Be specific about the parts which you think are scientifically relevant.

Well, if I'm reading this all correctly, there's no audit-trail for those funds. So, no we can't provide examples.

The person I was replying to made a bunch of allegations which had to be based on something, right? If you’re going to attack them for something they did there has to be some kind of specific event you could point to.

That can't be true though.

OP knows they are pushing woke policies, so that information is out there.

>Why is the cost of web hosting so important?

Err ... Wikipedia is a website, come on.

Yes, and seeing the total cost of running a website being significantly greater than the cost of the web hosting seems perfectly reasonable.

Sure, but they’re spending money on things that have nothing to do with running the website.

And the banner ads always make it sound like the server might grind to a halt any minute.

This is the key - and it's the failure mode of all political/charity begging across decades and decades.

"We want money to do the things we want to do" doesn't get as much reaction as "holy shit the servers will die tomorrow because you fucks don't ever donate and just suck the sweet sweet wikitit of knowledge".

It's obviously manipulative and at some point it crosses a boundary into immoral. You could add a "My donation is necessary to keep the Wikipedia servers online next year" yes/no question to the donation page and I bet you'd get something high like 80%+ picking yes, because of how the appeals are written.

> How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"?

As noted in their own 2020 report:

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWi...

Only 2.4 of the 112.4 million spent was actually on maintaining the servers themselves. The rest were spent on salaries (55.6 million (!!)), grants (22.8 million (!, why?)), & "Professional services" (11.67 million (again, why?)).

> What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

From what I can gather, it's the promotion of leftist talking points that relegates objectivism & personal liberty in favor of any form of rebalancing, be it racial, political, economical, social, gender-based, or sexual.

My problem with this is that its mainly a phenomenon that's isolated to western countries, with Asian & Middle-eastern countries seemingly skirting by with LGBT+ arrests & atrocities without any major recompense.

> Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting?

This is mainly because Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running", when their own reports make it clear that a lot of the donated funds have been sucked up by the foundation's own internal mechanisms.

> Which political extremists have taken over?

Mainly left-oriented extremists, with the organizations listed from here onwards being examples that were funded by the foundation.

https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579779097278181378

> What is ruined?

For one: Wikipedia's neutral reputation.

Wikipedia was supposed to be a place where consensus could be reached without falling into the trappings of personal or political bias. Instead, the foundation is now seeking to reduce its own transparency by ceasing the publications of its quarterly reviews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic.

> Only 2.4 of the 112.4 million spent was actually on maintaining the servers themselves. ... why?

You seem to be arguing that anything other than strictly server maintenance is wrong, immoral or unnecessary. I'm not sure why that would be the case.

I think people may be focusing on these high-level figures a bit too much. The Wikimedia website has other information about what it is they are actually doing.

> Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running"

Fair enough, I can imagine how that could be an issue. As one opposed to such manipulations in general, a critique of the sort of messaging being used is something that I would welcome.

> Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic.

Thanks, I didn't know that term before. I used a string of blunt questions formatted in that way to be as clear as possible, and because it mirrored the form of the OP's comment.

> You seem to be arguing that anything other than strictly server maintenance is wrong, immoral or unnecessary. I'm not sure why that would be the case.

This is answered by

> Wikipedia's donation drives make it look like "Donate to us to keep the servers running"

Meanwhile I've only ever considered the banners to be annoying and beg-y, but not any sort of claim that they are running out of money. Do the people "scammed" by "help us reach our fundraising goal" also get scammed by those emails about "donald trump's defense fund" and similar? Why didn't they just look up whether wikipedia is running out of money?

I don't understand how a disruptive banner that makes no claims can be considered nefarious.

I didn't mention claims of running out of money. I don't know what your first paragraph is based on.

> banner that makes no claims

Look at this example [0]. If you read that, what would you say the money is going to?

[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Founda...

Anything other than server maintenance or tangibly improving Wikipedia and directly supporting technical projects is unnecessary. Frankly nobody cares about the rest aside from the people getting money as a result and maybe their family and friends.

It’s like Mozilla and all of their non-Firefox/Thunderbird bullshit. Bloat for the sake of bloat.

> > Side note: Gish-gallop-style questions are note a conducive way of inviting conversations around a topic.

> Thanks, I didn't know that term before. I used a string of blunt questions formatted in that way to be as clear as possible, and because it mirrored the form of the OP's comment.

It's also a mis-use of the term. It's for live debates when you just dump a series of questions on the opponent without giving them time to respond, trying to make them look stupid to observers. Doesn't really apply to text like here, when you can take as long as you need to type of the reply.

It totally does apply here and has the same effect. The dwell time between responses makes the questioner look correct to casual readers.

> You seem to be arguing that anything other than strictly server maintenance is wrong, immoral or unnecessary.

I suspect the OP would be perfectly fine with Wikimedia hiring translators to translate more of the 6.5 million English articles into other languages which are often considerably less developed. Or funding more development of their textbooks, dictionaries and other content. They clearly have ample funds that seem to be going to more dubious ends.

> I suspect the OP would be perfectly fine with Wikimedia hiring translators to translate more of the 6.5 million English articles into other languages which are often considerably less developed. Or funding more development of their textbooks, dictionaries and other content. They clearly have ample funds that seem to be going to more dubious ends.

...I would rather that the translation efforts be done by the community & translation services than by the foundation itself. Pushing the effort of translation onto the foundation gives them authority over the translated material, & consequently authority on the original material itself.

In principle, I would like the scope of work for any foundation to be as minimal as possible, & to be directly related to the direct operations & maintenance of the service being provided. Any additional efforts beyond that invites scope creep & will inevitably bloat any organization with non-related work.

> From what I can gather, it's the promotion of leftist talking points that relegates objectivism & personal liberty in favor of any form of rebalancing, be it racial, political, economical, social, gender-based, or sexual.

This does not read like a good-faith interpretation to me. Small-o objectivism and personal liberty are not at all incompatible with a "woke" perspective on race; I daresay relativism -- particularly moral relativism -- is a minority opinion even among leftists. Nor is it necessarily the case that being woke means you're in favor of enforced rebalancing on the basis of race, ethnicity, etc. Wokeness, in my experience, is far more concerned with issues of justice than with rebalancing (which I take to mean something akin to affirmative action or reparations).

What do you think justice means in a "woke" context? My understanding that justice is equity, not equality, in the current jargon.

> How do you arrive at the claim that "probably most" donations go to "pushing woke politics"?

In their donations campaigns, they make it sound like most of the donations go to fund the site while it's almost less than 2%. If they were to employ cheaper developers not working in the city centre of SF and stuck with the pure operational costs (Wikipedia is driven by people working for free for the most part anyway) it would be significally less than it is today.

Even if they change nothing how the site is developed and the actual engineering costs, the funding pages are still dishonest since most of the funding does not go to Wikipedia itself.

> What does "pushing woke politics" mean?

They give money, a lot of it, more than double than the operational costs to highly controversial funds that are politically driven and does not lean on anything else. Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas and therefore are pushing politics.

> Why is the cost of web hosting so important? Do any comparable organisations spend a more appropriate proportion of their revenue on web hosting?

Because they make it sound like this is the main reason that they need additional funding when they ask for it on their webpage. It is what they claim (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fex9854WIAIHSun?format=jpg&name=...) they need in order to operate the site. If they strictly just used the funding to operate the site they could do so for many years to come.

> What is ruined?

The sense of having an actual free community that governs factual information for free for everyone. A site where everyone can rejoice over and take pride in the common knowledge of humanity and the accessability that it provides for people in countries that can't easily get this information otherwise.

This is slowly being ruined by people, like I assume yourself, that are so blinded by the current political agendas that they cannot see the damage they're inflicting on the community. I understand that people always have had different political agendas but you used to be able to talk to people on the other side of the spectrum and accept basic physical facts about the world.

Now it seems like we've thrown everything out of the window. People can't even get along over well established scientific facts and this is true for extremists on all sides.

It is hard to trust a source of information if you know the people that controls the information are political extremists. I would want to live in a world where I can trust that the articles on Wikipedia is as objective as can be.

The most recent Annual Reports [0][1] list 43% and 42% "Direct support to websites" and has a brief explanation of how "Keeping the Wikimedia websites online is about more than just servers." But I do note that plural 'Wikimedia websites' and not just 'Wikipedia'. But even if your 2% figure is accurate for wikipedia.org, that's 40% on other websites, some of which is used directly by Wikipedia.

They same reports list ~32% of their expenses as "support to communities" which they say includes "grants, programs, events, trainings, partnerships, tools to augment contributor capacity, and support for the legal defense of editors."

The screenshot you linked [2] doesn't show anything about hosting costs. I think most people would expect keeping any organisation/website running to involve costs other than the cost of the internet connection/servers. But I do realise that I'm talking from a privileged position here.

> This is slowly being ruined by people, like I assume yourself, that are so blinded by the current political agendas that they cannot see the damage they're inflicting on the community. I understand that people always have had different political agendas but you used to be able to talk to people on the other side of the spectrum and accept basic physical facts about the world.

I'm not sure where that's coming from. All I am doing is talking, and calmly asking you to explain some of the points you volunteered in this forum.

[0] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2019-annu...

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-2021...

[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fex9854WIAIHSun?format=jpg

> I'm not sure where that's coming from. All I am doing is talking, and calmly asking you to explain some of the points you volunteered in this forum.

First off, I am sorry if I came onto you but the questions you were asking while fair and square was incredible naive and a bit wishy washy so I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that you were a firm supporter of the traditional extremist left wing camp.

Everything about the wikimedia scandal can be viewed either by their own documents or most of the important parts is in the twitter thread posted by me and others in comments.

Most of the costs regarding the websites is probably due to the high salary costs of having developers maintain stuff. This is fine IMO but when you run a not for profit org maybe you should respect peoples money and open an office somewhere else than one of the most expensive cities in the world or simply hire remote developers and other employees.

> Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas and therefore are pushing politics.

Please provide some evidence that they fund specifically "extreme left wing" political agendas. By which you mean, what, soviet-style communism? Gulags for cops? Violent revolution?

> Thus, they fund specific (extreme left wing) political agendas

They fund specific agendas. I suspect you are from the USA, have never come across groups with extreme leftwing views, and have confused touchy-feely leftish liberalism with "extreme left wing".

Certainly they are using the funds to discreetly push a political agenda; I think they shouldn't do that. I think they should invest the capital, and run Wikipedia on the investment income. That's what you do with an endowment; you don't launch a search for ways to give all the money away.

Yeah I used to donate semi regularly but not anymore. The EFF is just about the only org I still trust.

Where are you getting "about 90%" from? The controversy here is about a US$4.5 million fund, which is about 2.7% of Wikimedia's 2021 income.

Well, not true. They have employed hundreds of people and pays them ridicolous salaries. Less than half is actually used on actually operating/developing the site. Yes that fund is the most controversial part but it's not the only thing about the topic that is controversial.

2021 website hosting cost $2.4 million - which is less than it did in 2012. Most of the money they recieve by donations goes to something else. As you may see, the site hosting costs are less than what the spend on that controversial fund.

See e.g. an earlier report in the same community newspaper:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

The budget and headcount simply keep growing and growing. At the same time, the Foundation has had eight-figure surpluses for nine of the last ten years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...

In the July 2020 – June 2021 financial year, the surplus was close to $90 million (over $50 million increase in Foundation assets, almost $40 million increase in Endowment).

Yet when volunteers complain that software tools need updating and bug-fixing, the Foundation claims there is a lack of resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

One thing they do spend money on is consultants and "community organizers" trying to figure out how to get people in the developing world to write Wikipedia articles in their languages for free – in part so that Big Tech's voice assistants and Knowledge Graph panels can provide answers in Indian and African languages and extend their monopolies to new markets.

Money actually flowing to people in the developing world however has been a really small amount – less than $4 million in 2020:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Nice ninja edit there, your post previously claimed "about 90% goes to pushing woke politics". As you can see below, enumerated in excruciating detail in the annual reports if you'd like to dig in, the biggest component of Wikimedia's expenditure is simply paying the engineers that keep the site running and roll out improvements like the new UI, visual editing, etc. The actual hosting bill (servers, bandwidth, etc) is only a tiny fraction of that cost.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe...

Yeah I get that I exaggerated my first sentence and thus edited it but it's not that far from the truth.

According to their own site, https://wikimediafoundation.org/support/where-your-money-goe... about 43% goes to the websites. This is less than half. I imagine that most of these salaries are ridicolously high where they could employ cheaper devs and get an actual good representation they chose a SF office with SF employees and give them huge salaries. And since I have learned about this fund and other controversial topics about their employee count etc I question this figure as well. I am not convinced that they have devs for about $50 million per year.

It's fine if you operate a for-profit company but when it's a not for profit organisation the ridicolous spending seems a bit disrespectful to the people that help shape wikipedia to what it is today.

See interesting comment underneath the linked article by a very longstanding Wikipedia volunteer:

--------------------

Problems with poorly supervised grants

See discussion last month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signp...

I've reviewed several grants and I remain deeply worried we are spending money on stuff that is a poorly disguised attempt to raid WMF coffers. A lot of grants are 1) being used for stuff that has ZERO connection with Wikimedia movement, 2) have little to no accountaiblity (people promise to do stuff, if they fail, I see no mechanism for money to be returned to WMF) and 3) seem to have very inflated costs (ex. one project I remember well asked for ~6k$ for open access publishing, whereas I know that the average costs of OA in this very field is usually under $2k, and a lot of similar research is published at no cost yet still using OA model). While I am sure some grants are being spent on worthy causes, the amount of problems I see here is very worrying. I am glad this issue is making more waves. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:44, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

--------------------

The words "gravy train", "cash cow" come to mind.

>This is yet another example of an org that has been taken over by political extremists

[Citation needed]

>[Citation needed]

Here you go, from Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger:

>Wikipedia Is Badly Biased

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

Appreciate the link and it was an interesting read, but being biased does not make them extremists.

So supporting radical left wing people with millions of dollars for output of political propaganda does not? Would you be as apologetic if Wikimedia would donate money to people who spread nazi propaganda as well? If nothing makes them extremists, then no one is extremist.

Of course it's all subjective but this is kind of what I mean that people like this destroys. If we, the other people standing by, cannot even get along to call shit out when it appears then we are royalty effed.

The original claim for which I asked a citation was "This is yet another example of an org that has been taken over by political extremists"

The link you provided makes the claim "Wikipedia pages are biased in their descriptions".

Those claims are not the same, thus your reference does not support the claim. I don't really care either way, but it is dishonest to refer to sources which don't even support the claim.

We can't agree because you appear unable to support the original claim, use dishonest and emotionally manipulative discussion techniques ("Of course it's all subjective but this is kind of what I mean that people like this destroys. If we, the other people standing by, cannot even get along to call shit out when it appears then we are royalty effed.") and Whataboutism ("Would you be as apologetic if Wikimedia would donate money to people who spread nazi propaganda as well?") to attempt to spread your worldview.

> Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that a lot goes to pushing woke politics?

What exactly do you mean by "woke politics"?

May be referring to this part of the thread[1] linked in the article

> Wikimedia gave $250,000 to Borealis's Racial Equity in Journalism Fund. That money was then cascaded down to a dozens of ideologically aligned news outlets across the US.

> Thus, the money you give to keep Wikipedia online is diverted to bankroll the inescapable American culture war.

[1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579776106034757633.html

https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633

That is the twitter thread that started the uproar, all the info you'll need is in there.

if you seriously ask: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#Woke_as_a_pejorative_term

if you were being sarcastic, the answer is: anything vaguely antiracist ist woke

If you see one side involving millions of people is portrayed as monsters, you should doubt such portrayal (people overall are good, sadists who enjoy human suffering are tiny minority, most evil is from systems/institutions not individuals).

Here's personal account (one data point) of what I mean then I use the word "wokeism:" good intentions are subverted to censor people, to distract from what is important, kindness/openness is weaponized e.g., cancel culture is applied to university professors for voicing scientific truth.

If by "cancel culture" you mean books banned in schools, that happens indeed, but maybe not the way you believe https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor...

Probably means something closer to Kathleen Stock: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/22/kathleen-s...

The mere fact that the word has been appropriated to mean something negative to some should be a big ol' red flag for those who are skeptical about its necessity.

It isn't and wasn't ever about divisiveness or negativity, the whole point is to include as many people of diverse backgrounds as possible in as many things as possible, and "woke" politics could be described as ideas and policies that support this concept of inclusivity.

Nothing about "woke" ideology portrays anyone as a "monster", full stop.

Millions of people are monsters. Millions of people are sociopaths.

People who use the term "woke" as a pejorative universally are stupid, terrible people, or they're manipulating stupid, terrible people. This is an absolute truth.

> If you see one side involving millions of people is portrayed as monsters, you should doubt such portrayal

Except that history is chock full of cases where millions of people collectively acted as monsters. People may overall want to be good, but seem to be very easily persuaded that "good" involves genociding all those "others".

> most evil is from systems/institutions not individuals

If those institutions perpetuating evil are made of up millions of people, then who cares? Your claim is that "Wokeism" is obviously wrong because it says 40 to 60 million Americans are acting like assholes, when in fact they're simply all individual die-hard followers of the asshole party? You're just shuffling definitions around to get around the obvious point that the term "woke" is now a get-out-of-racism-free card. (Or sexism, classism, homophobia, you name it)

> cancel culture

Yes, all those woke people, banning and burning books ...

You: for you everything anti racist is woke. Them: for you everything is racist.

And it goes on forever.

Pretty much word for word what I say about Mozilla and their constant "need" for more money.

I'll certainly never donate again.

Even if that were true (it doesn't seem like you're able to substantiate this)...

Good.

"Woke" politics (better known as "anything conservatives don't like") are the only sane politics taking place right now. Perfect? No. Actually trying to help the people who need it most? Yes.

Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that a lot, probably most, goes to pushing woke politics?

Hold up a second. The last time I saw an article whining about political bias on Wikipedia the complaint was that Wikipedia were a bunch of incel neckbeards and/or Nazis. Has something changed?

Wikipedia is basically the Wikipedia volunteers. Anyone can volunteer, so unsurprisingly some of the volunteers are "odd".

This article is about WMF, which is run by paid employees, not volunteers. They reflect the political posture of their employer, not the consensus of the Wikipedia volunteers.

Things have changed a LOT in the last 15 years. There are no neckbeards left on Wikipedia. It's all purple-haired, blue check marked ideologues now. Everyone else gets banned.

Well that's depressing.

> probably most

As far as I can tell from the OP and it's cited links[1], in 2021 they had around $160 in total revenue. $5 million of that went to the Tides foundation, the thing I think you are describing as "pushing woke politics". Another $50 million of that revenue was simply left over as unspent surplus.

Are you talking about other expenditures as "pushing woke politics"? On what basis are you claiming that a "lot, probably most" of donations to go "pushing woke politics"?

(Around 1/3rd of donations (still not "probably most") remain simply unspent, which is kind of weird, but not about "pushing woke politics").

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/1e/Wikim...

> Who would want to donate to wikipedia when they know that about 90%+ goes to pushing woke politics?

Lots of people! The advancing of fashionable progressive causes is a far more popular thing to do today than hosting free online encyclopaedias. Wikipedia would arguably get more donations if they stuck a Black Lives Matter logo on their banner ads.

> Lots of people! The advancing of fashionable progressive causes is a far more popular thing to do today than hosting free online encyclopaedias. Wikipedia would arguably get more donations if they stuck a Black Lives Matter logo on their banner ads.

I don't think so. Just because the social activists are vocal does not mean that they are numerous.

In fact, looking at raw numbers, they're obviously in the minority: wikipedia donators outnumber actual BLM donators, so there are obviously more people interested in donating to wikipedia than to BLM.

If the wikimedia foundation were honest in their request for donations ("We plan to spend this on political activism"), they'd get fewer donators.

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