Hacker News Reader

Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

That is missing the point. The point is that Wikipedia baits people by begging for help to keep the site up. Then, the raised money is funneled through different layers of charities (each obviously taking a cut) to then end up in a vague, totally unclear cause.

"many people can't access or contribute to Wikipedia because of racism" is not a thing you can pay money to fix. These are not server costs, where you can present the donor a bill for where his money went.

Who received the money ultimately? What happened because of that money? What could have been avoided because of that money?

Can you answer these questions? Would you donate to any organization which did not tell you these answers? Certainly I will not.

View on HN

First up, I actually agree that the specific fund donation here is highly sketchy, especially the way it bypassed the usual processes and in particular the conflict of interest involved with the counsel hopping jobs between the WMF and the recipient. So I'm not even going to try to justify it.

However, the WMF also does have a history of concrete actions to improve access to Wikipedia: it funds chapters around the world, seeds obscure language versions that would otherwise not be sustainable, and does stuff like sponsoring flights for students and Wikimedians living in poor countries to various Wiki conferences. I'm totally on board with this and I think it's a fine use of a reasonable portion of the Foundations' money, as long as it doesn't imperil the main mission, which it clearly doesn't.

It's the culture at the very top of the WMF that has allowed this "sketchy" fund to come about. It's even worse with the Wikimedia Endowment at the Tides Foundation. That's over $100 million in donations collected over a period of 6.5 years without a single Form 990 disclosure, without a single audited financial statement ever published:

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

Transparency is being reduced more and more; stopping publication of the quarterly reviews is just another symptom.

People who donate, do it only for the website, not for any other cause. The donate banner is a lie. Now when they are spending elsewhere, they are deceiving the donors. Period.

If they want money for all these things, they should clearly mention this while asking money in Wikipedia. People will donate for that. This is the reason of the issue. Not because people hate any community.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com