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Comment by hayst4ck | Hacker News Reader

I don't donate to Wikipedia because they need money. I donate to Wikipedia because I think they are a force for good in this world and I don't believe there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Wikipedia is an institution that has improved my life and I think that deserves investment.

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I think it does a lot of harm along with the good. They don't seem to enforce much for policies that bias any article that's non-technical. Also they redonate a lot of donated money, some of which goes to some dubious places. I would think that's reason enough to not donate.

Truth is biased. I am OK with someone taking a stand on what the truth is and the fact there are meta discussions on what the truth is is reassuring. If someone thinks Taiwan is a part of China, they are going to feel like an authoritative source of information describing Taiwan as a sovereign country is "harmful."

Fascist ideology doesn't want the idea of truth to exist and Wikipedia weighing in and saying "this is the best approximation of truth we got" is a small but powerful assault against fascist ideology.

The purpose of free speech is to protect speaking truth to power. If there is no conception of what truth is then how can one speak truth to power?

"Dubious donations" seems like the epitome of FUD.

Every nontechnical article is full of selective quotes, from borderline random people, which have no place in an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia has facts. That's not what Wikipedia even tries to do. If it wasn't auch a great source for the sciences I would be ok with it going away.

> That's not what Wikipedia even tries to do

I think it’s exactly what Wikipedia tries to do. But given the scale of things its not going to get it right every time.

> I think it does a lot of harm along with the good.

You said "also they redonate..." so you seem to consider that a separate issue. Thus, what "harm" have you found wikipedia to have done, specifically?

"some of which goes to some dubious places."

As Wikipedia would say... [citation neeeded].

Things like this, for example: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2021/09/08/wikimedia-fo...

If users support these organisations, they can donate directly, especially given that most Wikimedia donors have no idea their money is not being spent on Wikipedia itself.

What is dubious about Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), the Borealis Philanthropy Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, Howard University School of Law and the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ), InternetLab, STEM en Route to Change (SeRCH) Foundation, or the Media Foundation of West Africa? I've poked around to each of them and haven't found any scandals. Do you just not like the values of these organizations? I wouldn't think "dubious" is the right word then. Also, if you didn't like their values, it doesn't make sense to donate to wikipedia, an organization that implements the same values.

I wasn't a fan of those grants but it was a one time thing they did that was a relatively small portion of their budget.

According to tax forms just released last week, the outgoing Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher got $623,286 in severance pay in 2021:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/14/Wikim...

She made a total of $798,632 that year.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/14/Wikim...

Another manager who had been there for less than two-and-a-half years got $324,748 in severance, more than 100% of her salary in her last full year of employment ...

Discussion on the Wikimedia mailing list:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...

Also, $100 million have gone into an "Endowment" that has never to this day, in nearly a decade of existence, published audited accounts. Report in Wikipedia's community newspaper:

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

Promises have been made for years that the Endowment, held by the Tides Foundation, would "soon" be registered as a separate 501c3 nonprofit org and start filing public accounts ... still hasn't happened.

> I don't donate to Wikipedia because they need money. I donate to Wikipedia because I think they are a force for good in this world and I don't believe there is such a thing as a free lunch.

If you donate to an organization that doesn't need the money, you might as well assume that money will be wasted on something with the similar societal benefit as a party full of hookers and blow.

Donations don't pay the authors and editors.

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