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Comment by agnishom | Hacker News Reader

What is wrong with the requests for money? Wikipedia ads are the least intrusive of ads.

A lot of people are annoyed that the foundation has significant reserves, enough that much of it's budgets is grants, yet puts out messages like they are in dire need for cash. I think it's mostly fine, though annoying, but a lot of people disagree with it in principal.

https://archive.is/yg5RW

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

The grants thing is a bit misleading - a lot of the grants are to affiliate organizations in other countries. So for example if Wikimedia germany writes some code for the wikipedia site, it is probably funded by a grant from wikipedia donations.

I dont claim everything wikimedia foundation does is useful or that there isn't any wasted money. They are also definitely past the "keep the lights on stage", but you cant do anything useful if you only keep the lights on. Mostly i just think discussing if the budget of a multimillion dollar organization that runs one of the most popular websites in the world is reasonable requires a lot more nuance than most discussons on the internet have.

They are also under fire for putting misleading adverts in low-income countries like Brazil and India, sounding like they are going to be sold if they don't get enough donation.

Didn’t they make all that money off a weird porn site that had nude women posing with cats?

If you mean bomis, jimmy wales may have made some money off it (although i think most of his money comes from wikia/fandom not bomis), and maybe some very initial seed money/in-kind hosting came from there in the very early years (idk), but wikipedia is a separate entity from all that, and generally did not get money from bomis.

So no.

Little Gray Guy, as I recall.

> Wikipedia ads are the least intrusive of ads.

Wikipedia's ads take up the entire screen. How could they be more intrusive than that?

When I saw that Wikipedia has a bar/event space in Berlin. I decided I will never donate to them again. They don't know how to manage money. At the scale they run, their software should be way leaner than it is. It's shameful.

What is this in reference to? Where is this bar?

Wikimedia Deutschland exists for 20 years, has their own fundraising team which seams quite successfull based on sums raised, has their headquarters in Berlin and employ like 160 people.

From what I read "bar" hosts events every week at worst, including other orgs and initiatives, like Open Data or Open Content (sorry if I use wrong names, I used German article and my German is really bad).

I am always in awe how low is the knowledge of the scale of open initiatives in Germany. Linux distros, openstreetmap contributions, many open data initiatives, businesses developing OSS and offering support to it, or plainly promoting opensource and develepmont among citizens from early age. I'm humbled by their contribution to truly open initiatives and would not blink an eye if they "wasted" rent money for a single place. Also it's pennies compared to contributions they bring.

To any Germans reading, as much as us Poles can't shake off tension between our countries, we still see what you are doing. A true and honest hats off, to what you are doing to education and how vast is understanding of openness in your average citizen.

P.s. Wikimedia HQ is in San Francisco, I wonder how is the rent there...

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiB%C3%A4r

I find them intrusive, as well as dishonest. They give off a "poor little us" mom-and-pop-shop vibe, which must be very misleading to people who don't know how well funded they are.

> What is wrong with the requests for money? Wikipedia ads are the least intrusive of ads.

Did you forget the /s?

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