[ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:CANCER ].
I'm just saying.
290 karma · joined April 2, 2013
I'm just saying.
I am pretty sure that they would welcome comments from Hacker News users on that page.
Also see Wikipedia: Camel's nose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s_nose
I don't see any sources of revenue that could fund the hosting described.
OK, who would pay the 1,149 administrators? Oh wait, they are all unpaid volunteers too.
OK, who would pay the developers? Oh, wait, the software was originally created by unpaid volunteers and it works well enough that having three developers evaluating bug fixes submitted by volunteers would be enough. There are plenty of Linux distributions and open-source projects that get by on one or two developers.
What about the 924,632,645 edits, 49,122,961 pages of all kinds and 5,978,255 articles? Oh wait, those are free to copy over along with the software that runs the encyclopedia.
Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer"
Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer"
I am going to think about this, do some research, and see if I can turn it into an essay on Wikipedia about collecting money after the job is done. Thanks!
Didn't the march of dimes also keep taking in donations after polio was eradicated?
Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer"
If the endowment is just one more account that can be drained at will we have no protection from a sudden drop in revenue while the WMF maintains the current spending levels in the hope that revenue will recover.
I also looked into whether the endowment is legally protected against a large payout as a result of a lawsuit. I am not a lawyer, but it looks like the WMF needs to structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal to get that sort of protection.
Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer".
Calling out concrete examples of waste also has a downside. It usually results in the discussion going off into the weeds about whether individual expenditures are justified. There are many people who focus on individual examples of waste. I chose to focus on the big picture -- overall spending growth.
I believe that I did "actually describe a scenario where it was well functioning but ran out of money."
From my essay:
"Nothing can grow forever. Sooner or later, something is going to happen that causes the donations to decline instead of increase. It could be a scandal (real or perceived). It could be the WMF taking a political position that offends many donors. Or it could be a recession, leaving people with less money to give. It might even be a lawsuit that forces the WMF to pay out a judgement that is larger than the reserve. Whatever the reason is, it will happen. It would be naïve to think that the WMF, which up to this point has never seriously considered any sort of spending limits, will suddenly discover fiscal prudence when the revenues start to decline. It is far more likely that the WMF will not react to a drop in donations by decreasing spending, but instead will ramp up fund-raising efforts while burning through our reserves and our endowment."
:Would you really prefer it if Wikipedia allowed David Miscavige ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miscavige ) to edit the Wikipedia page on Scientology ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology )?
:Wikipedia's policies on writing about yourself are spot on. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Best_practices_for_e...
I don't think I have ever hinted that Wikipedia is spending too much on servers. I consider that part of Wikipedia to pretty much be the best managed part, and everything they do increases reliability, helps with disaster recovery, or makes the site faster. I even said "It costs a certain amount to have reliable servers, run a good legal team, maintain the core software, etc. But none of the things that the WMF needs to do require ever-expanding spending."
In my opinion, spending 1,250 times as much to do basically the same job is all the evidence you need. I wouldn't squawk at 5 or 10 times as much, but 1,250 times as much? At that point the burden of proof is on the person who claims that such a huge increase in spending was necessary.
Your reference to boys town missed the point. Boys town didn't run out of orphans to spend money on. They simply failed to spend a large amount of it on orphans.
A better charity to compare with Wikipedia would be the the Washington Monument Restoration Project.
See https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc72.htm
Once the Washington Monument is completely restored you can't spend any more money restoring the Washington Monument. If donations keep coming in, you shouldn't spend them on giving executives of the charity free ski vacations (yes, the WMF actually did that) You should instead build up an endowment that is eventually big enough that the interest covers all Washington Monument maintenance forever. Then and only then should you tell donors "look, we don't need any more money for restoring the Washington Monument. If you give us a donation we will use it for other things, starting with restoring the Lincoln Memorial".
There are a huge number of trolls and vandals who would love to be able to avoid being blocked by using a VPN. Wikipedia has to balance the need to stop them with the need to let legitimate VPN users edit.
In May of 2018 I posted a request for Comment and got a clarification on who should be granted IPBE.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:IP_block_exempt...
The result of that discussion was:
:It's likely safe to say that administrator judgement on a case-by-case basis can decide whether the provided justification constitutes a legitimate need and whether that need is sufficient to grant IPBE.. it's pretty clear that the community at large likely also doesn't want it to be routinely granted, for lack of a better phrase, just because someone wants it and could hat-collect it. Someone should likely, for example, actually be affected by a block to request it and/or someone should probably be able to explain their need for the additional layer of privacy rather than just, 'Hey I want IPBE because I said the word privacy.' "
That was the decision of the Wikipedia community. If you think that decision was "silly" you are free to post an RfC and see if the consensus has changed.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Re: "Has it become that bad?" No. Not even close. The people who complain about such things are typically newbies who make the mistake of trying to "fix" articles on highly contentious topics with hundreds of edits per day. Just pick a page that hasn't been edited in a while, which is most of them. The history tab tells you how often it gets edited.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Re: "I habitually use a VPN, and Wikipedia does not let me contribute (specifically, edit pages), even if I am logged in."
You can request permission to edit Wikipedia through a VPN.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_block_exemption
"Editors in good standing whose editing is disrupted by unrelated blocks or firewalls may request IP address block exemption, which allows editing on an otherwise-blocked IP address... If you will be editing using an anonymous proxy, including a VPN service, you must send your request to..."
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Re: "Wikipedia has a great output. In my view they don't need my time and effort. They're doing great now." We really need a lot more help here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team
"The Wikipedia Typo Team is dedicated to improving the quality of Wikipedia by correcting typos and misspellings. If you see any typos (even minor ones), please correct them. This kind of editing is a never-ending job, so we could use your help! Please consider joining our team. All you need to do is start correcting typos."
Re: "When I see a message asking to donate money, I do, because I assume they do need that if they're asking for money." please read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12...
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wikipedia-fundraising-drive-should...
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9qqds7Z3Ykd9Kdeay/...
http://thewikipedian.net/2016/03/11/modest-proposal-wikimedi...
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
First off, the above comment is an example of hijacking; using a discussion about one thing to try to get attention for something else. You see this a lot with Abortion, Gun control, and US presidential politics. I am not saying that those aren't important topics, but do they really need to be inserted into a discussion about how much money Wikipedia is spending?
I would strongly encourage the person trying to hijack this discussion to start a new discussion
I would strongly encourage all HN readers to not give the poster the attention he wants and to downvote any comments that are not about WMF finances
I also would strongly encourage all HN readers to not respond to this sort of thing and to stay on topic.
For those who are interested, here is what Wikipedia has done about this situation:
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
Philip Cross is indefinitely topic banned from post-1978 British politics, broadly construed. This restriction may be first appealed after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter. This sanction supersedes the community sanction applied in May 2018.
Passed 11 to 0 at 18:34, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Amended by motion at 20:08, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia's relevant policy states:
"The purpose of a topic ban is to forbid editors from making edits related to a certain topic area where their contributions have been disruptive, but to allow them to edit the rest of Wikipedia. Unless clearly and unambiguously specified otherwise, a topic ban covers all pages (not only articles) broadly related to the topic, as well as the parts of other pages that are related to the topic, as encapsulated in the phrase 'broadly construed.'"
If anyone thinks Wikipedia should do more, they should bring it up at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests -- not on hacker news.
Again, I encourage all HN readers to not respond to hijacking attempts.
This works:
I replaced it with another page on Wikipedia that redirects to the "User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased." page.
Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer".
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Re: "Um, the graph shows that the reserves are increasing every year. Money in exceeds money out year after year."
You missed the first part of what I wrote in my essay:
"Nothing can grow forever. Sooner or later, something is going to happen that causes the donations to decline instead of increase. It could be a scandal (real or perceived). It could be the WMF taking a political position that offends many donors. Or it could be a recession, leaving people with less money to give. It might even be a lawsuit that forces the WMF to pay out a judgement that is larger than the reserve. Whatever the reason is, it WILL happen. It would be naïve to think that the WMF, which up to this point has never seriously considered any sort of spending limits, will suddenly discover fiscal prudence when the revenues start to decline. It is far more likely that the WMF will not react to a drop in donations by decreasing spending, but instead will ramp up fund-raising efforts while burning through our reserves and our endowment."
I made it clear that Wikipedia is not in trouble at the present time. But there is a real possibility that there are bad times ahead, and we should prepare for them now.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Letting the endowment grow by at least inflation is already covered in my essay:
"We should make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details. We should limit spending increases to no more than inflation plus some percentage (adjusted for any increases in page views), build up our endowment, and structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad."
"If we do these things now, in a few short years we could be in a position to do everything we are doing now, while living off of the endowment interest, and would have no need for further fundraising. Or we could keep fundraising, using the donations to do many new and useful things, knowing that whatever we do there is a guaranteed income stream from the endowment that will keep the servers running indefinitely."
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Re: "I have heard just the opposite: that having a decade-length endowment is generally a sign of hording by the non-profit, and unlikely to be contributing to the mission."
That's only true of charities where there is no natural limit on how much they can spend. If you are feeding orphans you can always do more until every orphan is fed. The WMF isn't like that, They have one job; keep Wikipedia and the sister projects like Wictionary online. That doesn't require ever-increasing spending other than to cover actual increases in hosting expenses and essential employees.
Imagine a future Wikipedia that is 100% funded by the endowment, which will always be there even if nobody donates, and which has no fundraising banners, just a small "donate" link. I think that is a goal worth pursuing.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Re "I've heard bad things about writing articles on Wikis. Lots of ego-wars." you hear those things from new Wikipedia users who decide that the first thing they should do is either [A] "Fix" the Donald Trump article, [B] try to use Wikipedia to advertise their garage band, or [C] try to correct the biases I list at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:YWAB
If you pick an article, check the history, and find that it ISN'T getting 300 edits every day, you will have a much easier time improving that article.
My Wikipedia page has a link so you can email me. I will be glad to help if you want to become a Wikipedia editor.
EDIT: Fixed a bad link.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
I think you hit the nail on the head. For a charity that is trying to feed starving children, they can always use more money as long as there are any starving children left. Same with most charities. But if a charity exists to but an encyclopedia on the web, they don't need to keep increasing their spending other than what is needed to cover any increases in the cost of running the servers plus a reasonable amount for support staff.
Related: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/...?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Charity Navigator is a fine organization, but they do have the flaw of having to take the charities word on what the core mission is. If the WMF says they need 350 employees -- or 350,000 employees -- to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it. If the WMF says that flying people to exotic locations for Wikimania meetings is needed to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it. If the WMF says that building a search engine to compete with Google is needed to accomplish the core mission, Charity Navigator takes their word for it.
My position is that Wikipedia was accomplishing that core mission just fine in 2008. I was an active editor in 2008 and I did not notice any pressing needs that were not funded because we were spending 4.3% of what we are spending now. What, exactly, are we doing now that we were not doing ten years ago that justifies us spending 23 three times as much money to do essentially the same job? I could see spending 5 times more, but 23?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
I carefully considered the above objection when I first wrote my essay, but I decided against removing the cancer analogy. I though that making an analogy that would be remembered was important. For what it is worth, I myself am a cancer survivor and even after 10 years of it not coming back I still sweat bullets every year when I do my annual cancer screening.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
This is the first time I have seen any comment saying that I should have listed page views instead of pages. I hadn't given it much thought until you brought it up, but I don't see any reason which I shouldn't remove the pages statistic and replace it with page views. I do want to make the essay as accurate as I can, and criticisms/suggestions are a big help in doing that. (you never see the flaws in your own writing).
Can anyone think of a downside to me changing it to pageviews?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
I do not believe that the above "It was a plan from a past Executive Director that never even started" claim is accurate. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
Key quotes:
"In May 2015, Risker observed that a team called 'Search and Discovery' was 'extraordinarily well-staffed with a disproportionate number of engineers at the same time as other areas seem to be wanting for them'."
"We also know at some point it was an ambitious project to create a brand new search engine as an alternative to Google."
See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
My essay says "We should limit spending increases to no more than inflation plus some percentage". It doesn't say how big that percentage should be. If the WMF limits themselves to not spending more than ten times what they spent last year they would have done what I ask. Right now there are no limits.