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A comment on Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?. Parent comment

Re:Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people t... by saurik on Monday May 31, 2021 @06:14AM (#27342424)
> provides a place to work on non-encyclopedic content that should not be in Wikipedia itself

I don't think I agree with you at all here, given that I grew up wanting the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Wikipedia refuses to offer it... seemingly in no small part because the founder of it makes money off of Wikia.

But, I believe regardless: if someone goes to an encyclopedia and is told "this encyclopedia needs your help: it is going to run out of money unless you donate to it", and you take that money to do something that isn't to improve that encyclopedia, that is absolutely unethical, no matter how useful it might be on its own.

> Wiktionary indirectly supports translation work that benefits Wikipedia

This alone might be somewhat fair (though I find it hard to believe, honestly); but, I still challenge whether someone who comes to the website and is shown the current banner would believe their money isn't being flitted away on things that don't benefit the resource they were using, even if it might be "more ethical" to provide better translations.

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Re:Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people t... by ratww on Monday May 31, 2021 @06:40AM (#27342584)
The Wikia part is a very important point.

At some point in the last 10 years Wikipedia managed to purge as much content as it could about fiction because this was Wikia's turf. There was just an order from above and overzealous mods willing to do the work, even when the content wasn't readily available.

Now the content is in a website that's closed, slow as hell, littered with ads, tracking and autoplaying video.

Maybe Wikia should be the one footing the whole bill for Wikipedia, instead of Wikipedia spending 12% of donation money on fundraisers.

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Re:Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people t... by zozbot234 on Monday May 31, 2021 @06:52AM (#27342641)
They purged content about fiction because it was pointless cruft, often had no independent references, and was generally indistinguishable from undue promotion/advertising of said fiction. The increased focus on stuff that's neutral and properly verifiable seems to have been good for Wikipedia itself.
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