Wikipedia itself is what it is, a library of collective effort.
As much as I despise wikimedia, the worth of wikipedia for humanity is so much more compared to the negative aspects of wikimedia.
They pretend it is a charity, but it isn't. It all just goes to shareholders.
What is this nonsense? It's a non-profit. There are literally no shareholders.
There (wikimedia) public financials aren't particularly detailed, just the base required, but even they are damning.
The spent $4,767,366 on hosting. Sounds like a lot?
It's there smallest expense.
They spent $6,768,621 on travel and conferences, $9,645,387 on donation processing, $20,373,682 on professional services, and $127,467,261 on salaries/wages.
There financials do not support the "woe is us we're dieing worse than ever before and no one supports us" banners.
Ok so they're a fairly large organization. Compared to other similarly sized tech companies, they pay pretty far below market rates. They're not exactly looting the coffers.
They are doing pretty well financially, yes, and they have done well with their endowment, but it's not like they have an order of magnitude more money then they are letting on.
Are their banners obnoxious? Yes. Are they effective? Apparently.
What would you rather have? Do you really want Wikipedia to be destitute? "Hey guys Jimmy here we don't really need any money but I guess you can give us some?"
No one knows what the future holds. A strong endowment fund today isn't a guarantee for tomorrow.
I'm glad they're striking when the iron is hot. I hope they build up enough wealth to operate for generations upon generations. Of the things on the modern Internet that offend my senses, the fundraising banners on Wikipedia probably rank dead last.
I don't get how people can be so negative about such an overwhelmingly positive contributor to society.
The ASPCA and St Judes don't get money from "we're doing amazing shit with this pile of money you've given us". They get money from "look at these dieing children and pets".
Wikimedia is no different. The mission is worthwhile, and they have been overwhelmingly effective in their pursuit of that goal. The bickering over a few articles getting deleted or volunteers being banned is just par or the course for such a large org with such a large mission.
One could argue that the ASPCA could save more dogs if they didn't spend so much on execs and ads, but we can't know that to be true. What if saving that many dogs really does require million dollar c-suites and multi-million dollar ad-campaigns?
If I were choosing where to put my money, Wikimedia wouldn't be on the list for other reasons. I prefer smaller local orgs where the people managing the money have to interact directly with their neighbors who support their missions as I find the social pressure effective and it doesn't represent a cost to the organization like an accounting or accountability firm would. $1000 to my local library does more for my community than $1000 to wikipedia would ever do.
That's why I prefer federated national non-profits as well. Donating to say my local Habit for Humanity does support the national org to some degree, but most of the donation stays to support local efforts.
wiki-p/m-edia is a great mission, it just isn't my mission.