Asklemmy

Lucky for you the wikimedia foundation files annual reports https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2022-2023-annual-report/

I think this is the latest one available.

As to whether they need your money or not I’m a bit conflicted. They have raised and spent more and more money every year. They have a lot of money and some have argued they spend it poorly.

On the whole though, besides asking for donations, they have maintained their goal of being ad free. If you’ve ever used a fan wiki for a video game or hobby you have likely experienced how bad a wiki larded down with ads can be.

I think for myself as someone that has worked as a software engineer for my entire life building out massive infrastructure that is on a similar scale to Wikipedia, I don’t really know how they justify such high development spend when the tech isn’t really evolving very much. I’m sure it’s not cheap to host, so that spend is fine by me, but I’m not sure what all they are building. That doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile, I just have a hard time imagining it.

I would encourage you to look at numbers and decide if they make sense to you. Also people have written on the subject, so some googling will likely bring you to more opinionated pieces than my own.

I've been a funding member of the Wikimedia Foundation for over a decade. I have looked at their finances several times before and during financing them.

As with a lot of similar non-profits, a considerable amount of donations does not go into "running the servers". You have to judge this by yourself, but they don't embezzle any money and there is a reasonable bottom line. Wikipedia continuously helps tons of people, and the people who run the operation enable that.

You can download a full dump of Wikipedia any day. Compared to other lying companies, they have been true on their promises for some time.

Of all the $1 I could spend in a year, the one I give to Wikipedia is probably the least wrong invested, and that $1 actually already makes a difference

AFAIK they tend to overdramatize their lack of money.

No, they don’t.

As of December 31, 2023, [Wikimedia has] annual revenues of $180.2 million, […] net assets of $255 million and a growing endowment, which surpassed $100 million in June 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation

They seem to give a lot of cash away to other organisations https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579776106034757633.html (Their response is here for fairness.)

Whatever you think of the tertiary organisations, it seems like you're better off donating directly to a cause that needs it, rather than funding a bunch of middle managers to give it to someone else.

Wikipedia makes most of its money from donations, with some money coming from other sources like commercial API access. It consistently raises more money than it spends and has been building an endowment. However, that income mainly comes from the fundraising drives.

Wikipedia has an endowment, but it isn't enough to run the website for more than a few years.

In terms of expenses, the largest expense is in having staff to run the various websites and foundation. Charity auditors rank the foundation highly on expenses, so the foundation is likely not overpaying staff.

Wikipedia needs donations to survive, but it isn't struggling. If you feel like you have better things to donate to, it is probably ok for now.

No, it doesn't.

The Wikimedia projects are made by volunteers, almost none of the money goes to actually making the content. Some of it does go into keeping the servers running or into software development.

And some of it goes into expanding an ever-increasing bureaucracy, which is tasked among other things with enforcing intransparent "global bans" or lighter sanctions against contributors the WMF doesn't like (opinions of the editing community don't matter at all on these). If they had less money, perhaps they would lay off some of their trust and safety team and not catch some people who are making useful contributions by evading global bans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer

There are so many more worthy free knowledge organizations to donate to: OpenStreetMap, FOSS projects (e.g. Software in the Public Interest), even Miraheze.

And how about archive.org ?

As far as i know yeah without the donations they don't exist

They rely on donations, that part is correct. Are they in constant financial need so they are forced to ask users so often to donate? No, they are not.

Also keep in mind that while the server and developing costs of Wikipedia are one area of spending, Wikimedia spends money on a host of projects. Some of them you would probably consider more important than others.

Wikipedia will keep running, even if you don’t donate. The Wikimedia foundation (which runs Wikipedia) gets a lot of donations and fund a ton of other stuff apart from Wikipedia, so you’re donation will rather have a chance to decide if these keep running.

I don’t think they are running inefficiently. I do think they have more than enough money to keep themselves going for many years to come. Also, the lack of inclusiveness in the editing is the reason I don’t donate. Nothing like making an article contribution only to have it quickly reverted by some control freak editor from the inner circle. Wikipedia is not actually what it claims to be. It’s slightly more open than a real encyclopedia, but not much.

No

As far as I know, I don't know.

They set themselves up that way. They do so saying that if they were properly sponsored, the "sponsors" could influence their bias, as if they didn't succumb anyways.

I made an account and did a one time donation for $2.50. This removes the website donation banner. As long as I'm logged in, I do not see those messages. I get an email about donating once a year, possibly twice. Infrequently enough to be unsure of how often it has happened. If I ever see the donation banner on the website, I know I am logged out. So I can't answer your query about the corporate aspect but I can say that the heartstring tugging can easily be solved with a one time donation for a small amount. You can do a custom amount for a donation so theoretically it could be for $0.01 or your lowest fiat equivalent.

Actually Not really but It will be good if you donate.