Every so often I give a few bucks(far less than the worth of knowledge I got from it)
Among other projects I belive is beneficial to the world. It’s Libre software and provides free (CC-by-SA) knowledge without making you a product. I only made a one time 3$ donation but I might donate more in the future.
I used to do a regular donation ($5 a month or something) but then I found out Jimmy Wales (who was a figurehead of the site at that point) was a weird Ayn Rand libertarian and stopped.
Unless he’s personally being enriched (as opposed to making a living), that wouldn’t bother me. I have never felt the need to check. I donate because it’s useful to me.
I didn’t buy a Tesla because that fucker is enriched af and I hate him and I can get other cars that serve me just as well. There’s no (real) replacement or substitute for Wikipedia.
So yet another example of an objectivist being ultra productively generous and benefitting society, and again it’s simply rejected by someone whose opinion of objectivism was formed by its opponents.
People always talk about how it’s all about “I got mine” and yet every single one of her protagonists makes enormous self sacrifice for people they love.
Contrary to popular misinformation, objectivism isn’t about “I serve only myself”; it’s about “I decide my own ideals”.
And very frequently, the ideals of her hero characters include giving enormous gifts to others.
Wikipedia is a great example of that same drive manifesting in reality: 100% contrary to the BS greed-only perception of what Rand was trying to point to, Wikipedia is a totally free resource for everybody, sustained entirely by voluntary funding.
The way it’s in line with Rand’s thinking has nothing to do with selfishness and everything to do with the fact that the Wikimedia foundation doesn’t ask for permission it just creates and gives.
I’m no objectivist but I find it funny you are just downvoted but no one has the effort to make a counter-argument 🤣
It has an abominable political slant, so absolutely not. If there was a way to split the science/math/etc. segment from the rest of it, that one would totally be worth donating to.
Could you elaborate? I’ve never heard of that. Although I don’t donate to Wikipedia now.
That can be a touchy subject because the slant of Wikipedia and the slant of Reddit are very similar, but with Reddit leaning more towards chasing frivolous headlines and Wikipedia leaning more towards, like, rehabilitating Nazis and the like. The short version is that Wikipedia is far to the right of consensus among even neoliberal historians on many subjects and you will see things treated as plain there that are relatively fringe views academically.
Nope, I’ve donated to the internet archive because I have infinity more respect for them and they actually need more funding.
Wikipedia has more than they know what to do with, the money just falls out of their pockets
Came here to say the same thing. The Internet Archive needs the money a lot more and are constantly battling legal threats. I donate to them every now and then. Librarians and archivists rule.
Absolutely not. They have way more money than they can sensibly spend, keep begging for more as if they could barely keep the lights on (they could probably easily keep the core mission going with about 10% of the money they’re getting), and then expand their spending to match the donations they collected.
They then created an endowment (i.e. a pile of wealth that generates enough interest to sustain them indefinitely), using both additional donations and some of the money given to Wikimedia (which reduces the apparent amount of money they spend and is not listed as money Wikipedia/Wikimedia has, as it is accounted for separately). The $100M endowment was planned to take 10 years to build, got completed in 2021, five years before schedule. Wikimedia also has a separate cash hoard of almost a quarter billion dollars.
It’s actually all in their article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Finances
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Wow I didn’t know about this, thanks for the reading! I always feel morally in debt for using Wikipedia without giving back much and assume they were struggling a bit to operate, but wow they have received millions of dollars already!
edit: I’m still willing to donate though, and I just did, like I’m happy to pay for what I’ve learned from it, even if it doesn’t mean much to them.
They make it sound like they’re just about to close down, I’ve been sending them a few bucks every month for like a year and I feel a little bit slighted tbh
Very similar feelings here.
This is the most interesting thing I realize(thanks to you) this week so far
Giving 10 bucks a year, even though I use it very little. But sometimes it’s just easy and quick to look something up or read an interesting article, and I know that there are many people (students, etc.) who rely on it more than I do and have less money to spend
No because I already donate to the EFF and Internet Archive and I figure that’s enough. And apparently Wikipedia already has enough money according to the comments here
I have before, but I was crippled by a conservative pedo ran corporation called The Home Depot. So it’s not in the budget currently. Hide yo kids if you go in there.
May I ask what the story is there?
Yes because people are dumb enough as it is
