alt Hacker NewsThis is cute, but kind of an example of Wikipedia's off-mission bloat. It irks me that they constantly fundraise when most of it is not needed for Wikipedia proper, but rather used for initiatives people know less about and may not fund if they knew.
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i feel like that's a bit silly, the other projects are listed on the donation page (https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ) and tbh you are unlikely to be donating to the wikimedia foundation without being aware of (at least some of?) the rest
I wonder whether the emergence of a single, true Wikipedia competitor would actually put an end to this never-ending fundraising criticism (since people could simply donate to the competitor as a form of protest)
And they have a huge endowment fund now too that more than covers the cost of Wikipedia...
They, just like some newspapers, try to present themselves as neutral, not tied to any interest.
I don't begrudge them the odd party, anniversary, meetup.
And some of their subprojects are a great idea and could go much further -- it'd be fantastic to have a Wikipedia atlas, for example. The WikiMiniAtlas on geolocated articles is nice but it could be so much better.
But as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CANCER it's a huge concern that they're blowing money pretty much at the rate they get it, when they should be saving it for the future, and be pickier and choosier about what they're funding at any given time.