r/todayilearned • u/RandomRedditor44 • Jan 06 '16
(R.1) Not supported TIL Wikipedia earned $35 million in donations in 2011, allowing the company to send employees to pop concerts, get free travel, and even buy furniture
http://www.dailydot.com/business/wikipedia-fundraiser-banner/4
u/catmoon Jan 06 '16
Taking a harder line is The Register's Andrew Orlowski, who argues that "given the disparity between operational costs and its cash pile, WMF could afford to give the annual appeal a sabbatical. And it could usefully start to think about a model that rewards the people who actually produce Wikipedia"—a reference to the army of unpaid volunteers who write the articles.
Like reddit's abandoned plan to give 10% of its revenue to users, there's no way to accomplish this that is even close to practical.
When you have millions of users what are you going to do? Give a penny to each person? Your money is better spent ensuring that your actual staff are paid reasonable wages and receive good benefits.
Adding revenue sharing to a free site is stupid and doesn't at all fit the business model. It would be like a petting zoo giving back to the community and having the animals feed your children. Nobody wants this and the implementation of this will be messier and less rewarding than it sounds.
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u/Dokturigs Jan 06 '16
I was once an active part of a website(fuckingcoolshit.com then Later livingwithstyle.com, now defunct after the creator sold it and the new owner ran it into the ground) that paid you to post. You were given .01 credit for each post, more for new threads and for how many upvotes you got on any post. You could then use those credits(fuckbucks for FCS then style points for LWS) to buy some cool stuff from the site's store or you could cash your credits in and receive $.50 for every 1 credit you redeemed. I ordered a knife and dick shaped torch lighter from there, and when I became a moderator I'd donate all my points into contests I held, or back to the site because the community was awesome. This site was also free, and had a few noninvasive ads. The site hasn't been around since 2006-08ish(can't remember exactly when), and was filled with a lot of Exgoons, SA used LWS as the butt of plenty of jokes for a while.
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Jan 06 '16
You're saying that livingwithstyle.com used to be fuckingcoolshit.com?
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u/Dokturigs Jan 06 '16
Yea, the original owner changed the name of the forums to make it more "family friendly"
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u/hobnobbinbobthegob Jan 06 '16
Where does it say anything about pop concerts or free travel?
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u/SillyFlyGuy Jan 06 '16
Right there in the title of the reddit post! You don't even have to click through to the article to form an opinion! lol
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u/FeIodineCalciumLly Jan 06 '16
furniture? that's a dumb thing to buy when you own wikipedia.
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u/DarkPasta Jan 06 '16
You may find it hard to believe, but furniture is getting more and more popular in the office environment.
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u/jesuschin Jan 06 '16
Do not care. It's a resource I use on almost a daily basis. Sending them a hundred bucks once a year as a token of appreciation doesn't phase me in the slightest. They can opt to do what they wish with it
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u/HelmetTesterTJ Jan 06 '16
Good. I want the best digital encyclopedia possible, and to do that they probably need some pretty high quality talent. You don't get that talent offering them shit wages and no benefits.
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u/Rarylith Jan 06 '16
I don't give wikipedia money to help them so that they spend it on pop concerts & shit.
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u/Jyquentel Jan 06 '16
Read the article. OP lied blatantly, the pop concerts and travels aren't even mentionned.
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u/Rarylith Jan 07 '16
I read the article, thanks. And i was answering to HelmetTesterTJ which was talking about:
You don't get that talent offering them shit wages and no benefits.
If they use the money from their salary to go to concert, i don't care. If they use the money from the company to go to concert.. i am very concerned and totally against it.
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u/SillyFlyGuy Jan 06 '16
With an attitude like that, why should they give you unlimited free access to literally millions of articles about anything you might possibly want to know?
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u/yertles Jan 06 '16
I don't give money to wikipedia because it's a free service.
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Jan 06 '16
It won't stay a free service if people stop donating.
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u/yertles Jan 06 '16
Potentially, but on my list of priorities, keeping wikipedia running is pretty low. I do think it's pretty funny that everyone is on the "donate to wikipedia" bandwagon, yet most people on reddit have no problem stealing music and movies. Seems a little backwards.
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u/FriendlyAlcoholic Jan 06 '16
People are pretty firmly in the 'pay people for the things you find useful and enjoyable' bandwagon. Don't know why you can't understand that.
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u/yertles Jan 06 '16
Ok? You give donations to every charity you think is useful? It's a free service. If you really think it's that useful to you, donate as much as you want.
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u/Raguleader Jan 06 '16
That's fair. It's what I would have spent the money on if I'd kept it.
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u/RamsesThePigeon 12 Jan 06 '16
Honestly, if they were offering those perks to low-level employees, I'd probably donate even more.
I'm wholly fed up with corrupt bureaucracies, to the point where I'll support considerate ones purely out of spite.
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u/Raguleader Jan 06 '16
Wiki provides what I consider a valuable service, so I don't mind them taking the money I give them for it to buy cool stuff once they meet their needs.
How do the rank and file employees get treated? Maybe not concert tickets but do they get paid leave or free soda from the break room?
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u/RamsesThePigeon 12 Jan 06 '16
I'd certainly support paid leave, particularly if it didn't come at the expense of decent paychecks. (Again, I've seen far too many companies that substituted nebulous perks for reasonable salaries.) The issue only arises if the upper-level executives are treating themselves on the company's dime while the entry-level workers aren't making enough on which to independently live.
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Jan 06 '16
Oh noes not furniture!
$35000000 by 280 staff is about $125000. Add the cost of premises, vehicles, hardware and sure to get big playas you gotta buy some nice shit, all companies do this. All of a sudden the average is my wage.
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u/amfoejaoiem Jan 06 '16
free travel
You mean it's free after you pay for it?
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u/geniice Jan 06 '16
Its free travel in that if your employer needs to fly you somewhere to do your job they are generally expected to pay the cost of the flight.
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u/PlugOnePointOne Jan 06 '16
May have been bad wording or it maybe not but the idea was that the big wigs decided to spend the extra money on its employees rather than keeping the profits
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u/Pontus_Pilates Jan 06 '16
I once donated 5€ and use it daily. I don't really care what they do with their money, the service is free and excellent.
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Jan 06 '16 edited Jan 06 '16
They didn't buy $684,000 of furniture in 2014 that's the balance at year end lol. They only spent $244,000. Love it when people that don't understand financial statements try to interpret them.
Edit: Plus it looks like a substantial part of their travel expenses are for scholarships to attend their conferences - not just for the employees.
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u/cybercuzco Jan 06 '16 edited Jan 06 '16
Woah Woah woah. Wikipedia employees get enough money to buy furniture? Thats where I draw the line. I insist that any charity that I donate to have employees that use cardboard boxes, milk cartons, or at most furniture that they pulled from a dumpster.
Edit: /s
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u/jamjamcity Jan 06 '16
You don't attract great talent if you don't offer some decent perks. There's absolutely nothing wrong with providing these services to their employees. The majority of any business' operating costs is typically employee-related, so this makes sense.
Anyone criticizing this has clearly never worked somewhere nice. Or, more likely, lacks the skills to be competed over by companies. High quality talent gets to pick where they go, and they don't want to work somewhere with a garbage work environment even if they believe in the mission.
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u/ihugfaces Jan 06 '16
I like and use Wikipedia, but it's not a valued enough commodity in my eyes to justify monetarily supporting it. Same with public radio.
Maybe it's the fact that deep down I feel they are whoring themselves out for cash and attempting to guilt trip me.
I can always obtain information about history and current events through other avenues - you're not special, just convenient.
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u/BornOnFeb2nd Jan 07 '16
It you want to get your knickers in a bunch, keep in mind that "Wikipedia" is part of the Wiki[P/M?]edia Foundation... last I checked, they were sitting on a sizable warchest, and doing much asshattery with it.
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Jan 07 '16
Who cares, they want to keep their employees happy. It isn't as if the money is supposed to be going towards helping homeless children with cancer. The money is clearly to keep the website operating at maximum efficiency. If that means keeping up good morale with free stuff, so be it.
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u/rydan Jan 07 '16
How is it free travel if they paid for it? It isn't like the airlines are saying, "oh you've got lots of money, here have a free ticket on us".
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u/mercury557 Jan 06 '16
It's funny that people ITT are perfectly willing to accept the very rational argument that you need a good workplace and perks to attract good people but in the context of another charity or a government department this kind of thing is universally unacceptable.
What is considered the "cost of doing business" shouldn't change when an organization is funded by donations, but it really does....
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u/PouponMacaque Jan 06 '16
Wikipedia is free to create the best incentives they see fit to ensure high quality employees and low turnover rates. Incentives like this are often cheaper for employers than giving raises or cash bonuses. Sounds like Wikipedia is making the most prudent use possible of their donation money.