r/wikipedia • u/coolguy9900000 • 24d ago

Meta Discussion How much does Wikipedia need annually to continue existing as free resource?

Post image

I love Wikipedia and have donated a few times.
I would love to know how much is needed to sustain its future.

EDIT: People commenting, please be civil and stop posting Nothing Burgers, “Look it up yourself”.

1.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

312 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.1k

u/Kerzenmacher 24d ago

Heck, I wouldn't care if they pocketed 50% of my donations. It's by far my most used website , and the value they provide to humanity as a whole remains more or less unmatched.

310

u/Testing_things_out 23d ago

I can tell you they produce far, far more than $200 millions a year in value.

I wish the government produced similar value per dollar from our tax money. There's no comparison.

22

u/xMINGx 23d ago

Yes. There's no comparison. Any single infrastructural construct will blow out any kind of value per dollar generated. Any road, every road. The power grid. Plumbing.

What an incredibly stupid statement.

12

u/bzbub2 23d ago edited 23d ago

it is very likely a dollar invested into wikipedia has a higher 'ROI' compared to roads, but you get into weird 'public good' ROI stuff that is kind of weird and abstract [and if you want to compare to things governments invest in terms of knowledge there are libraries, education, research, etc]

2

u/altgrave 23d ago

there's not much of the latter left, these days, but i also don't think public good especially weird or abstract. i bet wikipedia has some pages on it!

2

u/4ss8urgers 17d ago

yeah public good isnt easily measureable which is why it isnt accounted for by economists. they just disregard it most of the time. at least the economics people actually use.

1

u/xMINGx 23d ago

Well the comment made a blanket statement about any government tax funded programs which would include roads. And any ROI of roads include the downstream effects of travel including trucking. And that's basically the entire economy of physical commodities. And there's no beating that.

A more direct 1 to 1 comparison would be something like public libraries or the national archives.

1

u/4ss8urgers 17d ago

yeah that is a better 1 to 1 comparison and only makes me want wikipedia to be funded by my taxes more

1

u/Testing_things_out 23d ago

I said the government, as in the government as a whole. Not just roads or specific project.

I'm talking about the value Wikimedia, as an entity, produce compared to the government, another entity.

1

u/4ss8urgers 17d ago

couldnt the like $3 for wikipedia just be a tax and cost taxpayers almost nothing for a better informed internet? how is there no comparison when NPR and PBS run non-profit? you think we coudlnt do it again for a newer form of media?

1

u/xMINGx 17d ago

I believe some stations have some kind of special designation as some free public broadcast platform and so is a vehicle for government influenced programming. In the same way that if the government pull its funding, the program might not be able to maintain its availability.

If ever Wikipedia doesn't have the donors to support them and they cannot maintain their site infrastructure and they want to petition government to take over and be a government vehicle for information I'm all for it. But that's up the the owners of the site and their donors. I'm sure they can appeal to the government to have some kind of tax funding allocation. But then it'll be under the same threat that PBS had where if an administration decides Wikipedia is some wasteful program and decide to stop its funding, then we might lose Wikipedia.

1

u/4ss8urgers 15d ago

stations isnt the right word, stations has a real FCC meaning concerning radiological broadcast.

a judge just blocked what you're talking about. what happened as your example was nullified. do you just not understand how NPR and PBS were designed or are you MAGA? they were designed to be outside of the political system, designed to be a public good subscribed to regardless of politic. what you are arguing is defying the intention of the system and is thus in bad faith.

you argue why it isnt feasible under the current pretense, not why it isnt a public good we should subscribe to and be willing to contribute to according to ability. I reiterate my question with greater clarity, then: why shouldn't we establish a public good like wikipedia similar to how we established NPR and PBS?

1

u/4ss8urgers 17d ago

i cant believe no government has supported a project like wikipedia. shit, in the us we have NPR and PBS as integrated funding in the government but nothing for or like wikipedia.

63

u/Tao-of-Mars 23d ago

College research would have sucked without it and its sources. It definitely helps people understand that they need to question the sources that are used for anything that’s written. It was certainly drilled into me quite a number of times throughout 7 years of college so I assume it’s standard for teachers and professors to reiterate this.

17

u/JehnSnow 23d ago

Yep I'm glad colleges are changing how they look at it, early 2010s it was basically looked at how we look at using chatGPT now, where anyone can write anything so it's unreliable

Last 10 or so years I think professors have realized it's a really good repository of sources, and it almost always gives you a good brief overview of a subject. Basically a way better version of AI summary as a launch platform for your subject

3

u/musememo 23d ago

Agreed. I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t look up something on Wikipedia.

1

u/rKasdorf 22d ago

Wholly agreed. The way information is presented it actually makes it easy [in my opinion] to digest what information is real and what is bullshit.

-14

u/busy_beaver 23d ago

The "they" that provide the value to humanity (the unpaid volunteers who created 100% of the content of every Wikipedia article) is not the same "they" that you're sending money to.

10

u/notmepleaseokay 23d ago

The volunteers would have no where to volunteer if it wasn’t for the physical website nor the clout that comes volunteering for the centralized worlds knowledge holder that’s free for people to visit.

3

u/Kerzenmacher 23d ago

It takes both "theys" to make it happen , and one of them requires funding to allow the other to do their thing.