Wikipedia's yearly donation campaign; Time to accept Bitcoins?

[coin_toss]

I think this is definitely the time for Wikipedia to start accepting bitcoins. If enough people contact them about this, maybe they will realize the amount of money they are losing every day as a result of this decision.

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[julz]

How about a bitbrew coffee pack to be sent directly to Jimmy Wales - along with a letter, preferably titled:
"A Community Appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales"

(see this post regarding the bitcoin gift pack idea: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53986.msg650430#msg650430)

We could hash out a short letter here I guess. (I don't know how familiar we should assume Jimmy is with Bitcoin)
The letter should explain that we believe Bitcoin is a potentially important system for charities everywhere because it allows small payments.

We should also mention the wikipedia ad which read: "If everyone reading this donated $1, our fundraiser would end today. Please donate to keep Wikipedia free"
Now that there is a technology which allows just this sort of donation - they reject it??  Could we have donated $1 each without some intermediary slurping up a huge fraction of it before bitcoin? I don't think so.


I'll throw 1BTC in for that.  Any interest?

[BTCurious]

How about a bitbrew coffee pack to be sent directly to Jimmy Wales - along with a letter, preferably titled:
"A Community Appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales"

Sweet I'll probably join in just because of this nice title

[gmaxwell]

I'm curious in reading past articles about Wikipedia seeking funding during their early stage. Do any exist and where? I'm guessing there was a time when they were struggling financially and would have welcomed any type of funding tossed their way.

(as someone who was involved in WP fundraising a long time back, I guess I can comment)

There never really was such a time. Wikipedia has long had a razor focus on operating efficiently as possible, made extensive use of volunteer resources (even for sysadmin stuff, legal stuff, etc). At its inception Jimmy funded it out of pocket with the help of friends, but it wasn't very costly to operate when there was no traffic.

Six years ago Wikimedia had ~2 actual full-time employees (and they weren't paid much, at that— as they were just ex-volunteers). As the site has grown, costs have increased tremendously, but not linearly— but as Wikipedia has grown fundraising potential has grown too (though also not linearly).

Even way back in the old days Wikimedia would turn away 'support' that appeared to have compromising strings attached, people wanting feeds of private user data, etc. It's been very fortunate that it's never had to make the hard decisions.  Though back then there used to be a lot of speculation about what would happen if the money ran short— would we run ads to stay afloat?   Now adays, that prospect seems so unlikely that people in the organization can say things like "if our funding were to vanish, it means we are failing our mission. Public funding is an important check on our performance.".  (Easy to say when you're sure it won't happen!).

I think Wikimedia would accept Bitcoin today, except there is at least one important staff member who's fallen _hard_ for the "bitcoin is a ponzi scheme meme" (google erik moller bitcoin)— and there isn't any great justification for bitcoin for them enough to overcome that bias... after all, looking at what the EFF, FSF, and Internet archive have received... we're probably only talking about a couple thousand dollars in support from bitcoin compared to the costs of dealing with the logistics, a small risk of negative PR. It would really only be majorly worth doing for the sake of supporting something new and innovative.

I think that as time goes on, and bitcoin proves itself to be a painless and worthwhile fundraising source for other orgs that wikimedia listens to (E.g. the FSF and Internet Archive) then they'll probably come around.

[nmat]

(as someone who was involved in WP fundraising a long time back, I guess I can comment)

There never really was such a time. Wikipedia has long (...)

+1. Nice post.

[Stemby]

How about a bitbrew coffee pack to be sent directly to Jimmy Wales - along with a letter, preferably titled:
"A Community Appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales"

Sweet I'll probably join in just because of this nice title

+1

[sadpandatech]

How about a bitbrew coffee pack to be sent directly to Jimmy Wales - along with a letter, preferably titled:
"A Community Appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales"

Sweet I'll probably join in just because of this nice title

+1

  I agree, between Julz suggestion and what Gmax said. I think if we can't change their mind we can atleast appeal to their 'heart'. I'll pledge 1 BTC to a Wiki gift.

  In light of this and the recent Archive idea of sending a gift. Should we be handling this through the Bitcoin100?  I'm just not sure if it would add too many different options ont he plate of the Bitcoin 100. Anyone elses thoughts?

  Cheers

[grondilu]

Why do they need money in the first place?

I mean, it seems to me that they don't do any effort to decentralize the whole thing, so that computing and storage essources would be provided by users.

Somehow, I think it might be a good thing if the Wikimedia fundation could go bankroute. After all, the encyclopedy would not vanish. It's free so anyone could save it by just downloading it (I have a copy on my laptop with a CGI script to consult it and it works fine).

Once Wikimedia goes down, it would be a big incentive for other organizations to continue the project with other, fresh ideas.

[Technomage]

Wikipedia accepting Bitcoin donations would be so big, that we should pressure them constantly. Not to the point of being an annoyance, but anyway. I sent an email to Wikimedia independently a few weeks ago regarding this issue and I didn't even get an answer. But they will take notice if we pressure them continuously and now that the Internet Archive started accepting donations from us, we should also point that out in every email.

I like the idea of the BitBrew coffee pack. We should create a proper letter together and then put the names of everyone supporting this effort to the letter as well so it's clear that it is from the community. That could help and we could do it fairly easily.

The whole idea of them accepting small donations via PayPal seems absolutely ridiculous when you think of how cheap it would be using Bitcoin. I think they will eventually understand it, but we should do our best to help them understand.

[gmaxwell]

I mean, it seems to me that they don't do any effort to decentralize the whole thing, so that computing and storage essources would be provided by users.

There are many virtues to decentralization,  but reducing operating costs and improving performance (assuming equal costs) are not really among them.  Some things appear to do so, but only because they are externalizing costs (e.g. shifting costs onto the most expensive last mile ISP paths, which is only 'cheaper' due to unsustainable all you can eat pricing, resulting in blocking/rate limiting, or hosting things on stolen resources).

Wikipedia costs a fair amount to operate, but only because it's so widely used. It comes down to something less than $0.05/yr per monthly visitor (actually more like, 0.02 but wikimedia is spending more than strictly necessary in order to develop new software and increase Wikipedia's usage around the world). The challenge for Wikimedia is that most of their visitors don't donate at all, and payment processing overheads would make operating on 400 million 5 cent payments still insufficient.

I use to argue that decentralizing Wikipedia (while retaining the property of having a single coherent website people could browse, rather than e.g. a forest of never updated forks, preserving user privacy, etc) was actually impossible, but the bitcoin distributed algorithm disproves that.  That said, many people complain about the time it takes to sync a full bitcoin node, it would be far worse with 400 gigabytes of article history and 12 TB of image data. So even ignoring the fact that it would cost more in total to operate it's not easy, and the required technology simply hasn't been built.

Of course, you can go to download.wikimedia.org, and pull a static dump and serve it up via a CGI and people do, but that isn't the same as decentralizing the sites— it's not getting the hundreds of updates per second, it's not providing a single, coherent, usable, and reliable view of the site. The prior attempts (for which there have been many) have all been laughable.

I'm sure if some bitcoiner wanted to build the technology to enable this they could find many patrons in the bitcoin and Wikipedia communities to sponsor their work. Sadly, it seems that on this subject most people are all talk.

[grondilu]

There are many virtues to decentralization, but reducing operating costs and improving performance (assuming equal costs) are not really among them. Some things appear to do so, but only because they are externalizing costs (e.g. shifting costs onto the most expensive last mile ISP paths, which is only 'cheaper' due to unsustainable all you can eat pricing, resulting in blocking/rate limiting, or hosting things on stolen resources).

Well, Terabytes of data are exchanged every day in P2P file exchange systems,
and yet I have never heard of any donation campaign for them.

Wikipedia costs a fair amount to operate, but only because it's so widely used. It comes down to something less than $0.05/yr per monthly visitor (actually more like, 0.02 but wikimedia is spending more than strictly necessary in order to develop new software and increase Wikipedia's usage around the world). The challenge for Wikimedia is that most of their visitors don't donate at all, and payment processing overheads would make operating on 400 million 5 cent payments still insufficient.

First, I want to say that I love Wikipedia. I contribute on the french site, I donated about 10EUR few years ago as I think it is the best thing that came up from Internet.

However, I will NEVER ever donate anything again. Because there are two many things I don't like with this project. For instance, there are several Wikipedia editing rules I just don't agree with. That's one problem with centralization: you must agree with the whole package or go away. If you don't agree with one part, you can't use the whole thing.

I also don't consider storing pictures to be important for an encyclopedy. And yet I assume this is one of the big cost for wikimedia. So I may accept to donate to "wikipedia", but certainly not to "wikimedia". Unfortunately, the wikipedia project is not separable from the wikimedia project.

I use to argue that decentralizing Wikipedia (while retaining the property of having a single coherent website people could browse, rather than e.g. a forest of never updated forks, preserving user privacy, etc)

What is wrong with diversity??? There is no reason why there should be a *single* encyclopedic wiki. An encyclopedy could have a "editorial line". There would be nothing wrong with that. On the contrary.

In Eric Raymond's metaphor, Wikipedia moves much more toward a "Cathedral" than a "Bazaar". And that's the main thing I don't like with this project.

... was actually impossible, but the bitcoin distributed algorithm disproves that. That said, many people complain about the time it takes to sync a full bitcoin node, it would be far worse with 400 gigabytes of article history and 12 TB of image data. So even ignoring the fact that it would cost more in total to operate it's not easy, and the required technology simply hasn't been built.

Yeah that why I think we should not fund old technologies with charity, so that people can have an incentive to imagine better technology.

Of course, you can go to download.wikimedia.org, and pull a static dump and serve it up via a CGI and people do, but that isn't the same as decentralizing the sites* it's not getting the hundreds of updates per second, it's not providing a single, coherent, usable, and reliable view of the site. The prior attempts (for which there have been many) have all been laughable.

reliable:   ok
usable:      ok
coherent:   ok
single:      WTF?

I'm sure if some bitcoiner wanted to build the technology to enable this they could find many patrons in the bitcoin and Wikipedia communities to sponsor their work. Sadly, it seems that on this subject most people are all talk.

Wait a bit. Some people will create a decentralized collaborative encyclopedy. But it sure won't help if people continue to support and fund wikimedia.

[qxzn]

How about a bitbrew coffee pack to be sent directly to Jimmy Wales - along with a letter, preferably titled:
"A Community Appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales"

(see this post regarding the bitcoin gift pack idea: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53986.msg650430#msg650430)

We could hash out a short letter here I guess. (I don't know how familiar we should assume Jimmy is with Bitcoin)
The letter should explain that we believe Bitcoin is a potentially important system for charities everywhere because it allows small payments.

We should also mention the wikipedia ad which read: "If everyone reading this donated $1, our fundraiser would end today. Please donate to keep Wikipedia free"
Now that there is a technology which allows just this sort of donation - they reject it??  Could we have donated $1 each without some intermediary slurping up a huge fraction of it before bitcoin? I don't think so.


I'll throw 1BTC in for that.  Any interest?

I'm in for 1BTC.

[teukon]

How about a bitbrew coffee pack to be sent directly to Jimmy Wales - along with a letter, preferably titled:
"A Community Appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales"

(see this post regarding the bitcoin gift pack idea: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53986.msg650430#msg650430)

We could hash out a short letter here I guess. (I don't know how familiar we should assume Jimmy is with Bitcoin)
The letter should explain that we believe Bitcoin is a potentially important system for charities everywhere because it allows small payments.

We should also mention the wikipedia ad which read: "If everyone reading this donated $1, our fundraiser would end today. Please donate to keep Wikipedia free"
Now that there is a technology which allows just this sort of donation - they reject it??  Could we have donated $1 each without some intermediary slurping up a huge fraction of it before bitcoin? I don't think so.


I'll throw 1BTC in for that.  Any interest?

I'm in for 1BTC.

Interesting.  Surely everyone reading that page donating $1 would be a horribly inefficient way of raising funds.  I guess they are just trying to make a point about how little they need to keep running.

Personally, I would be much more interested in a letter which asked Wikipedia to give their thoughts on Bitcoin rather than to promote Bitcoin and extol its virtues:
  Perhaps the main problem is the natural anonymity Bitcoin affords.  Is there a framework which would allow them to require contact information with each donation?
  Perhaps the main problem is simply the small size of the Bitcoin community.  It may cost Wikipedia more to sort out the legal side of things than they could expect to receive from the community.  In this case, how much promised wealth would it take for Wikipedia to formally begin to accept Bitcoin donations?  If they consider and decide that, for 2500 BTC say, they would have sufficient incentive to establish Bitcoin as a proper alternative donation method then the ball is back in our court.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

How about a bitbrew coffee pack to be sent directly to Jimmy Wales - along with a letter, preferably titled:
"A Community Appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales"

Sweet I'll probably join in just because of this nice title

+1

  I agree, between Julz suggestion and what Gmax said. I think if we can't change their mind we can atleast appeal to their 'heart'. I'll pledge 1 BTC to a Wiki gift.

  In light of this and the recent Archive idea of sending a gift. Should we be handling this through the Bitcoin100?  I'm just not sure if it would add too many different options ont he plate of the Bitcoin 100. Anyone elses thoughts?

  Cheers

If anybody wants to take a lead in this idea, go ahead, and I'll somehow incorporate in the Bitcoin100 doings. We'll make sure it gets as much full support as we can muster up.

~ ~~~~~~~~

Another angle I just though of. Remember all those volunteers that directly support Wikipedia? Those unpaid volunteers? In essence, is Jimmy saying, "I got mine. Screw yours!" What if every volunteer received only 1 BTC? Sure, at today's rate, it's crumbs. At tomorrow's rate, it may be $10,000 USD. Either way, it's a hell of lot more than what they're getting now. Therefore, what if those same volunteers specifically asked that all Bitcoin donations would belong to them. The pressure would no longer be from the Bitcoin community, but from within. It'll be pretty hard for Jimmy to say no to them, for they're the true backbone of the organization. It would be like him saying, "No! You will continue to offer up your services for free. And love it!" Puts a completely different spin on the whole thing now, doesn't it?

~Bruno~

[sadpandatech]

Therefore, what if those same volunteers specifically asked that all Bitcoin donations would belong to them. The pressure would no longer be from the Bitcoin community, but from within. It'll be pretty hard for Jimmy to say no to them, for they're the true backbone of the organization. It would be like him saying, "No! You will continue to offer up your services for free. And love it!" Puts a completely different spin on the whole thing now, doesn't it?

~Bruno~

  That is a very interesting idea to expand on. It is curious why there is no predefined option to 'donate to this contributor' embedded into the content templates. It would be pretty friggin awesome to have a 'Donate a Bitcent or two to this contributor' button on each of their entry pages. Of course, a contributor could make the choice of having one or not. Or even be allowed further control to place an 'If you found this entry useful and wish to show your appreciation for the contributor,' 'Donate a few Bitcents to xyz charity' button in their name.

  I hate helping to add to ideas and not really being in a position to take much action on it. :/ If I ever get my current project ironed out, I will free up enough of my time to do more of the things needed for the recent ideas I have been trying to contribute to. For now, I can offer my apologies. And hope that someone can grab these up and expand on them and move them forward.

  Cheers

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Therefore, what if those same volunteers specifically asked that all Bitcoin donations would belong to them. The pressure would no longer be from the Bitcoin community, but from within. It'll be pretty hard for Jimmy to say no to them, for they're the true backbone of the organization. It would be like him saying, "No! You will continue to offer up your services for free. And love it!" Puts a completely different spin on the whole thing now, doesn't it?

~Bruno~

  That is a very interesting idea to expand on. It is curious why there is no predefined option to 'donate to this contributor' embedded into the content templates. It would be pretty friggin awesome to have a 'Donate a Bitcent or two to this contributor' button on each of their entry pages. Of course, a contributor could make the choice of having one or not. Or even be allowed further control to place an 'If you found this entry useful and wish to show your appreciation for the contributor,' 'Donate a few Bitcents to xyz charity' button in their name.

  I hate helping to add to ideas and not really being in a position to take much action on it. :/ If I ever get my current project ironed out, I will free up enough of my time to do more of the things needed for the recent ideas I have been trying to contribute to. For now, I can offer my apologies. And hope that someone can grab these up and expand on them and move them forward.

  Cheers

You did more than enough, simply by adding to my idea. It didn't occur to me that the volunteers could just start adding text like you stated onto the pages you've outlined. Moreover, as a group, I'm willing to bet they rap with each other, as we do, either on a forum or elsewhere. Imagine if they were made aware of a potential income stream for them, but it was being nixed by the higher-ups.

Imagine, further, if there was a Facebook page bringing this revelation to their attention. I'm just imagining here!

~Bruno~

[gmaxwell]

Good news, on this front.

Wikimedia NYC, a non-profit regional support organization for Wikipedia/Wikimedia has started accepting bitcoin donations: https://nyc.wikimedia.org/wiki/Donate

Wikimedia has chapters all over the world that serve to organize regional efforts. In some countries there are tax advantages vs donating to Wikimedia itself (though, obviously not for a US chapter), but chapters primarily serve to organize the offline efforts of Wikimedians to reach out to the greater world around them— collaborating with schools, libraries, and museums.   

Wikimedia NYC is one of the larger and more productive chapters, especially considering that it's one of the younger ones. More info at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City

WM NYC runs workshops to teach people to edit wikipedia, they run an annual wikipedia conference in NY which is open to the public, and have run big highly productive initiatives to improve Wikipedia's coverage (both in articles and in illustrations). Their outreach both increases the depth of Wikipedia coverage, and breadth by helping people who aren't computer geeks to contribute.  Donations to Wikimedia NYC directly support these efforts.

I'm not personally a part of WM NYC, but I've worked with them on some of their projects in the past and sometimes visit to their meetings (or at least if you go through their meeting archives you can find pictures of me, though I live down in DC so I don't make it there too often).  So I can say with a least a bit of direct experience, but without personal bias, that they're an organization worth funding.  Moreover,  success with their bitcoin donations may encourage other chapters and Wikimedia itself to accept donations in bitcoin.

Cheers.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Good news, on this front.

Wikimedia NYC, a non-profit regional support organization for Wikipedia/Wikimedia has started accepting bitcoin donations: https://nyc.wikimedia.org/wiki/Donate

Wikimedia has chapters all over the world that serve to organize regional efforts. In some countries there are tax advantages vs donating to Wikimedia itself (though, obviously not for a US chapter), but chapters primarily serve to organize the offline efforts of Wikimedians to reach out to the greater world around them— collaborating with schools, libraries, and museums.   

Wikimedia NYC is one of the larger and more productive chapters, especially considering that it's one of the younger ones. More info at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City

WM NYC runs workshops to teach people to edit wikipedia, they run an annual wikipedia conference in NY which is open to the public, and have run big highly productive initiatives to improve Wikipedia's coverage (both in articles and in illustrations). Their outreach both increases the depth of Wikipedia coverage, and breadth by helping people who aren't computer geeks to contribute.  Donations to Wikimedia NYC directly support these efforts.

I'm not personally a part of WM NYC, but I've worked with them on some of their projects in the past and sometimes visit to their meetings (or at least if you go through their meeting archives you can find pictures of me, though I live down in DC so I don't make it there too often).  So I can say with a least a bit of direct experience, but without personal bias, that they're an organization worth funding.  Moreover,  success with their bitcoin donations may encourage other chapters and Wikimedia itself to accept donations in bitcoin.

Cheers.

Why are these sites different?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City

http://nyc.wikimedia.org/wiki/Home

[gmaxwell]

Why are these sites different?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City
http://nyc.wikimedia.org/wiki/Home

One is the older Wikimedia New York City chapter page page on Wikimedia meta wiki— it's a wiki setup for all the wikimedia sausage making stuff (thus 'meta').

Nyc.wikimedia.org is a separate wiki setup for the chapter earlier this year.  They're apparently migrating stuff from one to the other slowly over time. The front page there points this out (and the page at meta.wikimedia.org also links to nyc.wikimedia.org).

[sadpandatech]

@Gmax, that's pretty groovy stuff. Thanks for sharing.