Apr 20·edited Apr 20Liked by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard
A less sneaky way for X promoting a "New Wikipedia": For every post with a Wikipedia link, before posting X would show a message about why it Old Wikipedia is problematic, and offer to automatically change it to New Wikipedia.
What we all suspected. Thanks, Emil. Wikipedia has fallen to Conquest's Law: any enterprise not explicitly right-wing will in time become left-wing. See Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. government, and all the rest.
"At the end of 2023, Wikimedia (again, Wikipedia's parent organization) has a staggering 250 million dollars in assets."
Which is, per the numbers given, between one and two years of operating expenses, which are also growing over time, so that doesn't seem that weird to me.
"So what are they spending the other 166 million dollars on? Well, for starters, they give away 24 million to various organizations."
Well, "for starters", except that's really the only thing that you take issue with, other than a couple of inflated salaries for senior people (much like, say, every other organization in existence). You basically act like 100m in salaries is all trash because their board are making bank but honestly there's like two people on this board that cost more than a single senior software engineer at a FAANG company and it's almost certainly true that Wikipedia employs a bunch of software engineers who probably account for a huge chunk of that salary.
You seem to erroneously conclude that the only "true" cost of running Wikipedia is the server hosting costs, as though you could just leave Wikipedia sitting there and nothing would happen, but that's just not how large software systems work.
I think your description about the equity spending is hyperbolic but even on its own terms you have only really shown that $4.5m of $180m in donations has definitely gone anywhere you object to.
Cherchez la (blanc as it is in this case)femme. Katherine Maher got her Bachelors (!)in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies and no doubt the blonde was very popular with the faithful... She's typical of the well remunerated white women that are dotted all over global organisations and corporations engaging in a relentless anti white male agenda.
Further proof that those drawn to hard Left and Marxist ideas are abnormal.
I cannot be the only person to reluctantly come to the conclusion I do not wish to live alongside people who spend every waking hour scheming to undermine social norms, stability and the basic foundations of society. It is simply too exhausting and when I read articles like this I am not surprised, but I am dismayed. What is wrong with them?What kind of world do people like Maher want to live in?
I now believe it is simply not possible to live in a society with people like this because what they create is not some racially perfect equitable society. They create San Fransisco, and its blatant decline and failure does not stop them one bit. They just find even more racism, sexism and inequity to blame so they can try again.
Yeah, infesting a charitable organization, undermining its overt purpose, bending it toward prog agendas, diverting its funding toward prog causes, and increasing salaries for the infiltrators, is standard operating procedure for trust fund elites. I scented their stink on wikimedia over a decade ago and stopped donating. Useless creeps like Maher are practically raised to game the system like this. Funny to see how far out of hand it's gotten since then.
Ironically last generation's prog infestation in the educational institutions used to forbid students from using wikipedia, while it was still useful, citing bias and inaccuracy in spite of numerous "studies showing" it was better on average than commercial encyclopedias at the time. Now that their bugman comrades have fully skinsuited the organization it actually is full of bias an inaccuracy and basically worthless. So of course now citing wikipedia is academically acceptable.
The majority of the grants go to other country's local Wikimedia groups. For instance, Wikimedia Germany, which runs Wikidata. It used to be any money raised in those countries went to those countries locals orgs, so disbursing it instead was a compromise. Also some of the grants are for technical projects. Calling it a scam because you didn't like one tiny grant that was for two years is pretty dishonest.
This sounds like criminal and civil fraud. Basically, fraud is the use of false statements to get someone's money:
"In the United States, common law generally identifies nine elements needed to establish fraud: (1) a representation of fact; (2) its falsity; (3) its materiality; (4) the representer’s knowledge of its falsity or ignorance of its truth; (5) the representer’s intent that it should be acted upon by the person in the manner reasonably contemplated; (6) the injured party’s ignorance of its falsity; (7) the injured party’s reliance on its truth; (8) the injured party’s right to rely thereon; and (9) the injured party’s consequent and proximate injury. See, e.g., Strategic Diversity, Inc. v. Alchemix Corp., 666 F.3d 1197" https://www.robertdmitchell.com/common-law-fraud
I don't know in what county or state the prosecutor would have to be located to prosecute this.
I expect for civil fraud a class action suit could be brought. Probably a court would look kindly on giving the law firm 20% for its trouble and directing the money to be used to fund the substitute Wikipedia you suggest. Thus, this would be a profitable lawsuit for some law firm.
Must be the hundredth comment to this effect, but you appear to be confusing assets with revenue. At best 8% of assets can be translated into annual flows.
Wikipedia’s leadership aren’t just leftist activists. They’re also cucks. They automatically ban anyone who admits even the slightest attraction to minors, even if they think that sex between adults and minors as well as actual child porn should remain illegal, even if their editing on Wikipedia is completely productive over a timespan of years, and even if they are overwhelmingly attracted to other adults. This is terrible. I could see the logic in blocking the Wikipedia e-mail of users who are attracted to minors as a precautionary measure, but completely preventing them from editing Wikipedia when they haven’t actually done anything wrong seems to be going too far, no? “Virtuous Pedophiles” do exist, after all.
Some significant value in Wikipedia. However, some increasing levels of rot and corruption, not least in their pandering to gender ideologues.
My “tale of woe” about being defenestrated there for objecting to their article on transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard which claimed, still claims that “she” had “transitioned to female”:
Thanks for doing the legwork here. For what it’s worth, I donate to Wikipedia. Now that I’ve seen this, I never will again.
A less sneaky way for X promoting a "New Wikipedia": For every post with a Wikipedia link, before posting X would show a message about why it Old Wikipedia is problematic, and offer to automatically change it to New Wikipedia.
What we all suspected. Thanks, Emil. Wikipedia has fallen to Conquest's Law: any enterprise not explicitly right-wing will in time become left-wing. See Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. government, and all the rest.
This analysis seems a little overhyped.
"At the end of 2023, Wikimedia (again, Wikipedia's parent organization) has a staggering 250 million dollars in assets."
Which is, per the numbers given, between one and two years of operating expenses, which are also growing over time, so that doesn't seem that weird to me.
"So what are they spending the other 166 million dollars on? Well, for starters, they give away 24 million to various organizations."
Well, "for starters", except that's really the only thing that you take issue with, other than a couple of inflated salaries for senior people (much like, say, every other organization in existence). You basically act like 100m in salaries is all trash because their board are making bank but honestly there's like two people on this board that cost more than a single senior software engineer at a FAANG company and it's almost certainly true that Wikipedia employs a bunch of software engineers who probably account for a huge chunk of that salary.
You seem to erroneously conclude that the only "true" cost of running Wikipedia is the server hosting costs, as though you could just leave Wikipedia sitting there and nothing would happen, but that's just not how large software systems work.
I think your description about the equity spending is hyperbolic but even on its own terms you have only really shown that $4.5m of $180m in donations has definitely gone anywhere you object to.
Cherchez la (blanc as it is in this case)femme. Katherine Maher got her Bachelors (!)in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies and no doubt the blonde was very popular with the faithful... She's typical of the well remunerated white women that are dotted all over global organisations and corporations engaging in a relentless anti white male agenda.
Further proof that those drawn to hard Left and Marxist ideas are abnormal.
I cannot be the only person to reluctantly come to the conclusion I do not wish to live alongside people who spend every waking hour scheming to undermine social norms, stability and the basic foundations of society. It is simply too exhausting and when I read articles like this I am not surprised, but I am dismayed. What is wrong with them?What kind of world do people like Maher want to live in?
I now believe it is simply not possible to live in a society with people like this because what they create is not some racially perfect equitable society. They create San Fransisco, and its blatant decline and failure does not stop them one bit. They just find even more racism, sexism and inequity to blame so they can try again.
If Elon made his own Wikipedia, wouldn't every article just say:
░M░Y░P░ U░S░S░ Y░I░ N░B░I░O ░ ?
Yeah, infesting a charitable organization, undermining its overt purpose, bending it toward prog agendas, diverting its funding toward prog causes, and increasing salaries for the infiltrators, is standard operating procedure for trust fund elites. I scented their stink on wikimedia over a decade ago and stopped donating. Useless creeps like Maher are practically raised to game the system like this. Funny to see how far out of hand it's gotten since then.
Ironically last generation's prog infestation in the educational institutions used to forbid students from using wikipedia, while it was still useful, citing bias and inaccuracy in spite of numerous "studies showing" it was better on average than commercial encyclopedias at the time. Now that their bugman comrades have fully skinsuited the organization it actually is full of bias an inaccuracy and basically worthless. So of course now citing wikipedia is academically acceptable.
The majority of the grants go to other country's local Wikimedia groups. For instance, Wikimedia Germany, which runs Wikidata. It used to be any money raised in those countries went to those countries locals orgs, so disbursing it instead was a compromise. Also some of the grants are for technical projects. Calling it a scam because you didn't like one tiny grant that was for two years is pretty dishonest.
Great article, but I’m just surprised there are so many people who didn’t already know this.
Wikipedia being wholly corrupt has been common knowledge on the right for easily a decade.
Speaking of Wikipedia forks, Vox Day and friends did that years ago:
https://infogalactic.com/info/Main_Page
Not sure how current it is.
Do you have any Wikipedia alternatives that don’t rely on getting support from a highly charged political figure like Musk?
This sounds like criminal and civil fraud. Basically, fraud is the use of false statements to get someone's money:
"In the United States, common law generally identifies nine elements needed to establish fraud: (1) a representation of fact; (2) its falsity; (3) its materiality; (4) the representer’s knowledge of its falsity or ignorance of its truth; (5) the representer’s intent that it should be acted upon by the person in the manner reasonably contemplated; (6) the injured party’s ignorance of its falsity; (7) the injured party’s reliance on its truth; (8) the injured party’s right to rely thereon; and (9) the injured party’s consequent and proximate injury. See, e.g., Strategic Diversity, Inc. v. Alchemix Corp., 666 F.3d 1197" https://www.robertdmitchell.com/common-law-fraud
I don't know in what county or state the prosecutor would have to be located to prosecute this.
I expect for civil fraud a class action suit could be brought. Probably a court would look kindly on giving the law firm 20% for its trouble and directing the money to be used to fund the substitute Wikipedia you suggest. Thus, this would be a profitable lawsuit for some law firm.
Must be the hundredth comment to this effect, but you appear to be confusing assets with revenue. At best 8% of assets can be translated into annual flows.
Wikipedia’s leadership aren’t just leftist activists. They’re also cucks. They automatically ban anyone who admits even the slightest attraction to minors, even if they think that sex between adults and minors as well as actual child porn should remain illegal, even if their editing on Wikipedia is completely productive over a timespan of years, and even if they are overwhelmingly attracted to other adults. This is terrible. I could see the logic in blocking the Wikipedia e-mail of users who are attracted to minors as a precautionary measure, but completely preventing them from editing Wikipedia when they haven’t actually done anything wrong seems to be going too far, no? “Virtuous Pedophiles” do exist, after all.
Some significant value in Wikipedia. However, some increasing levels of rot and corruption, not least in their pandering to gender ideologues.
My “tale of woe” about being defenestrated there for objecting to their article on transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard which claimed, still claims that “she” had “transitioned to female”:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism