Andrew Orlowski is back!

Because no one else is doing it--not even the media.
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ericbarbour
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Andrew Orlowski is back!

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:50 pm

The former Register writer who routinely exposed Wiki-Crap in the early 2000s (and was routinely abused for it by Wikipedia insiders) has returned from wherever he was. With a new, well-deserved screed.

"The next time Wikipedia asks for a donation, ignore it"
Every year the NGO responsible for the fundraising adds tens of millions of dollars to its war chest. After a decade of professional fund-raising, it has now amassed $400 million of cash as of March. It created an endowment, managed by the Tides Foundation, which now holds well over $100 million of that. The Foundation wanted to hit that figure in ten years, but found it had sailed past it in just five. In 2021, the appeals raised a total of $162 million, a 50% year-on-year increase. Yet the running costs of Wikipedia are a tiny fraction of the amount raised each year.
Wikipedia can operate quite comfortably with the cash it has already, without running another banner ad, for twenty years. So where does the money go?

Not on the people doing the actual work on the site, of course. Wikipedia’s Administrators and maintainers, who tweak the entries and correct the perpetual vandalism, don’t get paid a penny — they’re all volunteers. What has happened is that the formerly ramshackle Foundation, which not so long ago consisted of fewer than a dozen staff run out of a back room, has professionalised itself. It has followed the now well-trodden NGO path to respectability and riches. The Foundation lists 550 employees. Top tier managers earn between $300,000 and $400,000 a year, and dozens are employed exclusively on fund-raising.

The NGO world of which the Wikimedia Foundation is now part uncannily follows Marx’s prediction that the middle class would devise an infinite number of ways of enriching themselves, while ensuring the proletariat, the volunteers at the Wiki-face, don’t share the riches. Understandably, the relationship between the unruly Wikipedia workers and their bourgeoisie betters at the Foundation is strained. When the Wikimedia Foundation proposed changing its name to the Wikipedia Foundation, many of them decided it was a slur and the attempt faltered. For the first time this year, dissent is evident: many recently condemned the Foundation for continuing to run misleading and aggressive appeals.

Without many people realising, Wikipedia has become the world’s most aggressive online chugger. It’s okay to say no.

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Re: Andrew Orlowski is back!

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Oct 12, 2022 8:06 pm

Buried in the comments below Orlowski's article is this Twitter thread, which shows that the WMF is re-donating some of its massive cash intake--to some very dodgy, extremely left-leaning organizations. None of this has anything to do with keeping Wikipedia in operation. Go and read up about the WMF-funded group called SeRCH.

https://mobile.twitter.com/echetus/stat ... 6034757633

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Re: Andrew Orlowski is back!

Post by badmachine » Thu Oct 13, 2022 2:45 am

oh goody:
The STEM en Route to Change Foundation (or The SeRCH Foundation, Inc.) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to using science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as a tool for social justice.
:roll: :jerkoff:

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Re: Andrew Orlowski is back!

Post by ericbarbour » Fri Oct 14, 2022 12:15 am

I've read that SeRCH is deliberately telling scientists to bias their experimental results, to encourage social justice and "woke-ism". If you want to encourage women of color to enter scientific fields, this is one goddamned insane way to do it. Also probably ineffective.

Also, I guarantee that anyone who asks (say) David Gerard about Orlowski's article will get a standard unhinged rant about how Unherd.com is a "nazi fake-news site" run by "wall-eyed crackpots" and so forth. Because writers like Douglas Murray and Matthew Goodwin are on the masthead. The fact that leftists like Paul Embery and Julie Bindel are ALSO on the masthead, that doesn't matter. Gerard's gotta Gerard.

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