Topic: Getting Wikipedia to accept Bitcoin donations - Community pledge - page 4. (Read 19110 times)

We can't force them to do anything. We can ask.

Opinions aren't set in stone. I don't know if anyone has ever had a serious discussion with them about why they should accept Bitcoin. Users randomly emailing them is not discussion. Erik Voorhees posting an aggressive response on his blog, designed to bring them to their knees, is not discussion.

I cannot do that with already sent funds, since that would be a breach of contract.

And I am not inclined to start a new pledge with revised terms, since I believe in the terms set in the OP.

We already have a pass-through. I do not see that it helped.

I asked Bitpay back in the day if they're making an effort to inform Wikimedia how much donations passed through them, but got no response.

No, but I can't think of an instance when it failed, either.

For me this is like what we did with DOSBox, times 1000. Perhaps it is naive to compare things of such different scales, but I explained my thought process in the OP, and I find it reasonable.

I'm sorry guys, but I can't see this ending well for the bitcoin community publicity-wise.  Think about it: they will view this as holding a large donation hostage until they "meet our demands" of accepting the donation in our currency. 

We can't force them to accept bitcoin.  Just accept that they have a different opinion about bitcoin than we do, and the future will show who's opinion ends up being the most correct. 

Holding a large donation over their heads on the condition that they accept bitcoin is just a bad idea. 

I recommend you convert the coins to USD and send the USD no matter what, by a set date, say 1 month from now.  And instead of saying "we'll give you $x if you accept bitcoin!" we can say "look at how much bitcoin has raised for you so far!  if you just accepted it yourself, you could have so many more donations from people who are uncomfortable donating via a pass-through!"

You can still set a goal of 10k BTC if you want.  But give the donation no matter what.  YES, let's raise awareness about the campaign while it's going on.  YES, let's try and use it as a motivator for them to accept bitcoin in the future.  But let's NOT hold a donation hostage.  That situation almost never ends well.  Can you think of an instance where this has worked historically?

I trust me, can I be a treasurer?

 

I still don't understand the reasoning. You already said you'd donate if they accepted Bitcoin - donating to the pledge is merely putting your money where your mouth is.

Allow me to introduce myself, after which I will no longer be a stranger

Seriously though, if that's the issue, name someone you'd trust and I'll ask him to join as a treasurer.

Great initiative. I just donated something.

I have already given some to Khan Academy; I rather give some to some other charities that I use frequently but have not yet supported.


Personally all I want is them to do is accept bitcoin, they don't have to promote it or anything. Just a bitcoin button on a donate page.

So I went ahead and donated 0.13 to 19HHHDya8PNqdVpiCdZYuwKyuWFoU1TC9A , not much for now but i'll donate more if this takes off. Since it would go to wikipedia when they finally do accept it is cool by me.

There's a little problem with that theory...

Let's take a look at ways to donate to Wikipedia...

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en

Amazon
PayPal
Moneybookers
Stock donations through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

First, I don't see how they can claim that these are not commercial entities. All of these businesses exist for one reason, and one reason only. To make money.
Second, I don't see how accepting payments through these services is qualifies as an Wikipedia ENDORSEMENT of these services.

Bitcoin is no different in my opinion.


Who the hell cares?

I can do that right now! OMG BITCOIN WORLD DOMINATION! EVEN WIKIPEDIA ACCEPTS! JUST BUY AMAZON CODES WITH BTC THEN DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA WITH AMAZON!

That being said, I fully endorse Wikipedia's right not to accept a currency they don't want, regardless of their reasoning behind it and I suspect eventually they will accept it anyway, because money talks and bullshit walks. We don't need to be begging people to take the currency.

If they accept it, great.
If not, move on.

If you got a good product people will come around eventually, you don't need to advertise. Ever see advertising for pot? I didn't think so.

I am willing to donate bitcoin to wikipedia. And I will not donate anything until they accept.

I am not willing to donate bitcoin to some 'get wikipedia to accept bitcoin fund', however - especially since it's managed by someone I do not know.

Sorry, nothing personal. But it might explain the low # of bitcoins donated - many might share my sentiment in one way or another.

I am quite underwhelmed by the community's willingness to donate bitcoins to Wikimedia which may be partially, but not wholly, explained by the reservations expressed in this thread. Even if this experiment turns out to be a failure, I do not regret pledging. I trust that Meni will continue to hold the funds until Wikimedia will accept bitcoin donations - which I am confident they will one day, maybe when my donation is worth many times more than it is now.

I still see no reason why anyone wishing to donate bitcoins to Wikimedia wouldn't do so through this pledge. Even if no pressure is made on Wikimedia (which is also fine by me, it just seems like a shame) - the only downside of this pledge is that the funds may sit for a while before Wikimedia accepts them.

That was not remotely the point of that comment. What I was saying is that it is not reasonable for them to take a moral high ground about our motivations.

Personally I think trying to analyze why people do things and holding them to some impossible standard of selflessness is futile. More productive is to care aout how they do them. My motivation may not be that of Wikimedia's idealized donor, but I'm doing this in the most transparent, respectful and moderate way possible.

Wikimedia accepting Bitcoin donations is mutually beneficial. Why is that a bad thing?

All of this has already been tried.

Why does it need to be instead? We can do all of this, and demonstrate that Bitcoin donations can be meaningful.


To quote Jimmy Wales (not the decision maker on fundraising, in an informal context):

What if we can take away the most important downside, by demonstrating the amount people are willing to donate via Bitcoin to Wikipedia?

(Though honestly, people's willingness to donate bitcoins to Wikipedia turns out to be much lower than I anticipated...)

No,  I'd prefer the case be genuinely made by those who had already found ideological common ground and earnestly weren't seeking a selfish result here.
It's fair for me, because it's exactly what I expect people to say. It's fair for them because its actual evidence supporting an earnest, if not entirely correct (/representative), belief. But... really? fair?  I wasn't aware that there was some particular formal structure for convincing people.

In any case, the whole approach of collecting up funds and handing them over conditionally was making the same statement implicitly to anyone whos perception was sensitized to read it that way. I was trying to caution you against that kind of position before you actually said it outright.
Yes, people's motivations are complicated. For example, one non-altruistic motivation sometimes at play is the feeling the need to be consistent with their past outspoken positions. It's usually easier to find locations for common ground when you're not saying things that play right into the wrong side of people's past battles...

I've seen Wikimedia turn away million dollar scale donations with strings which would have been easier to swallow than "do something that promotes Bitcoin's value" and that was at times when a million dollars was a lot more to Wikimedia than it is now,  if your strategy is it to exploit non-pure-altruism in the form of desire to bring in more funds, I do not predict success. Wikimedia's challenges are more in the domain of managing growth, not in bringing funds. With some additional effort but without Bitcoin Wikimedia could already bring in more funding than they could safely and sustainably apply to their mission at this time.

If instead people seek out ideological commonality— can a world with politically motivated mastercard blockades reliably share in the sum of human knowledge, when sometimes that knowledge is unpopular with people in power? (take care: Wikileaks is also a sore spot for some at Wikimedia)— or points of convenience for some donors I believe success is more likely.  Or even that bitcoin is a geeky toy and so geeks like both Bitcoin and Wikipedia.  These paths are also less incompatible with some positions that some people have previously adopted, bitcoin could still be a worthless scam but also still be easier for some donors to deal with or supportive of a vision of a world where people can speak more freely because they control their own finances.

For the record:

1. I do care about the potential positive impact of this move on Bitcoin's adoption, as well as exchange rate.
2. I do not intend to pursue, nor do I condone, any paid press about this matter.
3. I do not condone any press that states or insinuates incorrect or misleading notions.
4. Press about this issue would be welcome, though is secondary to being able to refer to the matter in conversation.
5. I cannot speak for anyone else.


Human interaction as well as motivation is complex; you can cynically spin anything into a self-serving manipulation, but that doesn't make the world stop. To quote from Scott Aaronson's "On Self-Delusion and Bounded Rationality":

Would you prefer lying about my/our motivation?

Also, it's unfair for either you or them to pick one point I've acknowledged and say "AHA! Got you! All you want is to profit from BTC rate appreciation and get rich quick!"

Specifically, BTC appreciation is just part of the story - it benefits the entire world that Bitcoin is more widely used, and this will help.

I don't see Wikimedia having accepted Bitcoin donations for the sake of the self-proclaimed purely altruistic so far.

I should remind you that the people who make these decisions are humans too, I doubt they're acting in pure altruism either...

This is what I'm talking about in my last message.

This is exactly the kind of relationship which Wikimedia is likely to perceive as seedy and unaligned with its values, and it's a position that plays squarely into any argument made that Bitcoin is a pump-and-dump scam.  Wikimedia has the luxury to turn down selfish "donations" like this, or anything that looks even remotely like them, and it does.

This approach will not be successful. And, in fact, I believe the existence of this thread with points like this might undermine any differently motivated (e.g. people with unrealized Bitcoin gains who already want to donate and believe they would be better off donating it than converting it to USD paying taxes on it) efforts, which I think is sad. If something happens here it will be in spite of people who hope for some publicity and a rise in Bitcoin value, not because of them.

An alternative interpretation of a bunch of stored up conditional-coins is that you are attempting to buy some easy publicity fodder to pump up your Bitcoin, and you want to use Wikimedia's name to lend credibility to your effort.

Wikimedia has a lot of past experience with this, they'd enter into some limited agreement with some startup or another to work on some minor thing or that and then all of a sudden there is some flood of paid-press "WIKIPEDIA PARTNERS WITH ANSWERS.COM" (and in the subtext, written between the lines: buy buy buy answers.com stock! they've monetized wikipedia!) ... even when it's only some minor thing, or some trial effort, mentioned on some lost orphan page.

I'm not saying thats what anyone here is trying to accomplish (uh, well, okay its actually not entirely clear to me that the ask here is entirely orthogonal with that kind of outcome—  I can promise that _someone_ is going to run some "OMG BITCOIN WORLD DOMINATION, EVEN WIKIPEDIA ACCEPTS" story on the basis of anything done here) but past outcomes have seriously soured people to certain kinds of relationships (enough that as a result Wikimedia generally no longer does partnerships with commercial entities),  and plenty of companies stumble in wanting to make a "donation" when really what they're trying to do is buy their name in lights on a top 10 website.

A lot of people have ideologies, and think they can buy their way into making them Wikimedia's ideology too.  Wikimedia has the luxury of being able to be offended by these offers.  Success here would instead be finding out how your ideology and Wikimedia's are actually complementary and overlap, not in creating a bounty that might be perceived as selling out to benefit some private interest unrelated to Wikimedia's ideology.

Careful communication is required to avoid stepping on Wikimedia specific and Bitcoin specific rakes in this kind of discussion.

What do you mean?

You have repeatedly edited your post. I'm not ignoring anything, I responded to the parts you had written at the time. I've now added more replies; and you can reply to those, that's how discussion works...

I wouldn't call it that.

The "promotion" would only be in an orphan page. No other active action on their part is required.

This can be resolved in discussion.

"Offers of advice from Bitcoin experienced people" is something I'm sure they've already received tons of. Most likely referrals to FSF, EFF and IA as well. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

But if you read the OP you know the plan is not to tell them "We'll donate X BTC if you accept Bitcoin, kthxbye". The goal is to start a discussion which may indeed involve all these bodies. But if all they have to show for this discussion is that the entire Bitcoin community donates just 7.5 BTC, it's not going to happen. I want to prove to ourselves and to them that we are actually willing to donate.

That's a whole other discussion but I believe it is very good that organizations accept bitcoins with immediate conversion to USD, since that's the first step. Afterwards they start noticing some of the suppliers accept Bitcoin so they save costs by keeping some of the proceeds as BTC and using them directly; and so on. The average path that each BTC goes through before being settled against USD grows, and with it the economic benefit.

That's very interesting, will need to look into that.

That's fine. If you don't believe bitcoin to gain a status of a reserve currency one day, then this may be relevant. Otherwise, I'm sure these funds will eventually reach Wikimedia. The EFF once refused. And then time did it's thing.

Donations are an act of one entity supporting another entity, in this case, for ideological reasons. If Wikimedia's ideologies do not align with mine, I don't want them to have the funds. I've told Wikimedia fundraisers repeatedly that I wish to donate, but I'm not willing to do so with blood-stained monopoly money. This pledge is simply a statement that the day they'll accept bitcoin donations, then they have these funds ready and waiting. It's okay, they can take all the time they need to realize this.

That wasn't just some link I googled up cold.  You appear to be ignoring that I am telling you that your actions are politically inadvisable, and that they are at risk of playing into the reservations you supposedly hope to address.

I appreciate your optimism but we're still in a stage where most of my wealth is in BTC form, I'm actively looking for opportunities to use Bitcoin, and hardly finding anything. We need more organizations to accept bitcoins as payment or donations, and I believe Wikipedia is an important strategic target.

More power to KA and I sent them a small donation. But they're simply a completely different caliber than Wikipedia. Personally I use Wikipedia multiple times daily but don't recall ever using KA, and I expect most people are similar in this regard.


This is one blog post from over two years ago. Possibly some staffers still hold similar misconceptions, but part of the process will be to flesh out and iron out these reservations.


You've answered your own question. Bitpay's offer is in no way sanctioned by Wikimedia. People want to donate in a way that is officially supported. And I've explained in the OP some of their reasons for refusing acknowledgement of Bitcoin as a donation method.

Bitpay is large and reputable, and Wikimedia has made no effort whatsoever to find out who Bitpay is or to enter a formal agreement with them, because they had no reason to. The pledged funds are meant to incentivize them to do the necessary work - finding out who the players are, enter formal agreements, monitor received funds etc.

It will be possible to mention Wikipedia as an organization accepting Bitcoin donations, which can boost confidence in the currency and encourage more people to use it. And yes, it should also have a positive impact on its exchange rate.

Their money? Until we donate it it's not their money. And it's perfectly acceptable to specify the terms under which we are willing to donate.

Came here to say this.

Instead of bugging organizations that are unwilling to finally accept bitcoin, we should show them what they are missing out on. Not by tangling bitcoin in front of them, but by funding similar projects.

Same is true for stores etc.

Nagging e-mails will probably not get us very far. Businesses/organizations losing clients/funders to competitors will.