Topic: Wikipedia's yearly donation campaign; Time to accept Bitcoins? - page 5. (Read 16657 times)

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.

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.

Them saying 'thanks, but no thanks' in having Bitcoin donations help augment their $14,490,000 contribution fund (pdf source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/AR_web_all-spreads_24mar11_72_FINAL.pdf), still sits ill with me.

They openly welcome a $1.00 donation via PayPal, of which they recognize only $.67 after PayPal takes their cut. Yet they don't want to even find a way around not accepting Bitcoin with virtually no fee, a fee that may be arranged to equal 0%.

They keep this up, I'll just dust off my almost complete set of Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia, and refrain from using their site or, at the very least, falsely claim to not use them.

In most countries there are definitely no legal issues with Bitcoin. I'm starting a company with various Bitcoin-related services, based in Finland, and I actually had to ask about this. I made an enquiry to the Finnish financial supervisory authority and they said to me, in very clear Finnish, that bitcoins are not money. From their perspective bitcoins are simply computational units, a virtual commodity. So not only is it not illegal, the financial authorities do not even care. They said it's "not our jurisdiction".

This could obviously change and we've seen exchanges struggle with banks. My next challenge is to get a bank account in Finland that'll be stable. I will explain to them my intentions completely from the start so there are no surprises. Hopefully I will not run into any major obstacles.

This is exactly what I was trying to point out. How the hell were you able to do it with fewer words? 

Not at all.  Laws may (possibly) forbid or make it hard to claim a tax deduction of money given via bitcoin but not make it illegal to accept bitcoin.  If wikipedia is willing to accept it, someone could give them a house, a VHS copy of TJ Hooker,  something virtual or even a commitment of work. 

Name the laws that specifically exclude bitcoin.  This is nothing but an assumption on part of Wikipedia.  An assumption that goes against its own philosophy: "be bold".

As far as I can tell, it is not illegal for a charity to accept any valuable as a donation that isn't fiat money, as long as the charity declares it.

Also, laws differ from country to country.  WMF has 38 local chapters. Perhaps we should try our luck with those?

it's the other way around, laws don't include bitcoin

Legal requirements for being a registered charity exclude Bitcoin. Laws exclude Bitcoin.

I'm a bit disappointed at this. Wikipedia was a disruptive technology desperately trying to find ways to bootstrap itself, not even a decade ago. Back in 2004-2005 large organizations didn't take Wikipedia seriously just like Wikipedia doesn't take Bitcoin seriously now. Wikipedia also had to face their fair share of excrement being slung at them from the mainstream media, when they were new. They should know what it's like.  Why don't they give Bitcoin a chance? It isn't any more of a hassle accepting Bitcoin than accepting other non-monetary donations.  Ideologically, Bitcoin and Wikipedia are quite similar and could benefit each other tremendously. 

It's about them refusing our donations, makes no sense. You want to give them something and they refuse it, but meanwhile they ASK for donations...

You missed the point.  The point isn't about how to get money to them, there are already websites setup for that.  It's about getting them to take bitcoins.   

I'm not really understand a problem. If wikipedia do not accepts bitcoins directly, why not do it indirectly?

I propose experiment: I will send $5-$20 donations to wikipedia on your behalf. I will send them in advance, using your e-mail in correspondent field. When you will receive the receipt, you will transfer me appropriate amount of bitcoins. USD/BTC exchange rate is up to you. I shall be grateful for explanation how you calculate this rate.

So, all you need to do is to reply in this topic with following information:

• donation size (from $5 to $20)
• your e-mail (if you don't want to publish it, then send it by private message, but please provide the number of your post, so I can link your email with other donation information)
• exchange rate (anyone you feel be fair)
• explanations where you get exchange rate from (optionally, but I asking to provide it if it is not very hard for you)

The interesting this about Bitcoin is although it can be anonymous it doesn't have to be.  Hypothetically wiki-leaks donations could be very public. Through use of Blockchain and requiring digital signatures (possible from a CA for amounts over say  500 BTC).  This would provide public insight into where the big money is coming from.

If the Microsoft articles all seem to have a pro-Microsoft slant and you can search block chain and digital signature lists and see Microsoft gave $2.5 M this year well you can put 2 and 2 together.

This is a good point. All it boils down to is the integrity of the people running an organization, and then you again have the dilemma of funding. What if you need 1 million USD to operate for one year, and you've only collected 200K, then some big company offers to pay the remaining 800K. Will you accept that offer, and perhaps compromizing your integrity and neutrality, or will you reject the offer, and struggle to get other donators?

One possible way is to state explicitly that no amount of money offered will make you give the donator any special treatment, but then again, the whole point of donating huge sums of money are usually to achive some level of influence on the organization you donate to.

I believe there are genuine corporations and individuals that will donate larger sums, not expecting anything back, but more ofte I guess they do in fact expect something in return.

Couldn't the big, evil, bribe-happy company who donated bitcoins easily prove to wikipedia that they control the address that sent the money?
That could lead to wikipedia being just as controlled by donators, while being less open about it (since the Money donated by Evildyne Industries reveal would likely happen over the phone instead of through a semi-public non-BTC transaction).

To Wikipedia folks if you are reading this:

I use Wikipedia a lot and would/could/should donate, but I've had a couple of beefs over the years.  These are mostly associated with your editors sometimes being caught displaying personal motives which conflict with the free flow of balanced information.  The situation of Israel, and with naked short selling come to mind.

All the same, I use the service enough to support it (in spite of the laughable pathetic look on the Jimmy's face which graces each page.)  I don't give two shits about tax right-offs and I want to foster the use of Bitcoin.  The BS about Bitcoin taking to much effort is just that.  So, if you accept Bitcoin, I'll pony up some charitable giving on your behalf.

I just resent my previous mail sent about a week ago, so I will see if I recieve an answer now.

If I ran a non-profit organization website, I sure would have accepted bitcoin or any other way
somebody wanted to support my organization.

  Maybe they finally got tried of responding or assumed it was all spam since it was in such a short timespan.? :/  Did anyone else not get a response back?


  Aye, this aspect of it makes me wonder as well. Of course, I am only vaguely familiar with all the guidlines regarding how non-profits are allowed to generate income. I certainly agree it undermines their potential. I am just not sure if it is an unwillingness to look at other options or if there are sincere legal hurdles that make such a prospect difficult to implement.

  I'm going to keep poking until I get an answer or someone more knowledgeable can attest to the difficulties or lack there of. If nothing else, knowing what road blocks are in the way of a non-profit utilizing Bitcoin donations will help the community in other endeavours.

  Cheers

I don't even got a response from Wikipedia regarding my request to pay with bitcoins. I guess they do not want donations.

So what if they were caught in a legal 'crossfire' ? How on earth would anyone attack wikipedia as long as they honestly
reported all their income, even though this was in USD, BTC or in the form of a laptop ? What kind of legal troubles could
they possibly get?

What I think this is: Inertia

Anytime you suggest anything new to a company or a group, or even individuals, there's this negativity to embrace it, many
want to wait 'till larger companies' accept it, 'till it becomes more widespread', 'till it becomes more accepted' etc.

Thing is, we're all part of the change. If we just wait, nothings happens, someone somewhere needs to take the steps to
implement new things, new technology and new methods.

For instance, if my memory serves correct, hole cards for hotel doors was an scandinavian invention, but no hotel in scandinavia
wanted to test it out, they were all satisfied using keys.

Then the inventors went to america and did a test with some hotels, it worked great, and soon after the entire world used these
systems. They're now obsolete in most parts of the world, but you get the idea.

If wikipedia were to recieve 100K USD worth of bitcoins in one year, this would not be enough for any governmental entity to
take action against wikipedia.

My guess is that the people making the decisions are reluctant to change and reluctant to new technology. And wikipedia wants
to 'stay neutral'. How on earth can we know that they do stay neutral. What if some oil company pays them a few million dollars,
would that bide for 'neutrality' ?

Would wikipedia have honest trustworthy articles about that oil company and the doings of that company ?

Adding to the stubbornness and unwillingness to change and adapt is the fact that wikipedia does not want to accept advertisers.

It's a huge site, with lot's of customers. If they wanted to, they could hire a couple of persons full time that could run the PR-division,
these people could then develop a model for putting ads on wikimedia pages, and having clear guidelines and rules about what is
allowed to advertise for could help wikipedia financially.

For instance, when I do a search for London, there could be a few discreet commercials for hotels, flights, car rentals etc. The
companies would have to pay Wikipedia for commercial spots. Obviously this would have to be implemented in a smart way and
such that people did not start finding wikipedia annoying.

And for those that absolutely hate commercials, it could be possible to turn off the commercials with having a registered account
and ticking off that option.

When you have an insane amount of visitors to a web-site, you're unwilling and unable to monetize on it, and in addition you won't
accept donations because it's in some 'weird' currency, then I question is wikipedia is not undercutting their potential ?