Like every year, December is the time of the donation campaign for Wikipedia in English. During this month, the platform hangs a banner on its main page asking for money to cover its operation and prevent the disappearance of the project, given that this, non-profit, is financed with the contributions of its users. And it has been, in the midst of a fundraising campaign, that Elon Musk has set the target of his missiles in the form of a message on the social network of which he is the owner.
Musk cited a far-right woke up denotes contempt for progressive ideas). The owner of But it is not its editorial board who gives one look or another to Wikipedia articles, but the users and editors themselves.
Wikipedia’s revenue in recent years has far exceeded 150 million dollars (144 million euros). In the last 2023-24 cycle, it reached 170.5 million, as explained on their page the organization. The bulk of the donations come from the United States ($106.5 million); Next comes Europe (49 million), followed by Oceania (six million) and Asia (approximately four million). Latin America does not reach a million dollars and Africa barely donates 132,000 dollars.
Buy an encyclopedia
The amount that the extreme right is calling into question covers close to 50 million, 30% of the budget in 2024, and is intended to meet the objective of achieving a more egalitarian Wikipedia. To this end, 30 million dollars are allocated to promoting equality and approximately 20 million for security and inclusion. They are data that They can be read on the website of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that maintains Wikipedia.
The businessman later deleted his comment from X (some users they made catches), although he shared another in which he maintains his hint of partisan use of Wikipedia funds. The response was immediate and cultural personalities, such as the writer Rebecca Solnit, launched their messages on the Bluesky platform encouraging donations to Wikipedia. “Elon Musk doesn’t want you to donate to Wikipedia, which in itself is a good reason to do it, but the much better reason is that it’s about Wikipedia. Last night I donated again,” Solnit wrote.
In any case, it is not the first time that the tycoon has criticized the collaborative platform. “A few years ago he joked that he wanted to buy Wikipedia to make it his own,” says Florencia Claes, president of the Wikimedia Spain foundation and professor of communication at the Rey Juan Carlos University.
Claes explains that Musk’s threat/joke was used by Wikipedia United States for its next fundraising campaign, warning of the dangers that lurked in the platform. “The issue had a lot of impact there, but not here, so we had a tense moment when we told them that moving the campaign in Spain was giving more voice to what was said against us,” he adds.
Wikipedia bias
In the United States, the debate around platform bias is highly polarized. Larry Sanger, co-founder with Jimmy Walles of Wikipedia in 2001, but currently away from the platform, repeatedly criticized in 2021 an alleged bias towards ideological positions that were more left-wing than right-wing.
“Elon Musk turns out to be totally ignorant about how we work,” says Claes. “The items indicated for topics such as equity, accessibility or inclusion have their reason for being in the clear inequality regarding free access to being an editor on Wikipedia, as well as the great male and Anglo-Saxon bias that exists on the platform for geographical and economic,” he explains.
Elon Musk turns out to be totally ignorant about how we function. The items for equity, accessibility or inclusion have their reason for being in the clear inequality regarding free access to being an editor of Wikipedia, as well as the great male and Anglo-Saxon bias that exists on the platform for geographical and economic reasons.
Florence Claes
— President of the Wikimedia Spain foundation
Therefore, they are parties “that seek a less biased and more universal and plural Wikipedia, where there are more editors from new countries.” The final goal is a collaborative encyclopedia with greater balance and that is not only a machine for producing articles. “Currently, the majority of entries about characters are Anglo-Saxon men and, if they are women, only those who are artists or athletes enter,” exemplifies Claes.
Patricia Horrillo is founder of Wikisphereone of the most active official communities of editors surrounding the Spanish chapter of Wikipedia. For her, the bias is due to the profile of the editors: “To contribute to Wikipedia you have to have time, know how to search for information, know how to write, have a computer and access to the Internet.” “Musk, like most people, does not know what Wikipedia is and how it is built. It is easier to think that there is a group of people deciding what is read in the free encyclopedia than to understand that we are thousands of Wikipedians around the world dedicating hours of our free time so that anyone can access open knowledge,” he adds.
Full resignation in Spain
For Florencia Claes, proof of the disparity of the different regional Wikipedias is that, in her opinion, “the Spanish Wikipedia is markedly right-wing.” Claes believes that the cause of this rightward movement is due to the fact that a significant number of editors are retired people with high purchasing power and very conservative ideas and points out as indications that “the quantity” of articles dedicated to churches” or “the discussions they raise “articles dedicated to feminism or figures or events linked to progressivism.”
The president of Wikimedia Spain reveals that, in this turbulent context for Wikipedia, the entire board of directors resigned en bloc this December, after having been elected just a few months before, last April. The Board chaired by Claes will be replaced on January 11.
It is easier to think that there is a group of people deciding what is read in the free encyclopedia than to understand that we are thousands of Wikipedians around the world dedicating hours of our free time so that anyone can access open knowledge.
Patricia Horrillo
— Wikipedia editor and founder of Wikiesfera
But it is difficult to be categorical in the analysis of the right-wing of the Spanish chapter, since it cannot be measured nor can it be generalized in the contents of an open publication website that, furthermore, is not managed by anyone. There is a group of organizations, both Spanish and Latin American, that with more or less funding work to improve it.
“In all spaces there is a reactionary wave that also moves to places like Wikipedia, but I don’t see that right now happening in a significant way.” [en Wikipedia España]”, explains Patricia Horrillo, who has been holding “editatonas” for years, collective meetings with a feminist focus to contribute new entries that make Wikipedia a more egalitarian place of knowledge.
The Spanish Wikipedia entries represent about two million articles. Although there are about 13,000 active users, the site’s statistics indicate that the “very active” there are 225. Of the ten most active editors in the last seven days, all those who identify their gender are men (visited as of December 30).
However, on Wikipedia there are editors with different editing privileges and it cannot be ignored that the ideology of the editors with the greatest power influences the content of the pages. “We,” Horrillo recalls, “were ‘attacked’ on a discussion page for requesting funding for a historical memory project in Spain,” she comments and adds that “many editors are gentlemen who defend the RAE above all things.” .
However, Horrillo asks to escape the single vision of the Spanish Wikipedia as a unitary space and in this sense vindicates the role of Wikiesfera, which is focused on promoting the participation of feminist and LGTBI+ women in the platform’s articles: “Although It costs us our effort, we have always managed to publish articles by women or people from the LGBT community.” “Only on some occasions have we had controversy about it,” he clarifies and ends by ensuring that they fight “that bias [reaccionario] creating solid articles that cannot be questioned from a sexist perspective.”
Each chapter, I would even say that each language in which it is made, represents a specific community and, therefore, reflects the prevailing thinking among the editors.
Florence Claes
— President of the Wikimedia Spain foundation
The president of Wikimedia Spain recognizes the work of Wikiesfera and other groups attached to the Spanish chapter “to balance the conservative and sexist bias”, and reflects on whether Wikipedia’s greatest virtue also constitutes its great problem: free access to its writing, “and even more so if you take into account that what the majority wants is to write their article and stop checking the sources that support the entries made by other people.” “Each chapter, I would even say that each language in which it is made, represents a specific community and, therefore, reflects the prevailing thinking among the editors,” says Claes, who avoids commenting on the orientation in the United States.
Horrillo does believe that there may be a certain bias towards progressivism in the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia but, far from seeing it as something negative, he assumes it as logical and attributes it to the fact that “many people from the university world intervene in the English Wikipedia, because it is the space to disseminate knowledge, and in the United States that is something that is deeply valued.” “I believe that the orientation to the left has to do with these values: building a free, open and collaborative space of universal knowledge,” he adds.
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