zlacker

>>nickpa+(OP)
Eh. If you don't want to donate, don't, but I don't quite get the outrage here. The Wikimedia Foundation is still small as far as charities go and is visibly making Wikipedia better: the new UI is a breath of fresh air, and given the insane complexity of MediaWiki markup, the visual editor is a piece of unimaginable technical wizardry. Wiktionary is an unheralded gem and even Wikidata is starting to be genuinely useful.

For what it's worth, Charity Navigator gives them 4 out of 4 stars with a 98.33/100 rating: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703

Meanwhile eg the American Cancer Society gets 73/100 and spends more on fundraising than WMF's entire budget, so oncologists can snort blow off hookers in Vegas, but nobody cares.

>>ripper+m8
The issue is that they make it sound like they are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia running when they are actually wealthier than ever before.

The whole premise of Wikipedia (or aspiration, at least, and yes, not always fulfilled ...) is that people should have information so they can't be manipulated.

It kind of sucks to see the very organisation hosting the site do the opposite, don't you think?

>>akolbe+79
Wikimedia is vital to Wikipedia, they have little money and pay their exec too little for what they do. IMHO.

>>pastag+La
Then they should tell donors and prospective donors what they do. As ever, all the content is written by unpaid volunteers (or people paid by others), but still the Wikimedia Foundation's spending doubles every few years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial...

What's it for? Tell donors what they are funding.

And somehow the priorities are wrong. The Wikimedia Foundation has annual 8-figure surpluses, but volunteers are writing open letters to complain that the Foundation fails to update and maintain critical aspects of the software:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Think_big_-_open_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

What the WMF does produce, however, is reams and reams of words about "strategy", "leadership", "codes of conduct" etc.

And millions of dollars are given away to progressive organisations that have nothing to do with Wikipedia:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...

>>akolbe+Pb
> Tell donors what they're funding

Wikimedia has a 100/100 transparency rating.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703

>>shadow+Jc
Notably none of the criteria measured in that rating consider their marketing. So yes their policies and filings exist, but those are not what they're presenting to potential donors, so do not prove the ads are not misleading