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
I don't get the outrage either. It's almost like people want Wikipedia to be barely scrapping by which isn't good. Having some money in your reserves is fine.

>>rany_+v9
I agree, but with a warchest of $400m, their budget can seemingly be funded at 2.5% withdrawal per year, so there may be no need to ask anymore. (Though personally I'd rather they spent even more and had more full time editors and researchers improving the site.)

>>peterc+kl
> more full time editors and researchers

By "full-time" you mean paid?

Researchers can't contribute to Wikipedia at all, unless the "research" consists of a literature review.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

And if there were full-time paid editors, I'd stop editing immediately, and instead contribute my efforts to the fork that would inevitably result.