zlacker

[return to "Wikipedia is not short on cash"]
1. ripper+m8[view] [source] 2022-10-12 10:37:15
>>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.

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2. Blikke+Fa[view] [source] 2022-10-12 10:58:34
>>ripper+m8
I used to donate, but no longer do, not for this, but because I'm tired about the Anglocentric, U.S.A.-centric style on Wikipedia with little efforts to fix it, as well as other neutrality issues.

When they flung some banner about soliciting more female contributors in my face which reeked of Americana it was the last straw.

I've seen some articles at least add “English-language criticism" by now instead of simply “criticism” when talking about the critical reception of work that wasn't even in the English language so that's a start, but too often still that doesn't happen. It's obviously unavoidable that English-language Wikipedia incurs some Anglocentric bias, but there is almost no effort to fix it and not even a template seemingly to warn that an article might carry an Anglocentric bias, even those that report on matters that mostly pertain outside of the Anglosphære.

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3. Ensorc+Mb[view] [source] 2022-10-12 11:09:03
>>Blikke+Fa
> When they flung some banner about soliciting more female contributors in my face which reeked of Americana it was the last straw.

What was this ad that was so objectionable?

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4. Blikke+IY[view] [source] 2022-10-12 15:21:31
>>Ensorc+Mb
Mostly because I'm tired of these U.S.A. “diversity” efforts which come down to “more persons from the U.S.A.” overlooking most of the world.

That they apparently think gender defines perspectives more than ethnicity and cultural background is the problem. Apparently they can make an effort towards gender but not toward the issue that plagues English-Language Wikipedia that only English-language sources are used in the end, often even about subjects that are fundamentally not in English such as the critical response of non-English media, being phrased as though it's a global consensus.

Again, I've seen some places where his has recently improved, but it's annoying to, say, see on Wikipedia that for instance “criticism was mixed” on a French film that was overwhelmingly positively received in France because English-language criticism was more negative due to cultural differences.

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