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
An organization that has the goodwill of the hacker community has to perpetually walk the line on the edge of pauper to maintain its virtue, lest it be seen as selling out and no longer worthy of the goodwill of the hacker community.

It's a bit of a self-defeating attitude. Hackers love scrappy upstarts. Succeed too hard and you cease to be a scrappy upstart.

>>shadow+ud
If they were running ads that said, "Hey we sort of have the money we need to keep doing this for a while, but you can give us some more money if you want to help", then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Wikipedia's current ads are both misleading and more intrusive than ever.

550 employees is huge, especially for an organization that doesn't even pay those employees to create and edit the content on the site. It's so far away from "on the edge of pauper" that the point you're making—even if true for other, non-Wikimedia realms—is completely irrelevant here.

>>cxr+Lf
If they were running ads like that, they wouldn't make any money. The psychology of fundraising is extremely well researched.

>>shadow+5k
They can keep lying and misleading people if they want, and they will get money from people who are okay with being lied to and misled. If they want the money and respect of people who place an incredibly high value on truth (like myself), then they need to tell the truth.

I will sooner give $20 to someone begging who tells me that he intends on spending it on booze, than I would a well meaning non-profit who attempts to snow me with rhetoric honed on manipulating millions of other people before me.