Refreshing compared to the alternative that Wikipedia is showing, with the tantrum-like emails we receive from their CEO like "LAST REMINDER" or "We've had enough" ; which they ironically send to people who gave.
I would much prefer the Wikipedia endowment model of non-profit orgs. They have a standard operating procedure with a predictable budget, and endowment that let's them run indefinitely, and we just have to suffer through pledge drives. I just block them with ublock filters. I gave them 6 dollars back in 2012, and according to their marketing that is enough for life.
No. They are meant to manipulate me personally, as well as other persons I care about. I will take them personally.
More broadly, I don't have to excuse bad behavior just because somebody's making money off it or because it makes some too-narrow metric go up. Yes, it's a complex and imperfect world. But to me that's a reason to work harder to make things better, not a reason for people to say, "fuck it" and make the world worse.
This is different than what is currently going on with venture backed services like reddit and youtube. I would argue that we should block ads there too, but there it is an arms race where we have to consider ways to protect ourselves from encroaching privacy violations. It's much ruder, and that is something we should actually be mad at.