zlacker

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+(OP)
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+h2
If they were running ads like that, they wouldn't make any money. The psychology of fundraising is extremely well researched.

>>shadow+B6
> If they were running ads like that, they wouldn't make any money.

Bullshit.

To repeat: the ads today are more misleading and more intrusive than ever. In years past there were ads that were unlike the ones used today. (People complained about them, but I was not among them.) Those ads were successful. There's no evidence to argue that they wouldn't be successful today, too.

>>cxr+X6
There is plenty of evidence, in the form of the hockey-sticking donation revenue for the organization, that whatever they're doing now works better than what they were doing in the past.

As I said, hacker ethos of biasing in favor of the scrappy underdog. It was fine to fundraise when they were small and their strategy was unproven, but as they grow and their strategy is demonstrated as effective, they lose our favor.

ETA: speaking of human psychology... It's an election cycle in the US. It's interesting that this story, the facts of which have been known since last year (according to a cursory search of news story dates) is suddenly again making the rounds right now. May be simple coincidence.

>>shadow+B6
They can start running the ads again once they only have enough cash to keep wikipedia running for the next five years rather than 35 years then.

>>concor+v9
Why leave donor money on the table for the ExxonMobil Foundations of the world to pick up?

>>shadow+Z9
These are charitable donations. That money wouldn't have gone to ExxonMobil et al, it would instead go to thinks like the Against Malaria Foundation.

>>shadow+u9
In part this is a cumulative effect. People are invited to set up a recurring donation, or include the Wikimedia Foundation in their will, so naturally there is a growing base level of steady income each year, with first-time donors on top of that.

The reason the story is coming up now is that the Wikimedia Foundation is currently "testing" the fundraising banners, in time for the big annual fundraising campaign in December. So at present, a certain percentage of Wikipedia readers in major English-speaking countries are shown the fundraising banners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#W...

>>shadow+u9
> There is plenty of evidence[...] that whatever they're doing now works better than what they were doing in the past.

You just moved the goalposts. (In this case, moved them such that your "argument" is just restating the substance of the complaint.) Wikimedia is bringing in a lot more money doing this sort of thing. That's well understood—by all, i.e., those on both sides of the issue.

Your job is not to defend the position that the aggressive ads bring in more donations, but that if they weren't using them then "they wouldn't make _any_ money". Please leave dishonest sleights of hand at the door.

>>cxr+xj
I thought "any" would be understood to be rhetorical exaggeration; my apologies. My actual position I've posited is an org loses support of the hacker community when it becomes successful even if nothing about what it's doing fundamentally changes. If their ads are different now, it's because they refined their approach; the goal was always to get people to give them money to be used as they saw fit.

>>shadow+wn
The banners have become more intrusive and obnoxious as the organisation has become richer. Ten years ago, they were quite mild by comparison. You wouldn't get ten reminders, the banners didn't cover your entire screen, and they didn't beseech you not to scroll away.

A couple of years ago a Wikimedia Foundation fundraising report explained why that "Don't scroll away" phrase was added:

------------

“Don’t Scroll Away”

A simple, yet effective phrase that we were surprised to see resonate with readers worldwide was simply asking readers not to “scroll away” from or “scroll past” the fundraising message in the banner. We believe that addressing the context in which people donate helps improve the donation rate.

------------

Quoted from this report: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2019-20_Report

>>shadow+wn
Sure, a classic motte-and-bailey. I'm familiar.

Feel free to provide an actual argument against any one of the following:

- Wikipedia is not short on cash

- The current ads are misleading and intrusive

- The ads of years past were successful despite not being this misleading or intrusive

- The point you're trying to raise, when you're not being mercurial about it (the point about "support of the hacker community" for causes "on the edge of pauper") is, even if we assume it to be true, has no place in this discussion, in light of the circumstances (i.e. what's true about the subject we're discussing—and what isn't true, either)

>>cxr+zX
Sure. If you don't want to discuss hacker bias against success via using the tools that are demonstrated successful because they're not "virtuous" tools, I can't force you. It's the only piece of this I'm interested in though.

>>shadow+B6
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.

>>shadow+SZ
In other words, what you're ostensibly here to discuss has nothing to do with WMF's campaign in light of the actual circumstances, and you've shown a willingness to make a bunch of indefensible claims along the way—only to say that you were never really serious about those things. There's no good reason for anyone to attempt to discuss anything with you when the only thing you seem to actually be committed to is the use of misdirection while hoping no one notices.