That's muddying the waters. If Wikipedia has deceptive donation drives, then who reports it should be completely irrelevant.
If he's not presenting a factual summary of what's going on, his "motivations" are likewise irrelevant.
If you can refute his claims, by all means do so, but vague ad hominems don't impress me.
If wikimedia was actually spending all donations on blackjack and hookers for execs, would it matter that the person reporting it was reporting it because he really hates wikis as a concept?
Either his claims are factual, or they aren't.
If they are not factual, they should be refuted, but appealing to his "motivations" or "track record" is not a refutation. It is an ad hominem attack, i.e., a logical fallacy.
His motivation absolutely affects how he reports on this issue. He's not a neutral observer and so he picks and chooses which facts he includes and puts his own spin around the issues.
As I said above:
> So when an oil company writes a report on the viability of solar power then that doesn't affect how we should view the report?
> His motivation absolutely affects how he reports on this issue. He's not a neutral observer and so he picks and chooses which facts he includes and puts his own spin around the issues.
The truth of that claim has no causal relationship with his opinions. I mean, obviously someone who disagrees with funneling donations to left-wing causes would be more likely to complain about it, or even possibly make something up. But that in itself has no bearing on whether the claim is actually true.
Does Wikipedia funnel donations to left-wing causes or not?
You have presented no evidence one way or the other. Instead, you have attacked his "motivations" and "track record". That is a textbook ad hominem.
Did you actually read the article? This point is not made anywhere in the article.
No point in discussing this further.
But why do you think it does affect how you view the report? Because the company is likely to lie, right? So you should perhaps examine the report more carefully. But that has nothing to do with the report's factuality. It may affect how likely it is to be true, but once you've determined it to be one or the other, who reported it is completely irrelevant.
Likewise, if Wikipedia is in fact dishonest when it asks for donations, and you first heard that completely true fact from a Nazi, are you going to conclude that actually it was false all along? In other words, is your reality determined by the opposite of what your political adversaries say?
> Indeed, in the 2012/13 year the Foundation budgeted for $1.9m to provide all its free information on tap.
$1.9m is was the capital expenditure budget for 2012/3 (ie cost of servers etc).
But I'm sure that his motivations had nothing to do with the fact that he found a conveniently small expense figure to mislead with.
EDIT: And I insist, all that's relevant is the error itself. The political affiliation of the person who made the error shouldn't matter.
"The Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Equity Fund is a new US$4.5 million fund created by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2020, to provide grants to external organizations that support knowledge equity by addressing the racial inequities preventing access and participation in free knowledge."