Comment by Spooky23
3 years ago
Charitable giving is important to me personally, and I have a relatively limited budget to donate.
I get a lot of utility from Wikipedia, but is my marginal dollar helping the mission or paying for dinner at a conference? Perhaps I’d be better off donating to an open source foundation for that part of the charity portfolio, which may actually have more impact on Wikipedia!
I think this org doesn’t communicate what it does well.
The problem is a social one, if everyone expects everybody else to do something about a problem, it never gets done.
"I thought you were doing it"
If you want to give, then give and I recommend giving to charity, the world needs lasting regular investment.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, someone is ultimately paying. If everybody assumes everybody else will pay for it and nobody is willing to add funds, then that service shall pass away.
Look at any social good and the investment it receives and the state of repair of those same services.
Is paying for dinner at a conference of wikipedia editors really that bad a thing?
In person conferences move open source projects forward. They build relationships and synergy between people who usually only see each other online. A cheap dinner is probably a lot of bang for buck when it comes to outcomes.