Comment by charles_f
2 years ago
You have to appreciate the complete transparency, gently nudging towards giving without ever begging for it.
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.
Those are just non-profit fundraiser consulting tactics. Don't take them personally, just ignore them. The reason they exist is that Wikipedia has too much money, so they spend some on consultants who say they can raise more. It's weird, but that's how the world works.
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.
> Don't take them personally
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.
> They are meant to manipulate me personally, as well as other persons I care about. I will take them personally.
This, absolutely! they play on people's psyche and mental cabling by trying to guilt you in the same way your parent would ; it's manipulative, and I have an absolute hatred for these tactics.
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I'm not saying they are not wrong - it's unfortunate that there is a second hand market for fundraising consulting. It doesn't accomplish anything productive, yet here we are. The key point is to understand that this is caused by Wikipedia having too much funding, not too little. As internet denizens, we can be proud that an open source store of knowledge has money to blow on wasteful consulting, and then proceed to create our ublock filters worry free.
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.
With respect you are misinterpreting personally here.
They don't know you; they don't know me. I'm a nobody, just like you.
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> Those are just non-profit fundraiser consulting tactics. Don't take them personally, just ignore them.
I don't take them personally, of course, but they do encourage me to avoid forking over any money.
any excuse to not donate!
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So...is Wikipedia at the level where they can invest to ensure they're sustained indefinitely?
Wikipedia? Yes easily.
Wikimedia? No, they're a money black hole and will eat whatever you give them.
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> Those are just non-profit fundraiser consulting tactics. Don't take them personally, just ignore them. The reason they exist is that Wikipedia has too much money, so they spend some on consultants who say they can raise more. It's weird, but that's how the world works.
It's still shitty, even if it's a shitty "standard practice" and not a shitty thing being done to me particularly.
Honestly, it seems like Wikipedia's goodwill is seen as an exploitable resource, that people in Wikimedia are using to do other, unnecessary things (probably building little personal fiefdoms).
Sort of like Mozilla, actually. IIRC, they literally won't let you give them money to fund Firefox development, and any donations you give them go to fiefdoms almost certainty entirely unrelated to why you gave them money.
Yeah I agree. But that's consulting for you. There is a lot to not like about the evils of consulting, but wikipedia being free and doing pledge drives are on the more mild side of what's wrong.
It's basically a attempt at sql injection to the brain. Can't wait for AI glasses to filter that crap once and for all from reality.
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I donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years ago. A physical address was a required field on the donation form. I have never stopped regretting it, because GODDAMN! They started hammering me with physical mail asking for more money immediately and have not stopped.
I had this happen years ago, ironically I'm pretty sure they spent more hounding me for the next dollar than i gave them (like $25).
In case you're still giving money to them, perhaps consider not donating to an organization that marks people as bigots for speaking against religious extremism.
edit They do do a lot of good work in marking actual hate groups though, so I suppose it's a net positive still even if they miss a few strikes.
Just curious why you used an address that's associated with you. Choosing the address of a place like a park, which is a real address that has no mailbox or direct association with you, ought to be the default if you don't want to be spammed to hell and back.
I was young and naive! Also, I wanted to make the donation immediately, while I was thinking about it. I didn’t want to put it on a back shelf of my mind and forget about it for a few years, and I assumed “The Good Guys” wouldn’t use my information in a negative way.
You might want to receive a tax receipt.
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Apologies in advance as I may be saying contrary to the sentiments here against Wikipedia fund raising. I also get the same emails and the banners. I diligently donate what I can. I don’t know where my funds will go. But what I do know is that I use that website practically twenty times a day and get something of value.
Wikipedia is particularly insulting because they make enough money to cover the actual costs of running Wikipedia (the site) in days if not hours, and could operate for years without any additional donations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32840097
Is it personally insulting to you that a completely free high quality services sometimes ask if you want to donate what ever small amount you'd like?
You'll be proper mad when you realize how much money that other company, whom you regularly pay for access to their services, has in the bank.
It's personally insulting that they lie and make it seem like they need the money to keep running, and that your donation will go towards helping Wikipedia itself, when they do not and it does not.
There's a difference between "donate if you appreciate this website" and "donate if you appreciate this website because we will have to shut down otherwise (not really though)"
Wikipedia is... nuanced. Keep in mind that the entity doing the fundraising is the Wikimedia Foundation. They pay the hosting costs, but return nothing to the actual Wikipedians (editors, admins.) Instead, what's left is used to pay the salaries for hundreds of administrative employees, fund third-party charities, and so on. You can love Wikipedia but have misgivings about the Foundation.
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We are really the ones who provide that high quality. Wikipedia isn't edited by the Wikimedia foundation.
Is that including staff + trying to do new stuff or just the servers.
It includes staff, but not new stuff. The new stuff seems to be mostly things not directly related to Wikipedia, like funding third-party projects or causes. I'm trying to be politic here: many people don't like the projects they are funding with donation money, and others just don't like that they give money to any projects, and other people don't like that they keep the banner up after they've paid for salaries and keeping the lights on.
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Why should Wikipedia do new stuff? Or rather, why is it okay for Wikipedia to lie to people to get funding for their new pet projects?
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https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2022-annu...
Seems almost mundane, as if they’re running a very effective foundation that’s actively achieving their goals. See the recent Cambridge study that explored how their governance has been effective at promoting moderate discourse while suppressing misinformation and hateful content: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-s...
Uh, the opening paragraph of that second leads reads to me like wikipedia effectively got ideologically captured and got rid of all editors who didn't agree.
Seems off. They have 250 million in net asset and hosting costs 2 million a year while they spend 88 million on salaries and still beg for money each year?
> which they ironically send to people who gave
I'm a lifetime member of my university's alumni association. This means I routinely get physical mail with headlines like, "YOUR OFFER INSIDE," and then the "offer" is to give them more money.
Sigh.
There was a comic I've never been able to find about wikipedia asking for money, it basically had them being that one crazy dude yelling at you to donate, and getting worse as time passed and you tried to ignore them. Then it showed a raw screenshot of wikipedias nag screen. Unsure who drew it or where it went, but I regret not archiving it, because it conveys what it feels like every time. I just don't want to donate if I have 0 control of where my money goes. If it's straight to paying the bill for the infrastructure, then sure.
Is it this one? https://bigmemes99.funnyjunk.com/pictures/4chan_1bff07_28908...
No but that's kinda good lol