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Wikipedia is far and away the most valuable project the world has ever seen and this guy is complaining about donation emails?
by wly_cdgr 5y ago
Wikipedia is far and away the most valuable project the world has ever seen and this guy is complaining about donation emails?
- cyounkins 5y agoYes. As I wrote, I have donated to Wikipedia and love the project. I think the methods they use to solicit donations undermines their trustworthiness.
- acover 5y agoWikipedia is great but I similarly don't trust their cries for help anymore. I won't donate till they communicate more honestly or Wikipedia - not wikimedia - needs help. It feels a lot like my local food bank begging for food but it turns out it's only their side venture composting food that's in need.
- lancesells 5y agoI'll donate to the annual email every year to keep them from adding ads or other forms of monetization.
- blowski 5y agoIt’s incredible how many people say they’d love to support an ad-free social network, frequently use Wikipedia, and don’t donate to Wikipedia. This is a problem for so many charities. People passionately agree with the mission, want to donate, can afford to donate… and yet don’t donate. And then complain when the charity is too aggressive in requesting donations.
- _3u10 5y agoDonations are the worst idea ever. They are hard to solicit and then when you do get one people have incredibly unreasonable expectations. How many people complain about non-profit execs making $200k but will happily buy nike's made by Chinese slave prison labor with out a thought as to how much the exec makes, or what the labor conditions are. Wikimedia is guilty of allowing people to volunteer their time. If you don't volunteer, nothing bad happens. Compare with try not volunteering your time to make Nike's in the Chinese prison system.
- loeg 5y agoI don't donate to Wikimedia anymore because they get plenty of donations and have demonstrated that they don't use the funds wisely. Wikipedia doesn't need more donors. Give your limited charity dollars to a more deserving organization.
- radlad 5y ago> Wikipedia is far and away the most valuable project the world has ever seen [citation needed]
- berkut 5y agoI share similar sentiments as the article's author: I donated once ~4 years ago, and have been *completely* turned off donating again (despite wanting to, and knowing I should for such a fantastic resource) by such agressive emails, because I feel it's rewarding such behaviour.
- CamperBob2 5y agoCouldn't agree more. As a longtime donor, I feel uncomfortable not donating, but even more uncomfortable at closing a positive feedback loop on bad behavior. New management is probably the only answer, as Wales clearly feels this is the best way to run this particular railroad. But what will we give up when that finally happens? The whole situation sucks. It would be so much better if they just knocked off the shady shit. Lately I've been redirecting donations that would have gone to Wikipedia to the Internet Archive, as I feel their work is at least equally important. But IA's reckless legal behavior is likely to result in my donations going straight to their defense counsel and/or plaintiffs, which is also not something I want to be part of.
- mattlondon 5y agoIt is the same with most charities. Donate once as a one-off and they will Never. Leave. You. Alone. You'll continue getting letters and emails and sometimes even calls for years and years after your last donation. It puts me off donating.
- randycupertino 5y agoI've had the same thing with race fundraising charities. I donated to someone else's Best Buddies bike ride fundraising trip and I haven't been able to get off "Maria Shriver's Best Buddies" email spam list for years. They create new email addresses to spam me constantly. It's turned me off of ever donating anything to them again!
- loeg 5y agoDonor-Advised Funds are nice in part because they make it easy to give charities money anonymously. They can't spam you if they don't know who you are.
- hammock 5y agoThe high value of Wikipedia is the (only?) reason why so many people tolerate really annoying donation solicitation practices. If it were any other way, it wouldn't be this way.
- myself248 5y agoI either found a way to unsubscribe from these, or I found a way to filter them. I now make a monthly donation, and I see the receipts from those transactions, and that's it. Just the way I like it. Contrast with the Red Cross, whose annoyance-to-value ratio is far worse, IMHO, to the point that I refuse to donate. Yes they're providing literal life blood to people who may die without it, but have you SEEN their firehose of email? I don't understand why this continues. It must work better than the alternatives, which is awful.
- petters 5y agoWikipedia is incredibly valuable, but the Wikimedia foundation is not known to spend money wisely. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12... A very small fraction of the money is going to keep the servers running. The editors of Wikipedia are unpaid. The software projects ran by Wikimedia have not been very impressive. What happened to proper discussion pages, for example? That has been going on for more than a decade.
- junon 5y agoThe "make a book" function has been literally broken (see: non-functional, with a "sorry about that" message) for years now. It used to be my favorite part of Wikipedia and now you can't do shit with it.
- easton 5y agoLooks like it was uninstalled from the English Wikipedia a couple months ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books
- junon 5y agoSad. It was insanely useful.
- bashmack 5y agoThe Wikipedia movement is in survival mode, and has for a while now being summarily dumping those things that require lots of volunteer effort to maintain, for very little return in terms of page views. Naturally, none of that has anything to do with the finances, because the job of maintaining Wikipedia content falls to the unpaid.
- StaringFrog 5y agoHave you seen Wikidata? https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page Super awesome project methinks
- tshaddox 5y agoIndeed, Wikipedia is so important that they absolutely should not be using scammy and spammy techniques to solicit donations.
- oscribinn 5y agoCompare the opening paragraphs of this article in 2015 vs now: https://web.archive.org/web/20151104200851/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://web.archive.org/web/20151104200851/https://en.wikipe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) Anyone thinking that Wikipedia still provides a nonpartisan platform which makes an honest attempt to catalogue all the angles on a specific topic without any blatant spin is either dishonest or naive.
- unethical_ban 5y agoIt's strange to see someone use "bipartisan" as a stand un for "fair" or "factual".
- oscribinn 5y agoEdited, "nonpartisan" is apparently the word I was looking for.
- bad_username 5y agoThis is cotrect. Wikipedia informs poorly on subjects that have political or cultural significance, favoring heavily certain ideologies over neutral presentation of facts. It has been hijacked by activists that make it impossible to introduce any data that is outside of what is fashionable today. Wikipedia still rides its old reputation, but does not deserve it any more.
- adzm 5y agoWhat are you trying to point out in the latest version? They are still pretty similar for several years apart.
- doublepg23 5y agoEchoing the other comment, I'm unsure what's wrong with the opening paragraph in the second link.
- bashmack 5y agoYou have a strange definition of value. I'd wager Wikipedia hasn't prevented a single child dying of hunger, let alone millions.