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The worse is that I started to stop contributing and caring for Wikipedia once the nagging fundraising started to be a regular thing. Because it does not make

The worse is that I started to stop contributing and caring for Wikipedia once the nagging fundraising started to be a regular thing. Because it does not make any sense to pretend to do something so that it can stay free and ad free, when half of the year there is constantly the fundraising banner that takes half of the screen of any displayed page. And the bad thing is that a lot of people are doing the same thing. All of that to support power/fame/hungry administrative employees/leaders that don't give a shit about the root goal of the project. Just look how many top paid people are needed and the inefficiencies compared to do the exact same job as a few years ago.

akolbe 5y ago
I agree that there is a complete culture mismatch. People come in with a mindset shaped by Silicon Valley and the nonprofit sector. It all seems to be about "organisational growth" and making money, money, money. Lots of committees, bureaucracy, policies written by people who have never contributed one word to Wikipedia, pages and pages of management-consultant-speak on Meta. The "Universal Code of Conduct" for example which they are intent on ramming down the community's throat is a complete disaster. But rather than looking at the problems with the text, they are busy having another committee write enforcement guidelines for it ... even though no community has approved the UCoC. Generally speaking, the Wikimedia Foundation has had some really poor leadership over the years. Well, let's say "mixed" to be charitable.
greatgib 5y ago
Also, something stunning when you read the replies and reflexions of the one in charge is how egoistic all of this is. They are thinking like this: people that donated should not see the nag screen anymore for some times..., and otherwise it is that there is a bug. But it is completely normal for all the non 'financial' donators. But, in my opinion, it is hugely egoistic, if I pay (do a donation) just for me being adfree,' it is like subscribing to a news paper. On my side, if ever I donate to them, it is to support the goal that other people will not have to be annoyed by the ad!
- akolbe 5y ago
  Thanks. That's a very interesting way of looking at it actually that hadn't occurred to me: "The (Ad-)Free Encyclopedia (If You Pay For It)". Still, I can understand people who have just been suckered into donating being irked if straightaway the same banner comes up again (Hi! This is the fifth time ...) and again (Hi! This is the sixth time ...) and again ...
toomuchtodo 5y ago
I would rather pay the Internet Archive to persist the corpus, Cloudflare to front it (CDN), and directly pay the devs and editors. The Wikimedia bureaucracy has needlessly grown to meet the needs of the ever growing bureaucracy, having captured users with the centralized library.
- akolbe 5y ago
  I don't know what the Internet Archive's financials are like, but donating to the Internet Archive arguably aids Wikipedia as well. It prevents link rot. This is becoming ever more important over time.

akolbe 5y ago

I agree that there is a complete culture mismatch. People come in with a mindset shaped by Silicon Valley and the nonprofit sector. It all seems to be about "organisational growth" and making money, money, money. Lots of committees, bureaucracy, policies written by people who have never contributed one word to Wikipedia, pages and pages of management-consultant-speak on Meta. The "Universal Code of Conduct" for example which they are intent on ramming down the community's throat is a complete disaster. But rather than looking at the problems with the text, they are busy having another committee write enforcement guidelines for it ... even though no community has approved the UCoC. Generally speaking, the Wikimedia Foundation has had some really poor leadership over the years. Well, let's say "mixed" to be charitable.

greatgib 5y ago

Also, something stunning when you read the replies and reflexions of the one in charge is how egoistic all of this is. They are thinking like this: people that donated should not see the nag screen anymore for some times..., and otherwise it is that there is a bug. But it is completely normal for all the non 'financial' donators. But, in my opinion, it is hugely egoistic, if I pay (do a donation) just for me being adfree,' it is like subscribing to a news paper. On my side, if ever I donate to them, it is to support the goal that other people will not have to be annoyed by the ad!

akolbe 5y ago
Thanks. That's a very interesting way of looking at it actually that hadn't occurred to me: "The (Ad-)Free Encyclopedia (If You Pay For It)". Still, I can understand people who have just been suckered into donating being irked if straightaway the same banner comes up again (Hi! This is the fifth time ...) and again (Hi! This is the sixth time ...) and again ...

toomuchtodo 5y ago

I would rather pay the Internet Archive to persist the corpus, Cloudflare to front it (CDN), and directly pay the devs and editors. The Wikimedia bureaucracy has needlessly grown to meet the needs of the ever growing bureaucracy, having captured users with the centralized library.

akolbe 5y ago
I don't know what the Internet Archive's financials are like, but donating to the Internet Archive arguably aids Wikipedia as well. It prevents link rot. This is becoming ever more important over time.