6 ms·
The issue is that they make it sound like they are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia running when they are actually wealthier than ever before.
by akolbe 4y ago
The issue is that they make it sound like they are struggling to have enough money to keep Wikipedia running when they are actually wealthier than ever before.
The whole premise of Wikipedia (or aspiration, at least, and yes, not always fulfilled ...) is that people should have information so they can't be manipulated.
It kind of sucks to see the very organisation hosting the site do the opposite, don't you think?
- ianai 4y agoMarketing. They hired someone(s) with marketing experience.
- zelphirkalt 4y agoHalf-truths. They hired someone with half-truths (bordering on lies) experience.
- cheschire 4y agoCorporate wants you to find the difference between these two.
- ethagknight 4y ago
- LightG 4y agoSo. Marketing?
- kordlessagain 4y agoIt is possible to raise interest in something without lying about it. Whether you will fully understand it or not is up to you.
- criley2 4y agoThis is loser logic. It's possible to play by self-imposed self-hindering rules, sure, but your competitors probably aren't. In business, you play the game that exists, not the game you want to exist. Politics is how you do the "game you want to exist" part.
- JohnFen 4y agoThis line of thinking is how we get dystopia.
- catchnear4321 4y ago*got
- kordlessagain 4y ago*git
- lillecarl 4y agoSounds like he read the acts of Purdue Pharma and DuPont as a manual for how to operate a business.
- criley2 4y agoSince we're on the ycombinator chat -- do you think ycombinator disagrees? Do you think businesses incubated here are taught about "ethical and moral advertising at all costs" or taught about "finding market fit and scaling fast at all costs", even using aggressively successful a/b tested etc marketing that many would find distasteful?
- criley2 4y agoAnd yet, the western capitalistic system that is built on private businesses acting in their own self interest, regulated by governments of the people enforcing social good, have created the least violent, least disease-ridden, most luxurious and incredible experience for humanity in history (or at least since civilization). Frankly, calling it dystopic that businesses play by the laws as written is ridiculous. Change the laws instead of expecting businesses to self-regulate out of the goodness of their hearts. Why is that dystopic?
- the_only_law 4y agoSounds like marketing
- samiam_iam 4y agothat sounds like a typical marketing though.
- magicalhippo 4y agoIndeed, it's highly manipulative. Wikimedia does way more than "just" Wikipedia, and the majority of the money goes to these other activities. Now, I'm not saying that's bad, some of those activities might be well worth it. But the banners I've seen have invariably been about the imminent demise of Wikipedia. Not that they got lots of other side projects they want funded.
- Jwarder 4y agoWeird, I haven't seen any recent banners frame it in terms of demise of Wikipedia. The urgent banners I've seen are about the time to complete the fund drive. Along the lines of: If X% of users paid $Y then the goal would be reached in Z minutes. If you assume the fund drive exists to help keep the lights on then I think it is natural to treat it as an existential issue for Wikipedia, but that doesn't seem to match the specific language used.
- akolbe 4y agoThis is just another psychological trick. They vastly exceed even their own revenue targets. Compare goals and results: 2020/2021 revenue goal: $108M, increased to $125M, total at end of year: $154M https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_fourth_quarter_2020-2021_tuning_session_-_Advancement.pdf&page=12 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikim... 2021/2022 revenue target: $150M, already exceeded by end of quarter 3, weeks before the start of the fundraiser in India, South Africa and South America: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AF%26A_Tuning_Session_FY21-22_Q3.pdf&page=5 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AF%26A...
- otherme123 4y agoThe banner shown in the article has a subtle tone of demise: if you don't donate, Wikipedia itself stops being independent, could not thrive, could not give reliable or independent info. And then the money is primarily spent in things other than Wikipedia. They never state or at least insinuate where the money go.
- pastage 4y agoWikimedia is vital to Wikipedia, they have little money and pay their exec too little for what they do. IMHO.
- akolbe 4y agoThen they should tell donors and prospective donors what they do. As ever, all the content is written by unpaid volunteers (or people paid by others), but still the Wikimedia Foundation's spending doubles every few years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Financial... What's it for? Tell donors what they are funding. And somehow the priorities are wrong. The Wikimedia Foundation has annual 8-figure surpluses, but volunteers are writing open letters to complain that the Foundation fails to update and maintain critical aspects of the software: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Think_big_-_open_letter_about_Wikimedia_Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Think_big_-_open_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coordination/2022_WMF_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/Coo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-09-30/In_focus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... What the WMF does produce, however, is reams and reams of words about "strategy", "leadership", "codes of conduct" etc. And millions of dollars are given away to progressive organisations that have nothing to do with Wikipedia: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/POVYUGT4ZYFJYCBUOK6YE7PMA6BZV4VS/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...
- shadowgovt 4y ago> Tell donors what they're funding Wikimedia has a 100/100 transparency rating. https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703 https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703
- Macha 4y agoNotably none of the criteria measured in that rating consider their marketing. So yes their policies and filings exist, but those are not what they're presenting to potential donors, so do not prove the ads are not misleading
- _glsb 4y agoThey don't though. The banner has a whiny tone, but never do they say that they are struggling to keep the site up.
- Macha 4y agoOh please, the mentions of having to seek alternative funding models like subscriptions and ads are clearly meant to raise the image of a site on the brink of unsustainability to potential donors
- akolbe 4y agoThe implied subscription threat is a complete red herring. They should be ashamed for even mentioning it in their fundraising messages. Wikipedians wouldn't work for free for a subscription service. The whole project would fork to a new host. The Wikimedia Foundation's own mission statement says, "The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the internet free of charge, in perpetuity." https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
- denton-scratch 4y agoMuch the same applies to the Mozilla Foundation. You can't contribute donations to Firefox; you can only contribute to the Mozilla Foundation, which spends most of the money it gets from donations on things that aren't Firefox.
- jevgeni 4y agoSure. And if you accept those images or not is your thing. Their banners are super annoying at only 2% conversion rate. What will it be without those banners?
- omnicognate 4y agoRead the screenshot: "... humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence", "if you donate... Wikipedia could keep thriving for years". The question as to whether this is manipulative isn't "is there are any clear statement of fact that is unambiguously a lie even in the most charitable possible interpretation?", it's "will this make ill-informed readers think their donations are necessary for Wikipedia's survival, and is this impression created deliberately?" I think that's a very obvious "yes and yes".
- agumonkey 4y agoMy reluctance to donating again to wikipedia lies almost entirely on the subtext of their communication. There's a dissonance between the class of the project, the alleged finances, the in-your-face popups (some years it was half the page).
- throwoutway 4y agoIt was greater than a half-page this year for me. It should be added to adblockers at This point
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI mean I'd be more amenable if they had a less in-your-face donation option running year round.
- agumonkey 4y agoI have the same idea. A tiny pastel margin block would make me donate easily. A simple 1 or 2 clicks process and that's it. I don't know how much experience they have, maybe stats say that subtle UX don't generate enough donations, while massive hated popups still bring massively more money. I hope so..
- geenew 4y agoFor me, at least, the fundraising banner is drawn on the page after the main content. Which means that the main content loads, displays, and then is pushed downwards by the banner. I don't know whether this is intentional, but if it is, then I would classify it as a dirty, attention-grabbing, dark-pattern-esque, trick. It would be more honest if they just used the blink tag.
- insane_dreamer 4y agoI haven't seen those banners and the pushy appears from Jimmy Wales in a long time.