Seriously, the whole argument is so flimsy. Very few people know or care about all of the extraneous arbitrary make-work causes and movements that Wikipedia don

Seriously, the whole argument is so flimsy. Very few people know or care about all of the extraneous arbitrary make-work causes and movements that Wikipedia donations are actually being used to fund rather than the core site. And that’s the whole crux of the argument that OP conveniently ignored: that the banners make it seem like Wikipedia needs the money, when it doesn’t. WMF, on the other hand, does need it so it can continue to grow its spending exponentially on causes no one cares about and have nothing to do with Wikipedia itself (which is what people actually care about and probably think their donations are being used to support).