3 ms·

Let's be honest, almost nobody is donating a significant amount i.e. $100K+ to the Internet Archive that would actually keep them alive. Everyone wants to scra

Let's be honest, almost nobody is donating a significant amount i.e. $100K+ to the Internet Archive that would actually keep them alive. Everyone wants to scrape and extract from them 100% for free.

j16sdiz 1mo ago
No. The question OP ask was.... who is paying for the matching? The donation got 3x, sure somebody is paying, right? I was planning to donate, and this omission stopped me.
- losteric 1mo ago
  why?? It's extremely common for nonprofits to have anonymous matching donors. Even my local animal shelter.
  - Daneel_ 1mo ago
    Then why not just say that in the post? "Our matching donor wishes to remain anonymous, but we thank them for their generosity" Simple.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo ago
  Why are you guys getting worked up over this? What's wrong with donors wanting to be anonymous?
  - ssl-3 1mo ago
    It's OK for a donor that provides matching funds to wish for, and to be granted, anonymity. It's also OK for primary donors to be suspicious of this for any reason that they choose, including no reason at all. Maybe the matching-funds donor is all peachy and clean. Maybe they're the root of all evil. We don't know. This lack of knowledge doesn't let people make an informed decision, and people are allowed to seek to make informed decisions and to get turned off when that isn't possible. :) (For the record: I'm more motivated to toss a few dollars in the hat when there's a multiplier at play than when there is not. I don't really care who it is that supplies the extra money. My mentality might lead me to a situation wherein my donation to the local orphanage is anonymously multiplied by a nearby orphan crushing facility that turns lost kids into soylent green, but it's a risk that I'm willing to take. Others are free to be as averse or accepting as they wish.)
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo ago
      The reason to avoid working with sketchy donors is so they don't unduly influence you. If they're anonymous, how can they influence you?
      - ssl-3 1mo ago
        Even when their matching donation is anonymous and the direct influence is zero, the orphan crushing facility wants the orphanage to be successful. The orphanage's rising success serves to limit the supply of orphans. This means that there aren't as many free-roaming orphans available for crushing as more of them get taken off of the market. This improves the supply-and-demand ratio for orphan-derived products. A successful orphanage means that the the orphan crushing facility can make more money while doing less of that tedious work of -- you know -- crushing orphans. (I don't know what kind of secondary or tertiary games could be played with anonymous matching donations to archive.org; my creativity has limits. But I do know that my support for enabling people to make informed personal decisions is approximately boundless, as anything less would be stifling.)
        0xDEAFBEAD 1mo ago
        I think in this hypothetical, the existence of an orphan-crushing industry should make you reluctant to donate to orphanages regardless of who's doing the donation matching.
        retsibsi 1mo ago
        Maybe I misunderstand the analogy, but in this scenario it seems that the orphan crushing facility's donations to the orphanage are an unalloyed good. Their motives are bad, and they are bad, but their donations to the orphanage are causing more orphans to be taken care of and fewer orphans to be crushed. Personally, my worry about anonymous donation matching would be that the anonymous (to me) funder is influencing the recipient (to whom their identity is known), and without knowing who they are I can't know the nature of this influence or whether it should cause me to reconsider my support. But I don't see any extra reason to care about anonymous donation matching in particular, as distinct from any other funding whose source is opaque to me.

Let's be honest, almost nobody is donating a significant amount i.e. $100K+ to the Internet Archive that would actually keep them alive. Everyone wants to scrape and extract from them 100% for free.

j16sdiz 1mo ago

No. The question OP ask was.... who is paying for the matching? The donation got 3x, sure somebody is paying, right? I was planning to donate, and this omission stopped me.

losteric 1mo ago
why?? It's extremely common for nonprofits to have anonymous matching donors. Even my local animal shelter.
- Daneel_ 1mo ago
  Then why not just say that in the post? "Our matching donor wishes to remain anonymous, but we thank them for their generosity" Simple.
0xDEAFBEAD 1mo ago
Why are you guys getting worked up over this? What's wrong with donors wanting to be anonymous?
- ssl-3 1mo ago
  It's OK for a donor that provides matching funds to wish for, and to be granted, anonymity. It's also OK for primary donors to be suspicious of this for any reason that they choose, including no reason at all. Maybe the matching-funds donor is all peachy and clean. Maybe they're the root of all evil. We don't know. This lack of knowledge doesn't let people make an informed decision, and people are allowed to seek to make informed decisions and to get turned off when that isn't possible. :) (For the record: I'm more motivated to toss a few dollars in the hat when there's a multiplier at play than when there is not. I don't really care who it is that supplies the extra money. My mentality might lead me to a situation wherein my donation to the local orphanage is anonymously multiplied by a nearby orphan crushing facility that turns lost kids into soylent green, but it's a risk that I'm willing to take. Others are free to be as averse or accepting as they wish.)
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo ago
    The reason to avoid working with sketchy donors is so they don't unduly influence you. If they're anonymous, how can they influence you?
    - ssl-3 1mo ago
      Even when their matching donation is anonymous and the direct influence is zero, the orphan crushing facility wants the orphanage to be successful. The orphanage's rising success serves to limit the supply of orphans. This means that there aren't as many free-roaming orphans available for crushing as more of them get taken off of the market. This improves the supply-and-demand ratio for orphan-derived products. A successful orphanage means that the the orphan crushing facility can make more money while doing less of that tedious work of -- you know -- crushing orphans. (I don't know what kind of secondary or tertiary games could be played with anonymous matching donations to archive.org; my creativity has limits. But I do know that my support for enabling people to make informed personal decisions is approximately boundless, as anything less would be stifling.)
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 1mo ago
        I think in this hypothetical, the existence of an orphan-crushing industry should make you reluctant to donate to orphanages regardless of who's doing the donation matching.
      - retsibsi 1mo ago
        Maybe I misunderstand the analogy, but in this scenario it seems that the orphan crushing facility's donations to the orphanage are an unalloyed good. Their motives are bad, and they are bad, but their donations to the orphanage are causing more orphans to be taken care of and fewer orphans to be crushed. Personally, my worry about anonymous donation matching would be that the anonymous (to me) funder is influencing the recipient (to whom their identity is known), and without knowing who they are I can't know the nature of this influence or whether it should cause me to reconsider my support. But I don't see any extra reason to care about anonymous donation matching in particular, as distinct from any other funding whose source is opaque to me.