[NoZebra120vClip]

Okay, so I read this article to the end (right down to the ironic "Become a Supporter" button, which I thought was another screenshot at first, but it's a real button.)

I kept thinking... so? What's your point?

People run these WMF hitpieces all the time, and they are absolutely enraged that Wikipedia dared to splash a dialog box asking for their money. These are the same people who regularly visit ad-infested news sites and tolerate (while still screaming about) all manner of tracking and monetization as they browse. But Wikipedia, which is 100% ad-free, and 99% free of dialogs asking for donations, how dare they!!1

So this particular hitpiece says there's a lack of transparency and that Wikimedia is doing a politics. Sure, I suppose we can all use more transparency, especially with a non-profit, but legally, they don't need to tell you more than they already do. Solution is easy: don't donate. But why write a hitpiece?

If only you knew what for-profit, opaque corporations, which never beg for donations, did with their endowments and revenue. Not just corporations, but universities too; it's not like Wikimedia is some isolated, evil money-grubbing beggar waiting to do supreme evil with your $5. Wikimedia simply wishes to pull their weight in a pond full of heavyweights. And they have the brand recognition and the influence to do some pretty amazing things, for better or worse.

Do you hate Wikipedia's politics or something? Are you envious of their highly-ranked and highly-respected position on the Web? Are you really just mad about that dialog box as you were freeloading on our freely-licensed Creative Commons content?

[marginalia_nu]

Politics aside, I do think it's an incredibly bad look to regularly break out the sad eyed Jimbo Wales banner begging for money to help keep Wikipedia running when they're so far away from a shortage of funds that they feel they can give part of the donations away to other organizations.

When you accept charitable donations, you have a duty to use those donations for the intended purpose. You aren't legally required to do this, but you're expected to do it. If you don't do it, or misrepresent what you're asking for, people will get upset. They will feel like you squandered their donation. They will write about it, and tell their friends.

I don't think this is strange at all. WMF has a reasonably good name due to the value and popularity of Wikipedia. Reputation is fickle though. It doesn't take much before WMF becomes that organization that said they needed money, but gave away all the donations (even if they only gave away a small portion; but that's public perception for you).

It's also important to emphasize that for an organization like the WMF, reputation is everything. You can not do donation-based charity work without a good reputation. The entire model hinges on the organization being trusted.

[kemotep]

Bryan Lunduke has kind of gone off the deep end the past few years. It does always seem bizarre that Wikimedia alone gets called out when companies like Apple alone have enough in just cash to fund Wikimedia for the next 1,000 years.

Unless you believe that any cent over the cost to do business is unethical to collect, why should Bryan Lunduke be any more qualified to be able to determine that Wikimedia is misusing their money than the people running the organization. I am assuming here that he is okay with private property rights.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Money is fungible, right? If I donate $5.00 then I am offseting $5.00 worth of running Wikipedia's infrastructure, whether or not they ceremoniously take my $5.00 bill and put it into the vendor's pocket.

[bitshiftfaced]

> Sure, I suppose we can all use more transparency, especially with a non-profit, but legally, they don't need to tell you more than they already do. Solution is easy: don't donate. But why write a hitpiece?

When you assume it's just going to Wikipedia, you don't know not to donate. Thus, you see articles like making people aware in the first place.

[satisfice]

The point is they are lying.

I always assumed they were lying when they put up the banners saying they needed money urgently.

Now I know.

That’s the point.

[NoZebra120vClip]

I don't see them lying.

I can see them exaggerating, and using extreme pathos to convince you, in a mere dialog, of the need for donations.

At worst, yes, their pleas could mislead the naïve. But they are extremely careful in their wording, and if they were outright lying, then they would suffer for it, perhaps even legally.

It's interesting, because many of the dialogs I see here are actually appealing to people who read Wikipedia the most (and don't edit it.) So I would say that's a good and targeted appeal to the freeloaders.

I am open to correction on this: if you can find a dialog from WMF that outright lied and told a falsehood about a material fact, then show it to us, and prove the fact. As we say, [citation needed].

I'll start you with a helpful image search: https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&sca_esv=558977329&...

[satisfice]

The impression they give about needing money is wrong. They intend to give that impression. It’s lying.

I think Wikipedia should go away. The entire philosophy is wrong. It’s a toxic mess. But until it does, I don’t see any problem with punishing it by visiting its pages.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Of course they need money. They have operating costs, salaries, rents, contracts to pay. You're the liar if you say that an organization doesn't need money to keep operating.

Anyone who visits WMF's servers and uses their websites without donating or volunteering is a freeloader, and you are a net drain on WMF's resources. That's why the most donation dialogs appear to people who visit frequently.

They don't "need" your five-dollar donation, because they have other donors. If 100% of their donors decided WMF didn't "need" any money and they all withdrew their donations, WMF would quickly implode. Perhaps you could convince everyone to do so!

[superkuh]

I agree. I'll just stop donating money like you suggest. But if you're wondering what the purpose of the article was, it was to inform people like myself who didn't know their regular donations weren't actually paying for wikipedia. It seems best to just contribute article fixes, wikimedia images, etc, and direct support of the actual wikipedia/media projects going forwards. Not money.

I don't understand the comparisons to megacorps. It's not like anyone is donating to Apple or the NYT.

[NoZebra120vClip]

> I don't understand the comparisons to megacorps. It's not like anyone is donating to Apple or the NYT.

Consumers give them money anyway, it's known as "sales".

What happens is that when companies become large enough, it becomes prudent from a tax perpsective to "give back to the community" and practice philanthropy. Therefore, your iPhone dollars and your NYT subscriptions are going toward charitable causes. You may or may not be able to find out what they are. Many people have gone sleuthing for these links, and made much hay about them.

The other thing corporations do is support employees in various ways. For example, employees might be permitted a certain number of hours of community service for charitable volunteering. Or, employees' charitable donations may be matched by the employer, etc. These matches may be restricted to a shortlist of preferred charities. More hay can be made about all that.

Corporations are also, of course, one of the biggest and most powerful sectors of lobbyists in these United States. Corporations donate the most tax dollars to candidates and campaigns, and they actively send lobbyists to legislatures to ensure that their interests are met. Again, your iPhone dollars at work.

So while Wikipedia is free and open and requesting your donations, you're purchasing gobs of stuff every day from corporations, and that's why people these days often factor in the politics of said corporation in our decisions whether to buy or not buy, and where to buy.

[5555624]

>> I don't understand the comparisons to megacorps. It's not like anyone is donating to Apple or the NYT. > > Consumers give them money anyway, it's known as "sales".

Except for "sales," you know what you are getting in return. Someone buying an iPhone knows they are getting an iPhone and that's what they care about. Many people donating to Wikipedia think they are making a donation to keep Wikipedia running, not some other cause they may or may not care about.

Perhaps they should make two huge buttons for donations, labeled "Wikipedia" and "Wikimedia Foundation, and see what happens with donations.

[NoZebra120vClip]

When I give money to a charity, I don't expect anything in return, I'm entrusting that money to them for purposes that they see fit. I choose a charity based on its works and mission.

If people have chosen to donate to the WMF because they think all they do is run the English Wikipedia, and haven't done their due diligence, then that's not the WMF's fault. Sure, I suppose that a constant stream of hitpiece articles raises awareness, but they're so biased that it should only be the first step on a long process of due diligence.

Biased negative reporting on charities often proves useful to the people who wish to support such causes. So if you run an exposé on how evil empires carry water for X, Y, and Z, then be prepared to attract people who love X, Y, and Z, and enthusiastically begin to support that evil empire.

[superkuh]

Right. So if I run a charity for, say, helping low power FM community radio stations and I collect a bunch of money, and then give it to a political group advocating for legalization of cannabis, you'd think that was okay because you don't expect anything in return? It'd be your fault for not knowing I'd changed my charity's mission from the previously publicized LPFM community project to diversify out into legalization efforts. It'd be too bad that no one wrote an article updating you on the change in my hypothetical charity's "mission". And if they did do so, would you call it a hit piece?

[NoZebra120vClip]

Yes, that'd be ok. Yes, it'd be my fault.

"Hit piece" is a value judgement on the negative tone and bias of the article. Another possibility is a "puff piece" in High Times for example, extolling the virtues of the charity's newfound cause.

However, you've nearly constructed a strawman, because nobody would expect an LPFM charity to diversify into cannabis, yet nothing the WMF does is inconsistent with their mission from the start. They've simply expanded, globalized, and broadened in scope; that's the way I see it.

[serf]

The patrons of creative commons are by no means free loaders, and that concept being injected belittles a lot of the point.

>Do you hate Wikipedia's politics...

That's exactly the point, how would they know? What if they know they dislike the politics but wish to continue to support infra costs and the like because of the real value Wikipedia offers the world? No option.

[NoZebra120vClip]

False; there are plenty of opportunities for him to contribute. He could be an editor. He could write and run bots. He could design and build tools that run on WMF's cloud platform. He could help develop the MediaWiki software itself. Myriad opportunities to contribute to a free project.

[shrubble]

I think it is disingenuous to talk about "freeloading" when the license that the content was released under, was freely chosen? No one is forcing anyone to license content under Creative Commons...

[NoZebra120vClip]

You misunderstand the meaning of "free".

If it is possible to contribute to WMF monetarily, by volunteering in myriad ways, etc., and it is not supported in any other way, such as ads, subscriptions, corporate sponsors, then technically anyone who reads Wiki*edia or downloads content from Commons, Wikisource, etc., is freeloading without contributing anything.

The WMF doesn't mind, certainly, that there is a large plurality of freeloaders: that's their very model. But they also need money and volunteers to run everything, and that's why they're mugging you with dialog boxes.

If you don't have the time, effort, or expertise to volunteer for WMF, consider donating voluntarily, because you certainly do benefit from their mission, and see above about fungibility.

Frankly, though, it is far, far better to attempt to volunteer in some capacity, because as has been demonstrated, they're financially pretty flush, whereas the volunteer situation is always fairly desperate on several fronts.