Color me absolutely unsurprised to learn that there are political issues at Wikipedia. All these people that hate it so much should go on over to that other, freer encyclopedia where they won't get treated like shit and they'll make a greater contribution to the world.

I can't remember what the name of it is, but when you find it you let me know so I can go there too.

You just don't get that WMF, who you give your money to, and Wikipedia are not the same.

WMF don't write Wikipedia, don't curate Wikipedia, don't check its content.

They pay the hosting (2% of their expenses), tweak the software (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse), give out grants (often of doubtful benefit to the reader) and use it as a fundraising platform.

Their expenditure has increased 20-fold over the past ten years.

I've been contributing to Wikipedia since 2006. It was a top-10 website even then. It's not twenty times better today than it was ten years ago (and what expansion and improvement of content there has been since then is not down to the WMF).

Its software is not half a billion dollars better than it was ten years ago.

But that's the amount of money the WMF has soaked up.

You finally got me interested, so I started to read your links. I got halfway through one of them before I decided to go see what Jimmy Wales has to say about the WMF. Perusing his most recent Quora answers he chose not to answer any on this issue, so I looked up the WMF itself's Quora topic and found this:

https://www.quora.com/Wikipedia-in-2015-Why-does-Wikipedia-a...

It explains what they're using the money for and addresses the messaging problem created by the donation banners and what their solution was.

Thanks for looking into it. (Btw, I wrote that Quora answer you linked to.)

Yes, the donation banners sound slightly less alarmist these days (partly due to year-long efforts by myself and others), but most people who donate still think there is an acute hosting costs crisis and ask no questions about what the money is spent on, and what benefit that spending brings to readers and contributors.

For example, I would like to see WMF spend money on displays giving readers a rough idea of an article's health and reliability (based e.g. on the quality of the cited sources, and the contributor mix - it's quite easy to distinguish an astroturfed article from a healthy one, if you know what to look for). No interest.

I would like them to spend some of their millions to give contributors free access to sources (paywalled services, digitised books, online libraries etc.) But that's not where their spending priorities are. What they do do in this area seems more like a fig leaf.

I'd like them to do research on known problem areas in their content (such as PR editing and political and other kinds of manipulation, especially in some of the other language versions) and to issue consumer warnings for these known flaws, but they prefer to sweep them under the carpet.

To my mind, the WMF are very provincial and inward-looking: tinkering with the software, PR and fundraising come first, readers and contributors last. Until that changes, I don't recommend donating to them.

Huh. I see your point now. I wonder if there's a better way to accomplish your goals than to encourage people to not donate to WMF. After all, you can't exactly donate to Wikipedia, so there's no way for people who want to support WP to choose what they want to do.

Yes, I did read about the Reward Board. No, that's not a real alternative, it's a half-baked idea that doesn't take into account why people donate to non-profits.

Donation is simultaneously an act of trust and an act of delegation. I am saying that I trust that whoever I'm donating to can spend this $20 better than I can spend it. I donate money precisely because I don't care enough to donate time, which is far more valuable to me than my money is.

Literally the only reason I've bothered to read your rationale, and trust me it was a struggle, is because I find the idea of Wikipedia fascinating enough to briefly care about the political intricacies.

If you guys were the Red Cross and you told me to not donate, I'd just roll my eyes, the $10 that comes out of my account every month towards it isn't worth the effort it takes to verify whether it's money well spent or not. I'm well aware of the fact that it's not an efficient donation. But they actually help people that need help and if I spent it on beer instead that would help nobody.

I want money to come out of my account and someone who cares about it more than me to spend it more wisely than I ever could. That's why I donate. I donate some $60 a month to various Patreons. I am mildly interested in what they do with it but honestly they could be spending it on beer, weed or meth themselves and I wouldn't give a toss.

If Wikipedia wants to distance itself politically from the Wikimedia Foundation then what it needs is enough organization to collect it's own donations and the gumption to run its own outreach campaigns. I'd even do my part by telling everyone I know. Someone has to lead the charge, and being that you seem to be the one who cares the most, you should at least seriously consider stepping up.

But you're fighting an uphill battle by asking people to not donate to Wikipedia / WMF. Education is expensive, and you are using the scarcest resource you have, time, to convince me, one person, to not spend my money, which is super cheap for me.