Wikipedia/Wikimedia is worth hundreds of dollars per year to me. I occasionally throw $20 at them. It is a steal. I never asked myself if they have too much money or if they are using it "correctly".
The main donation page doesn't seem bad to me. Nowhere do they claim they are struggling or may go under. In fact, they say "thriving" and that a small donation will keep it thriving for years to come.
To those upset with them, what would you do? All of their other projects are about free information. Are people upset about wikidata or wikiversity exist? Should they have only done Wikipedia and stopped? Should they not ask for money until they are desperate and in a dire situation? Should they not use any marketing speak and say, "we have hundreds of millions of dollars but would like more please."
Comparing them to FAANG/MAMAA, it is no comparison at all. The value is great and pure: nice, fast, simple, useful interface. They don't have malware, ads, tracking scripts, popups, spam, or dark patterns. Unlike social media there is no envy/depression side effects. They don't try to get you addicted and gamify it. They don't push controversial news just to boost engagement. They respect your privacy, ublock origin has nothing to block on their site.
It seems like Wikimedia is getting hell on here for having very high standards and maybe not quite living up to people's expectations. Whereas the FAANGs have zero standards, don't respect users at all, are 100% profit driven (and already have vastly more money), but they are ok because... some reason.
Maybe in the pure STEM subsections but anything to do with humanities is highly subjective and biased.
Even in the hard sciences I find that Wikipedia is a just good starting point: scan the references for the real material. It helps if you have access to real libraries, both physical and digital.
Personally I stopped donating to them when I discovered how difficult it was to correct errors in literally my own family's history; there's always some "editor" sitting there to roll it back in seconds.
> Personally I stopped donating to them when I discovered how difficult it was to correct errors in literally my own family's history;
As it should be. Wikipedia is not your personal blog. If you cannot prove what you say is true to an acceptable standard it should be reverted. That is how it wikipedia stays reliable.
Of course wikipedia is far from perfect when it comes to reliability.
However, given you did not include a citation for the sale of that bridge that meets wikipedia's guidelines on appropriate sources, i am not sure it is quite the comeback you think it is.
Wikipedia being a starting point is one of my favorite things about it. I really like that all their sources are cited and linked to. It always amazes me that news organizations don't cite their sources or have links to the original source.
On that same note, could that be why your family history gets rolled back? No doubt it would be frustrating to have a change you know is real get rolled back but it would make sense from an objective editorial standpoint. That said, I get why you wouldn't want to donate. I personally come from a long line of nobodies (and am proudly carrying on that tradition) so I will never have this problem!
That gibberish about primary sources is one of the fundamental ways in which Wikipedia stays at least partially accurate. Wikipedia is not a blog, it's just meant to be a gathering of information from other sources. So adding facts which are not anywhere else online is not the sign of a broken system, it's the sign of a system that cares about citations and about being a reliable source of information. It's unfortunate when people try to add factual things, but if anyone was able to edit Wikipedia to add whatever, it would have become a cesspool long ago.
The main donation page doesn't seem bad to me. Nowhere do they claim they are struggling or may go under. In fact, they say "thriving" and that a small donation will keep it thriving for years to come.
To those upset with them, what would you do? All of their other projects are about free information. Are people upset about wikidata or wikiversity exist? Should they have only done Wikipedia and stopped? Should they not ask for money until they are desperate and in a dire situation? Should they not use any marketing speak and say, "we have hundreds of millions of dollars but would like more please."
Comparing them to FAANG/MAMAA, it is no comparison at all. The value is great and pure: nice, fast, simple, useful interface. They don't have malware, ads, tracking scripts, popups, spam, or dark patterns. Unlike social media there is no envy/depression side effects. They don't try to get you addicted and gamify it. They don't push controversial news just to boost engagement. They respect your privacy, ublock origin has nothing to block on their site.
It seems like Wikimedia is getting hell on here for having very high standards and maybe not quite living up to people's expectations. Whereas the FAANGs have zero standards, don't respect users at all, are 100% profit driven (and already have vastly more money), but they are ok because... some reason.