Sadly I had a similar experience only this weekend.
We were enjoying a going away lunch with friends who are out of the
country over Christmas, when one of them asked about Wikipedia's
problems, knowing that I often volunteer time to it. He claimed that
the site was spamming screen-sized pop-up banners trying to raise
money because they were going bust. I had to advise him how wealthy
the Foundation was, with hundreds of staff and extra cash in an
endowment fund.
Isn't it about time that the Wikimedia Foundation came to terms that
/plenty/ of money is made through sensible fundraising, without every
year embarrassing the whole Wikimedia Community by promoting the
impression that Wikipedia is about to close down if the public don't
give them enough money to keep their servers powered up over
Christmas? Making 10% more money every year is growth for the sake of
it unless we can understand in an accountable and transparent way
where that extra 10% is needed; preferably right there in the
fundraising banner so folks don't get the impression that Wikipedia is
about to vanish.
Thanks,
Fae
On Wed, 18 Dec 2019 at 20:34, Jacob Jose <jacob.jose(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I also felt like how Benjamin's dad did.. If one is viewing using the
mobile app, the red banners fill the entire screen and one has to scroll
down to get to the content. I think the fund solicitation ads need to be
much less loud than it's now..
Background: I have been an active Wiki contributor for over 10 years now.
On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 2:27 PM Benjamin Ikuta <benjaminikuta(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
My dad recently said to me:
"I was solitated by them after looking something up. I thought it strange
the way they were pleading for donations. They made it sound like they
might be shutting down if we the general public didn't donate."
Has there been any research into how common it is for readers to get the
wrong impression from the marketing messaging?
I've heard of this sort of thing happening before, and I think it's highly
antithetical to our values to be deceptive.
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