This was the title of a message on the Help Desk of the Dutch Wikipedia
earlier this month. The title refers to the fundraising e-mail a reader of
Wikipedia received so-called with a message from Jimmy Wales, and this
reader got very concerned about what he saw as this e-mail looks like to be
a scam or spam. The reader asked us: "But isn't this a strange way to
collect money? This given the many warnings for not clicking on links in
strange e-mails as those are often fraudulent (etc.), this does not seem
very reliable to me."
It seems that the e-mail came truly from WMF, but the concerns of this
reader are something to be aware of.
Another user writes he receives fake e-mails almost every day for all kinds
of "services" and "requests" which do not feel trustworthy, the same
as for
this e-mail from WMF.
The reaction of another user: please throw this kind of dubious e-mails
away quickly, such e-mails can't be trusted.
Someone else writes: That donation campaign is very American and the
volunteers behind the Dutch Wikipedia have been calling for years against
the international Wikimedia organization that this way of raising funds
does not work in the Netherlands and Belgium, among others.
That last part is I think the essence, for more than a decade WMF organises
the fundraising, for more than a decade the Dutch community complains about
the way/style/etc of the fundraising, and for more than a decade it is
tradition that WMF does do little with the feedback and makes the same
mistakes year after year after year...
Disappointed greetings,
Romaine