On 1 January 2012 00:24, David Levy lifeisunfair@gmail.com wrote:
And when it was pointed out that a reference to Sue Gardner as "Wikipedia Executive Director" was inaccurate, Zack's initial response was "We're going to test Wikimedia against Wikipedia in the banner right now." (In other words, "We'll test the truth against a falsehood to see which brings in more money.")
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-December/062932.html
I find this attitude rather disconcerting.
It got worse. They changed it to "Wikimedia Executive Director" and when it was pointed out that it should be "Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director" Philippe (who was running the fundraiser last year) said (on 13 December 2010 on the Fundraising mailing list, which is private so I can't give a link): "So yeah, we're doing everything we can to maximize the income." (I won't quote the entire paragraph, but the context is essentially "Yeah, we know there are problems with these banners but they raise money so we're going to do it anyway.")
It is, as you say, a very disconcerting attitude.