Short answer: I don't think it's a cynical lie. I think that the donations our donors give do results in benefits to the community, even if they aren't transactional or tangible things. We definitely don't want to give any misleading impression that the benefits are tangible so we will look into this and if we can, try and to improve it.
Long answer: If I look at where things are now versus where things were when I first started editing, it's amazing the amount of progress the editing experience has made. Even some of the projects with the bumpiest entries into the movement have been profoundly impactful. Some might raise an eyebrow in my use of it as an example, but I am astounded by how much easier the visual editor makes writing articles. Especially with the tools that are built into like Citoid. It is a dream to use.
Visual Editor was a big step for the WMF. I appreciate very much that it exists, along with other projects, like Flow and MediaViewer, despite the community's initial/final rejections (respectively).
Unfortunately, I can only use it effectively when I don't plan on editing templates or links, those workflows are inefficient and easy to make mistakes. I like to use Citoid, but I always have to fix up the result. With the lengthy loading time, every time I have to weigh whether it's worth the time using Visual Editor. As a result I use it roughly once a month (estimate), although I wish it would be feasible to use it more often.
Looking at the greater picture I'm happy that new editors are somewhat more likely to use the Visual Editor, proving its benefit. On the other hand, as a senior software architect who had worked on improving Visual Editor, I am aware of the technical reasons that caused the community's low acceptance - and how it can be fixed -, therefore I fully understand the community's response.
Aron
Senior Software Architect and Analyst
Or on the multilingual front with the content translation tool which has seen 700,000 articles at last count? In the last couple of years we will finally have integrated editor onboarding tools that are being worked on which are critical for the health of our communities? From personal experience, having better onboarding will massively improve community projects that aim to engage and bring in new editors to the movement.
At one level you have the discrete improvements being worked on or completed with things like partial blocks, revision scoring, visual diffs, real time watchlists. At a more global level things like Structure Data on Commons or Abstract Wikipedia have the potential to solve massive problems the community has faced like multilingual categories or global templates. Those have the potential to bring huge benefits to the editing community on the projects.
The benefits aren't always tangible to a specific individual and can often be invisible even if it enables or supports community focused work further downstream. It's worth noting that many of the pragmatic and mission driven choices made cumulatively over 15 years have made this work harder for us. The limited resources in the earlier years meant that we accumulated a huge amount of technical debt and digging out of that is always harder after the fact. I'd defer to the opinions of my colleagues but the increasing investment over the last few years has allowed us to start actually making headway, even if there is still a long way to go.
I had the misfortune of visiting Wikipedia logged-out the other day, and was struck by the large size of the donation banner, and the odd wording of the appeal. (Something about awkward and humble.) Re-checking now, the "awkward" bit is gone, but the following sentences are still there:
"If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge, take a minute to donate. Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified information that their work matters."
As an occasional editor I want to know: how do the donations show me that the work matters? Is there some W?F "appreciation fund" that's going to start handing out disbursements to editors? Will the money hire more dev's to implement all the unfinished items from the Community Wishlists? Will funds be used to run better "community consultations" where the communities are actually listened to? Or is it just a big fat cynical marketing lie?
[Add: okay, I get it that donation appeals have to phrased in a way that actually causes people to donate. But this skates very close to implying that Wikipedia's editors are paid from donors' money.]
Cheers,
Pelagic
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Seddon
Senior Community Relations Specialist
Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation
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