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