Hello, I received an email earlier today, in which the person who was the subject of an article I wrote last year decided to make a donation to the WMF. Excerpted from the email:
"Has it occurred to the people running Wikipedia that some people might think Wikipedia is affiliated with Wikileaks? It would be an easy mistake to make, and even I balked because I am totally anti-Wikileaks. I found a page Wiki stating you were not affiliated, but you should really include that info with your donation requests.
I suspect thousands of would-be donors did not donate because they were not totally sure and didn't want to take the chance. Please pass this piece of info onto the people in charge, because I think it's a really important point to stress!"
Regardless of how I feel on the matter, this person does make a good point. I have come across many people who view Wikileaks as irresponsible and dangerous. Calling out our non-affiliation with Wikileaks on the donation page seems fairly drastic. However, because this may be a common misconception, clarification should be made *somewhere*.
Chris
On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Chris Lee theornamentalist@gmail.com wrote:
Regardless of how I feel on the matter, this person does make a good point. I have come across many people who view Wikileaks as irresponsible and dangerous. Calling out our non-affiliation with Wikileaks on the donation page seems fairly drastic. However, because this may be a common misconception, clarification should be made *somewhere*.
A blog post on the subject was posted back in early December.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/12/09/what%E2%80%99s-in-a-name-in-the-ca...
-Chad
Chris Lee wrote:
Regardless of how I feel on the matter, this person does make a good point. I have come across many people who view Wikileaks as irresponsible and dangerous. Calling out our non-affiliation with Wikileaks on the donation page seems fairly drastic. However, because this may be a common misconception, clarification should be made *somewhere*.
It's in the FAQ: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en
If you feel it should be elsewhere on wikimediafoundation.org, leave a note at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_wiki_feedback (which has its own obnoxious banner about WikiLeaks currently) and I can update the site as appropriate.
MZMcBride
"Has it occurred to the people running Wikipedia that some people might think Wikipedia is affiliated with Wikileaks? It would be an easy mistake to make, and even I balked because I am totally anti-Wikileaks.
The bigger question is whether or not it has occurred to Julian Assange. Since people keep confusing the two, and some want to donate to one and not the other, maybe in his next fundraiser Assange can refer to himself as the Wikipedia Executive Director.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org