Sadly I had a similar experience only this weekend.
We were enjoying a going away lunch with friends who are out of the country over Christmas, when one of them asked about Wikipedia's problems, knowing that I often volunteer time to it. He claimed that the site was spamming screen-sized pop-up banners trying to raise money because they were going bust. I had to advise him how wealthy the Foundation was, with hundreds of staff and extra cash in an endowment fund.
Isn't it about time that the Wikimedia Foundation came to terms that /plenty/ of money is made through sensible fundraising, without every year embarrassing the whole Wikimedia Community by promoting the impression that Wikipedia is about to close down if the public don't give them enough money to keep their servers powered up over Christmas? Making 10% more money every year is growth for the sake of it unless we can understand in an accountable and transparent way where that extra 10% is needed; preferably right there in the fundraising banner so folks don't get the impression that Wikipedia is about to vanish.
Thanks, Fae
On Wed, 18 Dec 2019 at 20:34, Jacob Jose jacob.jose@gmail.com wrote:
I also felt like how Benjamin's dad did.. If one is viewing using the mobile app, the red banners fill the entire screen and one has to scroll down to get to the content. I think the fund solicitation ads need to be much less loud than it's now..
Background: I have been an active Wiki contributor for over 10 years now.
On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 2:27 PM Benjamin Ikuta benjaminikuta@gmail.com wrote:
My dad recently said to me:
"I was solitated by them after looking something up. I thought it strange the way they were pleading for donations. They made it sound like they might be shutting down if we the general public didn't donate."
Has there been any research into how common it is for readers to get the wrong impression from the marketing messaging?
I've heard of this sort of thing happening before, and I think it's highly antithetical to our values to be deceptive.
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