brooks4405 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 10:52 pm
Historically the messages asking for donations have come up for a couple of weeks a year, but now it has been running for months on end and the messages are getting ever more desperate. Maybe people have decided they have better thing s to do with their hard earned than donate to Wikipedia to fund jollies for arse hole administrators? The chapter in my part of the world has plenty of money in the bank according to its last accounts, yet still cries poor.
This all came up in the last financial report.
Put very simply, Wikipedia is losing brand value, particularly with its target market, the young idealists who genuinely bought into the myth that is Wikipedia. As a result, small donations, Wikipedia's main source of income, are becoming fewer and smaller, and donors are not recommending Wikipedia to their friends. Rather worryingly, apparently they don't even look at Wikipedia anymore.
As usual, Wikipedia doesn't really know why people are turning away from it, but their default is to blame technology and come up with yet more half baked half assed solutions.
To me it seems obvious. Wikipedia long ago abandoned its neutrality principle, and instead enthusiastically embraced the war against Trump. A decade ago it would have been considered outrageous for Wikipedia Administrators to be proud!y displaying banners that personally attack the ideological enemies of Wikipedia, while at the same time writing Wikipedia articles in that topic area and banning people for non-neutral editing. Now they call that a Tuesday.
Similarly, a decade ago everyone knew the sound logic behind Jimmy Wale's advice that you should show respect to everyone, even as you show them the door. Today, Wikipedia Administrators and their hangers on try to outdo each other in how enthusiastically they can punch a Nazi. It is deeply ironic and hilarious to watch.
But they didn't gamble on the world becoming a far more complex place. It is no longer a case of dividing people into red (bad) or blue (good). People's beliefs are nuanced, and so naturally to be able to form and defend these blended views, they seek out quality information.
When they fire up a Wikipedia page, the bias screams out at them like a megaphone. They feel the strong push of Wikipedia's warriors forcing them toward a conclusion, the RIGHT conclusion.
The effect is remarkable. As it turns out, these young idealists don't like being told what to believe. They don't like being force fed the supposedly correct opinion. They don't like being treated like children. They quite rightly think of themselves as being above being the sort of sad fragile poof who would only go to Wikipedia to have their pre-existing views validated. They already have their socials if they need the comfort of a silo or an echo chamber.
And it seems pretty clear that the people who take a peek behind the curtain and see how the sausage is made, run a mile. They know a Nazi run exercise in Approved Texts when they see it.
So they have clearly been going elsewhere.
To make up the shortfall in donations, the begging banners have to be seen by more people and have to be run over a longer duration.
If that doesn't do that trick, Wikipedia plans to pivot toward chasing large legacy gifts and corporate donations, seemingly not realising that is virtually guaranteed to lose them even more donors of the young and idealistic type.
As always, the hilarity comes in knowing it was the volunteers not the Foundation, the pieces of shit like Drmies and Beeblebrox, the pathetic middle aged white Western male assholes desperately trying to seem woke, the people who stripped all power from Jimmy Wales, who are the cause of this calamity.
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