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Was it the LiveView stuff that felt foreign? I'd agree there's a learning curve there as someone coming from Django.
I recently used ChatGPT and Claude to help myself build a simple app for my wife. Just listing things and being able to edit them basically. It was VERY frustrating as both models get pretty basic things wrong around the plumbing stuff like configuring SwiftData or CoreData.
I tried it with a version of the prompt(s) I used in that project and I got an app that's just a white page.
This is not conducive to honest conversation. I've been nothing but polite in our discussion. Your sarcasm here and in further responses isn't constructive.
> Managers earning $300K+ are not getting rich. Good. I guess it's all relative.
It is relative. If you live in San Francisco where the WMF is headquartered, this salary won't make you rich. I wish I could make that much money but given the role and the location, it doesn't seem exorbitant.
It might be instructive to look at how many people are giving money and not just the actual amount of money. I'm honestly saying that. I don't know the numbers because I haven't looked in years. Maybe there's more money because more people use it, more people find value in it, and more people donate. It would be an interesting way to slice the data. What's the average donation size? How has the geographic distribution of donations changed?
It seems like across all these threads, what many people, possibly including you, are responding negatively to is the language in the ads and not strictly the fact that the WMF collects money from people who willingly give it. I've already said that I don't care for the language either. I believe that they could be successful without it. Perhaps, not equally as successful but successful nonetheless. I shared that feedback when I worked there. I want them to appeal to the better angels of our nature.
Still, it's marketing and if my money supports the mission (the whole mission and not just Wikipedia), which by all accounting it does, then I'll continue to donate. The marketing, while undesirable, doesn't change their dedication to the mission.
Personally, I find the ads histrionic and would like them to change. However, an article like this that insinuates something akin to malice or subterfuge instead of recognizing the reality of non-profit fundraising isn't helpful. That was my point.
As for the language in the ads, it's there because it works. The WMF has tried, many times, language which is less emotional and more objective. It doesn't work. People don't respond.
What you're asking for is to have people donate because of their objective sense of value but that's not how most humans work. The WMF does what works.
As for laying out their plans, there are dozens of wiki pages[1] dedicated to it and every task[2] and commit[3] to the code is public.
What they tell people in these pleas for donations is the language that actually gets people to donate. If folks would donate after reading the Medium Term Plan, then they would promote but instead humans tend to act only when an emotional appeal is made. That might not work for you but testing and experimenting on those ads proves that it does for most people.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...
Not giving Wikimedia money does absolutely nothing to stop a bad admin or group of admins from making bad choices. Wikimedia has very little control, if any, over things at that level. They can advocate for change but that change must come from the users themselves.
Increasingly, what's being stored is metadata about the content within those pages. Not to mention projects like Wikidata [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page] which is storing "structured knowledge" about literally everything.
1) Automatically identifying, reporting, and perhaps removing spam, hate speech, advertising, conflict of interest, etc. content. That's done in part by a system called ORES which was designed, built, and is managed by folks working for Wikimedia. Could volunteers have built such a system? Of course. Did they? No.
2) Identifying, blocking, and reporting child pornography. Like any site on the Internet that allows users to upload images, thousands of images of child pornography are uploaded to Wikipedia (and its sibling projects) on a regular basis. There are tools designed to catch most of these. However, humans still have to moderate a lot of this content. Would you volunteer to do that work all day long? I wouldn't. And that's why someone needs to be paid to do it.
So, while there is likely bloat in the organization (as in any group of humans endeavoring toward a shared goal), there is a lot of work done that volunteers wouldn't or couldn't or simply shouldn't do.
So then, I think the Guardian [https://www.theguardian.com] is a decent "all around" choice that has enough interesting edges to not feel redundant. It's especially good if you want to check out their UK or International editions to get something not so US-biased on occasion.
The NY Times [https://www.nytimes.com] is an obvious choice and it has its merits. Increasingly, the editorial choices seem to make less and less sense. I get it for $3 a month and for that price, it's worthwhile.
The LA Times [https://www.latimes.com] is slightly less globally focused but if you live on the US West Coast, it might be more applicable than other options.
The Miami Herald [https://www.miamiherald.com] used to be an interesting change of pace and perspective with some wonderful columnists. However, its parent company was recently purchased by a private equity firm so it remains to be seen what the commitment level is.
So, then they say, "Wikimedia should do something." Wikimedia has very limited control over the content that exists on Wikipedia and this ruling relies on and validates that position.
I'm not arguing that this is ideal or preferable. I'm saying that the lines between these two words are important and yet sometimes difficult to define. The crux is that Wikipedia is wholly separate from Wikimedia in all the ways that matter in a case like this.