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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

I do think there is such a thing as "the community's willingness to deal with it", and that rather than my statement being meaningless/confused, your objection is really a normative claim about who should be able to complain. But if it helps you understand, you can reinterpret my comment as:

(1) All the effort people put into collecting copyright-free sound files is drastically undermined by the lack of nice plug-ins; and

(2) The Wikimedia foundation, which collects huge amounts of money from unsophisticated donors, is negligent in spending that money on ridiculous projects that help only a small number of particular types of nerds while leaving things like this that could actually help the typical donor broken.

In other words, when I donate money to the Wikimedia foundation and they don't fix easy stuff like this, I am justified in complaining.

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Good point on the budget.

But even if you submitted a "fix" to the foundation, somehow I imagine that it wouldn't be adopted, for reasons.

No, you certainly are not. You're donating money, not employing them. They get to choose what to do with the money, not you.

If you don't like it, stop donating. Or better yet, write a patch, or email them suggestion for a better player. I agree with your original point, but you lost me with this second post.

Non-profits absolutely have duties to their donors when they accept money. They don't get to spend it on whatever they want. And those duties are especially strong when they take money for a technical job from non-technically-sophisticated donors.

Finally, those duties are even stronger when the non-profit is the steward of a non-replaceable community commons; there is no way to donate to a Wikimedia Foundation competitor to improve Wikipedia.

> If you don't like it, stop donating

Think about what you're saying. People can't complain unless they donate, but if they don't like what's happening they should not donate. That sort of reasoning is how you get non-accountable dysfunctional non-profits.

> Or better yet, write a patch, or email them suggestion for a better player.

I can't write a patch. It's not in my abilities.

Write them an email? That isn't a serious suggestion, because you know it would accomplish nothing. That's not where these conversations take place.

> I can't write a patch. It's not in my abilities.

> Write them an email? That isn't a serious suggestion, because you know it would accomplish nothing. That's not where these conversations take place.

It sounds like you arent really interested in seeing this fixed.

Sometimes, when you want something fixed, merely complaining or commenting to the right person will get it resolved. Sometimes more effort is required. You are right, an email might not get you the result you want.

But have you tried? If you havent even tried an email I dont think you have the right to complain. You havent made even the smallest effort to constructively advocate or try to resolve the issue. Once youve done that, you have a better case.

I don't know why my technical inability to submit patches for audio plugins is evidence I don't really want to see this fixed. I am not a software developer.

There is zero chance that they are unaware of this issue. So the question is, first, what is the best way to communicate dissatisfaction? And I don't think emails directly to the Wikimedia foundation are effective (and I don't think you think that either).

More importantly, I'm claiming that the Wikimedia foundation, and the Wikipedia community, are negligent regardless of what I personally do. It's beyond obvious to anyone who has thought a wink about UX that this stuff is crap. "We haven't gotten enough emails about it to divert resources from Wiki-con-for-Slovokian-teenagers" is not a plausible defense.

> Write them an email? That isn't a serious suggestion, because you know it would accomplish nothing.

If no-one ever complains about it, it will be difficult to prioritize over things people do complain about.

I'm not saying we shouldn't complain about, I'm saying this particular method (an email directly to the Wikimedia foundation) is not the correct method. More importantly, the email suggestion was not a serious one by the commenter who made it; it was just an attempt to undermine my complaint.

If you donated the money and specified your donation was only to fix the player on the web site and they accepted it, then yes, you have say in how they spend it. You don't have a lot of leverage if they don't spend it on that but you could possibly sue them.

If you donated the money without telling them what they have to spend it on, they can spend it on anything they want.

Good luck finding a lawyer to represent you in this law suit and good luck spending many times your original donation on said lawyer all because you don't like the look of the audio player on the web site.

I was making a moral argument, not a legal one.

See, this is the problem with communism; without incentives, people just do whatever they feel like. And what they feel like might not be valuable.

If Wikipedia had revenue-generating potential for companies, it might be a better resource. As it is, it's turned into a money-generating resource for people who freeload off the goodwill.

(I donated to Wikipedia once; never again.)

How drunk are you to compare Wikipedia to communism???

Btw, the value of the content of a company-based Wikipedia will be none, because noone will trust 'em.

> Think about what you're saying. People can't complain unless they donate, but if they don't like what's happening they should not donate.

I don't think anyone is saying that. You're absolutely free to complain, and we're absolutely free to point out the lack of value of your complaints. That's all that's happening here.

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