That is a ridiculous and ugly accusation to make. If you don’t know what it takes to run a globally available top site, it is better not throw stones at people.
Is that wrong ? Far from reality? Help them (and readers like me) get a clear understanding.
OKAY, it is an ugly accusation considering "don’t know what it takes to run a globally available top site", but why? How much does it cost to run a Wiki like site on that high traffic using some modified form of mediawiki platform?
I am just trying to get a clearer understanding than attacking / siding anyone
Or hosting all the images? Or paying developers, devops, managers? Like sure, some middle manager may be unnecessary but a big company will have inefficiencies. Also, it is a good decision to not stop accepting funds once a monthly quota is reached since donations are fickle. An article like this may suddenly cause an outage in donations, they have to have reserves for such cases.
When someone goes to Wikipedia and feels "this was awesome; I want to support this... and OMG, they say they might fail if they don't get money from people like me!" it is absolutely unethical to take their money and spend it on Wikidata, a product this user might have no clue exists and may or may not care at all about. Maybe Wikidata is a great thing, but then the pitch should be "we are glad you enjoyed Wikipedia! don't worry: Wikipedia is safe, as we have more than enough money to fund it! however, we have other projects we think might make a similarly positive impact on the world... maybe you would want to donate to one of them?".