Gorhill should have a statue somewhere for making the web browseable.
To me, there are 3 projects I'd throw my money to:
- uBlock Origin
- ytdl
- The Internet Web Archive
"The Thriving Movement budget has increased from $14.3 million last fiscal year to $36.7 million in this budget which represents an increase of $22.4 million or 157%. It has also grown from being 13.2% of the Foundation’s overall budget to 24.5%."
Not only is more money going into it, a larger share of their budget is being allocated to it, so a larger share of each donation goes into DEI initiatives. If you're the kind of person that does not think this is a valuable investment of your money, you might not be inclined to donate anymore (or to donate less than before).
I personally believe a 24.5% share of the budget for what are largely DEI initiatives is not something I'd prefer to support with increasing donations, so I have scaled back my donations to them (as well as Mozilla/Firefox for the same reasons). I am sure many people agree with DEI initiatives and donate more. That's fine. We all vote with our wallet.
Source: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...
But if I understand what you're saying correctly, you're saying it's a negative for them to put such a focus on it?
I'm just not interested in funding those initiatives at that percentage of budget and would rather send the money to other essential Internet companies who have lesser investments in those ideas. I still give some to Wikimedia, just not as much.
In my experience, the Wikimedia Foundation seems to be the one who is most transparent about where funds go, while organizations like Internet Archive doesn't make a lot of data public, at least via their own website.
Also, Wikimedia may not be as transparent as you think. Here's more information on that, but the whole thread is worth reading.
So Wikimedia is a non-profit AFAIK, you have any idea why it's not listed on charitywatch.org?
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703
EDIT: However it is not updated for recent years. Likely because Wikimedia is not transparent enough with their financial statements.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. If I were a cynical man I might speculate that it's not because things that look good don't get scrutinised as much but that anyone wanting less scrutiny might try painting their aims as "good" and those who object as therefore "bad". But I digress. Wikimedia's mission is[1]:
> to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally
What does DEI at their workplace have to do with that?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation#Mission
+ Dark Reader
https://archive.org/donate?origin=wbwww-TopNavDonateButton
(Couldn't find links for uBo and ytdl. I've asked gorhill where to donate in the past and they've refused donations.)
That said:
- IA doesn't even offer cancelling. That's... not a particularly technically challenging feature. I have a strong feeling that they in fact have a cancel button somewhere in their backend anyways.
- While some of this can be annoying, it's kinda table stakes these days. If you can't handle basic subscription functionality, god help you for things like 3-D Secure.
This is a non-starter for me.
> No donations sought.
> Without the preset lists of filters, this extension is nothing. So if ever you really do want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which were made available to use by all for free.
professional astronomy photos is an activity where the low end starts very expensive. Basic setups are in the thousands of dollars.
(For context: Reddit awards don't give the recipient anything except the ability to browse Reddit without any banner ads, and access to a special forum. If you make a big Reddit donation to someone, you're actually donating to Conde Nast, Spez, etc)