Wikipedia has been one of the most beautiful creations of the Internet and they continue to be trustworthy. I don't really see anything worthy of bad faith assumptions about Wikipedia's $70K donation Filipino American National Historical Society. Seriously people find better causes. Protest real issues.
I won't go into discussing the photos of sad looking Jimmy Wales that pop up in my inbox twice a year: you have probably read plenty on this topic already. The only argument I have is I donate money to sustain the project I value, not the Filipino American National Historical Society. I would, perhaps, donate to this Society directly, but don't make this decision for me. It feels deceptive.
That would have been upright and trustworthy, if a bit annoying. Finding out that they are re-donating my donations irks me. I don't like it. I like the stated missions statements of the charities they donated to, but I don't know anything about them. Are they good charities? What were the grants used for? Who's going to put the effort in to let me know that this wasn't a greedy soulless con job and some of the money I spent to protect a huge trove of human knowledge actually went to some greedy dickhead in Brazil and there's not a dang thing I can do about it?
I'm not donating to Wikipedia & co again until those questions are answered, and I'm not putting any more effort into finding the answer than spitting this rant out.
There's too much shifty questionable things going on to blindly trust any longer.
Eg, if they donate to MariaDB because they use the database, or to the EFF because they offered legal assistance, that makes perfect sense to me.
But donating to an organization that doesn't directly benefit Wikipedia in any way, that's where I'm much more doubtful. I'd much prefer they just advertised them in some way instead, like during their donation drives.
The biggest donation is going to a charity managing an archive. A place that has important documents that can be cited by, oh I don't know, an encyclopedia maybe?
I make donations to many different charities, but I do my own due diligence, in particular how much money actually goes to the cause in question, rather gets used to pay an expensive C-suite.
Signpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36029115
And for a laugh, see the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/style/katherine-maher-ash...
"The couple traveled around the world in early 2022 and moved to New York that June. ... On July 22, Erica Kochi, a friend of the couple who became a one-day deputy marriage commissioner in San Francisco, officiated the wedding before 140 guests on the lawn of Willow Camp in Stinson Beach, Calif. The day before, the groom rode in on a white horse for a Hindu ceremony.
“It was two days of cross-cultural celebration and community,” Ms. Maher said, “and a really big dance party.”"
I guess the donations helped pay for that as well.
It is the layman's understanding that donations to Wikipedia are directly for the operations of this obviously great resource.
If they had a separate foundation for data gathering and social justice, or if they said in their pledge drives "5% of your donation will be redistributed to causes for equity in journalism and encyclopedic knowledge" this wouldn't be a story.
These non profits have missions that go beyond their most visible projects. This is almost always the case with any non profit. It's not called "the Wikipedia server foundation" or "the Firefox browser foundation" for a reason.
It doesn't strike me as coincidental that people are complaining about money going to be people who aren't considered white.