Grand Donors, a gallery of people who have donated $1,000 or more Options

[LessHorrid vanU]

2. So, of those two people, one might exit our site more determined to make that $15 donation, and the other one might withhold that donation to go find out why it takes $182,000 to pay a lawyer to defend an open-source encyclopedia project.

Fair comment in regard to this one donor, but I still question the legitimacy of targeting the quirks of those who wish to give money to WP, and speculating on their reasons, rather than the what's, why's and wherefore's of WP use of such monies.

I am much more the WP sceptic for reading this site (long before I registered), but I am also very much the WR sceptic too - and this seems to me part of the unfortunate tendency of bashing the pro-WP minded folk just for having that opinion. This is how some WP folk foster the idea that WR is an attack site, which allows them to disregard any valid criticism that comes up here.

[KamrynMatika]

I think this thread should be moved to a non public forum at the least. Even if it's not likely they'll come across it, other people might and something about me doesn't like the idea of mocking people in public for doing something they believe is right.

[thekohser]

I think this thread should be moved to a non public forum at the least. Even if it's not likely they'll come across it, other people might and something about me doesn't like the idea of mocking people in public for doing something they believe is right.

Mocking is a strong word. Were I to remove the moustache comment, what else is full-blown mocking?

Greg

[KamrynMatika]

I think this thread should be moved to a non public forum at the least. Even if it's not likely they'll come across it, other people might and something about me doesn't like the idea of mocking people in public for doing something they believe is right.

Mocking is a strong word. Were I to remove the moustache comment, what else is full-blown mocking?

Greg

Okay, wrong word. But things like this are basically being a dick:

To date the only other grand donor is this guy:

Anonymous
sha1:338c3706b3f34653d195ee40a310f73d2fb52b5c Wed, 10/24/2007 - 20:18 USD 1,500.00 $1,500.00

Now, Mr Anonymous (or Miss or Ms or whatever title you may have), I notice that you like jumbling random letters and numbers. Now, we here think that there is something wrong with that. What are you playing at? Sha1? Does that mean you are Shakira? Or someone else?

I think that it is reasonable to see a potential conflict of interest in who contributes.

After all, why would you give money to something that gives you something for free? Only if it benefits you.

The guy in question is anonymous, yes, but I don't like the idea of making a thread of everyone who donates big amounts and then implying that basically they must have a COI or be making underhand deals, etc, when we have no evidence for reasonable suspicion.

This post has been edited by KamrynMatika: Fri 26th October 2007, 5:46pm

[GlassBeadGame]

Questioning the nature of the type of person who gives money to WMF seems appropriate to me.

[KamrynMatika]

Questioning the nature of the type of person who gives money to WMF seems appropriate to me.

There's a difference between talking about that 'type of person' in general and holding up specific examples and saying 'Hmm, I wonder what their shady motive is'.

This post has been edited by KamrynMatika: Fri 26th October 2007, 6:19pm

[thekohser]

Questioning the nature of the type of person who gives money to WMF seems appropriate to me.

There's a difference between talking about that 'type of person' in general and holding up specific examples and saying 'Hmm, I wonder what their shady motive is'.

I don't subscribe to the "shady motive" thing. I subscribe to the "misguided benefactor" thing.

But, since we seem to be nudging toward that Wikipedia Review conniption fit that seems to happen every so often, I've decided to transcribe the database to my own site. I intend to keep mockery to a very bare minimum.

WR Sysop Patrol -- please delete this thread from the site, leaving only the following:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I have created an annotated listing of the 2007 donors to the Wikimedia Foundation who contribute at least $1,000.

If you support the display of this list, please show your support through Digg love.

Greg

This post has been edited by thekohser: Fri 26th October 2007, 6:54pm

[GlassBeadGame]

Questioning the nature of the type of person who gives money to WMF seems appropriate to me.

There's a difference between talking about that 'type of person' in general and holding up specific examples and saying 'Hmm, I wonder what their shady motive is'.

It seems fine if you want to make that point. But do you really want moderators to take some action concerning the other posts? I can't see it.

[KamrynMatika]

Questioning the nature of the type of person who gives money to WMF seems appropriate to me.

There's a difference between talking about that 'type of person' in general and holding up specific examples and saying 'Hmm, I wonder what their shady motive is'.

It seems fine if you want to make that point. But do you really want moderators to take some action concerning the other posts? I can't see it.

I guess not. I don't really want to contribute to the drama here recently. I just don't like this thread. Don't mind me ...

[Somey]

(In the interests of transparency, I deleted some posts between AB and LHvU that were, in my opinion, a misunderstanding, and a regrettable one at that. Hopefully nobody will miss 'em...)

Anyway, this is an interesting problem to say the least. I hope I'm not looking at it too simplistically - the issue is that once we've posted their names, along with some background info, financial donors to WP might be ridiculed here simply for having given money to what they honestly believe is a worthy cause, or worse, accused of attempting to buy influence there, which in turn makes us WR folks look excessively prone to conspiracy theorizing and general disrespect for well-meaning acts of (what could arguably be deemed) charity... correct?

My immediate reaction would be to suggest that some of us may be overreacting. I mean, sure, there is Joseph100 are people here who might make unfounded or scurrilous suggestions merely out of anger and general hostility... That's true of a lot of things, though. It really comes down to whether or not one believes the Wikimedia Foundation is sufficiently controversial, or simply out-and-out damaging, that if people make four- or five-figure donations to it, they should be scrutinized for it.

And how can we, knowing what we know, seeing what we've seen, possibly conclude that it isn't sufficiently controversial? If you ask me, these people should at least be made aware of the fact that there are people out here who feel that they're contributing to what may be the ultimate demise of an important institution that should not be allowed to disappear - namely, the great Western tradition of professionally produced, peer-reviewed general reference materials for education and knowledge dissemination. (Sorry, I know there's probably an Eastern, Northern, and Southern tradition for that too... I'm just trying to prevent feature-creep here.)

Still... we probably shouldn't be unwilling to remove something that's clearly a personal attack on a WMF donor without real justification, particularly if it borders on libel in some way, though I don't believe we've seen anything quite like that, not yet anyway. If we do, then sure, maybe we close the thread and move parts of it "elsewhere"... But hopefully the regulars who read these ramblings will remain rational and reasonably respectful. (Hey, alliteration! )

[blissyu2]

Okay, wrong word. But things like this are basically being a dick:

To date the only other grand donor is this guy:

Anonymous
sha1:338c3706b3f34653d195ee40a310f73d2fb52b5c Wed, 10/24/2007 - 20:18 USD 1,500.00 $1,500.00

Now, Mr Anonymous (or Miss or Ms or whatever title you may have), I notice that you like jumbling random letters and numbers. Now, we here think that there is something wrong with that. What are you playing at? Sha1? Does that mean you are Shakira? Or someone else?

I think that it is reasonable to see a potential conflict of interest in who contributes.

After all, why would you give money to something that gives you something for free? Only if it benefits you.

The guy in question is anonymous, yes, but I don't like the idea of making a thread of everyone who donates big amounts and then implying that basically they must have a COI or be making underhand deals, etc, when we have no evidence for reasonable suspicion.

How is that being a dick? I was making light of it, because quite frankly we will never know who they are.

I guess that there is an argument that we shouldn't care who donates. On the other hand, perhaps we should care.

Ultimately, if you choose to donate good money to a bad cause then that's your right to do that. If you choose to do it because you're an ignorant fool, an idiot, or because you profit from the badness of the cause, then quite frankly we are very unlikely to find out which of them it is.

I think that it is a genuine concern that some might have as to the secret conflict of interest amongst those who are donating. After all, if a high level businessman donates too much to a political campaign, and then soon after being elected, the politician changes laws to significantly benefit the businessman, both of them can get in to serious trouble for corruption.

This is what we are talking about here. Someone donating and then in return getting something significant back from it.

The problem, I think, is that this thread began without a clear aim as to which of the 3 we were trying to catch out.

Are we:

A) Trying to stop the ignorant fool from donating when most of the money goes to a high-price lawyer's salary etc? i.e. Trying to educate them.

Noting the number of idiots who use Wikipedia and the stupid comments that they make while donating $1 or so.

C) Trying to note the people who donate in return for kickbacks somehow.

I'd like to think that it is for option C, as that would seem to me to be the most important one.

The problem is that most people say that they are anonymous, and the few that don't probably don't have anything to hide.

Hence the fishing expedition is unlikely to catch any big fish.

Linking Amazon to Wikia was a good catch though, but this trip I think we are going to come up empty.

Perhaps we can stick with warning the ignorant fools, make a new thread to say that, and be done with it.

It may be time to lock this thread.

[thekohser]

It may be time to lock this thread.

The root of this thread will continue on Centiare. While you're checking it out, please go through Digg or Reddit and give it a thumbs-up before you go to the actual page!

Greg

[Somey]

I still see no need to lock the thread... not yet, anyway. Like I say, we'll just have to be careful about specific and unwarranted personal "attacks" on individual donors, in some cases deleting them outright if they start to approach libel or conspiracy-theory territory. Whereas the non-specific, well-deserved, and non-personal attacks, well... maybe that sort of thing does make us all look bad, but it's still within our purview, and I wouldn't say the topic has been "fully explored" yet. (Has it?)

So... is that acceptable to everyone who's raised an objection so far? It's not like we're running some sort of contest to see who can make the nastiest remark(s) about these folks. If it starts to look that way, then sure, we'll close the thread, but until that happens, I just don't see it.

Of course, it may be a moot point - this has already gone off-topic and turned itself into a "meta-thread" about whether or not the thread itself should be closed.

[AB]

I think that it is a genuine concern that some might have as to the secret conflict of interest amongst those who are donating. After all, if a high level businessman donates too much to a political campaign, and then soon after being elected, the politician changes laws to significantly benefit the businessman, both of them can get in to serious trouble for corruption.

This is what we are talking about here. Someone donating and then in return getting something significant back from it.

If someone is donating in the hopes of getting defamatory or other harmful information
removed, I think we should wish that person the best of luck. : )

This post has been edited by AB: Sat 27th October 2007, 6:38pm

[thekohser]

Someone from the Belgian Wikipedia came onto Centiare and attempted to troll my website, adding this devious, NPOV edit. I was forced to revert the edit and protect the article.

The foundation hosts websites for projects like Wikipedia. The cost for hardware and bandwith for hosting these websites - and that is the primary mission of this charity - exceeds sixty percent of the budget.

The primary charitable mission of Wikipedia is to buy hardware and bandwi<d>th? Bah, humbug!

Greg

[KamrynMatika]

Blissy, if people are making super-secret COI deals with the WMF, they are going to make their donations privately, not via a publicly available list.

[blissyu2]

Blissy, if people are making super-secret COI deals with the WMF, they are going to make their donations privately, not via a publicly available list.

You'd think so. But they always slip up somewhere.

By the way, who is Joichi Ito? The latest non-anonymous grand donor.

Oh and as for our anonymous donator, he's got 6 hits on google anyway:

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=338c3706...fe=off&filter=0

[thekohser]

Blissy, if people are making super-secret COI deals with the WMF, they are going to make their donations privately, not via a publicly available list.

You'd think so. But they always slip up somewhere.

By the way, who is Joichi Ito? The latest non-anonymous grand donor.

Oh and as for our anonymous donator, he's got 6 hits on google anyway:

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=338c3706...fe=off&filter=0

Wow, what is that website coming up #2 behind Reddit.com (a Top 1000 site), as well as above Wikimedia.org (a Top 300 site) on that Google search? Must be a highly-optimized site for Google PageRank, being that that particular article only came into being a few days ago.



Greg

This post has been edited by thekohser: Tue 30th October 2007, 7:41pm

[guy]

The foundation hosts websites for projects like Wikipedia. The cost for hardware and bandwith for hosting these websites - and that is the primary mission of this charity - exceeds sixty percent of the budget.

That's fair enough. Its primary mission is to host websites, and obviously a high proportion of its expenditure is hosting costs. How is that POV?

[-_-]

The fundraiser for the german wikipedia is somehow successfull. See for November and for October. They also got 3 1000+ donations in October. In 2005 they got about 120.000 euro donated in 2006 90.000. I think they tried to avoid getting too much money as they coud not really spent it and they can't transfer money to the foundation in the us, cause german law doesn't allows this. I guess they didn't really want to invest in servers as they didn't want to be responsible for the hosting. Half a year ago they finally bought 15 servers in Amsterdam.