Monday, November 21, 2011

Wikipedia fundraiser

A letter I sent to donations@wikimedia.org today:

I like wikipedia. I use it often, and I've learned much from using it over the years. I've even pitched in a minor correction or fixed a typo on occasion. For those, I thank your organization.

Now for the unsavory part, to be fair.

Asking to raise $17.5 million by year's end, for what? I've seen this before.

Carefully disguised in a bunch of fluffy words and pages and dishonest pleas, you almost cover up your greed... almost. Searching out the information to verify that what I suspected was true, I found it on the Frequently Asked Questions page...

"HELPS FUND STAFF SALARIES"
I saw the pictures of your employees. Bunch of young, pretty, well-to-do types. Don't do anything, just sit around in an office, shuffling papers and clicking links, making appearances at useless events when summoned. Yeah, yeah.

Well let me tell you pompous, gall-saturated, mindless lemmings something. I literally work my ass off. I work full time, often overtime, and I still cannot pay for all the basic necessities in life. I'm not talking about cell phone service or internet, either. I'm talking about rent, electric, and food.

Give you people millions of dollars to do what thousands could do. I've never ran the world's #5 site, but I have ran the world's #1000 site. Before you start smirking and sipping your overpriced coffee in smug superiority, I have one word for you: scalability. I know how much money you need to run your operation, I know how much power and bandwidth you need. You lie to the very people you're stealing money from! "Oh, our site is so big, it's so complex, we have this many servers and this many people to run it all, its so big, it costs so much, we are scared of ads!"

BULLSHIT! Bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT!

So how much do you make to be a whining, email-trashing waste of space?

Sincerely,
Guruchild

P.S. FUCK YOU!

1 comment:

Guruchild said...

It's been 2 days since I emailed them.

They must have seen it, if not, what the fuck are they doing with your donated millions?

And, if they have seen it refused to respond, is an organization that buries its head in the sand something you want to give millions of dollars to?