Ryan Kaldari, Same Wiki Lies, New Wiki Face
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Gotta give Wiki (pedia/Media) credit. Last time they were running a campaign they recognized that splattering Jimmy Wales photo all over the place was attracting a ton of bad publicity (quote “This is exactly why we cannot leave Jimbo up for 2 MONTHS”). The laundry list of abuses by Jimmy Wales is amazingly long:
- Using Wiki money to pay for his flights/expenses to personal speaking engagements
- Editing his girlfriends wikipedia entry both while dating and after they broke up
- Editing his former partners wikipedia entry in order to make it seem like he was the sole founder of Wikipedia
- Taking in 5 and 6 figure sums for public speaking engagements, while claiming to make no money from Wiki media/pedia. The only reason people want to talk to him is because he was the cofounder.
Is just a taste. So it’s time to go with someone who can actually relate to the people that work/read Wikipedia instead of a smug douchebag. Ryan Kaldari is the opposite of Jimmy Wales. At least so much as he comes off as a hipster, a gentle person who isn’t about to take your money and waste it.
Even so, the same issues that exist with Jimmy Wales exist with Ryan Kaldari. Wikimedia Foundation is spending far too much money on everything else. For a not-for-profit organaztion, Wikimedia is sitting on more then enough money to allow it to survive for at least 3-4 years. The biggest problem currently? The amount of money the Foundation is sinking into the ever ballooning employee payroll. Hiring 32 people should not cost as much as it does for them.
The reality is that I’ve done these rants at least twice before, you can read the first one and then the second one. I beg you, if your really going to donate money donate it to someone that does good like wikileaks. Also take a trip to Charity Navigator and realize that they give Wikimedia a horrible efficiency review of 26.50. Hell, you’d almost be better off donating money to Encyclopedia Dramatica then Wikimedia.
It ends up after a little more searching I found out this is an ongoing thing. They are comparing different people and wording to Jimmy Wales appeal to see if they can use other people instead of Wales and still get the same amount of donations. If you see any of the ads, I’d say click through them, but donate nothing just to screw with their results.
