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By Mark D, April 28, 2012 8:15 pm

But thanks for the laughs. You really shouldn’t bother getting a blog post removed which has gotten almost no attention. I had to double check the stats, but it has a total of 251 views in a year, of which 190 of them were in December when your banner on Wikipedia was in rotation. But hey, what do I know about the internet. Well at least tonight is going to be an easy night for new material, as here’s the fun letter that was in my inbox tonight:

From:
Ryan Kaldari
kaldari@gmail.com

Message:
I’ve been working at the Wikimedia Foundation for 2 years as a
software developer. Last year, they recruited me (and several other
community members and employees) to appear on a fundraising banner so
they could stop barraging people with Jimmy. After they put me on a
banner, I was then exposed to the full measure of human hate. No less
than 3 parody Facebook profiles were created, and numerous blogs and
discussion boards decided that I was the best thing to make fun of for
a couple weeks. All because I was encouraging people to donate to a
non-profit website. Most of these profiles and posts eventually
dropped off of Google, but your blog post is still on the first page
of Google matches for my name, as it has been for almost a year now. I
wouldn’t care so much, accept that it basically says I’m a liar, right
there in the headline for any potential employer or future girlfriend
to read when they google my name. I appreciate that the Wikimedia
Foundation has strong critics and I think such criticism is useful.
However, you should know that your criticism isn’t hurting the
Foundation, it’s only hurting me personally. I don’t want you to
remove your blog post, but I was wondering if there’s any chance you
could remove my name from the headline. The headline is still just as
effective without it. Looking through your website, it looks like we
have a lot in common and I hope you’ll read my email as a request from
another human being and not just from a representative of the
Wikimedia Foundation, which just happens to be my current employer.
Regarding the Foundation, you may want to look at their current
Charity Navigator profile as they are now one of the top ranked
charities in the country on both the Financial score and the
Accountability & Transparency score. I know this probably won’t change
your opinion of the Foundation, but I wanted to mention it, as the
Charity Navigator scores were one of the main criticisms in your blog
post. Anyway, thanks for listening. Peace.

When you sleep with the devil, you gotta pay your dues. Wikipedia is still duping people into donating when they have enough money to be solvent for the next 5-10 years at least. Except of course that they keep adding more and more staffers who are taking a bigger and bigger chunk out of the operating salary. And for what?

Comments (0)

By Mark D, July 29, 2011 2:41 pm

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.