Let me pay for Firefox

There is a sad parallel to Wikimedia Foundation, rooted in the same argument: We don't know the correct price. These entities are effectively monopolies with no competitors, and there is no public negotiation on what the annual budget of these entities should be.

So once they get away with nag screens on the world's biggest billboards, CEO pay is suddenly 'justified'.

But that illusion only works when there is zero oversight.

> But that illusion only works when there is zero oversight.

Certainly when it comes to Wikipedia: there is oversight. I know people don't like the fact that Wikipedia spends money on things other than server racks, but spending money on developing the community is a pretty legitimate thing to do! How else can you maintain such an encylopedia? You need to attract knowledgeable people to write and review articles!

If only.

A very informative comment.

The exact same way it always worked.

It's also obscenely disingenuous to ask for donations like they do with this current model. Downright insulting.

I don't think there are objections to Wikipedia developing the community.

The objections are primarily around the aggressive and deceptive fundraising.

Wikipedia collects donations by essentially saying (in some years more directly, otherwise more implying) "if you don't donate Wikipedia WILL DIE", rather than "Please give us some money so we can build an even bigger community to make Wikipedia even better".

They are also making the banners incredibly obnoxious. From "donate or ask later", full-screen interstitials, to delayed popups that interrupt you after you've started reading, and with increasing frequency. During their "yearly" fundraisers (I think it's actually 2-3x a year, masked behind "local" vs. "global" campaigns) they pop them up every few days on every device you use, and now they're introducing "experimental" banners every month (again per device) so several times per month, and more frequently if they delete cookies. [1]

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising#Proposed_ch...

At some level this is true, but I'm also 98% sure that if you do that, you get far fewer donations. Fewer donations = less money to do good work. This means you can't provide money to support foundation projects (these are quite valuable and promote exchange of knowledge amongst Wikipedia contributors, and also onboard new people to make a better encyclopedia). Eventually not doing this leads to the pool of contributors shrinking, which leads to burnout, and eventually to a slow death spiral.