1. They put up a temporary site notice asking for donations. They don't advertise on the project, and their sole source of funding is though donations. Very demanding.
2. What questions, specifically, does the article raise in your mind? Note - I say "questions", and not vague and ill formulated doubts.
The question it raises in my mind is how much of my donation is going to fund the servers and bandwidth and what they are always asking for money for, and how much is going to other things that I would not agree are worthy of my charity dollars.
Last time I looked at their finances it was about 50% went to fund servers, bandwidth and engineering in general. Now I'm sure that they do need to spend more than that, but I found that proportion different to what I had expected and it discouraged me from donating.
It's just plain obnoxious IMHO - also, what for have cookies been invented?
If i click the ad/begging/whatever away, you're not increasing your chances for me to donate when it pops up again whenever i come back to WP - you're achieving the exact opposite..
Just something about point 1, i donated last year and this, yet ive still received 2 emails this year (after this years donation) asking for another donation, plus you still get the massive banner on the wiki site.
Yeah, it's not like I really care if the banner ad is for wikipedia itself or for an advertiser. It's still an intrusive banner ad. Plus since it's for themselves, they probably go a bit further on the intrusiveness scale.
1. They put up a temporary site notice asking for donations. They don't advertise on the project, and their sole source of funding is though donations. Very demanding.
2. What questions, specifically, does the article raise in your mind? Note - I say "questions", and not vague and ill formulated doubts.