[WikiEN-l] fundraising

[Oldak Quill]

On 23/10/2007, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > On 23/10/2007, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> So, bottom line, we need money to operate the websites and to do more as
> >> well. Those of you who were already wikipedians 3 years ago (or worse
> >> :-)) will remember a time where the site was slow and sometimes dead.
> >> Hopefully, though we grew enormously, your editing experience is now
> >> good 99% of the time. This does not come from nowhere. There are people
> >> working to make sure that we provide you the best editing and reading
> >> environment.
> >
> > Most of the people objecting to the banner are not objecting to a
> > banner in principle (and certainly not objecting to fundraising). The
> > issue is with the way it looks and was carried out. You seem to be
> > presenting this issue as binary: scrolling advert or the death of
> > Wikimedia.
>
> I am not sure who is "you", but it is definitly not "me" :-)

By "You seem to be presenting...", I meant that in the post you made
which started this threat, you seem to be presenting the issue as
binary.  I didn't mean that you more generally, or the Foundation,
were/are presenting the issue as binary.

> I was not in the team who worked on the fundraiser, except for global
> messages issues.
> But no, I would not say it is binary. Proof being that in the next hours
> following the set up of the sitenotice, several changes were brought.
> On my computer, the text is no more scrolling, and a dismiss link has
> been added. I know there was work as well on Jimmy's video (which I
> first saw 48 hours ago). There might be other changes as well, but I do
> not immediately see them.

And these changes are appreciated.

> > Some people are saying the banner is distracting, ugly and wasn't done
> > with enough communication. Shouldn't the discussion be about those
> > things and whether any of them present problems?
>
> Yeah, no problem. The problem is not really that there was not enough
> communication (there is never enough communication anyway), but rather
> that people do not really get involved and comment until the stuff is
> right up in their nose. But hey, that's a wiki. We can change stuff.

If people have a natural inclination to not pay attention to these
things, we should try to discover why. I don't always keep track until
things are in my face because I selectively read postings on
Foundation-l based on thread names and discard those I'm not
particularly interested in. Perhaps it was wrong of me to assume that
no major changes would be made in the Fundraising this year and that I
could ignore information relating to it.

What other means could be used to keep Wikimedians updated on issues?
Perhaps Wikizine could be better promoted and more widely distributed?
Could Wikizine be made more visible on Community portals? I have no
idea what the solution is to these problems.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)