[WikiEN-l] Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)

[Steve Bennett]

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Deniz Gultekin <dgultekin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> MuZemike,
>
> Bad feelings? We're learning more about our donors to maximize the
> fundraising potential of our messages during the two month campaign. We
> have a lofty goal - and a short time period to accomplish it in.

At an intellectual level, I agree with the premise that if an
organisation like WMF wants to raise money through banner ads, and
wants to raise *a lot* of money, it makes sense to engineer that
process: experimenting, collecting data, refining the message,
implementing improvements.

But at a gut reaction level, I find this process distasteful. I don't
know why, exactly. There's this feeling of treating the people who
support WMF as lab rats, working out which experimental conditions are
ideal for extracting maximum dollar per eyeball. And the inherent
irony in an idea like "donors respond well to authenticity, so we
carefully concocted a message full of maximum authenticity..."

It's something like intellectually being ok with eating meat, but not
wanting to observe the process of butchery.

Just posting to back anyone else up who feels a bit uncomfortable with
seeing this kind of report, and the thinking implied behind it.

Steve