About raising money - Langcom

24 Sep 2021


      Hoi,
There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much
money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make
this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need
money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year
enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money
and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people
   donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense
   of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
   - With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the notion
   that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is
   reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for  results that
   are globally relevant ..
   - We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and define
   what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to
   increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and
   discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the
   service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is
   good but not  enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to
document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an
important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two
projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer
ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these
benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the
current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the
data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own
software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept
that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may
find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no
urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is
lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF
raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project
and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient
for who,for what and for how long.
Thanks,
       GerardM