On 10/23/07, Nick <heligolandwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote: Actually, there is another option. Some corporation could decide that $100M in advertising potential is a great incentive to try and build a better mousetrap. A corporation willing to invest $10M could very credibly seek to fork Wikipedia, develop an advertising supported model, and introduce changes in the community structure that might attact new volunteers. It is not a sure thing by any means, but a large stable bankroll from advertising would go a long way. There is no guarantee that the most important internet encyclopedia in 2015 will be the one run by the WMF. -Robert Rohde

I though Wikipedia was about building an encyclopedia, not a community? It doesn't matter how the community works in the slightest, provided it yields the desired product. I agree with this, though: "Few corporations even begin to grasp the dynamics of a community like ours". This is quite correct. Few corporations even begin to grasp the concept of letting the lunatics take over the asylum. Few corporations tolerate flagrant incompetence, either. Adverts would give us the cash to hire professionals, sweep out the current clutter, and get on with building the interface, presentation, and reliability that we deserve from our position as a top-ten website and world's Number One encyclopaedia. At the moment, we do not merit our elevated status. Some of this is due to lack of cash, plenty more to inability to govern from those who currently do. Moreschi Odi profanum vulgus et arceo. _________________________________________________________________ 100’s of Music vouchers to be won with MSN Music https://www.musicmashup.co.uk

On 10/24/07, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman(a)hotmail.co.uk> wrote: Of course we do, people aren't being coerced into using the site. :) That's not to say that improvements couldn't be made. I'd rather see a ransom system for bugs and software enhancements than some hierarchical command structure that would be completely dissonant with the current community. Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion

On 24/10/2007, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Wikia has picked up how much funding? And digital universe certainly started off with $10 million -- geni

On 27/10/2007, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote: Because we would rather write about thinks other than MMORPGs and Star Wars Fanon (More than 15,000 pages of Star Wars fan fiction) -- geni

Why should it be? Why should we expect progress to stop with us? Why should we assume that nobody will devise an even better medium of collaboration than a wiki? Why should we even assume that the concept of internet encyclopedia will be relevant 8 years from now? As usenet went, so shall we. On 10/23/07, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

On 23/10/2007, Nick <heligolandwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote: Nothing is solely up to the foundation. Plenty of people have made it clear they would leave/fork if adverts were added to Wikipedia. If the foundation wants to continue to have projects to host, they need to listen to what their users want. They understand this, I think it very odd that so many users seem not to.

If there were two Wikipedias, one with ads, one without, which do you think readers would go to? The only thing the original Wikipedia would have going for it is brand recognition. It would take time for people to learn about the ad-free version, but people would learn (possibly quite quickly, since I can see the media jumping on the story).

On 25/10/2007, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc(a)ktchan.info> wrote: The one that's higher up in the search results will be the one most used, since search rankings (at least on Google) depend on incoming links, which are, of course, correlated with use.

Thomas Dalton wrote: But if the Foundation has to resort to ads because there just isn't enough money coming in from donations and other sources to keep running otherwise, how is the ad-free fork going to manage any better? I don't support ads in general, but if the choice is between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia at all I say stash a backup of the database somewhere safe and then go for it.

If it ever gets to that point, then you're absolutely right. Wikipedia with ads is certainly far better than no Wikipedia at all. We are nowhere near that point at the moment, though.

On 24/10/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: It is also worth noting that this has happened already - a few years ago pretty much the whole Spanish Wikipedia just got up and left because the notion of ads was even floated (though this may have been just a last straw) - so caution is well advised. - d.

On 10/25/07, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think that's the key. Personally, I'd rather have opt-out targetted advertising for two weeks out of the year than have untargetted forced banner advertising for two months out of the year. Eventually I don't think begging for donations is going to be sustainable. The banner ads asking for donations will continue to get more and more annoying, and the desire for funds will continue to rise. But for now, it works.

Nitpicks aside, I think you know what I mean.

On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: My key point was that I'd personally prefer opt-out targeted advertising for two weeks out of the year to what Wikipedia has right now.

On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: First of all, I don't think opt-out is going to make significantly less than forced-in. Opt-in advertisements would be significantly less effective, but I don't think many people would choose to opt-out and I think the ones that chose to do so would be the least likely to click on the ads anyway. But feel free to double my amount of time if you'd like, I'd still feel the same way. Secondly, the last time I calculated it I estimated that it'd only take 2 weeks of Google Adsense ads to make enough money to fulfill the WMF's budget. If you want to make some updated calculations, feel free. Oh hell, I'll do it. Let's say $2 CPM (that's low according to http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-google-adsense), on 7 billion page views per month (http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/06/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-traffic). That's $14 million a month, which would mean roughly $7 million from two weeks of ads. Triple my numbers if you want, and Wikipedia could make $4.6 million in a month. And I'd still personally prefer a month of opt-out targetted text ads to the current fundraising messages. And that's all I'm talking about in this message. My personal preference - which would be less annoying to me personally.

On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: I don't see why I'm in any better position than you to answer that question. In fact, apparently you're more familiar with it than I am. I also gave myself a factor of three in possible mistakes, and actually I halved the low end of what that site said was the average CPM ($4-5). So I really have a fudge factor of 6x+. I'm not going to spend tons of time coming up with really accurate estimates, because I think it's so blindingly obvious that you could make as much as you do in fundraising for the year in less than a month using targeted text ads.

Ad returns have risen since 2003. (Maybe dropped since 2001.) On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com

On 10/25/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Well, there is so much money that could be generated as we've seen with Mozilla (i.e. $50-150M a year) you would have so much money in the bank that you would be subservient to NO ONE. If Google gives Mozilla a hard time they can walk away and never raise money again... they could simply live off the interest. So, while I agree with you in concept, the reality is that this level of funding would be akin to an endowment that would make Wikipedia sustainable and independent FOR ALL TIME! Wouldn't that be an amazing thing? In terms of the COI I can't see that happening as the advertising in Google is assigned by... well... machines. Those people buying the ads don't even know what sites the ads are going on! So, the COI would only exist in the eyes of the users and I think it would be a stretch to think that some randomized/rotating Google ads--the same ones they see all over the web--would make folks think there is a conflict. Now, if they did see it as a conflict you could make all advertising displayed on Wikipedia 100% optin. If someone turns the ads on themselves they made the decision and the COI can't really exist can it? Also, you could rotate the advertising between Yahoo, Google, and MSN and that would place another layer of distance. All this being said, I respect people who want to protect the project so much. It's that relentless obsession with the issues that makes Wikipedia great. However, I might point out that the Wikipedia has a bigger conflict of interest right now if it is funded by a small number of donors--especially ones that are anonymous except to the insiders-- That's a COI of epic, star chamber proportions I think.... what if it comes out that Jimbo got Bono to put in $1M and Bono works for a VC firm that is funding wikia... :-) I mean, you could really go X-Files level conspiracy level on this stuff. best j --------------------- Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis

On 27/10/2007, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote: Some people must think servers maintain themselves, and that bandwidth is a costless commodity, and that people answer phones on a volunteer basis... That is a joke right, especially in the US! Peter

On 2007.10.23 19:12:56 -0400, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> scribbled 0 lines: Last I heard, the Mozilla Foundation was still a 501(c)3 charity despite their Google deal. Has it since been removed? -- gwern MKSEARCH LABLINK 3P-HV Lebed NAWAS MIT Posse credit forces Anonymous

Anthony wrote: Fair enough. If we are ever in the unfortunate position of making too much commercial money, this would be one possible solution. Ec

Forgot to ad that the wikimedia corporation would have to donate most of its profits to the foundation Phoenix 15

On 24/10/2007, Phoenix wiki <phoenix.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, St. Petersburg, Florida (UNN) — The Wikimedia Foundation(R), the nonprofit behind Wikipedia(R), the Free Cheap Encyclopedia™, will be introducing paid editing to all projects through the new Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation joint venture with Richard Branson. A standard paid account will start at US$25 (€20 or £0.05) per month per user, with a discount of US$5 (€16 or £0.04) per month for users with over 2000 edits. The paid editing initiative was announced during the Foundation's Winter 2006/Q4 funding drive. Wikipedia(R) is the number 10 website in the world, and the only website in the Alexa Top 20 run by a nonprofit. Despite its low overheads, with only six paid staff, the Foundation has had tremendous difficulty in keeping up with the ever-increasing demand for server hardware, not to mention the bandwidth bill for serving an average 150 megabytes per second, doubling every six months. Slow page loading and frequent downtime remain perennial problems. "Advertising on Wikimedia(R) has been roundly rejected by the community," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikimedia(R), "even though we're missing out on about *sixty thousand goddamn dollars each and every frickin' day* by not having two Google text ads. But we got away with proving mathematically that the Virgin Unite logo in the fundraising banner was technically sponsorship and not 'advertising' per se, and as a bonus it shook off a couple of the most troublesome whiners from the Dutch and Italian Wikipedias(R). And hey, we outlasted Enciclopedia Libre nicely. *We got the brand name*, suckas. "We were so desperate for cash that we'd initially considered a rental scheme for volunteers, but Rob Church is still under twenty-one so can't legally work any street corner other than Piccadilly Circus, and Greg Maxwell got a little too excitable with his first rough trade customer once the ketamine wore off. Brion had to resort to the cattle prod. Very enthusiastic volunteer, though, Greg. Totally dedicated. But rest assured, we still hold out hope of finding a Wikipedian™ who's actually attractive to anyone anywhere. Danny already bought the wide-brimmed purple fedora and the cane." The new account levels are: * WikiFree™: You can get a free account by completing offers or reffering freinds to do the same. For an initial setup fee of five dollars (€4 or £0.01), you get ten article edits a month, six picture userboxes and one vanity article. * Sponsored Plus™: The new Sponsored Plus™ level gives free users more options, paid for by "PUNCH THE MONKEY!" adverti sponsorship messages on pages, images and the 'Save page' button. After your five dollar setup fee, you get 100 edits a month, twelve picture userboxes and two vanity articles, one for yourself and one for your garage band. * WikiPaid™: The WikiPaid™ account, at twenty dollars a month, offers unlimited monthly edits, thirty picture userboxes, twenty edits per month in the Wikipedia(R): page space, a vanity article each month and sponsorship messages only in the sitenotice banner. * WikiAdministrator™: WikiAdministrator™ powers are given to the most highly respected editors on Wikipedia(R). For one hundred dollars a month (€80 or £0.20), you get all the paid user benefits, unlimited edits in the Wikipedia(R): page space, smaller sponsorship messages in the sitenotice banner, immunity to CheckUser and droit de banstick in any edit war with a lesser editor. Sponsored Plus™, WikiPaid™ and WikiAdministrator™ users can also create their own Wikistress meters and move adversaries' articles to Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense. The new Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation is a for-profit joint venture between the Wikimedia Foundation(R) and Richard Branson's Virgin Group. The Foundation owns the trademarks and licenses them to the Corporation, and Virgin engineers run the server network and sell adverti market sponsorship. Wikipedia(R) remains free content under the GNU Free Documentation License, but use of the logo, the puzzle globe, the font or the word "Wikipedia"(R) attracts a 25¢ per use license fee. (Please deposit coin in CD drive before continuing reading.) The Wikimedia(R) Foundation's profits go to furthering their charitable goals, which remain "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." The Foundation's new financial muscle is used to facilitate the hard work of its dedicated employees and independent consultants, most of the latter being recruited from the most experienced Foundation volunteers. "We feel we have a duty — a duty to all of humanity, really — to use the Foundation's new resources wisely and effectively," said James Forrester from on board the Arbitration Committee™ yacht. Richard Stallman surprised many with his enthusiastic support for the creation of Wikimedia(R)'s for-profit arm. "In particular, I strongly hope the Foundation sticks it to Debian the way Mozilla did over Firefox. Call my GFDL 'non-free,' will they. Assholes." "We think there's tremendous scope for synergy here. Jimmy and I have been discussing this deal since we met on Bono's private Caribbean island last year," said Sir Richard. "We think Wikimedia(R) will fit right in with the way our other recent Internet acquisition, NTL-Telewest, works. Particularly their excellence in customer service." "We work well together," said Wales. "It's a beard thing." The Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation has been listed on NASDAQ (VWMC 0.000002↓). The initial public offering raised almost seventy dollars by the close of trading yesterday. - d.

On 24/10/2007, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: Mmm. Which side do we sell advertising to on [[Abortion]]? If you don't blacklist you'll get screams; if you do you'll get screams, whoever you pick on. In an attempt to maintain (appearances of) neutrality, we'd have to spend quite a lot of effort controlling who gets these advertising slots on contested topics; that's going to eat into the profits quite quickly. It's not a simple matter of "and now, open the money pipe" -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

I had an interesting discussion this evening with a senior sales executive for a major commercial publisher, who was totally amazed that we did not accept advertisements, as in his view everyone wanted to maximize income and financial support and the money the staff could be paid--as his company did. that of course is why he is there, and i am here. consider the On 10/24/07, Jason Calacanis <jason(a)calacanis.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

Jason Calacanis wrote: You've given the reason yourself: it's a slippery slope to putting ads everywhere. Refusing ads entirely may or may not be optimal, but the clarity is unmatched. William -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

You haven't actually addressed the issue to email you replied to was talking about. We're not saying users won't like ads (although that's probably true as well), we're saying that inappropriate ads could cause serious problems, so we would have to control what ads we show, which causes even more problems.

I guess it's because they're clearly separate from the encyclopedia. Of course, I can't be sure it's clear to everyone... there are plenty of idiots in the world, I'm sure some of them read Wikipedia.

On this subject, here is something to think about. Which is worse in terms of COI risks? Funded 100% by donations by 50% of the donation money comes from only 1-3 people/groups. Funded 90% through ads but with no advertiser accounting for more than 1% of the income. It's a serious and important question. On 10/25/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote:

On 10/25/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: I would say the former is a more serious COI risk in terms of incentive to compromise our content (though on a very narrow range of content, related to the big-money people/groups), while the latter is a much more serious risk in terms of public perception of COI (with all the negatives that come with that). I don't think there is significant risk of editors actually tailoring content to drive ad revenue (especially since the per-page revenue numbers would never be made public), but ads are a constant reminder to every reader that there is something commercial going on, even if Wikimedia itself is a non-profit. Most readers would never have any inkling of COI concerns from individual high-value donations. But I also think that switching to Google search (with ads) would be much less likely to raise red flags with users, compared to article ads. After all, they are used to seeing ads in the context of search; it would all seems part and parcel of using faster and more relevant Google search (and/or MSN or Yahoo! or Ask). Most users sophisicated enough to worry about ads and revenue streams can also appreciate the functional difference between Wikipedia's current search and what an integrated commercial engine could do. -Sage

On 25/10/2007, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: (As I write this, incidentally, I have #wikimedia-donations open in an IRC window on the same screen; each donation notification picked up from the server and dropped into an IRC channel. It's a really heartwarming thing to have ticking slowly by as you work; a note every minute or two telling you how happy people are with what we're doing here. The most recent is "It's an honor to be a part of the worldwide Wikipedia community!" - from someone who was *giving us money* to say that. Just thought I'd share that thought...) It strikes me that it's a tradeoff. a) you have a COI issue on half a dozen pages - those relating to the big donors - and this issue is *very* prominent. (Half our money comes from, say, Google? Hell yes, we'd all be worried about the neutrality of [[Google]]). b) you have a COI issue spread across several hundred or thousand pages - those relating directly to the advertisers for those specific pages - but to a smaller degree for each one because we're less beholden to each. (If you give us 30% of our income we can't tell you to go boil your head; if you give us 3%, we can grit our teeth and start kicking) As Jason notes below, the first case becomes much worse in cases where the donor is anonymous - it's very much a matter of external perception, since the *community* doesn't know who that big donor is and so can't really pander to them, but that's still just as bad. lesser of the evils - it means we can say with reasonable confidence that 99.9% of the encyclopedia is completely untouched by any possible COI, and we can even - perhaps - think about proactive measures like a discreet disclaimer on articles related to our donor. Unpleasant but manageable. For a model with only a small number of advertisers, you're looking at much the same thing - there is a major worry about COI for each, *but* the limited number means that we can get a reasonable idea of "these articles are to worry about, the rest are completely irrelevant to the adverts and so fine". The latter case, I presume you're thinking of an adsense model. This makes it even worse than simply "having a hundred advertisers", because it gets more and more diffuse. As a result, at any given time we can't easily say which pages are and aren't "tainted" - *or* how much money we get from any given advertiser. In effect, we have to worry about the appearance of potential COI on a large fraction of our pages, albeit not at a very great level. The advertising world probably has some complex reputation metric for this... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 10/25/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: You must have a dictionary with novel and exclusive definitions of both the words "serious" and "important". If 50% of donations were (in the serious world) coming from geeks; I have a genuinely hard time seeing how anyone other than academics with traffic cones up their asses would complain. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

Keep in mind who this is talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin (and now pardon me while I NPOV that article a bit) Quoting David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com>om>:

On 27/10/2007, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: Because people would rather believe there is a conspiracy to suppress the truth than that they are wrong. - d.

On 27/10/2007, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu> wrote: Oh, certainly. But the case which was posted as an example (everyone should read that blog entry, it's wonderful and proves AFD can do its job well) is a good example of theorists who work by finding three coincidences, assuming bad faith and seeing what they get from there. - d.

David Goodman wrote: I have no basis for commenting on the specific facts of the case where the deletion took place over a year ago. Nevertheless, it is a great example of how the religious zealots bring the project into disrepute. Ec

Friends would be nice, but we can't sacrifice editorial quality to get them. If people are only going to be our friend if we have a nice article on them, then they aren't the kind of friend we want.

Jason Calacanis wrote: Wouldn't mind having that option anyway, ad revenue or no. Wikipedia's internal search function can suck sometimes. :)

GDonato wrote: I'm not advocating here; I'd just like to probe this view a little. It's one I mainly agree with, but I'm wondering if there's some way we could increase revenue without risking NPOV or COI. Two ideas: 1: On our search results page, we put a little sidebar. It says, "Didn't find what you're looking for? Try your search on Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Ask, or PowerSet." Each one of those is a link, and we work out a revenue share deal with each search engine for the traffic we send them. 2: On the first page that a user visits from a search engine result, we run that search engine's text-only ads on the side of that one page. If they continue on with Wikipedia, they see no more ads. This is only for traffic arriving from commercial search engines. The reason these might be different is that a) we don't interrupt the normal flow of use, and b) the user is in complete control of what vendor is serving them the ads. Would approaches like this be safer in your view? William -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

On 10/24/07, GDonato <gdonato(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote: Some, like Andrew Keen, have argued exactly the opposite - that unpaid editors are inevitably bound to create content which serves their own purposes, so what you end up with when you don't have explicit advertising is hidden advertising. I think it's a reasonable point of view, and something we're starting to see quite a bit of in Wikipedia. The problem is there's no real way to fix it without throwing away so many of the basic concepts of Wikipedia. So while it might be the best way to go, it's probably best saved for another project. Maybe Citizendium could try it, it fits in much better with their model.

Jason Calacanis wrote: Same issue here. Accepting money from a corporate interest ties a string from us to them, one they gain leverage by the ability to threaten to cut it. It doesn't matter if people have to turn something on for that money to flow or not.

On 10/24/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: My agreement is tempered only by curiousity about what Wikimedia will do now that there is a nearly 5 million dollar budget for next year when the public will not donate more than 2 million during this fundraiser. Would selling Davis' seat on the board to the highest bidder be more wise than ads?

On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: I personally don't think it's a COI etc to have adsense or something similar, but it seems like a lot of *readers* do. I read a lot of sentiments that say, "stay ad free", "thanks for the free and ad-free info" etc. I don't really agree that this is as important as it seems to the people writing it, but there you go. A good solution, I think, would be to just use google for search. It wouldn't make the huge profits we could make with adsense, but I don't think we need those kind of profits. It also has the benefit of not covering pages with ads, sort of in the same style Firefox makes money without anyone knowing about it. I know people love lucene because it's open source etc, but honestly, I think most people use google to search anyway. Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion

On 10/24/07, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc(a)ktchan.info> wrote: The ad is not all that valuable to advertisers or readers if it is *completely random*. (Yes I said readers, some readers would consider ads useful if they were relevant... ::shrugs::) Google adwords allows advertisers to specify keywords (and negative keywords). And a price they are willing to pay per-click-through. Every search or page view results in an auction among the ads with matching keywords. The ads bid they keyword price * their (google measured) click through rate i.e. their expected profit to google. This also results in poorly targeted ads costing large amounts of money per click and ultimately not displaying at all. (There is also a click through rate floor, and other factors that come into play..) The bid results determine who shows and in what order. Do you think a scheme like this produces COI problems?

Gregory Maxwell wrote: Nice analysis. Thanks. The devil's-statistical-advocate in me has to ask, though: 106,813 hits is, like, 2 and 2/3 seconds' worth, right? Is that a valid sample?

On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: Out of curiosity, what time of the day/week?

On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ah, yeah. I was being an elitist without fully realizing it. What I was thinking is that people who are comfortable with both probably use google. When people ask about search in the help pages it seems like they are directed to google a lot, and before the search was working as well as it is now I know a lot of people directed people that way. I wonder if that has changed with the recent search improvements? Of course most people will use the one that is easier, and definitely ours is easier since the placement is so good. I don't think it's better though. :) Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion

Gregory Maxwell wrote: Which gives me the opportunity to further relay our search for a treasurer (board member). Please see below Regarding your question... I do not expect we'll bring the entire money needed during this fundraising. But we should not under estimate the money that could be brought by a couple of rich friends. There are other venues interesting to test as well. For example, if was several times mentionned that it might be interesting to organise these fancy dinners with rich potential donors, maybe in SF or in London, with Jimbo as featured guest. Also, I do not know for Jimbo, but I have spent quite a bit of time during the year, hanging around with people related to Unesco et al. And compared to a year ago, we have a much better image toward these people. We are now considered a charity, rather than a corporation ready to sell Wikipedia hundred of millions of dollars. I hope that this will start paying dividends soon. I presume business (at least to a certain extent), bringing in royalties from logo use might also bring fresh money, though it is tricky in many respects. I also expect our future treasurer to start working a strategy to set up endowment... Speaking of which, here is the treasurer search announcement. Please forward this announcement to relevant forums, mailing lists and individuals. Anthere The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, is looking to appoint a new Treasurer to its Board of Trustees, effective December 2007. The term for the current Treasurer has ended. The Wikimedia Board of Trustees manages the Foundation and supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate corporate authority in the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Board members are unpaid volunteers who are excited about supporting the international charitable mission of the Wikimedia Foundation: to bring free knowledge to the entire planet. === ROLE SUMMARY === Required duties include, but are not limited to the following: * Manage, with the finance committee to be created, the board's review of and action related to the board's financial responsibilities; * Work with the chief executive to ensure that appropriate financial reports are made available to the board. Regularly reviews reports to board on key financial events, trends, concerns, and assessment of fiscal health; * May work directly with the bookkeeper or other staff in developing and implementing financial procedures and systems; * Serves as support to the financial officer of the organization and as chairperson of the finance committee; * Serves on the audit committee; * Review the annual budget that is presented to the balance of the board for approval; * Review the annual audit and answers board members' questions about the audit; * Provides financial and operational advice and guidance to the board as required. ===REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS=== * Maintains knowledge of the organization and has a personal commitment to its goals and objectives; * Understands financial accounting for American nonprofit organizations; * Must be comfortable in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment; * Accounting and financial background - an accounting or other financial designation (i.e. CPA, CA, CFA, or other International equivalent), with a thorough understanding of American GAAP. * MBA or business degree would be helpful, although not required; * Some experience with legal frameworks and contracts would be helpful; * Background or familiarity with fundraising would be an asset; * Has previously served as a treasurer on another non-profit board (at least five years); * Willing to commit time for board meetings, committee meetings and special events; * Works well in a group, is able to work with a decentralized international team, using electronic communication tools. === EXPECTED TIME COMMITMENT === It is expected that the Treasurer will be able to attend four meetings per year, which may possibly be held outside of the USA. In addition, participation in the Foundation's annual conference would be preferred. Cost of attending these meetings will be reimbursed. Other time expectations would be reviewing quarterly reports, budgets, and policies and helping to oversee the audit process. === CONTACT === Please contact us at <treasurer-search AT wikimedia DOT org> if you are interested in this position. === ABOUT THE WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION === The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a US-registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most visited websites, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews and the Wikimedia Commons media repository. The Wikimedia Foundation relies primarily on donations and other contributions in order to run its operations. The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of existing projects and is currently based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Foundation will relocate to San Francisco, California in the near future. Wikimedia has local chapters in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Serbia, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Poland. http://wikimediafoundation.org