Suggestions, anyone? en:wp is the largest project by far, hence both the most expensive to run and the greatest base for possible fundraising.
We've been slightly hacking around the sidebar lately - see [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]]. I recently added "About Wikipedia". I also just now changed the tooltip for "Make a donation" from "Support us" to "Help keep Wikipedia running". This will probably show up for most of you later today. (The sidebar is very aggressively cached, i.e. action=purge doesn't update it ;-)
One idea that sprang to mind was a donation GIF, linking to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising . Not a PayPal button, but something that specifically draws the eye to it. Think of it as a logo ad for ourselves. How to make it eye-drawing but not unstylish or obnoxious is a tricky one. (And part of why graphic designers are paid money.)
Any others?
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com Date: 12-Feb-2007 10:21 Subject: [Foundation-l] About rumors... To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
RUMORS
I was away from my computer for 4 days last week, to participate to a conference (LIFT) in Switzerland. During this conference, the organiser asked me questions about the financial situation of the projects. I answered with plain honesty and unfortunately with some words which raised the attention of a blogger in the room.
Never mind that the words were taken out of context, never mind the smiles that went with the words, the words were out. Twisted.
So, if some of you have heard that Wikipedia might close in 4 months due to financial difficulties, these are the words I am talking about.
For more on the discussion on the matter, please see the blog of Mr Guissani. I had a long discussion with him on financial matters on friday morning.
http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/02/the_wikimedia_c.html
I think that summarize things pretty well.
---------
BEING INFORMED
The day the WMF will plan to close Wikipedia for lack of funds, believe me, you'll know. Before the press.
Will Wikipedia close in 4 months ? NO. NO. AND NO.
---------
TRANSPARENCY AND FIGURES
All of our financial statements for year 2004, 2005 and 2006 are public and audited. Please find them here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report#Audited_financial_stateme...
We also have a page where we state our needs for the coming 6 months. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for.
(as a reminder, our fiscal year goes from june to june)
TO make it short, we currently have above 1 million (exact figures to pick up from Carolyn, perhaps 1,5) in bank, available for use.
Current monthly expenses as of today are about 75 000 dollars. We had an (optimistic goal) of hardware investment of 1,6 million before june. We can expect bandwidth and hosting costs to naturally follow. We also need more human help, at least hiring a permanent executive director, a CTO and probably more developers.
Just have a look at the page and do count yourself. If you add current daily operations + hardware investment + increase in bandwidth + increase in hosting + 3 to 5 additional employees, we are already over that 1.5 millions that we have in hand.
So, as of today, I think we can quietly say that
"yes, we have about 3-4 months of operations at hand". Not 6 months. Not 1 year. Not 2 years. Roughly 3-4 months.
If you look at the bottom of this page, (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for#Retained_reve...) you'll see that the recommandations of auditors is always to try to have 6 months of reserve. We are far from it. We have roughly 4 months. Having 6 months of reserve is financially wiser.
Did you have a way to know this previously ? Yes you did. It was listed in the site notice during the full month of fundraising. So, there is nothing new to wikipedians. There might be something new to press though.
---------
IS THAT A BIG DEAL ?
I repeat, we are not going to disappear. We have been in worse state in the past. Well, in december 2006, some expenses were delayed, delayed till the money from the fundraising was flowing in, and we could pay the bills.
Someone mentionned image server a few days ago. Image server was planned in september hardware quote. But purchase was delayed till december. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_sept_2006 Because given our cashflow situation, it would have been unreasonable to buy the image servers.
This should not happen. We should not come to the point where we delay hardware investment. We should aim to provide the best service, not just the service we can afford.
We should not try to pretend we do not need money. We do need more money. People at the Foundation are trying to find creative ways to collect more, with services (datafeed), royalties from brand use (Wikipedia in particular), matching donations etc... but raising the money for the projects should not become only the business of 10 or so employees. This should be many people concern. Because Wikipedia is not the website of a few people, not even the website of the community, it is a common good.
ant
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I think it is getting overly cluttered. About link is already on the bottom of every page. I think we should remove entries from the sidebar and not add. When was the last time you clicked "Current events"? We are not wikinews and current events are already on the main page. - Cool Cat
On 2/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Suggestions, anyone? en:wp is the largest project by far, hence both the most expensive to run and the greatest base for possible fundraising.
We've been slightly hacking around the sidebar lately - see [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]]. I recently added "About Wikipedia". I also just now changed the tooltip for "Make a donation" from "Support us" to "Help keep Wikipedia running". This will probably show up for most of you later today. (The sidebar is very aggressively cached, i.e. action=purge doesn't update it ;-)
One idea that sprang to mind was a donation GIF, linking to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising . Not a PayPal button, but something that specifically draws the eye to it. Think of it as a logo ad for ourselves. How to make it eye-drawing but not unstylish or obnoxious is a tricky one. (And part of why graphic designers are paid money.)
Any others?
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com Date: 12-Feb-2007 10:21 Subject: [Foundation-l] About rumors... To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
RUMORS
I was away from my computer for 4 days last week, to participate to a conference (LIFT) in Switzerland. During this conference, the organiser asked me questions about the financial situation of the projects. I answered with plain honesty and unfortunately with some words which raised the attention of a blogger in the room.
Never mind that the words were taken out of context, never mind the smiles that went with the words, the words were out. Twisted.
So, if some of you have heard that Wikipedia might close in 4 months due to financial difficulties, these are the words I am talking about.
For more on the discussion on the matter, please see the blog of Mr Guissani. I had a long discussion with him on financial matters on friday morning.
http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/02/the_wikimedia_c.html
I think that summarize things pretty well.
BEING INFORMED
The day the WMF will plan to close Wikipedia for lack of funds, believe me, you'll know. Before the press.
Will Wikipedia close in 4 months ? NO. NO. AND NO.
TRANSPARENCY AND FIGURES
All of our financial statements for year 2004, 2005 and 2006 are public and audited. Please find them here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report#Audited_financial_stateme...
We also have a page where we state our needs for the coming 6 months. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for.
(as a reminder, our fiscal year goes from june to june)
TO make it short, we currently have above 1 million (exact figures to pick up from Carolyn, perhaps 1,5) in bank, available for use.
Current monthly expenses as of today are about 75 000 dollars. We had an (optimistic goal) of hardware investment of 1,6 million before june. We can expect bandwidth and hosting costs to naturally follow. We also need more human help, at least hiring a permanent executive director, a CTO and probably more developers.
Just have a look at the page and do count yourself. If you add current daily operations + hardware investment + increase in bandwidth + increase in hosting + 3 to 5 additional employees, we are already over that 1.5 millions that we have in hand.
So, as of today, I think we can quietly say that
"yes, we have about 3-4 months of operations at hand". Not 6 months. Not 1 year. Not 2 years. Roughly 3-4 months.
If you look at the bottom of this page, ( http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for#Retained_reve... ) you'll see that the recommandations of auditors is always to try to have 6 months of reserve. We are far from it. We have roughly 4 months. Having 6 months of reserve is financially wiser.
Did you have a way to know this previously ? Yes you did. It was listed in the site notice during the full month of fundraising. So, there is nothing new to wikipedians. There might be something new to press though.
IS THAT A BIG DEAL ?
I repeat, we are not going to disappear. We have been in worse state in the past. Well, in december 2006, some expenses were delayed, delayed till the money from the fundraising was flowing in, and we could pay the bills.
Someone mentionned image server a few days ago. Image server was planned in september hardware quote. But purchase was delayed till december. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_sept_2006 Because given our cashflow situation, it would have been unreasonable to buy the image servers.
This should not happen. We should not come to the point where we delay hardware investment. We should aim to provide the best service, not just the service we can afford.
We should not try to pretend we do not need money. We do need more money. People at the Foundation are trying to find creative ways to collect more, with services (datafeed), royalties from brand use (Wikipedia in particular), matching donations etc... but raising the money for the projects should not become only the business of 10 or so employees. This should be many people concern. Because Wikipedia is not the website of a few people, not even the website of the community, it is a common good.
ant
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On 12/02/07, Cool Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
I think it is getting overly cluttered. About link is already on the bottom of every page.
It was added to the sidebar at Sandra's request because no-one sees it down there.
I think we should remove entries from the sidebar and not add. When was the last time you clicked "Current events"? We are not wikinews and current events are already on the main page.
Possibly. See Village Pump discussion.
- d.
Where is this discussion on the villige pump? (Dont want to read every VP page - yea I am lazy)
- Cool Cat
On 2/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/02/07, Cool Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
I think it is getting overly cluttered. About link is already on the
bottom
of every page.
It was added to the sidebar at Sandra's request because no-one sees it down there.
I think we should remove entries from the sidebar and not add. When was the last time you clicked "Current events"? We are not wikinews and current events are already on the main page.
Possibly. See Village Pump discussion.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/02/07, Cool Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
Where is this discussion on the villige pump? (Dont want to read every VP page - yea I am lazy)
whoops, I thought I linked it -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Sid... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Sidebar#Wikipedia:About
- d.
On 2/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Suggestions, anyone? en:wp is the largest project by far, hence both the most expensive to run and the greatest base for possible fundraising.
Moving away from cafepress for t-shirts and the like is the standard one. On of the biggest brands on the web can do better than cafepress.
One idea that sprang to mind was a donation GIF, linking to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising . Not a PayPal button, but something that specifically draws the eye to it. Think of it as a logo ad for ourselves. How to make it eye-drawing but not unstylish or obnoxious is a tricky one. (And part of why graphic designers are paid money.)
Could be done when you consider the talent we have available. Would need clearance to us foundation logos mind.
On 12/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
One idea that sprang to mind was a donation GIF, linking to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising . Not a PayPal button, but something that specifically draws the eye to it. Think of it as a logo ad for ourselves. How to make it eye-drawing but not unstylish or obnoxious is a tricky one. (And part of why graphic designers are paid money.)
Could be done when you consider the talent we have available.
I contemplate in horror http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_logos_%28overview%29 . Mind you, it did give us our current rather nice Wikipedia, Wikimedia and MediaWiki logos.
Would need clearance to us foundation logos mind.
I think we can assume that a design good enough that the volunteer community wouldn't scream loud enough in protest to be heard around the world would be approved pretty quick-smart!
- d.
On 2/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Could be done when you consider the talent we have available.
I contemplate in horror http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_logos_%28overview%29 . Mind you, it did give us our current rather nice Wikipedia, Wikimedia and MediaWiki logos.
Wow, talk about your needle in a haystack.
"This page includes many examples of why the present Wikipedia Death-Star logo is actually really good, and also why graphic designers get paid real money to come up with good logos."
Would need clearance to us foundation logos mind.
I think we can assume that a design good enough that the volunteer community wouldn't scream loud enough in protest to be heard around the world would be approved pretty quick-smart!
This ties in with recent threads about having free-as-in-speech versions of the various logos to distribute around the traps, but perhaps we could have a button - like the "A Wikimedia Project" and "Powered By MediaWiki" at the bottom of every page - for donations which could be freely distributed for people to stick on their websites.
David Gerard wrote:
Suggestions, anyone? en:wp is the largest project by far, hence both the most expensive to run and the greatest base for possible fundraising.
When a blogger makes a comment about the imminent fiscal collapse of Wikipedia it might be good to reply with thanks for bringing public attention to our fundraising site. ;-)
Ec