On 12 January 2015 at 15:59, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 Jan 2015, at 11:25 pm, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote: Now that the 2014 Fundraising campaign has finished and which,
according
to
a WMF blogpost from a week ago, "surpassed our goal of $20 million"
According to the data provided at https://frdata.wikimedia.org/ the Foundation seems to have taken $30.6 million over the period from December 2 2014 to December 31 2014.
This is $10.6 million more than the $20 million fundraising goal indicated in the blog post. (At any rate, that's the sum I get; I'd welcome anyone double-checking my math.)
There is no scenario I can come up with where this is actually a good result. Sure, an extra $10.6 million might be nice in the bank, but it massively exceeds budget. The fundraiser met its goal, with plenty to spare, on December 17. And yet we put our readers and our users through another two weeks of fundraising. Given that we were already really pushing the goodwill of the broad Wikimedia community (that includes the users of our products)....well, as I say, this is not a good result. People were putting Wikipedia on Adblock because of those banners, and they were doing it long after the goal had been reached.
I'd say I was speechless, but actually I am working extremely hard to hold my tongue here, awaiting an explanation for this. And yes, I think the Wikimedia community deserves to know why this happened.
Risker/Anne