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