Hoi, One of the reasons, for many the only reason for giving a\t the annual fundraising drive is exactly to provide money to maintain our infrastructure. Take that away and you take away the reason to give. Once people get it in their mind that we have reserves to pay for our infrastructure, they will remember this and not support us for our other goals.
In my honest opinion, building an endowment as suggested will be a mistake that we will regret. When the giving sentiment turns against us it will be next to impossible to change it again. If you seek assurances, there are other methods that will not be damaging in this way. Thanks, GerardM
On 5 July 2010 10:48, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jul 4, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When we are frugal and build reserves, this will be appreciated. When we
build
reserves that have no immediate goals, we will lose acceptance as an
organisation
that actually needs the money.
I agree we should have specific goals for resources, both short- and long-term. The reason to allocate a fund for long-term infrastructure support, is to avoid confusing that with generic reserves (with "no immediate goals").
It is true that, if there are no other major crises happening at the same time, people will step up anytime there is a real need to help Wikipedia. But part of our duty is to prepare for a major crisis as well (one in which most of our supporters will have their own personal troubles).
Thomas Dalton writes:
The "kill switch" idea, as I understand it, is about killing the internet entirely, not one site. If the US government shuts down all the parts of the internet that are under its jurisdiction, the internet would pretty collapse worldwide
The Internet is a bit more robust than this. At any rate, Wikipedia should be so widely mirrored by local groups that it would still be available on local networks if the global Internet became unavailable. "One country taking down the Internet" isn't so likely, but one country being cut off is. Today there are entire countries that have a single provider connecting them to the rest of the world; with cheap internal connectivity within the country but expensive connectivity to the Internet as a whole. A focused effort to increase our network of local mirrors could minimize this effect.
Every national and regional library should have a local copy of Wikimedia.
SJ
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