Hi!
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I'd say (nearly?) everyone was pretty surprised when I sort of hemmed
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Mark wrote it very much the way I feel about it - I talk to lots of people, and they've been donating in early days or few years ago, but they stopped donating lately - and they are still reading our annual reports and what not. People who understand what Wikipedia is and what Wikimedia is stop supporting financially. Of course, they are way more interested and way more willing to help than average person, who'd donate only if we say "this is to keep lights running", but yet they turn away. This does tell something.
This infinite loop of "we should do more things, because we can raise money"-"we need more money, because we want to do more things" doesn't work that well, when growth of projects has flatlined, so fundraising team has to resort to blinking banners. Last year we discussed this, and "blinking banner was an error". This year pictures at top left, blinking banners, etc - are becoming a norm. This isn't much of a slippery slope to say that next year we should expect dancing monkeys.
Anyway, back in 2010:
"now that we have blinking banners, I'm sure we should try out how full-screen banners work, with "click to go to wikipedia"." " Oh! Oh! can we have marquees as well... and those flashy "under construction" gifs?? "How about we add popups? Seriously, if you're going to do this, just add AdSense...it's a heck of a lot prettier." "popups, lightboxes, talking jimbos: Fundraising 2011"
Cheers, Domas