Sorry, Birgitte. It may be that this mailinglist is intended as the communication channel between the foundation and the community, but I dont think it works very well. The reactions here show most, if not all, people were taken by surprise. Which in itself shows this mailing list doesnt provide
To blame the people for not reading this mailing list is imho opinion the wrong approach.
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
Most posts here are not very interesting to the avergae wikipedian. The summary indeed , but doesnt mention Virgins name: "our anonymous donor's decision". I dont see any mention of a sitenotice before dec 20. That's about a week in advance.
Please dont misunderstand me: I dont say we shouldnt have taken the gift. I appreciate their gift, and 60K/day is a large amount. But timely communication would have prevented a lot of misunderstanding. Of course then too some people would have recated vehemently, but it would have been easier to explain.
teun
On 12/28/06, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
- Could the board please communicate all
decisions which are sensitive
among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent
mailinglists?
I second this request.
- Has there ever been an open call to all
wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to
receive money?
Not formally, I think.
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
5)No, just follow this list.
6)Yes
This is the mailing list you subscribe to to be aware of things that affect all Wikimedia communities. If you are part of another mailing list that you think would be sensitive to an issue here, you should forward the message along to that list. There is also now a summary service on meta which you could point people towards.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
At the beginning of the drive there was an announcement on this list of the fund raising drive which included many details you seem to have been unaware of. But the general idea of matching donors had been discussed here much earlier.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_12_10-16 "Brad Patrick announced the opening of the latest fundraising"
There have been many messages asking for people to help with fundraising. Announcing the creation of the Fundraising Committee and asking interested people to sign up (Certainly an open call). Even more general questions asking for fundraising ideas both before and after the Committee was started. Any fundraising discussions seemed to be met with questions about the audit and budget. It seems to me that the current drive began as soon as the audit was released because of a real need of money that has probably been put off because the community requested the WMF not take part in any overt fundraising until the audit documents were released.
Anyone has been subscribed to this list should be aware of all this. Anyone who wishes to be aware of these sorts of things should subscribe or read the LSS including links. I think most people who have subscribed to list did so because they were blindsided by some decision in the past and wanted to make sure they stayed informed in the future. I know I did. I sympathize that you feel blindsided, but it can only be up to you to ensure that you are informed of these things.
Birgitte SB
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