On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 9:44 AM, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers@gmail.com> wrote:
Two weeks ago I emailed the fundraising team with the following note, quietly and discretely pointing out an error in their messaging. Sadly I haven't had a reply and I think that in the UK they are still using the £3 buys a coffee for a programmer line:
Aside from the incidental nature of the appeal, £3 and $3 are very
different sums of money. When I saw $3 I thought that was an expensive way to buy coffees and that the WMF should invest in a kettle and some mugs. But £3 for a coffee, now that just looks wasteful, even to someone living in an expensive part of London. I dread to think what it looks like to someone living in other parts of England, let alone cheaper parts of the world. "£3 gets coffee and biscuits for a potential wikipedian coming to a training session", that I could defend.
There's also the honesty/credibility factor. I doubt I am the only
person seeing different versions of these ads including different currencies, if the sums are this far apart the suspicion has to be that none of the figures are to be trusted. Not a great help to our program of improving Wikipedia quality and getting such details right in our articles.
That is the problem of having the same message translate in all languages. If you have a centralised fundraising it's inevitable. A part for currency (which is a problem), I want to emphasize the fact that even the best translation maybe dosen "sound right" in different languages and cultures.
There is for example an American rhetoric that simply doesn't translate in other languages. I've translated (as a volunteer) several WMF messages to donors in Italian and always felt that those messages where made for an American audience. I would love to see an A/B test with "culture-localized" messages (I think it is part of the "honesty discourse" above).