On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Dennis During <dcduring(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How would we KNOW that our efforts were pleasing to
anyone other than
ourselves? We have very little information about how valuable our
users fee about any of the projects in any language. In the name of
some definition of privacy we have created a world where our efforts
face virtually no broad reality check.
If I judge according to your name, you are a native English speaker
(sorry if I made a mistake :) ). As someone who is not a native
English speaker and as someone who has a fair amount of contacts in
non-English world, I may guarantee that not only we have a great
support, but we are, actually, a community [and WMF is an
organization] with very high reputation (and, not only inside of
non-English world). So, according to that, our efforts are valued by
others.
I suppose we could rely on a marketplace test: Are we
succeeding at
raising the funds required to keep the operation running and at
getting volunteer help to reduce the need for funding?
Presumably the foundations and corporate funders know how to evaluate
us, whether it is on some statistical basis, on some good-intentions
test, on a feel-good basis, or based on how it contributes to their
own objectives.
AFAIK, donations during the fundraising period at the end of the year
are increased from year to year. Actually, I think that last year
we've got much more, because the previous one we've got one very big
donation doubled by some other donor. (If I don't remember well,
someone may correct me.) However, we should watch the fundraising
period for this year, too.