I've been thinking about this situation.
I am grateful that the goal was met early.
As much as these new goals are nice, they should have been included in the original target amount if WMF said or implied that the campaign would stop when a specific amount of money was raised.
It's especially uncomfortable for me that I'm hearing a lot of interest in WMF in promoting Wikipedia's principles of verifiability and neutrality in fundraising, when WMF in its fundraising said one thing and then goes off to do something else. Imagine what would happen if I received a grant from WMF for purpose X and then decided to do Y with it without getting advance permission from WMF. That wouldn't go over very well. I appreciate that budgets and timelines of projects are difficult to estimate correctly and that project scopes change, but there are limits to the flexibility.
While I like the new goals, at a minimum the text of the campaign should be changed to reflect that the original goal was reached and that WMF is asking for additional funds above the original goal. My preference would be that the campaign be stopped because WMF should prioritize integrity above expedience; WMF has other opportunities to raise additional funds from other sources, WMF has considerable reserves, and I can't see that there is a critical need to continue this particular fundraising campaign. When WMF tells its donors something WMF should make every reasonable effort to adhere to what it said it would do.
Pine
On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 11:17 PM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
It seems the whole world is full of spreading lies nowadays.
I feel very sad that now even we are following this trend
If we stated we would stop when the target was met, so we should stop when the target was met
Anders who are commited to spread correct facts through Wikipedia, as a counterforce to all loose statement
016-12-17 kl. 07:06, skrev Peter Southwood:
If you wanted to continue past the target, the message should NOT imply that you would stop at the target. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lisa Gruwell Sent: Friday, 16 December 2016 8:05 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] English Fundraiser Update
Hi everyone,
As most of you know, we run our English-language online fundraiser on Wikipedia every year in December. It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year. During this time we raise the bulk of funds to support our operating budget to support the projects, fund community efforts around the world, and run the Wikimedia Foundation.
This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million in record time. This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how much support we have from people all over the world.
Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to continue to fundraise more in the month of December, for the following reasons:
- While we have reached our goal for the December campaign, we have not
yet reached our fundraising goal for Fiscal Year 2016-17 (July 2016 - July 2017).
Continuing the English fundraiser gives us security and flexibility through the end of the fiscal year. It allows us to have a less aggressive banner schedule in coming months, which gives us time for more research and better localization.
- We have clear programmatic uses for additional funds.
We have some important projects that could use additional funds and are ready to proceed. We plan to direct additional funds to the following work:
1. The buildout of an additional caching center, to improve site performance for users across Asia and Oceania [1]. 2. Investment in additional support for structured data on Wikimedia Commons and improved integration with the Wikidata roadmap [2]. 3. Support for community health initiatives, including additional support for the Community Engagement team [3]. 4. Support for an inclusive and truly global movement strategy process[4]. 5.
Growing the endowment in order to secure our future [5].You can find more information about each of these areas of work below.
We have chosen these projects because they directly support our mission and respond to the needs of Wikimedia communities and users. We also believe these investments are investments in our future: support for a diverse global community, increased resourcing for sister projects, a healthier community culture, a shared direction for the future of the movement, and security for our mission in perpetuity.
Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few more days. We would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before making an end-of-year push in the final couple days of the year. (Many people choose to give at the very end of the year, and they are expecting to hear from us as usual -- so it is an opportunity to give people who plan to give the easiest means to participate).
We’ve been following the conversations on this list about the fundraiser and the target. On Wednesday, we sent this recommendation to our Board of Trustees, who were broadly supportive of this course of action. Today, we are sending it to you. We believe we can make good use of the funds in the coming year, without additional unsustainable commitments into coming fiscal years. It is fiscally responsible and programmatically sound. The additional work strengthens our movement, and the additional funds make these efforts possible.
We welcome your questions and feedback.
Best regards,
Lisa Seitz Gruwell and Jaime Villagomez
More information about the projects:
[1] An additional caching center to improve performance in Asia and Oceania
Our current caching centers in have provided significant value to users, and the Wikimedia Foundation invested further in them in 2014-15. We believe that further expanding these efforts and their reach into other parts of the world would further help us provide the best user experience to our global audience. With that in mind, we are considering a number of different locations for an additional caching center to enhance our performance for Wikimedia communities in Asia and Oceania. Most internet organizations compete to reach users by establishing local points of presence, and as a result the performance expectations of users in Asia are getting higher. Establishing this new caching center will help us meet those expectations for site performance.
[2] Structured data on Commons*
The Structured Data project https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data is an effort to store information for media files in a structured way on Wikimedia Commons, so they are easier to view, translate, search, edit, curate and use. This would be done on Commons with the same technology as the one developed for Wikidata. Wikimedia Commons holds a lot of data about the files it hosts. Structuring this data more and making it machine-readable would have many benefits to making our files more accessible in multiple languages, improving the process for uploading media, increasing the usability of the search function, and decreasing ambiguity for people interested in re-use of media on Commons. A demo system is currently available: https://structured-commons.wmflabs.org
[3] Responding to harassment and toxic behaviour*
On November 13th, the Board issued a letter https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-December/085668.html to the Wikimedia community in support of efforts to improve overall community culture and health. The letter confirmed the value of allocating resources to this work. The WMF Support and Safety team detailed some of the possible approaches in a letter by Patrick Earley. Funding from this year’s fundraiser would be directed at supporting these approaches, including technical tools for better blocking and detection.
[4] Movement strategy process
Katherine recently shared the exciting news that the Board has approved a US$2.5million spending resolution to support the development of a Wikimedia movement strategy https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017. Coming to consensus on a strategic direction will help us know what destination we are headed, which path we will take, and how we will ensure our work is well supported.
[5] The Wikimedia Endowment
The Wikimedia Endowment https://15.wikipedia.org/endowment.html, launched earlier this year during the Wikipedia 15 celebration, serves as a perpetual source of support for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. Since then, we have already received some major gifts and are recruiting a talented and committed board for the endowment. In June, we seeded the endowment in part with contributions from last year's campaign. Further investment in the endowment is an investment in building a sustainable future for Wikimedia projects.
*Note: We are also seeking foundation grants for these projects – Structured Data on Commons and responding to harassing and toxic behavior – which may cover all or a portion of their costs this fiscal year. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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