Hello,
On December 28 we will be changing the fundraising sitenotice for 24 hours. The new site notice will be identical to the anonymous donor site notice, except that it will say.
"Today your donation will be matched by Virgin United."
Virgin United will be a link to the Virgin United website. There will also be a small Virgin logo in the sitenotice. A sample will be ready for you tomorrow morning (Brion time).
Please convey this to the appropriate people.
Danny
I don't know if others would agree, but I'd prefer to link to an article. It would certainly seem less commercial.
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Hello,
On December 28 we will be changing the fundraising sitenotice for 24 hours. The new site notice will be identical to the anonymous donor site notice, except that it will say.
"Today your donation will be matched by Virgin United."
Virgin United will be a link to the Virgin United website. There will also be a small Virgin logo in the sitenotice. A sample will be ready for you tomorrow morning (Brion time).
Please convey this to the appropriate people.
Danny _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
I don't know if others would agree, but I'd prefer to link to an article. It would certainly seem less commercial.
I suspect Virgin might not agree. ;-)
Aside from that, of course, is the practical point that this is Wikimedia-wide, not just Wikipedia-wide. What article would, say, Commons link to? And how about languages that didn't have an article on Virgin, or had an utterly inadequate one?
It's not Virgin's choice. If they get to dictate the nature of their representation, it starts to border on advertising. I think we'll have better credibility with the community if we link to an article.
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
I don't know if others would agree, but I'd prefer to link to an article. It would certainly seem less commercial.
I suspect Virgin might not agree. ;-)
Aside from that, of course, is the practical point that this is Wikimedia-wide, not just Wikipedia-wide. What article would, say, Commons link to? And how about languages that didn't have an article on Virgin, or had an utterly inadequate one?
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
It's not Virgin's choice. If they get to dictate the nature of their representation, it starts to border on advertising. I think we'll have better credibility with the community if we link to an article.
True, and I doubt that they can dictate anything at this point. I nevertheless think that it would be rather crass of us to not link to them if we told them that we would do so when the matching donation was arranged. (I have no idea if this was actually the case, though; presumably Danny would know.)
In any case, there's still the issue of finding something suitable to link to. The en: article on the group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group) is in pretty poor shape, and the handful of other languages don't seem to be any better.
NullC just informed me that we originally promised to link to the official sites. I agree that we should not renege on that promise.
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
It's not Virgin's choice. If they get to dictate the nature of their representation, it starts to border on advertising. I think we'll have better credibility with the community if we link to an article.
True, and I doubt that they can dictate anything at this point. I nevertheless think that it would be rather crass of us to not link to them if we told them that we would do so when the matching donation was arranged. (I have no idea if this was actually the case, though; presumably Danny would know.)
In any case, there's still the issue of finding something suitable to link to. The en: article on the group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group) is in pretty poor shape, and the handful of other languages don't seem to be any better.
I would actually like to say a big thank you to Virgin for doing this and a big thank you to whomever managed to pull this off. I hope more companies will follow Virgin's way!
Waerth
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
It's not Virgin's choice. If they get to dictate the nature of their representation, it starts to border on advertising. I think we'll have better credibility with the community if we link to an article.
They don't get to dictate the nature of their representation.
They did not write the text or choose how they would be recognized; the text will be a neutral thanks. However, linking to an article is something of invitation to the sort of mischief-making (vandalism, POV-pushing, accusations of biasing the article, whatever else) that I wouldn't consider a suitable thank-you. And as pointed out by Kirill Lokshin, it would probably require that we make our articles on the company quite a bit better...
(I would hope the extra attention would make people notice and improve the articles, but that's as an editor -- there is not and there will not be any agreements about article content!)
For those who are interested, there is more information about the matching donations in the fundraising FAQ on the Foundation site: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ
-Kat
We can link to the official site (as per agreement) -and- to the article perhaps?
On 12/26/06, Kat Walsh kwalsh@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
It's not Virgin's choice. If they get to dictate the nature of their representation, it starts to border on advertising. I think we'll have better credibility with the community if we link to an article.
They don't get to dictate the nature of their representation.
They did not write the text or choose how they would be recognized; the text will be a neutral thanks. However, linking to an article is something of invitation to the sort of mischief-making (vandalism, POV-pushing, accusations of biasing the article, whatever else) that I wouldn't consider a suitable thank-you. And as pointed out by Kirill Lokshin, it would probably require that we make our articles on the company quite a bit better...
(I would hope the extra attention would make people notice and improve the articles, but that's as an editor -- there is not and there will not be any agreements about article content!)
For those who are interested, there is more information about the matching donations in the fundraising FAQ on the Foundation site: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ
-Kat
-- Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
I don't know if others would agree, but I'd prefer to link to an article. It would certainly seem less commercial.
I suspect Virgin might not agree. ;-)
Aside from that, of course, is the practical point that this is Wikimedia-wide, not just Wikipedia-wide. What article would, say, Commons link to? And how about languages that didn't have an article on Virgin, or had an utterly inadequate one?
If we link to Madonna it would be like a Virgin. :-)
Ec
On 12/26/06, David Strauss david@fourkitchens.com wrote:
I don't know if others would agree, but I'd prefer to link to an article. It would certainly seem less commercial.
Geesh if we think putting an article on the main page causes a ton of vandalism, I can't imagine what putting one in the site notice like that would do. Way to thank a donor!
On 27/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Hello,
On December 28 we will be changing the fundraising sitenotice for 24 hours. The new site notice will be identical to the anonymous donor site notice, except that it will say.
"Today your donation will be matched by Virgin United."
Virgin United will be a link to the Virgin United website. There will also be a small Virgin logo in the sitenotice. A sample will be ready for you tomorrow morning (Brion time).
Please convey this to the appropriate people.
Danny _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I'm having a little trouble finding out who "Virgin United" is. Neither Wikipedia nor Google has enlightened me. Is this Richard Branson's Virgin? If not, could you give us a link to their website?
Virgin United is Virgin's charitable division.
Oldak Quill wrote:
On 27/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Hello,
On December 28 we will be changing the fundraising sitenotice for 24 hours. The new site notice will be identical to the anonymous donor site notice, except that it will say.
"Today your donation will be matched by Virgin United."
Virgin United will be a link to the Virgin United website. There will also be a small Virgin logo in the sitenotice. A sample will be ready for you tomorrow morning (Brion time).
Please convey this to the appropriate people.
Danny _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I'm having a little trouble finding out who "Virgin United" is. Neither Wikipedia nor Google has enlightened me. Is this Richard Branson's Virgin? If not, could you give us a link to their website?
On 27/12/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Hello,
On December 28 we will be changing the fundraising sitenotice for 24 hours. The new site notice will be identical to the anonymous donor site notice, except that it will say.
"Today your donation will be matched by Virgin United."
Virgin United will be a link to the Virgin United website. There will also be a small Virgin logo in the sitenotice. A sample will be ready for you tomorrow morning (Brion time).
Please convey this to the appropriate people.
Danny
I'm having a little trouble finding out who "Virgin United" is. Neither Wikipedia nor Google has enlightened me. Is this Richard Branson's Virgin? If not, could you give us a link to their website?
Virgin United is a small part of the Virgin group - yes, Branson's Virgin - it (as far as I can tell) exists to co-ordinate all their charitable work, matching donors and recipients.
I was going to write an article last night, but I found trying to read their site an unrewarding experience too ;-)
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