Tomorrow the Virgin Unite will not longer be present as a sitenotice. Today jeroen and others complained about that sitenotice. In his words the community would have been split. The current fundraiser raises today an additional several 100k US dollar, so that is gain one. Concerning the Dutch Wikipedia, today over 250 persons registered a username. So the Dutch Wikipedia today gains that many new users and maybe loose temporarily (I doubt definitely) one or two well known users.
Somebody else mentioned the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It's in the press they would like to raise the level of primary and secondary education in the US. Wikiversity and or Wikibooks might be helpful in raising the level of education there and elsewhere. Suppose the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would like to grant some money to WMF on the condition that it would be for specific projects, e.g. Wikibooks or Wikiversity, would that raise any objections by anyone?
In short, I believe Brad Patrick and his team are doing a perfect job to keep the WMF and the websites up and running.
Dedalus
On 12/28/06, Dedalus dedalus@wikipedia.be wrote:
Tomorrow the Virgin Unite will not longer be present as a sitenotice. Today jeroen and others complained about that sitenotice. In his words the community would have been split. The current fundraiser raises today an additional several 100k US dollar, so that is gain one. Concerning the Dutch Wikipedia, today over 250 persons registered a username. So the Dutch Wikipedia today gains that many new users and maybe loose temporarily (I doubt definitely) one or two well known users.
For both numbers one can doubt if they are permanent. But the one swho have gone are mainly old hands, experienced contributors who have the core values of wikipedia at heart.
The new ones will mainly have arrived because of the 250,000 article milestone, the press release hit the media today. Many of the new wikipedians will never write even 1 article.
Somebody else mentioned the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It's in the
press they would like to raise the level of primary and secondary education in the US. Wikiversity and or Wikibooks might be helpful in raising the level of education there and elsewhere. Suppose the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would like to grant some money to WMF on the condition that it would be for specific projects, e.g. Wikibooks or Wikiversity, would that raise any objections by anyone?
In short, I believe Brad Patrick and his team are doing a perfect job to keep the WMF and the websites up and running.
Dedalus _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Teun Spaans wrote:
On 12/28/06, Dedalus wrote:
Tomorrow the Virgin Unite will not longer be present as a sitenotice. Today jeroen and others complained about that sitenotice. In his words the community would have been split. The current fundraiser raises today an additional several 100k US dollar, so that is gain one. Concerning the Dutch Wikipedia, today over 250 persons registered a username. So the Dutch Wikipedia today gains that many new users and maybe loose temporarily (I doubt definitely) one or two well known users.
For both numbers one can doubt if they are permanent. But the one swho have gone are mainly old hands, experienced contributors who have the core values of wikipedia at heart.
To be frank, we have to ask ourselves if that's true.
JeroenVP for instance has made clear that he does not care about the core values of Wikipedia at all (making knowledge available to the public as free content) but only cares about not ever seeing anything he perceives as an "advertisement".
That saddens me.
If we'd just sold out to $BIGCO years ago we wouldn't need to run fundraisers. But of course let's be honest, there would be big stankin' blinking ad banners on every page all day every day forever if we had done that, like every other 'web 2.0' site with no business model.
If perfectly normal, everyday non-profit fundraising techniques that would not lift an eyebrow elsewhere are so offensive to a handful of people that they would happily throw away everything this project stands for... I have to ask...
*Should* we actually miss them?
As I said the other day, we have as a community an anger management problem. People fly off the handle, get into flame wars, hold grudges.
The first step in combatting that is to step back and calm down when we have a knee-jerk emotional reaction; think about what the other person's saying and what we're about to say.
In the longer term, we also have to think about what the project is actually about and how what we do and say actually helps or hinders that.
When we have a reaction to something, is it because we really think it harms the principles behind the project? Or are we having a selfish reaction?
Certainly as an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. I benefit from its continued solvency. Money coming in means the project I work on stays up, I keep my job, I can pay my rent. That's good for me, of course. ;)
More importantly, it keeps Wikipedia and friends up and online.
As the highest-profile free/open content website out there, I think that's pretty valuable just in terms of visibility.
It also provides a useful resource for many people, as a first step on researching or quickly looking up various topics.
It also provides a source of encyclopedia content which can be, and is, reused and republished.
By running fundraising events to boost donation income, this keeps the site free of both: * the control of a single benefactor who could threaten to drop support * the constant 24/7 barrage of annoying banner ads that makes the typical web experience a little less pleasant
Good? Probably!
But let's think about those two things again:
* the control of a single benefactor who could threaten to drop support
vs
* the constant 24/7 barrange of annoying banner ads that makes the typical web experience a little less pleasant
The first one is about *control*; maintaining our independence and our credibility, and our future. We have multiple donors, no single majority we have to rely on or have to please.
The second is about *comfort*. We don't want ads because they're *ugly* and *annoying*. If one of a hundred advertisers gets in a tizzy over something and pulls out, well... who cares? There'd be thousands to take their place.
In all honesty, running ads wouldn't do a damn thing to affect our *neutrality*. Can we really say different, knowing that we can easily tell any advertiser to fuck off if they wanted to pressure us?
No, they're just annoying.
Really, really annoying.
So if we're going to call a brief fundraising notice an "advertisement", fine for the sake of argument let's call it that.
It's small.
It doesn't blink.
It has a tiny, tiny 50x24 logo... not a giant 480x80 banner.
It doesn't push any particular product or service.
You can make it go away by clicking a button once.
It'll be gone in a few hours, and things like it will only run a few times a year.
If it's an advertisement, it's about as minimal as we could possibly get.
And it *still* gave enough traffic to kill Virgin Unite's web server in under 12 minutes.
That's *killer* ad revenue potential.
We could make *lots* by actually running ads.
But we throw it away.
Why?
Because banner ads are annoying. *Damn* annoying. And somehow as a community the hate of advertisements has grown so ingrained that even *non-advertisements* that *kinda resemble advertisements* send some people into such a tizzy that they'll edit-war and threaten to leave forever and ever.
Well.
People get in tizzies, edit-war, and threaten to leave forever and ever *every day* on Wikipedia.
Why should our fundraising technique be any different from any other topic?
Let's all calm down, pass the kool-aid around, and think to ourselves what we actually like and don't like about Wikipedia and Wikimedia. What we want to see the project accomplish. What we think it's really *about*.
Is it about non-commercialism?
Is it about "fuck Microsoft"?
Well... no.
It never was.
Neither is, say, Linux and free/open-source software. But those communities have a lot of people with the same confusion (and there's some overlap to be sure).
It's about free/open educational content. It's about making materials open and available for use by the public, including the creation of derivative works and redistribution.
That's not non-commercial in the sense of being anti-commercial; it's just *un-commercial* in that it follows a different path.
In fact it's fully compatible with commercial enterprises, and a healthy ecosystem with the commercial world is to be encouraged.
Free software involves a lot of companies which distribute, support, and develop it.
Free content involves companies which distribute, support, and republish it, and they give back too.
It's fine to think advertisements are ugly and to prefer that we avoid going to banner ads because we think it's a nicer, purer web without them.
But to go to the extreme of demanding that companies who donate to help keep free content available should remain anonymous is to adopt an *anti-commercial* attitude that is, IMHO, damaging.
In my experience with conversations of this type over the last few years, there is an unfortunate tendency of some people to assume that free content means that no money should ever change hands, and this belief is often tied up with such anti-commercial sentiment.
But that's not true. It was never true.
Free content IS NOT ANTI-COMMERCIAL.
FREE CONTENT DOES NOT FORBID MONEY FROM CHANGING HANDS.
FREE-CONTENT LICENSES *FORBID YOU FROM FORBIDDING* THAT MONEY CAN CHANGE HANDS!
FREE CONTENT *ENCOURAGES* A COMMERCIAL ECOSYSTEM TO DEVELOP TO SUPPORT IT.
Maybe it's time for the community to "clean house" as it were. Take stock of your beliefs about free content and what this project is about.
I do expect some people to leave; that's not because they're bad people. But some people are going to discover, sooner or later, that they've been chasing something *other* than free content, and that Wikipedia isn't really the project for them after all.
Other people are going to leave because they're angry even though they don't actually understand the difference. That's nothing new. People get in tizzies, edit war, and threaten to leave Wikipedia forever and ever all the time over every little thing.
That's why we need to stop, to think.
It's better to leave calmly over a reasoned belief, for instance a belief in anti-commercialism which is incompatible with free content, than to storm out in a huff -- and probably just wind up coming back to fight again.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Thank you, Brion. You are not only wonderful because you keep the site from falling flat on its butt, but because you write things like this.
-Kat
Hee hee, Brion, you never cease to amaze me....another fabulous post. You must have been saving your quota for the end of the year. ;-)
On 12/28/06, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you, Brion. You are not only wonderful because you keep the site from falling flat on its butt, but because you write things like this.
-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
Op donderdag 28 december 2006 21:42, schreef Brion Vibber:
JeroenVP for instance has made clear that he does not care about the core values of Wikipedia at all (making knowledge available to the public as free content) but only cares about not ever seeing anything he perceives as an "advertisement".
I assume the above statement is a way to polarise the discussion ever more and I will ignore these remarks.
It's about free/open educational content. It's about making materials open and available for use by the public, including the creation of derivative works and redistribution.
Exactly, but you you miss the point completely Brion. It's advertisement at a location where the free content is CREATED, not redistributed/mirrored. Actually I don't care about if people make money with Wikipedia content, the same applies for Linux distributions, but we are talking about advertisement on the location where the content is created. That kills our reliability, so far we have that allready. It's not about business-models, websites, but about the source off the free content. Any connection to what kind of company, religion, political party, government, whatever... will harm one of the basic principles of this great project.
It really sadness me also to hear that you and the Foundation are opportunists, that can endanger the projects.
I do expect some people to leave; that's not because they're bad people. But some people are going to discover, sooner or later, that they've been chasing something *other* than free content, and that Wikipedia isn't really the project for them after all.
Hopefully it will be those people who endanger Wikipedia and such, like selling us out and don't have any respect for the community. The community who created Wikipedia and such.
That's why we need to stop, to think.
That's what we do all the time, unfortunately we don't think the same.
I will ask the Foundation to make an official excuse to the community about forcing these site notices and about not directly informing the communities. I will also ask to stop any other actions like these in the future, until the community at least can have a vote in this matter.
Jeroenvrp
On 12/28/06, Jeroenvrp wikipedia@xs4all.nl wrote:
e time, unfortunately we don't think the same.
I will ask the Foundation to make an official excuse to the community about forcing these site notices and about not directly informing the communities. I will also ask to stop any other actions like these in the future, until the community at least can have a vote in this matter.
Maybe you want to start with defining the term "community". It proved to be not so easy... (And no, the community is not just the subscribers to foundation-l) Michael
Op donderdag 28 december 2006 22:51, schreef Michael Bimmler:
I will ask the Foundation to make an official excuse to the community about forcing these site notices and about not directly informing the communities. I will also ask to stop any other actions like these in the future, until the community at least can have a vote in this matter.
Maybe you want to start with defining the term "community". It proved to be not so easy... (And no, the community is not just the subscribers to foundation-l)
That is very easy. The "community" are the users who contribute on all Wikimedia projects.
Jeroenvrp
On 12/28/06, Jeroenvrp wikipedia@xs4all.nl wrote:
Op donderdag 28 december 2006 22:51, schreef Michael Bimmler:
I will ask the Foundation to make an official excuse to the community about forcing these site notices and about not directly informing the communities. I will also ask to stop any other actions like these in the future, until the community at least can have a vote in this matter.
Maybe you want to start with defining the term "community". It proved to be not so easy... (And no, the community is not just the subscribers to foundation-l)
That is very easy. The "community" are the users who contribute on all Wikimedia projects.
Okay. And sure you know how to get in contact with the whole community? Because people tend to complain about not being informed, although they just didn't read the relevant threads on foundation-l. Should we make a notice on every little village pump (it will be really cheap and easy to translate such a thing in every possible language to allow non-english-speakers to participate)? Or shall we send an email to every registered Wikimedia user (see translation issue above)? Or do you know another way how *everybody* feels included, asked and considered? Michael
Jeroenvrp
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Op donderdag 28 december 2006 23:03, schreef Michael Bimmler:
Okay. And sure you know how to get in contact with the whole community? Because people tend to complain about not being informed, although they just didn't read the relevant threads on foundation-l. Should we make a notice on every little village pump (it will be really cheap and easy to translate such a thing in every possible language to allow non-english-speakers to participate)? Or shall we send an email to every registered Wikimedia user (see translation issue above)? Or do you know another way how *everybody* feels included, asked and considered?
I allready explained that. There a few mailing lists for the local communities and there are village pumps. I'm not talking about informing every single project, but the ones with a good amount of community members. Yes, the are many of them, but it is 30 min. work to inform them. You can do it English, there is always someone who can translate it and that is ten times better than only informing this mailing list, that is not read by the average hard working contributors.
Jeroenvrp
On 12/29/06, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
Okay. And sure you know how to get in contact with the whole community?
So a report from a certain portion might be useful ;) I would like to introduce another view we find on the community, I mean, a community of a certain language speakers as a part of the whole Wikipedia community; Japanese editors.
I have seen no complaint, no grudges anywhere as far as I know - on Village pump, mailinglist and some external usergroups. (I haven't access irc recently, but perhaps there was no reaction). Some was impressed by the generocity of Virgin and it is perhaps an exceptional reaction; It is obvious most of editors on the Japanese projects simply did not care for it. They have been fascinated in their daily concerns instead - editwar, disputes, votes and of course, editing articles.
What we as editors' community pursue here and now on the project is both sustainability and neutrality in my opinion, and I cannot think one time donation and one time expression of gratitude hurt the neutrality. If we were asked to make a favor to donors on our content, it were a serious damage, but here and now I haven't seen such threatening.
Exactly, Aphaia, it could really be much worse.
On 12/29/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/29/06, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
Okay. And sure you know how to get in contact with the whole community?
So a report from a certain portion might be useful ;) I would like to introduce another view we find on the community, I mean, a community of a certain language speakers as a part of the whole Wikipedia community; Japanese editors.
I have seen no complaint, no grudges anywhere as far as I know - on Village pump, mailinglist and some external usergroups. (I haven't access irc recently, but perhaps there was no reaction). Some was impressed by the generocity of Virgin and it is perhaps an exceptional reaction; It is obvious most of editors on the Japanese projects simply did not care for it. They have been fascinated in their daily concerns instead - editwar, disputes, votes and of course, editing articles.
What we as editors' community pursue here and now on the project is both sustainability and neutrality in my opinion, and I cannot think one time donation and one time expression of gratitude hurt the neutrality. If we were asked to make a favor to donors on our content, it were a serious damage, but here and now I haven't seen such threatening.
-- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
- Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 29/12/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/29/06, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:
Okay. And sure you know how to get in contact with the whole community?
So a report from a certain portion might be useful ;) I would like to introduce another view we find on the community, I mean, a community of a certain language speakers as a part of the whole Wikipedia community; Japanese editors.
I have seen no complaint, no grudges anywhere as far as I know - on Village pump, mailinglist and some external usergroups. (I haven't access irc recently, but perhaps there was no reaction).
Lots of reaction on IRC, from which it seemed the biggest backlash was in it.wp and nl.wp, both of whom had some very vocal people coming by.
The Catalan wp responded to it in a rather delightful way, by taking advantage of the presence of the "Day of the Holy Innocents" (Iberian equivalent of April 1) to treat it all as a grand joke - http://ca.wikinews.org/wiki/Imatge:Wiki-ca-Innocents.png is a copy of the modified logo that went up, and both ca.wnews and es.wnews ran news stories saying we were going to charge 20 EUR for editing and float on the NASDAQ ;-)
Some was impressed by the generocity of Virgin and it is perhaps an exceptional reaction; It is obvious most of editors on the Japanese projects simply did not care for it. They have been fascinated in their daily concerns instead - editwar, disputes, votes and of course, editing articles.
enwp was broadly the same. Some noise kicked up by people discussing it freely and frankly, and a number who Didn't Like It One Bit, but not really much above the usual level we have of people Very Upset Over Something. Certainly no repeated editwarring to remove the sitenotice, attempts to disrupt it in other ways, or having it occupy the attentions of the entire project...
As to the "broader community", our readers - as of last night, when I checked OTRS, I couldn't find a single complaint about it. I'm welcome to corrections from anyone who talked to someone, but keyword searching drew a total blank in the day's mail. And given the random things that cause some of our readers to write and complain*, I think that's a pretty good figure.
On 29/12/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The Catalan wp responded to it in a rather delightful way, by taking advantage of the presence of the "Day of the Holy Innocents" (Iberian equivalent of April 1) to treat it all as a grand joke - http://ca.wikinews.org/wiki/Imatge:Wiki-ca-Innocents.png is a copy of the modified logo that went up, and both ca.wnews and es.wnews ran news stories saying we were going to charge 20 EUR for editing and float on the NASDAQ ;-)
Darnit, outdone! /me rushes off to steal the story for UnNews
- d.
On 29/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/12/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The Catalan wp responded to it in a rather delightful way, by taking advantage of the presence of the "Day of the Holy Innocents" (Iberian equivalent of April 1) to treat it all as a grand joke - http://ca.wikinews.org/wiki/Imatge:Wiki-ca-Innocents.png is a copy of the modified logo that went up, and both ca.wnews and es.wnews ran news stories saying we were going to charge 20 EUR for editing and float on the NASDAQ ;-)
Darnit, outdone! /me rushes off to steal the story for UnNews
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundation_to_introduce_paid_e...
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 29/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/12/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The Catalan wp responded to it in a rather delightful way, by taking advantage of the presence of the "Day of the Holy Innocents" (Iberian equivalent of April 1) to treat it all as a grand joke - http://ca.wikinews.org/wiki/Imatge:Wiki-ca-Innocents.png is a copy of the modified logo that went up, and both ca.wnews and es.wnews ran news stories saying we were going to charge 20 EUR for editing and float on the NASDAQ ;-)
Darnit, outdone! /me rushes off to steal the story for UnNews
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundation_to_introduce_paid_e...
- d.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Oh brother!
Jeff
On 29/12/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Oh brother!
Note edit summary for article's creation.
(It's amazing the Fair Use a satirical site can get away with under US law.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 29/12/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Oh brother!
Note edit summary for article's creation.
(It's amazing the Fair Use a satirical site can get away with under US law.)
This came from the the Larry Flint vs. Jerry Fallwell lawsuit in the 1980's. I agree its going over the line.
Jeff
- d.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
David Gerard schreef:
On 29/12/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Oh brother!
Note edit summary for article's creation.
(It's amazing the Fair Use a satirical site can get away with under US law.)
- d.
Hoi, Especially the logo is brilliant.. *This image is a copyright http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Copyright violation because this is a Wikimedia image.* Luckily, nobody cares http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Nobody_cares. Thanks, GerardM **
On 12/29/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/12/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The Catalan wp responded to it in a rather delightful way, by taking advantage of the presence of the "Day of the Holy Innocents" (Iberian equivalent of April 1) to treat it all as a grand joke - http://ca.wikinews.org/wiki/Imatge:Wiki-ca-Innocents.png is a copy of the modified logo that went up, and both ca.wnews and es.wnews ran news stories saying we were going to charge 20 EUR for editing and float on the NASDAQ ;-)
Darnit, outdone! /me rushes off to steal the story for UnNews
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Wikimedia_Foundation_to_introduce_paid_e...
That's hilarious.
Maybe you want to start with defining the term "community". It proved to be not so easy... (And no, the community is not just the subscribers to foundation-l)
That is very easy. The "community" are the users who contribute on all Wikimedia projects.
Jeroenvrp
Hmm, I think you may be missing something pretty important. In fact, the definition of community is the single most difficult thing to agree upon. What is my community, your community, etc. does not have answers. The Board retreat could not answer it with the 25 people who were there. The Board itself cannot agree on the meaning. Certainly, though, you do not have the hubris to think that this thing called Wikimedia exists only for editors, to the exclusion of the millions of people who view it every day? I view the orthodox idea that the community consists of, and can only consist of, editors as being at least as insulting as the opposite would be to Horning. Millions of people *read* the site, and do not contribute a comma. And that's okay! Generators *and* consumers of free culture must be incorporated. If we are philosophically opposed as people who differ on whether a sound is made when a tree falls in forest, so be it.
--- Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm, I think you may be missing something pretty important. In fact, the definition of community is the single most difficult thing to agree upon. What is my community, your community, etc. does not have answers. The Board retreat could not answer it with the 25 people who were there. The Board itself cannot agree on the meaning. Certainly, though, you do not have the hubris to think that this thing called Wikimedia exists only for editors, to the exclusion of the millions of people who view it every day? I view the orthodox idea that the community consists of, and can only consist of, editors as being at least as insulting as the opposite would be to Horning. Millions of people *read* the site, and do not contribute a comma. And that's okay! Generators *and* consumers of free culture must be incorporated. If we are philosophically opposed as people who differ on whether a sound is made when a tree falls in forest, so be it.
If we are going to reach for a definition of what our community is, I do not think it would be hubris to say that it includes everybody who helps us toward our goal of making free content available to everybody in the world in a language they can understand. That would certainly include all editors but also includes everybody who donates or even those who spread the word about our projects and our goals. Extending that to all regular readers is not much of a leap since they are sharing in the proceeds of our goal and furthering it just by tuning in and giving our editors a practical reason to edit well.
-- mav
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
On 29/12/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
If we are going to reach for a definition of what our community is, I do not think it would be hubris to say that it includes everybody who helps us toward our goal of making free content available to everybody in the world in a language they can understand. That would certainly include all editors but also includes everybody who donates or even those who spread the word about our projects and our goals. Extending that to all regular readers is not much of a leap since they are sharing in the proceeds of our goal and furthering it just by tuning in and giving our editors a practical reason to edit well.
I must say, it feels really good knowing my work is useful to others. I repeat once more what a buzz it was seeing sentences I'd written in [[:en:Xenu]] reused in literally every news report on Tom Cruise around mid-2005 ...
One thing I've been doing when shilling for the fund drive is add "If you want to give something back but haven't got money, you could give photos or writing instead." I don't know if adding that to the fund drive page would overly distract from the important message, i.e. that we're on the bones of our arse and NEED MONEY NOW. One to consider between fundraisers, perhaps.
- d.
On 29/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
One thing I've been doing when shilling for the fund drive is add "If you want to give something back but haven't got money, you could give photos or writing instead." I don't know if adding that to the fund drive page would overly distract from the important message, i.e. that we're on the bones of our arse and NEED MONEY NOW. One to consider between fundraisers, perhaps.
I know the money is important, but it'd be nice to express it differently: "If you want to give something back but don't have the time to edit, please contribute a small financial donation instead."
Oldak Quill schreef:
On 29/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
One thing I've been doing when shilling for the fund drive is add "If you want to give something back but haven't got money, you could give photos or writing instead." I don't know if adding that to the fund drive page would overly distract from the important message, i.e. that we're on the bones of our arse and NEED MONEY NOW. One to consider between fundraisers, perhaps.
I know the money is important, but it'd be nice to express it differently: "If you want to give something back but don't have the time to edit, please contribute a small financial donation instead."
Hoi, Think big.. "please contribute a financial donation instead." Thanks, GerardM
Brad Patrick wrote:
Maybe you want to start with defining the term "community". It proved to be not so easy... (And no, the community is not just the subscribers to foundation-l)
That is very easy. The "community" are the users who contribute on all Wikimedia projects.
Jeroenvrp
Hmm, I think you may be missing something pretty important. In fact, the definition of community is the single most difficult thing to agree upon. What is my community, your community, etc. does not have answers. The Board retreat could not answer it with the 25 people who were there. The Board itself cannot agree on the meaning. Certainly, though, you do not have the hubris to think that this thing called Wikimedia exists only for editors, to the exclusion of the millions of people who view it every day? I view the orthodox idea that the community consists of, and can only consist of, editors as being at least as insulting as the opposite would be to Horning. Millions of people *read* the site, and do not contribute a comma. And that's okay! Generators *and* consumers of free culture must be incorporated. If we are philosophically opposed as people who differ on whether a sound is made when a tree falls in forest, so be it.
"Community" is open to definition. It can probably work with any of the definitions given. Then there are communities of communities. Those who work on any specialized WikiProject themselves can be considered as a community.
I can grasp your vision of the wider community that includes the silent majority of readers, but getting them involved is as much if not more of a challenge than getting citizens involved in the electoral process. Meantime, life goes on.
Ec
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Jeroenvrp wrote:
Op donderdag 28 december 2006 21:42, schreef Brion Vibber:
JeroenVP for instance has made clear that he does not care about the core values of Wikipedia at all (making knowledge available to the public as free content) but only cares about not ever seeing anything he perceives as an "advertisement".
I assume the above statement is a way to polarise the discussion ever more and I will ignore these remarks.
It was meant to be a provocative opening statement, but it appears accurate based on your actions and words last night and you have not explained otherwise, so I continue to stand by these words.
It's about free/open educational content. It's about making materials open and available for use by the public, including the creation of derivative works and redistribution.
Exactly, but you you miss the point completely Brion. It's advertisement at a location where the free content is CREATED, not redistributed/mirrored. Actually I don't care about if people make money with Wikipedia content, the same applies for Linux distributions, but we are talking about advertisement on the location where the content is created. That kills our reliability, so far we have that allready.
How? Please explain.
It's not about business-models, websites, but about the source off the free content. Any connection to what kind of company, religion, political party, government, whatever... will harm one of the basic principles of this great project.
How? Please explain.
I do expect some people to leave; that's not because they're bad people. But some people are going to discover, sooner or later, that they've been chasing something *other* than free content, and that Wikipedia isn't really the project for them after all.
Hopefully it will be those people who endanger Wikipedia and such, like selling us out and don't have any respect for the community. The community who created Wikipedia and such.
Perhaps you missed it, but the foundation came from the community and is made up of community members.
Perhaps you missed the last six years solid, where there have always been disagreements within the community and communications problems between different parts of it.
Me, I noticed. That's probably why I've been screaming for better organization and communication in this fundraiser debacle.
Communication is the #1 problem facing us. Do you believe the best response to this is to engage in edit wars?
I don't.
That's probably why I'm posting here instead of dropping the nukes and blocking edit-warring sysops.
What good would it do other than piss people off?
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
Op vrijdag 29 december 2006 00:41, schreef Brion Vibber:
It was meant to be a provocative opening statement, but it appears accurate based on your actions and words last night and you have not explained otherwise, so I continue to stand by these words.
Well, you did revert me on a Wikipedia where you are only a moderator because of technical reasons and since this was NOT a technical issue, I assume you also did not follow the book.
It's about free/open educational content. It's about making materials open and available for use by the public, including the creation of derivative works and redistribution.
Exactly, but you you miss the point completely Brion. It's advertisement at a location where the free content is CREATED, not redistributed/mirrored. Actually I don't care about if people make money with Wikipedia content, the same applies for Linux distributions, but we are talking about advertisement on the location where the content is created. That kills our reliability, so far we have that allready.
How? Please explain.
It's not about business-models, websites, but about the source off the free content. Any connection to what kind of company, religion, political party, government, whatever... will harm one of the basic principles of this great project.
How? Please explain.
Come on Brion, must I really explain this to you. I don't go that way with you. You should know WHY?
Perhaps you missed it, but the foundation came from the community and is made up of community members.
That's even worse.
Perhaps you missed the last six years solid, where there have always been disagreements within the community and communications problems between different parts of it.
Yes, so we should have learned from the past.
Me, I noticed. That's probably why I've been screaming for better organization and communication in this fundraiser debacle.
Good to hear that.
Communication is the #1 problem facing us. Do you believe the best response to this is to engage in edit wars?
I don't.
No I don't believe that, but sometimes things are more important than not doing anything.
That's probably why I'm posting here instead of dropping the nukes and blocking edit-warring sysops.
Well, that is one more credit for you.
What good would it do other than piss people off?
Nothing, so let stop us for now. I think everyone had made his/her point and I truly hope the communities are much better informed and involved the next time.
Jeroenvrp
On 29/12/06, Jeroenvrp wikipedia@xs4all.nl wrote:
Op vrijdag 29 december 2006 00:41, schreef Brion Vibber:
Exactly, but you you miss the point completely Brion. It's advertisement at a location where the free content is CREATED, not redistributed/mirrored. Actually I don't care about if people make money with Wikipedia content, the same applies for Linux distributions, but we are talking about advertisement on the location where the content is created. That kills our reliability, so far we have that allready.
How? Please explain.
It's not about business-models, websites, but about the source off the free content. Any connection to what kind of company, religion, political party, government, whatever... will harm one of the basic principles of this great project.
How? Please explain.
Come on Brion, must I really explain this to you. I don't go that way with you. You should know WHY?
No, really ... please explain. You're making these blank assertions on a public mailing list, and even if you think Brion can read your mind the rest of us can't.
Nothing, so let stop us for now. I think everyone had made his/her point and I truly hope the communities are much better informed and involved the next time.
I suggest it would still help if we understood yours.
- d.
Brion Vibber wrote:
It's about free/open educational content. It's about making materials open and available for use by the public, including the creation of derivative works and redistribution.
Exactly, but you you miss the point completely Brion. It's advertisement at a location where the free content is CREATED, not redistributed/mirrored. Actually I don't care about if people make money with Wikipedia content, the same applies for Linux distributions, but we are talking about advertisement on the location where the content is created. That kills our reliability, so far we have that allready.
How? Please explain.
Well. I think it would be interesting to take a very close look how this "non-advertisement" in sitenotice affects the content of the article of "non-advertised" company or organization.
Take a look on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Unite
which was created first on 14:35 December 2007, and had almost 100 edits till now. I am quite sure that it would have never be edited so extensively if the logo of this organisation hadn' been used in sitenotice. This is rather obvious that this logo indeed has quite enormous effect on the content of this particular article. I am not judging if this effect was good or wrong.
What we may be afraid of: *The company "non-advertised" on sitenotice might be interested to keep the article about itself in the shape they would prefer, and they may expect that someone from Foundation will take care of it *It may end-up in agressive edit war, which may result in blocking this article *There will be more such articles, so the problem will grow soon.
This was not discussed yet, but if Foundation make a decision to put some "real" advertisement on Wikipedia and other projects, how it may affect the articles about advertised companies and organisation as well as biographic articles about the people conected with these companies and articles about products/services they provide?
It is really difficult to evaluate this without any experimental data, but I think many people fell that it may create some sort of conflict of interest.
On 29/12/06, Jeroenvrp wikipedia@xs4all.nl wrote:
I will ask the Foundation to make an official excuse to the community about forcing these site notices and about not directly informing the communities.
The Wikimedia Foundation board has semi-regular elections. If you are unhappy with the decisions they make, vote differently next time. Don't blankly defy what they have decided on behalf of all Wikimedia projects, out of some misguided sense of self-importance. That will just get you emergency desysopped more quickly.
I asked you in IRC to explain why you were edit warring against the wishes of the Foundation, and you did not respond.
It's one thing to disagree with what the Foundation has decided to go with for this fundraiser. It is quite another to take it upon yourself to prevent the Foundation from implementing that decision on your local project. You should be taking a long, hard look at whether you can continue to participate in Wikimedia projects if you have such trouble accepting decisions of the Wikimedia Foundation, who it should not be forgotten have to pay all the bills.
~Mark Ryan
--- Jeroenvrp wikipedia@xs4all.nl wrote:
Op donderdag 28 december 2006 21:42, schreef Brion Vibber:
JeroenVP for instance has made clear that he does
not care about the
core values of Wikipedia at all (making knowledge
available to the
public as free content) but only cares about not
ever seeing anything he
perceives as an "advertisement".
I assume the above statement is a way to polarise the discussion ever more and I will ignore these remarks.
It's about free/open educational content. It's
about making materials
open and available for use by the public,
including the creation of
derivative works and redistribution.
Exactly, but you you miss the point completely Brion. It's advertisement at a location where the free content is CREATED, not redistributed/mirrored. Actually I don't care about if people make money with Wikipedia content, the same applies for Linux distributions, but we are talking about advertisement on the location where the content is created. That kills our reliability, so far we have that allready. It's not about business-models, websites, but about the source off the free content. Any connection to what kind of company, religion, political party, government, whatever... will harm one of the basic principles of this great project.
There is no difference between where the content is created and distributed and consumed. It is all the the same place. The high number of hits logged by Wikimedia websites would not be happening if the primary consumption of the content took place at the mirrors. The success of Wikimedia is due to this elimination this idea that content is something to be created and then distibuted to consumer. In Wikimedia creation and consumption are combined and anyone is welcome to either create or consume (or both!) from the same outlet.
I want to explain were I think the general opposition to advertisement comes from. While brion is correct that free-content is not against commercialism; free content is against consumerism. Advertising is a large part of the culture of consumerism. This is a culture that *is* at odds with the ideas of Wikimedia. This is where I believe the strong reaction against ads stems from more than anti-commercialism.
I think it is natural for people with a strong dislike for the consumer culture to make there way to Wikimedia. It is natural that these people suddenly seeing a multinational coporation in the site-notice would have a bad reaction. I think the reasoning behind the sitenotice display is sound and I support the decision. But perhaps I would have been upset if I had not already expected to see coporate matching donors. It is hard to say, I am really not that radical. At the same time I have seen many people who I think are radical in their related areas defend this sitenotice. This makes me think the bulk of the reaction is really due to the surprise factor. Maybe the lesson here is that there is a need for better internal new releases.
I think Brad's annoucement of the beginning of the fundraising drive was very good. If it had had a footer silmilar to what the Wikimania Tapai team has been doing, encouraging people to forward it and spread it to other lists, maybe there would have been less uproar. It is sometimes hard to remember how much of a communication problem still remains within this organiztion. Six months ago it was nearly impossible to know what happening at the Foundation level. Now there are annoucements, reports, and even timetables! But this is not being spread much through the larger community. I think the LSS is a great step forward, perhaps it is time to not only list this on meta but make weekly "deliveries" to the village pumps of small communities and ask any larger communities with internal news programs to host within those programs.
Birgitte SB
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Birgitte SB wrote:
I want to explain were I think the general opposition to advertisement comes from. While brion is correct that free-content is not against commercialism; free content is against consumerism. Advertising is a large part of the culture of consumerism. This is a culture that *is* at odds with the ideas of Wikimedia. This is where I believe the strong reaction against ads stems from more than anti-commercialism.
This is an interesting distinction.
It is sometimes hard to remember how much of a communication problem still remains within this organiztion. Six months ago it was nearly impossible to know what happening at the Foundation level. Now there are annoucements, reports, and even timetables! But this is not being spread much through the larger community.
I have noticed improvements in that six months. Those who have worked on this deserve the credit, and I can't picture Jimbo doing it all himself. Expanding the community that is informed will take it one step further.
Ec
--- Dedalus dedalus@wikipedia.be wrote:
Somebody else mentioned the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It's in the press they would like to raise the level of primary and secondary education in the US. Wikiversity and or Wikibooks might be helpful in raising the level of education there and elsewhere. Suppose the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would like to grant some money to WMF on the condition that it would be for specific projects, e.g. Wikibooks or Wikiversity, would that raise any objections by anyone?
Not by me. Also, the charge that the current message is an advertisement sounds bizarre to me since no product or service is even mentioned, let alone pushed.
The message is simply an acknowledgement of a very generous donation that is linked to the amount of money our readers can give in a day; this is an inducement to donate. It is NOT an inducement to buy any product or service of Virgin Unite or the Virgin group of companies.
This is no different than the sponsorship messages seen or heard on the non-profits NPR and PBS.
In short, I believe Brad Patrick and his team are doing a perfect job to keep the WMF and the websites up and running.
Ditto.
-- mav
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On 12/28/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Dedalus dedalus@wikipedia.be wrote:
Somebody else mentioned the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It's in
the
press they would like to raise the level of primary and secondary
education
in the US. Wikiversity and or Wikibooks might be helpful in raising the level of education there and elsewhere. Suppose the Bill and Melinda
Gates
Foundation would like to grant some money to WMF on the condition that
it
would be for specific projects, e.g. Wikibooks or Wikiversity, would
that
raise any objections by anyone?
Not by me. Also, the charge that the current message is an advertisement sounds bizarre to me since no product or service is even mentioned, let alone pushed.
From Wikipedia: "*Advertising* is paid communication through a non-personal
medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Variations include publicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicity, public relations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations, product placementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_placement, sponsorship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship, underwritinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwriting_spots, and sales promotion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_promotion."
Hmmmmmm.
The message is simply an acknowledgement of a very generous donation that is
linked to the amount of money our readers can give in a day; this is an inducement to donate. It is NOT an inducement to buy any product or service of Virgin Unite or the Virgin group of companies.
This is no different than the sponsorship messages seen or heard on the non-profits NPR and PBS.
Right. Those, too, are ads.
On 28/12/06, Dedalus dedalus@wikipedia.be wrote:
In short, I believe Brad Patrick and his team are doing a perfect job to keep the WMF and the websites up and running.
I don't think anyone who has objected to the Virgin Unite notice has claimed Brad Patrick and his team were doing a bad job. They certainly are doing a very good job. It was their methods that were being questioned. Since we're a community-based project, this seems healthy.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org