Hoi, There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe - With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that are globally relevant .. - We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and define what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient for who,for what and for how long. Thanks, GerardM
This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, then we will find a way to spend it". Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects.
*Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of current fundraising communication.
Vito
Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people
donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
- With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the notion
that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that are globally relevant ..
- We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and define
what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient for who,for what and for how long. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hoi, No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn..
The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and should be so much better.
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, then we will find a way to spend it". Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects.
*Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of current fundraising communication.
Vito
Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people
donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
- With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the notion
that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that are globally relevant ..
- We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and define
what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient for who,for what and for how long. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Gerard,
Do you think the banners *have* to paint a mental picture of Wikipedia being in dire financial straits for people to donate? With wordings like "We need you to make a donation this Friday so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence"?
Isn't it pretty bizarre to portray your financial situation in this way, when you're planning to increase your expenses by 40% from one year to the next, and are literally taking 10 times more money from the public per annum than you did ten years ago?
It's not about the money per se – there are surely few people and organisations who would say that they couldn't do with some more money than the amount they have – but about whether you give the public and prospective donors a more or less accurate impression of your financial situation and your spending intentions.
Do you think the current fundraising banners do that?
Andreas
On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn..
The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and should be so much better.
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, then we will find a way to spend it". Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects.
*Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of current fundraising communication.
Vito
Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people
donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
- With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the
notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that are globally relevant ..
- We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and define
what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient for who,for what and for how long. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hoi, I presented two existential threats to our ecosystem. We have a technical debt in the legacy software we use for our functionality. The engine for Wikidata is not likely to survive, it desperately needs replacement. When the question is: are we in dire straights, yes we are. Is this about fundraising, hell yes. Do fundraisers require a compelling message, they do. I remind you of this "branding" issue. We are raising money for Wikimedia.
The notion of a budget is to fulfill ambitions. We have gone over the message, let's talk about the mission. It is about "sharing the sum of all knowledge". Opening up Commons in a Wiki way to nine year old children worldwide is easy, we already have the software and it will cost money to implement properly. It needs an integral implementation that fits our infrastructure. There are other examples that demonstrate that we do not even "share the knowledge available to us". Increasing a budget to fulfil ambitions is what you do to get things done. Fundraising is what we do to pay the cost of enabling the fulfilment of what is budgeted.
The Wikimedia Foundation has the best platform to raise funds. Much more is possible. We can easily get more institutional money. However, it is well known that the WMF retains its independence by keeping a balance between public and institutional funding. Therefore the fundraising is essential for "Wikipedia" to retain its independence.
What I point out is not new, it should be well known. To me your point of view is bizarre. It is only about appearances and numbers without a context in what we do Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 16:26, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard,
Do you think the banners *have* to paint a mental picture of Wikipedia being in dire financial straits for people to donate? With wordings like "We need you to make a donation this Friday so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence"?
Isn't it pretty bizarre to portray your financial situation in this way, when you're planning to increase your expenses by 40% from one year to the next, and are literally taking 10 times more money from the public per annum than you did ten years ago?
It's not about the money per se – there are surely few people and organisations who would say that they couldn't do with some more money than the amount they have – but about whether you give the public and prospective donors a more or less accurate impression of your financial situation and your spending intentions.
Do you think the current fundraising banners do that?
Andreas
On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn..
The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and should be so much better.
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, then we will find a way to spend it". Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects.
*Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of current fundraising communication.
Vito
Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When people
donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
- With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the
notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that are globally relevant ..
- We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and
define what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient for who,for what and for how long. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Once again this is not what the fundraising messages point out.
This is just a quite shareable list of top priorities in your opinion.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:00 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, I presented two existential threats to our ecosystem. We have a technical debt in the legacy software we use for our functionality. The engine for Wikidata is not likely to survive, it desperately needs replacement. When the question is: are we in dire straights, yes we are. Is this about fundraising, hell yes. Do fundraisers require a compelling message, they do. I remind you of this "branding" issue. We are raising money for Wikimedia.
The notion of a budget is to fulfill ambitions. We have gone over the message, let's talk about the mission. It is about "sharing the sum of all knowledge". Opening up Commons in a Wiki way to nine year old children worldwide is easy, we already have the software and it will cost money to implement properly. It needs an integral implementation that fits our infrastructure. There are other examples that demonstrate that we do not even "share the knowledge available to us". Increasing a budget to fulfil ambitions is what you do to get things done. Fundraising is what we do to pay the cost of enabling the fulfilment of what is budgeted.
The Wikimedia Foundation has the best platform to raise funds. Much more is possible. We can easily get more institutional money. However, it is well known that the WMF retains its independence by keeping a balance between public and institutional funding. Therefore the fundraising is essential for "Wikipedia" to retain its independence.
What I point out is not new, it should be well known. To me your point of view is bizarre. It is only about appearances and numbers without a context in what we do Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 16:26, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard,
Do you think the banners *have* to paint a mental picture of Wikipedia being in dire financial straits for people to donate? With wordings like "We need you to make a donation this Friday so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence"?
Isn't it pretty bizarre to portray your financial situation in this way, when you're planning to increase your expenses by 40% from one year to the next, and are literally taking 10 times more money from the public per annum than you did ten years ago?
It's not about the money per se – there are surely few people and organisations who would say that they couldn't do with some more money than the amount they have – but about whether you give the public and prospective donors a more or less accurate impression of your financial situation and your spending intentions.
Do you think the current fundraising banners do that?
Andreas
On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn..
The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and should be so much better.
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, then we will find a way to spend it". Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects.
*Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of current fundraising communication.
Vito
Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When
people donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
- With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the
notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that are globally relevant ..
- We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and
define what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient for who,for what and for how long. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hoi, Please read carefully. I do point out that there is an existential threat to "Wikipedia", I do point out that we need fundraising to stay independent.
I do point out that the fundraising message is on point. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 09:12, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Once again this is not what the fundraising messages point out.
This is just a quite shareable list of top priorities in your opinion.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:00 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, I presented two existential threats to our ecosystem. We have a technical debt in the legacy software we use for our functionality. The engine for Wikidata is not likely to survive, it desperately needs replacement. When the question is: are we in dire straights, yes we are. Is this about fundraising, hell yes. Do fundraisers require a compelling message, they do. I remind you of this "branding" issue. We are raising money for Wikimedia.
The notion of a budget is to fulfill ambitions. We have gone over the message, let's talk about the mission. It is about "sharing the sum of all knowledge". Opening up Commons in a Wiki way to nine year old children worldwide is easy, we already have the software and it will cost money to implement properly. It needs an integral implementation that fits our infrastructure. There are other examples that demonstrate that we do not even "share the knowledge available to us". Increasing a budget to fulfil ambitions is what you do to get things done. Fundraising is what we do to pay the cost of enabling the fulfilment of what is budgeted.
The Wikimedia Foundation has the best platform to raise funds. Much more is possible. We can easily get more institutional money. However, it is well known that the WMF retains its independence by keeping a balance between public and institutional funding. Therefore the fundraising is essential for "Wikipedia" to retain its independence.
What I point out is not new, it should be well known. To me your point of view is bizarre. It is only about appearances and numbers without a context in what we do Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 16:26, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard,
Do you think the banners *have* to paint a mental picture of Wikipedia being in dire financial straits for people to donate? With wordings like "We need you to make a donation this Friday so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence"?
Isn't it pretty bizarre to portray your financial situation in this way, when you're planning to increase your expenses by 40% from one year to the next, and are literally taking 10 times more money from the public per annum than you did ten years ago?
It's not about the money per se – there are surely few people and organisations who would say that they couldn't do with some more money than the amount they have – but about whether you give the public and prospective donors a more or less accurate impression of your financial situation and your spending intentions.
Do you think the current fundraising banners do that?
Andreas
On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn..
The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and should be so much better.
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, then we will find a way to spend it". Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects.
*Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of current fundraising communication.
Vito
Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising money and raising expectations.
- We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When
people donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe
- With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the
notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that are globally relevant ..
- We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and
define what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is good but not enough.
Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern age.
For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may find a partner in this endeavour.
The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient for who,for what and for how long. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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* do fundraisers require a compelling message? *could be reworded into *do fundraisers need to lie?*
Once again, you say that "Wikidata is about to crash", "we don't properly deliver our contents everywhere", but according to FY2019-2020 audit report https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf while inbalance increased of 23%, hosting expenditures increased of 2,7%, the "other" item (which includes, among many things, *funding of the Wikidata project*) increased of 15%, in-kind expenses, partially related, decreased of about 70%. Undeniably 32% growth in (combined) wages and awards (grants) items also impact infrastructure. These figures surely don't highlight an infrastructure which is about to collapse or, at least, not a sense of urgency towards preventing it from happening.
Please correct me if I am wrong by pointing out how much money was spent on the priorities you highlight.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:19 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, Please read carefully. I do point out that there is an existential threat to "Wikipedia", I do point out that we need fundraising to stay independent.
I do point out that the fundraising message is on point. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 09:12, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Once again this is not what the fundraising messages point out.
This is just a quite shareable list of top priorities in your opinion.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:00 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, I presented two existential threats to our ecosystem. We have a technical debt in the legacy software we use for our functionality. The engine for Wikidata is not likely to survive, it desperately needs replacement. When the question is: are we in dire straights, yes we are. Is this about fundraising, hell yes. Do fundraisers require a compelling message, they do. I remind you of this "branding" issue. We are raising money for Wikimedia.
The notion of a budget is to fulfill ambitions. We have gone over the message, let's talk about the mission. It is about "sharing the sum of all knowledge". Opening up Commons in a Wiki way to nine year old children worldwide is easy, we already have the software and it will cost money to implement properly. It needs an integral implementation that fits our infrastructure. There are other examples that demonstrate that we do not even "share the knowledge available to us". Increasing a budget to fulfil ambitions is what you do to get things done. Fundraising is what we do to pay the cost of enabling the fulfilment of what is budgeted.
The Wikimedia Foundation has the best platform to raise funds. Much more is possible. We can easily get more institutional money. However, it is well known that the WMF retains its independence by keeping a balance between public and institutional funding. Therefore the fundraising is essential for "Wikipedia" to retain its independence.
What I point out is not new, it should be well known. To me your point of view is bizarre. It is only about appearances and numbers without a context in what we do Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 16:26, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard,
Do you think the banners *have* to paint a mental picture of Wikipedia being in dire financial straits for people to donate? With wordings like "We need you to make a donation this Friday so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence"?
Isn't it pretty bizarre to portray your financial situation in this way, when you're planning to increase your expenses by 40% from one year to the next, and are literally taking 10 times more money from the public per annum than you did ten years ago?
It's not about the money per se – there are surely few people and organisations who would say that they couldn't do with some more money than the amount they have – but about whether you give the public and prospective donors a more or less accurate impression of your financial situation and your spending intentions.
Do you think the current fundraising banners do that?
Andreas
On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn..
The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and should be so much better.
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, then we will find a way to spend it". Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects.
*Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of current fundraising communication.
Vito
Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> Hoi, > There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too > much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to > make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do > need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per > year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising > money and raising expectations. > > - We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When > people donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. > This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe > - With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the > notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is > reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that > are globally relevant .. > - We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and > define what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to > increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and > discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the > service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is > good but not enough. > > Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have projects > to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive provides > an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can integrate the > two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for its services. > Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other benefits. One of > these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia references into a modern > age. > > For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on > the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the > data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own > software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept > that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may > find a partner in this endeavour. > > The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is no > urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is > lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF > raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project > and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient > for who,for what and for how long. > Thanks, > GerardM > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hoi, You are wrong. First, fundraising and budgeting is aimed at the future, they aim to enable the needs defined in the present. When you refer to an audit, particularly one that is two years in the past, it reminds me of obligatory messaging for investment products in the Netherlands: "results from the past do not predict results for the future". Apparently you are not aware that the engine used for Wikidata/Wikibase will not suffice and is likely to break our service. You ask about efforts from the past; developers new at the time have analysed and optimised the performance of MediaWiki (and related) code. It resulted in a huge improvement in our service. MediaWiki used to work properly only for desktop computers, at this time mobile phones are supported. However editing on a mobile is still not very inviting.
You repeatedly state that the fundraising message is a lie. It is not, the facts do not support your notions.
Fundraisers that lie find that they may gain more money for the moment. In the long run it is detrimental for the fundraising capacity. I know, I raised funds for charities.
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 09:48, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
- do fundraisers require a compelling message? *could be reworded into *do
fundraisers need to lie?*
Once again, you say that "Wikidata is about to crash", "we don't properly deliver our contents everywhere", but according to FY2019-2020 audit report https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf while inbalance increased of 23%, hosting expenditures increased of 2,7%, the "other" item (which includes, among many things, *funding of the Wikidata project*) increased of 15%, in-kind expenses, partially related, decreased of about 70%. Undeniably 32% growth in (combined) wages and awards (grants) items also impact infrastructure. These figures surely don't highlight an infrastructure which is about to collapse or, at least, not a sense of urgency towards preventing it from happening.
Please correct me if I am wrong by pointing out how much money was spent on the priorities you highlight.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:19 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, Please read carefully. I do point out that there is an existential threat to "Wikipedia", I do point out that we need fundraising to stay independent.
I do point out that the fundraising message is on point. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 09:12, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Once again this is not what the fundraising messages point out.
This is just a quite shareable list of top priorities in your opinion.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:00 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, I presented two existential threats to our ecosystem. We have a technical debt in the legacy software we use for our functionality. The engine for Wikidata is not likely to survive, it desperately needs replacement. When the question is: are we in dire straights, yes we are. Is this about fundraising, hell yes. Do fundraisers require a compelling message, they do. I remind you of this "branding" issue. We are raising money for Wikimedia.
The notion of a budget is to fulfill ambitions. We have gone over the message, let's talk about the mission. It is about "sharing the sum of all knowledge". Opening up Commons in a Wiki way to nine year old children worldwide is easy, we already have the software and it will cost money to implement properly. It needs an integral implementation that fits our infrastructure. There are other examples that demonstrate that we do not even "share the knowledge available to us". Increasing a budget to fulfil ambitions is what you do to get things done. Fundraising is what we do to pay the cost of enabling the fulfilment of what is budgeted.
The Wikimedia Foundation has the best platform to raise funds. Much more is possible. We can easily get more institutional money. However, it is well known that the WMF retains its independence by keeping a balance between public and institutional funding. Therefore the fundraising is essential for "Wikipedia" to retain its independence.
What I point out is not new, it should be well known. To me your point of view is bizarre. It is only about appearances and numbers without a context in what we do Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 16:26, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard,
Do you think the banners *have* to paint a mental picture of Wikipedia being in dire financial straits for people to donate? With wordings like "We need you to make a donation this Friday so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence"?
Isn't it pretty bizarre to portray your financial situation in this way, when you're planning to increase your expenses by 40% from one year to the next, and are literally taking 10 times more money from the public per annum than you did ten years ago?
It's not about the money per se – there are surely few people and organisations who would say that they couldn't do with some more money than the amount they have – but about whether you give the public and prospective donors a more or less accurate impression of your financial situation and your spending intentions.
Do you think the current fundraising banners do that?
Andreas
On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn..
The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and should be so much better.
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
> This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, > then we will find a way to spend it". > Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the urgency > portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our projects. > > *Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of > current fundraising communication. > > Vito > > > Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < > gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto: > >> Hoi, >> There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too >> much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to >> make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do >> need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per >> year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising >> money and raising expectations. >> >> - We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When >> people donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. >> This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe >> - With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the >> notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is >> reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that >> are globally relevant .. >> - We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and >> define what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to >> increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and >> discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the >> service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is >> good but not enough. >> >> Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have >> projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive >> provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can >> integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for >> its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other >> benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia >> references into a modern age. >> >> For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on >> the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the >> data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own >> software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept >> that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may >> find a partner in this endeavour. >> >> The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is >> no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is >> lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF >> raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project >> and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient >> for who,for what and for how long. >> Thanks, >> GerardM >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, >> guidelines at: >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... >> To unsubscribe send an email to >> wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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False urgency in fundraising has been a problem for years, including the years before the fiscal years I'm referring to. Expenditure on infrastructure and software (both essential and non-essential) development hasn't been the main inbalance item for many many years. There's nothing wrong with allocating more resources on "improving", "growing" and "evolving" the projects, but this can be made clear to donors, without being sold as a "struggle to survive".
I didn't yet check old banners but I perceived, in years, a shift in fundraising from "help Wikipedia [with less frequent mentions of other projects] grow" to "Wikipedia [alone] is gonna running out of funds".
Also, is there any formal commitment to "prevent Wikibase from collapsing"?
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 10:55 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, You are wrong. First, fundraising and budgeting is aimed at the future, they aim to enable the needs defined in the present. When you refer to an audit, particularly one that is two years in the past, it reminds me of obligatory messaging for investment products in the Netherlands: "results from the past do not predict results for the future". Apparently you are not aware that the engine used for Wikidata/Wikibase will not suffice and is likely to break our service. You ask about efforts from the past; developers new at the time have analysed and optimised the performance of MediaWiki (and related) code. It resulted in a huge improvement in our service. MediaWiki used to work properly only for desktop computers, at this time mobile phones are supported. However editing on a mobile is still not very inviting.
You repeatedly state that the fundraising message is a lie. It is not, the facts do not support your notions.
Fundraisers that lie find that they may gain more money for the moment. In the long run it is detrimental for the fundraising capacity. I know, I raised funds for charities.
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 09:48, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
- do fundraisers require a compelling message? *could be reworded into *do
fundraisers need to lie?*
Once again, you say that "Wikidata is about to crash", "we don't properly deliver our contents everywhere", but according to FY2019-2020 audit report https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/f/f7/Wikimedia_Foundation_FY2019-2020_Audit_Report.pdf while inbalance increased of 23%, hosting expenditures increased of 2,7%, the "other" item (which includes, among many things, *funding of the Wikidata project*) increased of 15%, in-kind expenses, partially related, decreased of about 70%. Undeniably 32% growth in (combined) wages and awards (grants) items also impact infrastructure. These figures surely don't highlight an infrastructure which is about to collapse or, at least, not a sense of urgency towards preventing it from happening.
Please correct me if I am wrong by pointing out how much money was spent on the priorities you highlight.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:19 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, Please read carefully. I do point out that there is an existential threat to "Wikipedia", I do point out that we need fundraising to stay independent.
I do point out that the fundraising message is on point. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 09:12, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Once again this is not what the fundraising messages point out.
This is just a quite shareable list of top priorities in your opinion.
Vito
Il giorno sab 25 set 2021 alle ore 09:00 Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hoi, I presented two existential threats to our ecosystem. We have a technical debt in the legacy software we use for our functionality. The engine for Wikidata is not likely to survive, it desperately needs replacement. When the question is: are we in dire straights, yes we are. Is this about fundraising, hell yes. Do fundraisers require a compelling message, they do. I remind you of this "branding" issue. We are raising money for Wikimedia.
The notion of a budget is to fulfill ambitions. We have gone over the message, let's talk about the mission. It is about "sharing the sum of all knowledge". Opening up Commons in a Wiki way to nine year old children worldwide is easy, we already have the software and it will cost money to implement properly. It needs an integral implementation that fits our infrastructure. There are other examples that demonstrate that we do not even "share the knowledge available to us". Increasing a budget to fulfil ambitions is what you do to get things done. Fundraising is what we do to pay the cost of enabling the fulfilment of what is budgeted.
The Wikimedia Foundation has the best platform to raise funds. Much more is possible. We can easily get more institutional money. However, it is well known that the WMF retains its independence by keeping a balance between public and institutional funding. Therefore the fundraising is essential for "Wikipedia" to retain its independence.
What I point out is not new, it should be well known. To me your point of view is bizarre. It is only about appearances and numbers without a context in what we do Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 16:26, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard,
Do you think the banners *have* to paint a mental picture of Wikipedia being in dire financial straits for people to donate? With wordings like "We need you to make a donation this Friday so that we can continue to protect Wikipedia's independence"?
Isn't it pretty bizarre to portray your financial situation in this way, when you're planning to increase your expenses by 40% from one year to the next, and are literally taking 10 times more money from the public per annum than you did ten years ago?
It's not about the money per se – there are surely few people and organisations who would say that they couldn't do with some more money than the amount they have – but about whether you give the public and prospective donors a more or less accurate impression of your financial situation and your spending intentions.
Do you think the current fundraising banners do that?
Andreas
On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 2:50 PM Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi, > No it is not. When we do not find a solution for the technical > issues for Wikidata it will crash and burn.. > > The ferocity that some people display about the WMF fundraising > astounds me. We are operating one of the biggest websites in the world, it > is hugely problematic in that its bias for English prevents us from > providing a service that is of the same quality for everyone. The legacy > that exists in our code and the rising expectations are obvious signs that > we are under investing, not over investing. There is a limit to the growth > of our organisation as such I applaud the WMF even though it could and > should be so much better. > > On Fri, 24 Sept 2021 at 15:25, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote: > >> This is exactly the previously mentioned idea of "collect money, >> then we will find a way to spend it". >> Instead, we should be honest with donors and volunteers, the >> urgency portrayed by banners is not true, there's no risk of closing our >> projects. >> >> *Assumes that there is only one project* is true, but in terms of >> current fundraising communication. >> >> Vito >> >> >> Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 14:50 Gerard Meijssen < >> gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> ha scritto: >> >>> Hoi, >>> There are some people who repeatedly argue that we raise way too >>> much money. Given a set of assumptions an argument can be constructed to >>> make this point. In my opinion there is little merit to the argument. We do >>> need money to operate the Wikimedia projects and a positive outcome per >>> year enables us to do more.the next year. I have some ideas about raising >>> money and raising expectations. >>> >>> - We want to raise less money in the Anglo-Saxon world. When >>> people donate money everywhere they too will gain a sense of ownership. >>> This sense of ownership is to be distributed more equally around the globe >>> - With our projects owned more equitably around the globe, the >>> notion that "any child of nine year old can find pictures in Commons" is >>> reasonable and self-evident; the world pays for results that >>> are globally relevant .. >>> - We need a delivery manager, his/her task is to research and >>> define what it is our projects deliver to their public. The objective is to >>> increase both quantity and quality of what is delivered by a project and >>> discuss with project communities what it is that can be done to improve the >>> service to its public. Commons does provide material to Wikipedia, that is >>> good but not enough. >>> >>> Both the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive have >>> projects to document all scientific papers / output. The Internet Archive >>> provides an important service to the Wikimedia Foundation and we can >>> integrate the two projects, reduce costs and have the WMF pay the IA for >>> its services. Closer ties with the Internet Archive provide many other >>> benefits. One of these benefits is that we can bring the Wikipedia >>> references into a modern age. >>> >>> For Wikidata there is a technical limit in what we can achieve on >>> the current platform. Because of Wikidata the WMF is a very big fish in the >>> data pond. We need to (imho) pick up the challenge and develop our own >>> software. This will cost significantly and it demonstrates that we accept >>> that Free software is not Free as in Beer. With the IA as a partner, we may >>> find a partner in this endeavour. >>> >>> The notion that we raise too much money, the notion that there is >>> no urgency is a fallacy. It is all too easy to identify how our service is >>> lacking and where we can improve our service. The arguments why the WMF >>> raises too much money assumes that there is only one project, their project >>> and they consider that its status quo suffices. The question is, sufficient >>> for who,for what and for how long. >>> Thanks, >>> GerardM >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, >>> guidelines at: >>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >>> Public archives at >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... >>> To unsubscribe send an email to >>> wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, >> guidelines at: >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... >> To unsubscribe send an email to >> wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, > guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... > To unsubscribe send an email to > wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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Comparing the Wikimedia Foundation's annual revenue targets for the past five financial years against actual revenue, I find that the Wikimedia Foundation exceeded its revenue target (and also its actual expenditure) by an average of $30 million per year.
The figures (all excluding Endowment revenue) are as follows:
REVENUE Target Actual 2016/2017 $63,0M $91,2M 2017/2018 $76,8M $104,5M 2018/2019 $93,1M $120,1M 2019/2020 $111,7M $129,2M 2020/2021 $110,5M $157,0M TOTAL $455,1M $602,0M
Sources: Planned revenue: Annual plans on Meta, available here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Foundation_annual_plans Actual revenue: Audited financial statements as summarised and linked here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics
The times when Jimmy Wales promised the public that the Foundation would stop fundraising when its fundraising targets were met are clearly long past.[1]
This being so, I wonder: the WMF Advancement team (including fundraising tech) currently comprises around 50 people.
Are any of their salaries tied to their ability to increase revenue each year? This kind of incentive would, of course, arguably put them in an invidious position.
As far as I am aware, only one Advancement salary has been included in recent Forms 990.[2] It increased from $168K in the year 2015 to $252K in 2019, the most recent year for which we have a Form 990 (both figures are base compensation only).
That is an increase of exactly 50% in the space of just four years, and far in excess of inflation. Was this increase based on the parallel increase in WMF revenue over that time period?
At any rate, what we see here are not the financials of an organisation struggling to maintain or update essential software, or struggling in any other sense. It's the financials of an organisation committed to growth, and testing how much growth is sustainable.
That is fine, of course, but then that is what the fundraising banners should tell people.
I mentioned résumés the other day. It was on my mind because I had come across Lila's profile page[3] on the Word Economic Forum website. This tells readers that Lila "led Wikipedia’s rapidly expanded regional presence to nearly 100 global organizations, doubled revenues and launched the Wikipedia Endowment to support modernization and expansion of knowledge access in perpetuity."
Again, doubling WMF revenues is all well and good, but then let's be nice and upfront about it when asking people for their money.
Andreas
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/16/jimmy_wales_wikipedia_fundraising_pro... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_215#Once_upon_a_...
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries and https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200049703 [3] https://www.weforum.org/people/lila-tretikov
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 12:29 PM Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
False urgency in fundraising has been a problem for years, including the years before the fiscal years I'm referring to. Expenditure on infrastructure and software (both essential and non-essential) development hasn't been the main inbalance item for many many years. There's nothing wrong with allocating more resources on "improving", "growing" and "evolving" the projects, but this can be made clear to donors, without being sold as a "struggle to survive".
I didn't yet check old banners but I perceived, in years, a shift in fundraising from "help Wikipedia [with less frequent mentions of other projects] grow" to "Wikipedia [alone] is gonna running out of funds".
Also, is there any formal commitment to "prevent Wikibase from collapsing"?
Vito
Hoi, As you present your numbers in isolation, you can make up any argument and not address any of the points made in the original post and subsequent replies. When you mention salaries, you do not compare them to the common practices for remuneration and only when you do, can you argue that it is "too much". You can point to the growth of activities in particular teams and only when this does not provide the service as required you may have a point. You argue that there is no problem with our infrastructure.. I pointed out that we have a potential disaster in the underlying engine of Wikidata and you ignore that.. The presentation of our text based data may seem quite robust and still we have problems with the presentation of all the signed languages, the diacritics of Macedonian needs attention, the software that we use for bots and tools is not supported by the WMF, WMF lacks the necessary bandwidth. Commons search has a rate of false positives that is over 50% and for you everything is fine.
Your complaint is about our fundraising and the urgency it expresses. As I said earlier, we are to maintain a balance between private monies and institutional monies in order to retain our independence. We are underfunded as it is, essential functionality does not get the attention that is required.
The only way I can understand your argument is when you look at it from a "Wikipedia only" point of view and as a nuisance. English Wikipedia could maybe survive in isolation. As it is Wikipedia consists of hundreds of individual projects and for all of them Wikidata and Commons is essential infrastructure. We could and should do better in our support, even when our only aspiration is to share "the sum of knowledge that we have".
I dismiss your arguments for lack of merit. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 15:28, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Comparing the Wikimedia Foundation's annual revenue targets for the past five financial years against actual revenue, I find that the Wikimedia Foundation exceeded its revenue target (and also its actual expenditure) by an average of $30 million per year.
The figures (all excluding Endowment revenue) are as follows:
REVENUE Target Actual 2016/2017 $63,0M $91,2M 2017/2018 $76,8M $104,5M 2018/2019 $93,1M $120,1M 2019/2020 $111,7M $129,2M 2020/2021 $110,5M $157,0M TOTAL $455,1M $602,0M
Sources: Planned revenue: Annual plans on Meta, available here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Foundation_annual_plans Actual revenue: Audited financial statements as summarised and linked here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics
The times when Jimmy Wales promised the public that the Foundation would stop fundraising when its fundraising targets were met are clearly long past.[1]
This being so, I wonder: the WMF Advancement team (including fundraising tech) currently comprises around 50 people.
Are any of their salaries tied to their ability to increase revenue each year? This kind of incentive would, of course, arguably put them in an invidious position.
As far as I am aware, only one Advancement salary has been included in recent Forms 990.[2] It increased from $168K in the year 2015 to $252K in 2019, the most recent year for which we have a Form 990 (both figures are base compensation only).
That is an increase of exactly 50% in the space of just four years, and far in excess of inflation. Was this increase based on the parallel increase in WMF revenue over that time period?
At any rate, what we see here are not the financials of an organisation struggling to maintain or update essential software, or struggling in any other sense. It's the financials of an organisation committed to growth, and testing how much growth is sustainable.
That is fine, of course, but then that is what the fundraising banners should tell people.
I mentioned résumés the other day. It was on my mind because I had come across Lila's profile page[3] on the Word Economic Forum website. This tells readers that Lila "led Wikipedia’s rapidly expanded regional presence to nearly 100 global organizations, doubled revenues and launched the Wikipedia Endowment to support modernization and expansion of knowledge access in perpetuity."
Again, doubling WMF revenues is all well and good, but then let's be nice and upfront about it when asking people for their money.
Andreas
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2016/12/16/jimmy_wales_wikipedia_fundraising_pro... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_215#Once_upon_a_...
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries and https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200049703 [3] https://www.weforum.org/people/lila-tretikov
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 12:29 PM Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
False urgency in fundraising has been a problem for years, including the years before the fiscal years I'm referring to. Expenditure on infrastructure and software (both essential and non-essential) development hasn't been the main inbalance item for many many years. There's nothing wrong with allocating more resources on "improving", "growing" and "evolving" the projects, but this can be made clear to donors, without being sold as a "struggle to survive".
I didn't yet check old banners but I perceived, in years, a shift in fundraising from "help Wikipedia [with less frequent mentions of other projects] grow" to "Wikipedia [alone] is gonna running out of funds".
Also, is there any formal commitment to "prevent Wikibase from collapsing"?
Vito
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Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources: * the moral superiority of financial disinterest * outlandish budgets and fundraising goals * improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
Hoi, Thank you for your reply. I am grateful for the insight that you offered and find that my notions have mostly aligned. They will align even more as I consider it further.
There is one other aspect that you miss.. probably quite deliberately. There are those that consider that Wikipedia is all that counts and English Wikipedia at that. You find it in the reply "is there a commitment to saveguard Wikidata", it is however widespread. I find that I have no more tolerance for the "Wikipedia only" attitude. Yes, the consensus in English Wikipedia can be what it may but when it is stupid, the consensus is stupid. It takes good arguments to convince me otherwise.
When you then consider that the cost of "any nine year old child can find pictures in Commons" has a cost of less than 25.000 Euro. It is mostly evangelism and separating the existing code from the existing search functionality. Just consider, with such functionality available, it will be easier to raise funds globally. What will be left of the 25K is enough to add functionality to find a building, a tree, a fireman and an ambulance that is local. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, 25 Sept 2021 at 22:51, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Mentioning the first two points can be either red herring or an interesting digression to read, I'll opt for the second interpretation.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6
billion in 2016.
Quite a rilevant comparison, I'd say.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the
concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
"Cope or go away" in this context is interesting rather than simply rude highlighting some widespread misconception about what is the most interesting part of the Wiki-ecosystem for the majority of people around.
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about
the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
They don't do the "right thing", instead, they do the "most effective thing". Also, * to raise the required amounts* is not true, given that targets were always exceeded.
if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
There we go with this strawman, once again. Totally unrelated to how donations are asked, definitely unrelated to how funds are currently allocated.
Summing up a long, brilliant, essay to justify ambiguity in banners.
Vito
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
Stressing the good will and effort of the people who craft these messages to do the right thing is important. That doesn't make the outcome beyond reproach though. Questioning the outcome doesn't have to involve questioning the good will and effort of these people. Getting the impression that questioning the outcome in some way makes people believe it questions the good will and effort of these people is hurtful.
Without going in to that point too far, is there data on whether the perception of donors about the financial situation of the foundation reflects reality, what donors think the WMF spends money on vs what it spends it on, and perceptions vs reality of after how much time which projects would go black without new funding. I have the anecdotal impression these lay pretty far apart, but anecdotal impressions don't make data.
If we don't at least have a common understanding of those facts, we can argue about this for another two decades without coming any closer to an understanding.
Dear Guillame, as well as others who may share his position:
I write as a partial rebuttal to a number of points within your response.
"In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollar"
Much of this is premised not on direct spending for our projects, our editors, or even a reasonable growth rate for the endowment. Instead it is an attempt to resolve knowledge equity on a global scale by transferring huge sums of money outside Wikimedia.
This despite the fact that the strategy recommendations have dubious binding power in general, having never undergone a consensus method. But in the case of knowledge equity it's even more dubious, as it's a recommendation that had unanimous stated disagreement on the actual recommendation. The WMF seems to take them as a given, which since they were responsible for the close, would inherently make them INVOLVED.
Beyond that, the first tranche of donations, huge donations, to external projects this year did not notify the broad community of this, did not take on full community feedback as to a) whether we should do this at all, or b) whether these particular efforts were wise/cost-efficient etc.
You say that the fundraising team has done years of A/B testing, but while they do a fantastic job at raising money, it clearly *isn't* set for the lowest level of alarmist needed to raise the necessary sum of money. The necessary sum of money is what's been set as the budget for the year. If you want that budget to be forward-facing, increase the target budget.
Instead we smash past it, which demonstrates highly effective fundraising abilities, but that the dial for acceptable alarmism is way too high.
I am an OTRS/VRT agent, and some of the tidal wave of tickets we get as a result of this phrasing make me consider resigning the position every Nov-December, when the bulk come in.
"denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful"
Not doubt, but you're defining "need" (not, would find beneficial [if you can prove that]) and "we" (not somewhat aligned organisations) without having got Community agreement for a mass expansion of these definitions.
If you genuinely believe that these are needed, then the banners should be reading "we need to get up to $1 billion/year fundraising, with roughly 1/8th to actually maintain our projects, and 7/8 to support a variety of external projects in different countries to encourage knowledge acquisition".
Just because it's effective doesn't mean you're allowed to use alarmist language unless it is 100% accurate in every facet. I have told the state of our finances and the use of money to a number of non-wikipedians, and about 75% cease donating, at least for that fundraising wave. If the language were correct, then I shouldn't be able to convince *anyone*.
Hi Guillaume,
Thanks for a thoughtful, perceptive, enlightening and multidimensional post that's been a pleasure to read. I think we grow as people when we can see things from more than one perspective, and there is much in your post that is worth pondering.
I will try to add some complementary perspectives in this post.
There are two – closely related – assumptions in your mail that strike me as particularly worthy of being examined.
First, you say, "as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission".
I would argue that this is not something that you objectively "need", but something that you "want". Which leads me directly into the second assumption, underlying your assertion that your co-workers "have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes."
The key word here is "required". You present your colleagues as people trapped in a system where they are condemned to desperate efforts to, as you say, figure out the "least alarming language" that will "do the trick" (while not getting them hated on too much).
That means you are looking at the question of banner wording from one end only (one anchor, to use the phraseology you introduced in your post): whatever amount is "required" this year. In doing so, you tacitly accept and endorse the need for "alarming language" – you're effectively saying that reducing it to the level of the "least alarming language" possible is all your team can be asked to do, and enough to fulfil their ethical responsibilities.
This isn't right. You are unmoored from the other end of the equation, i.e. to what extent the fundraising banners would still be considered consistent with your actual financial situation by an average person in full possession of the facts.
This unmooring is how you end up, year after year, based on your A/B testing, with messages that prominently paint a picture of Wikipedia being threatened. These messages have been about "keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free", impressing on people the need to make "a donation this Sunday" so the WMF can "continue to protect Wikipedia's independence", and so on. They work not because donors share your ideas about the ever more comprehensive and costly global mission the WMF has set itself, but because they love Wikipedia and would not like to see it fail or disappear. It's as simple as that.
You also elided the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation, in the 2020/2021 financial year alone, took at least $65M, but perhaps as much as $85M more from donors than its own budget "required":
– Actual takings were $157M+ for the Foundation[1] and $40M? for the Endowment (the Endowment stood at $62.9M on July 1 2020[2] and has now exceeded $100M, as we've just been told; the June 30 2021 year-end figure is still not available, as you still haven't published the fourth-quarter tuning session deck).
– Revenue targets at the beginning of the financial year were $108M for the Foundation and $5M for the Endowment.[3]
Clearly, the budgeted amounts could have been taken with "less alarming" language.
I have asked before who sets these "required" amounts, and who directs staff to continue fundraising well after publicised targets are met. I have not received a straight answer. Where, please, does the buck, literally, stop? Who has the final word?
And are Advancement managers' salaries, which appear to have a startling upward mobility (just like the CEO salary in the past five years), indeed tied to increases in Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Endowment and Wikimedia Enterprise revenue? Do you use such incentives?
I would really appreciate it if you could be open about these questions. I don't think they are unreasonable questions to ask a donor-funded organisation that regularly takes public pride in its transparency.
Elsewhere in your post you speak eloquently about the urgency of your global mission. I would encourage you to base your fundraising messages around this vision. Then people will know what you want the money for, and the funds will be used the way donors imagined they would.
I assure you that to many people's minds this is not currently the case. This tweet had over 1,750 likes and nearly 1,000 retweets, at a time when there were no English fundraising banners on display:
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1399236909495328771
It speaks to this.
The fundraising is part of a pattern. Throughout WMF history, there have been ethical lapses and stark management failures at the Foundation and its subsidiaries. This is an opinion shared, I believe, even by a good number of WMF staff.
Off the top of my head, I would count among such lapses:
– Jimbo's early indiscretions, – the Stanton Foundation/Belfer Center affair and the handover of the Kazakh Wikipedia to a repressive regime, – Gibraltarpedia, – ignoring the fascist takeover of the Croatian Wikipedia, – the obfuscation and lies about the Knowledge Engine and James Heilman's sacking, – the appointment of Arnnon Geshuri to the board, – the rebranding effort, – Framgate, – unpaid Indian volunteers being asked to create Wikimedia content according to search engine query lists supplied by Google, – the lack of transparency surrounding the Knowledge Equity Fund, and – the now infamous German parliamentarian project.
To be honest, and please don't take this as a figure of speech, this history does not inspire me with confidence. What is striking is that many of these failures and eventually uncovered secrets were probably the result of good intentions. The way to hell is paved with them, people say. As long as the fundraising carries on unchanged, I will feel that there has really been no improvement, and the organisation's ethics have not matured enough to be up to its job.
Other aspects that concern me are how the WMF often appears like a sidekick to Big Tech, whose intentions for the global south are entirely self-serving and, if realised, will increase rather than diminish inequality. No one should be under any illusions about that, and indeed you touch upon this in some of the dystopian scenarios you linked to in your post. (It was really great to read about a joint WMF project with DuckDuckGo the other day, surely a much more congenial bedfellow than Google, Amazon or Facebook.)
Then there is the somewhat opaque influence that consultants with close ties to the Clintons and the Council on Foreign Relations[4] have had on long-term strategy. Just more openness about these links would help actually. So, yes, maybe just naming things is a help.
Again, thanks for your post.
Regards, Andreas
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-ter... [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=20... [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 9:51 PM Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
On Sun, 26 Sept 2021 at 16:32, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
I have asked before who sets these "required" amounts, and who directs staff to continue fundraising well after publicised targets are met. I have not received a straight answer. Where, please, does the buck, literally, stop? Who has the final word?
How can the latter be anyone but the board?
Hoi, Andreas, you are entitled to an opinion. But it is your opinion. When others say things about the WMF, what it is there for, its challenges, when they build an argument you can and you do ignore it. The consequence is that it invalidates your refutations and your opinion is only that at best. A case in point is: Guillaume makes a statement about the WMF and you reduce it to his opinion. In this way you take the liberty to ignore what is said and continue with the same, same, same.
The Wikimedia list is not your platform, it is not about Wikipedia. The whole of your point is as I perceive it, built on your perception of a "checkered past". Nowhere is it about what we as a movement will be in the future, the challenges we face. What I miss in all of your writing is what to do for our future, how are we going to tackle the biggest bias we face (English, not gender). How are we going to tackle our biggest blind spot (the non-AngloSaxon world).
As I pointed out before, your opinion is your own. The arguments of others you ignore and you are entitled to your opinion. Sadly, your point of view does not bring us forward. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 26 Sept 2021 at 17:33, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Guillaume,
Thanks for a thoughtful, perceptive, enlightening and multidimensional post that's been a pleasure to read. I think we grow as people when we can see things from more than one perspective, and there is much in your post that is worth pondering.
I will try to add some complementary perspectives in this post.
There are two – closely related – assumptions in your mail that strike me as particularly worthy of being examined.
First, you say, "as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission".
I would argue that this is not something that you objectively "need", but something that you "want". Which leads me directly into the second assumption, underlying your assertion that your co-workers "have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes."
The key word here is "required". You present your colleagues as people trapped in a system where they are condemned to desperate efforts to, as you say, figure out the "least alarming language" that will "do the trick" (while not getting them hated on too much).
That means you are looking at the question of banner wording from one end only (one anchor, to use the phraseology you introduced in your post): whatever amount is "required" this year. In doing so, you tacitly accept and endorse the need for "alarming language" – you're effectively saying that reducing it to the level of the "least alarming language" possible is all your team can be asked to do, and enough to fulfil their ethical responsibilities.
This isn't right. You are unmoored from the other end of the equation, i.e. to what extent the fundraising banners would still be considered consistent with your actual financial situation by an average person in full possession of the facts.
This unmooring is how you end up, year after year, based on your A/B testing, with messages that prominently paint a picture of Wikipedia being threatened. These messages have been about "keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free", impressing on people the need to make "a donation this Sunday" so the WMF can "continue to protect Wikipedia's independence", and so on. They work not because donors share your ideas about the ever more comprehensive and costly global mission the WMF has set itself, but because they love Wikipedia and would not like to see it fail or disappear. It's as simple as that.
You also elided the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation, in the 2020/2021 financial year alone, took at least $65M, but perhaps as much as $85M more from donors than its own budget "required":
– Actual takings were $157M+ for the Foundation[1] and $40M? for the Endowment (the Endowment stood at $62.9M on July 1 2020[2] and has now exceeded $100M, as we've just been told; the June 30 2021 year-end figure is still not available, as you still haven't published the fourth-quarter tuning session deck).
– Revenue targets at the beginning of the financial year were $108M for the Foundation and $5M for the Endowment.[3]
Clearly, the budgeted amounts could have been taken with "less alarming" language.
I have asked before who sets these "required" amounts, and who directs staff to continue fundraising well after publicised targets are met. I have not received a straight answer. Where, please, does the buck, literally, stop? Who has the final word?
And are Advancement managers' salaries, which appear to have a startling upward mobility (just like the CEO salary in the past five years), indeed tied to increases in Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Endowment and Wikimedia Enterprise revenue? Do you use such incentives?
I would really appreciate it if you could be open about these questions. I don't think they are unreasonable questions to ask a donor-funded organisation that regularly takes public pride in its transparency.
Elsewhere in your post you speak eloquently about the urgency of your global mission. I would encourage you to base your fundraising messages around this vision. Then people will know what you want the money for, and the funds will be used the way donors imagined they would.
I assure you that to many people's minds this is not currently the case. This tweet had over 1,750 likes and nearly 1,000 retweets, at a time when there were no English fundraising banners on display:
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1399236909495328771
It speaks to this.
The fundraising is part of a pattern. Throughout WMF history, there have been ethical lapses and stark management failures at the Foundation and its subsidiaries. This is an opinion shared, I believe, even by a good number of WMF staff.
Off the top of my head, I would count among such lapses:
– Jimbo's early indiscretions, – the Stanton Foundation/Belfer Center affair and the handover of the Kazakh Wikipedia to a repressive regime, – Gibraltarpedia, – ignoring the fascist takeover of the Croatian Wikipedia, – the obfuscation and lies about the Knowledge Engine and James Heilman's sacking, – the appointment of Arnnon Geshuri to the board, – the rebranding effort, – Framgate, – unpaid Indian volunteers being asked to create Wikimedia content according to search engine query lists supplied by Google, – the lack of transparency surrounding the Knowledge Equity Fund, and – the now infamous German parliamentarian project.
To be honest, and please don't take this as a figure of speech, this history does not inspire me with confidence. What is striking is that many of these failures and eventually uncovered secrets were probably the result of good intentions. The way to hell is paved with them, people say. As long as the fundraising carries on unchanged, I will feel that there has really been no improvement, and the organisation's ethics have not matured enough to be up to its job.
Other aspects that concern me are how the WMF often appears like a sidekick to Big Tech, whose intentions for the global south are entirely self-serving and, if realised, will increase rather than diminish inequality. No one should be under any illusions about that, and indeed you touch upon this in some of the dystopian scenarios you linked to in your post. (It was really great to read about a joint WMF project with DuckDuckGo the other day, surely a much more congenial bedfellow than Google, Amazon or Facebook.)
Then there is the somewhat opaque influence that consultants with close ties to the Clintons and the Council on Foreign Relations[4] have had on long-term strategy. Just more openness about these links would help actually. So, yes, maybe just naming things is a help.
Again, thanks for your post.
Regards, Andreas
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-ter... [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=20... [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 9:51 PM Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
It's not only that.
When the WMF uses its funds to actively act against its volunteer community (ACTRIAL, MEDIAVIEWER, FRAMBAN, and more lately UCOC), that raises issues beyond disgust. The projects we spent our time building are now actively being used to do things we don't want to do. It is not just that WMF is using its money on frivolous or useless projects (though that would be a problem), it is that WMF is using its funds from what we built to actively punch us in the face and act against us.
If WMF were using its funds to take trips out to Barbados for no reason, well--we'd probably still be irritated about that. But use our funds to actively stomp on our volunteer community, and ignore what they say?
Well that's not just disgust. That's anger, and that's what you're seeing.
Regards,
Todd Allen
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
I think perhaps you attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Cheers,
Peter
From: Todd Allen [mailto:toddmallen@gmail.com] Sent: 28 September 2021 10:01 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Marketing Mail] [Wikimedia-l] Re: About raising money
It's not only that.
When the WMF uses its funds to actively act against its volunteer community (ACTRIAL, MEDIAVIEWER, FRAMBAN, and more lately UCOC), that raises issues beyond disgust. The projects we spent our time building are now actively being used to do things we don't want to do. It is not just that WMF is using its money on frivolous or useless projects (though that would be a problem), it is that WMF is using its funds from what we built to actively punch us in the face and act against us.
If WMF were using its funds to take trips out to Barbados for no reason, well--we'd probably still be irritated about that. But use our funds to actively stomp on our volunteer community, and ignore what they say?
Well that's not just disgust. That's anger, and that's what you're seeing.
Regards,
Todd Allen
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
* the moral superiority of financial disinterest
* outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
* improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem...
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
UCOC must surely be ruled out of this list. The reasons behind its creations are indisputable.
Anyway donations are collected because of volunteers' work, but should be mainly bound to readers' (donors') will.
Vito
Il giorno mar 28 set 2021 alle ore 10:19 Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com ha scritto:
It's not only that.
When the WMF uses its funds to actively act against its volunteer community (ACTRIAL, MEDIAVIEWER, FRAMBAN, and more lately UCOC), that raises issues beyond disgust. The projects we spent our time building are now actively being used to do things we don't want to do. It is not just that WMF is using its money on frivolous or useless projects (though that would be a problem), it is that WMF is using its funds from what we built to actively punch us in the face and act against us.
If WMF were using its funds to take trips out to Barbados for no reason, well--we'd probably still be irritated about that. But use our funds to actively stomp on our volunteer community, and ignore what they say?
Well that's not just disgust. That's anger, and that's what you're seeing.
Regards,
Todd Allen
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
If UCOC is such a great idea, it should be made opt-in, or at least opt-out. After all, if it's so brilliant, surely everyone will want it anyway, right?
It is the imposition of "You will get this whether you like it or not" which is the problem.
Todd
On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 4:39 AM Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
UCOC must surely be ruled out of this list. The reasons behind its creations are indisputable.
Anyway donations are collected because of volunteers' work, but should be mainly bound to readers' (donors') will.
Vito
Il giorno mar 28 set 2021 alle ore 10:19 Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com ha scritto:
It's not only that.
When the WMF uses its funds to actively act against its volunteer community (ACTRIAL, MEDIAVIEWER, FRAMBAN, and more lately UCOC), that raises issues beyond disgust. The projects we spent our time building are now actively being used to do things we don't want to do. It is not just that WMF is using its money on frivolous or useless projects (though that would be a problem), it is that WMF is using its funds from what we built to actively punch us in the face and act against us.
If WMF were using its funds to take trips out to Barbados for no reason, well--we'd probably still be irritated about that. But use our funds to actively stomp on our volunteer community, and ignore what they say?
Well that's not just disgust. That's anger, and that's what you're seeing.
Regards,
Todd Allen
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Hr.wiki case proves that some very basic things must be enforced, anyway.
Vito
Il giorno mar 28 set 2021 alle ore 23:29 Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com ha scritto:
If UCOC is such a great idea, it should be made opt-in, or at least opt-out. After all, if it's so brilliant, surely everyone will want it anyway, right?
It is the imposition of "You will get this whether you like it or not" which is the problem.
Todd
On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 4:39 AM Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
UCOC must surely be ruled out of this list. The reasons behind its creations are indisputable.
Anyway donations are collected because of volunteers' work, but should be mainly bound to readers' (donors') will.
Vito
Il giorno mar 28 set 2021 alle ore 10:19 Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com ha scritto:
It's not only that.
When the WMF uses its funds to actively act against its volunteer community (ACTRIAL, MEDIAVIEWER, FRAMBAN, and more lately UCOC), that raises issues beyond disgust. The projects we spent our time building are now actively being used to do things we don't want to do. It is not just that WMF is using its money on frivolous or useless projects (though that would be a problem), it is that WMF is using its funds from what we built to actively punch us in the face and act against us.
If WMF were using its funds to take trips out to Barbados for no reason, well--we'd probably still be irritated about that. But use our funds to actively stomp on our volunteer community, and ignore what they say?
Well that's not just disgust. That's anger, and that's what you're seeing.
Regards,
Todd Allen
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM Guillaume Paumier < gpaumier@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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I think zh.wiki adds that into the list of reasons why UCoC should be enforced.
Of course I hope the foundation can be as transparent as possible.
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 06:35, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hr.wiki case proves that some very basic things must be enforced, anyway.
Vito
Il giorno mar 28 set 2021 alle ore 23:29 Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com ha scritto:
If UCOC is such a great idea, it should be made opt-in, or at least opt-out. After all, if it's so brilliant, surely everyone will want it anyway, right?
It is the imposition of "You will get this whether you like it or not" which is the problem.
Todd
On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 4:39 AM Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
UCOC must surely be ruled out of this list. The reasons behind its creations are indisputable.
Anyway donations are collected because of volunteers' work, but should be mainly bound to readers' (donors') will.
Vito
Il giorno mar 28 set 2021 alle ore 10:19 Todd Allen < toddmallen@gmail.com> ha scritto:
It's not only that.
When the WMF uses its funds to actively act against its volunteer community (ACTRIAL, MEDIAVIEWER, FRAMBAN, and more lately UCOC), that raises issues beyond disgust. The projects we spent our time building are now actively being used to do things we don't want to do. It is not just that WMF is using its money on frivolous or useless projects (though that would be a problem), it is that WMF is using its funds from what we built to actively punch us in the face and act against us.
If WMF were using its funds to take trips out to Barbados for no reason, well--we'd probably still be irritated about that. But use our funds to actively stomp on our volunteer community, and ignore what they say?
Well that's not just disgust. That's anger, and that's what you're seeing.
Regards,
Todd Allen
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM Guillaume Paumier < gpaumier@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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There is no point raising more money than we can usefully spend. There was presented in this thread a very appropriate list of expensive things we could usefully do ,but the reason we don’t do them isn’t lack of money —because we have so much of what we raise unspent. We either don’t have the ability to organise to do the work or can’t find the people or would rather accumulate money than use it.
On Sep 28, 2021, at 6:39 AM, Vi to vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
UCOC must surely be ruled out of this list. The reasons behind its creations are indisputable.
Anyway donations are collected because of volunteers' work, but should be mainly bound to readers' (donors') will.
Vito
Il giorno mar 28 set 2021 alle ore 10:19 Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com ha scritto: It's not only that.
When the WMF uses its funds to actively act against its volunteer community (ACTRIAL, MEDIAVIEWER, FRAMBAN, and more lately UCOC), that raises issues beyond disgust. The projects we spent our time building are now actively being used to do things we don't want to do. It is not just that WMF is using its money on frivolous or useless projects (though that would be a problem), it is that WMF is using its funds from what we built to actively punch us in the face and act against us.
If WMF were using its funds to take trips out to Barbados for no reason, well--we'd probably still be irritated about that. But use our funds to actively stomp on our volunteer community, and ignore what they say?
Well that's not just disgust. That's anger, and that's what you're seeing.
Regards,
Todd Allen
On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi,
(Sending this as a personal opinion, albeit one informed by my work on revenue strategy in the past few years.)
Discussions about fundraising in the Wikimedia movement often involve the same arguments over time. My theory, after observing and participating in those discussions for 15 years, is the following.
Objections to Wikimedia fundraising (and, more broadly, revenue generation) tend to stem from three main sources:
- the moral superiority of financial disinterest
- outlandish budgets and fundraising goals
- improper means used to raise money.
The first one is relatively simple. A significant number of us find any relationship between money and free knowledge viscerally disgusting. We've been editing as volunteers for years, devoting our free time to the advancement of humankind through knowledge. We have done so through countless acts of selflessness. Our financial disinterest is inextricably woven into our identity as Wikimedians. The Foundation should only raise the minimum funds required to "keep the lights on." Anything more is an attempt to profit from our free labor, and that's revolting.
This is not unlike discussions of business models in the libre software community; we can also see those arguments surface in discussions around paid editing. I will leave the moral argument aside, because little can be done to change individual identities and moral judgments of money. But let's name them explicitly, in hopes that we can separate them from more fact-based arguments, if we are willing and able.
The second point of contention is how much we raise. To those of us who remember the early years ("May we ask y'all to chip in a few dollars so we can buy our second server?!"), raising $150+ million a year these days seems extravagant, and probably always will. The much smaller budgets from our past act as cognitive anchors, [1] and in comparison recent budgets appear greedily outsized. Instead of being outraged by the growth of the budget, we should instead ask ourselves how much money we really need.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
And the fact is that, as a movement, we need as much money as we can get to advance our mission. Our vision is so ambitious and expansive that it is also bound to be inevitably expensive. This is something that the Board understood: shortly after endorsing the Strategic Direction in 2017, they directed the Foundation to prepare to raise more funds than usual, to be able to move towards our collective vision for 2030. [2] My fellow members of the working group on Revenue Streams for movement strategy also understood the scope of the movement's ambitions: the first guiding question for our work was how to "maximize revenue for the movement". [3]
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Novem... [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
People who attended the meeting of strategy working groups in Berlin in early 2018 might remember a thought exercise led by the Revenue Streams group. In it, we estimated that coming closer to our vision would probably require an annual budget for the movement in the vicinity of a billion dollars. There is nothing intrinsically outrageous about that amount, as long as the money advances the mission efficiently and equitably. The International Committee of the Red Cross had a global budget of $1.6 billion in 2016.
And that's the heart of the argument about fundraising goals; it's less about how much we raise, and more about what we spend it on. Moral argument aside, the problem is rarely that the movement is raising too much money, but rather that people feel that they're not getting their fair share of it, whether in cash, attention, support, or something else. At the Wikimedia Conference in 2018, literally no one wanted to talk about revenue; very few people wanted to be part of the working group. What people were arguing over was whom the money should go to, and who should decide its allocation. If volunteer contributors felt that they were properly supported with features, tools, and programs, and if affiliates felt that they had access to the resources they needed to grow their efforts and impact, I venture that we would all complain a lot less about the size of our fundraising goals.
This brings us to the problem of impact and accountability. The Wikimedia Foundation is in the very privileged position of having very little individual accountability to its donors: the choice of the "small-dollar donor model," in which an enormous number of people donate very small amounts of money, makes our financial model extremely robust. But it also dilutes the accountability to each individual donor.
Nonprofits usually have a much smaller donor base; they need to convince their donors that their money is put to good use, and that it has the maximum impact in service of the organization's mission ("the best bang for the buck"). But we are an unusual nonprofit with the ability to reach billions of people, and those numbers work in our favor. This is also why disintermediation (meaning third parties like search engines and smart assistants providing Wikimedia content directly to people, without sending them to our sites) is such a risk to the model we have relied on for most of our existence.
For the most part, and leaving aside major donors, people support us because we provide them with utility, and they want to give something back in return. This dynamic frees us from having to woo and please donors, and enables us to instead work on what we think advances our mission the most. But it also makes it tempting to assume our impact without really ever having to prove it. Which means that the impact of movement funds ends up being a matter of personal interpretation, and we have no shortage of variety when it comes to individual opinions.
Without direct accountability from donors, who else is left to hold the movement (and the Foundation) accountable for the impact of our spending? The Board would be an obvious candidate, but Trustees have historically encouraged us to spend more, not less. The Global Council might think differently, but it's still a long way away. And as much as volunteer communities may demand accountability, the truth is that without mechanisms to enforce it, their competing claims of authority are just that: claims.
Discussions on this mailing list and elsewhere are a classic example of the concept of voice, as formalized by Albert Hirschman in his work on responses to decline in organizations. [4] We are unhappy with a decision but reluctant to simply exit the group, either because we don't see an alternative, or because of the sunk costs of emotional investment, or because of the sense of identity that comes with belonging to the group, or because ultimately we can live with the decision. And so, with exit not available as an option, we use our voice instead, even though it has proved to only have a very limited effect on making different decisions. (And also because we *do* love to argue.)
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
Of course, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where fundraising "too much" could lead us to making bad decisions. Indeed, you don't even need to imagine it: I wrote just that scenario a few years ago. [5] But that's a matter of how we spend, not how much we raise. Another reason for caution is that excessive fundraising might conceivably jeopardize our future ability to raise funds (the "crying wolf" argument). But it's also likely that sources of revenue that are available to us today might not be available to us in the future.
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Futures#2031:_Success_...
So now we're left with how we raise money, and the common complaints about the size, frequency, and tone of fundraising banners. The argument is that fundraising messages use unduly alarmist language, and that donors are therefore misled into thinking that Wikimedia is facing imminent danger. I do believe that not enough credit is given to the people who craft those messages in banners and emails. These people care an extraordinary amount about doing the "right thing." They have literally spent years doing A/B tests to soften the tone and figure out the least alarming language possible to raise the required amounts. All that while enduring constant criticism of their work. They are heroes.
But beyond that, there is also a real sense of urgency that the most vocal of us here generally do not sense. There are very real threats to our mission, much closer in time than we imagine. [5] Assuming that, just because we've been around and successful for 20 years, we'll be around and just as successful for the next 20, is wishful thinking underpinned by normalcy bias. [6]
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Revenue_strategy/Summary [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
There's a fine line between thriftiness and privation, and in today's fast-changing world, denying ourselves the resources we need is harmful to our mission. As emijrp would argue, there is a deadline, [7] especially if we look beyond privileged communities and we strive to make up for historical oppression. The modesty of financial ambitions reflects a certain privilege and ignores the vast resources required to actually focus on communities left out by structures of power and privilege. If we are to live up to our commitment to epistemic justice, we must give ourselves the financial means to do so. The longer the injustice persists, the more compounding harm is done. Our work *is* urgent, even if it's not the same urgency that drives donors.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_a_deadline
In a nutshell: by all means, let's better assess our impact, instead of just assuming it. And let's discuss accountability mechanisms. But let's also be realistic about the resources required for a mission as broad as ours. And let's understand both the urgency of our endeavor, and the financial demands of our collective promise of Knowledge Equity. Misery is no more virtuous than opulence if wealth is distributed equitably to advance our mission.
-- Guillaume Paumier (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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