On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 12:04 AM, Mark delirium@hackish.org wrote:

Of course, I'm not the best advocate in such situations, because I'm a bit wary of the direction things are going myself, so tend to give a sort of sheepish shrug in reply, and an explanation that a substantial portion of the money (though perhaps no longer the majority) *does* go to some of the core servers-and-software operations. I do worry things are becoming a bit like a Big Nonprofit, though, even verging onto some NGO ambitions, while not being 100% clear to the outside world that that's the direction we're going--- the outside world still thinks we're struggling to raise money to pay for bandwidth and colo space. I would guess the same is true of many Wikipedians as well; I only recently realized how much the Foundation has grown in the past 3 years, without, as far as I can tell, it ever being an explicit decision to expand scope... just sort of happened. Not entirely comfortable with it, but eh, I guess that's how things go, and it *does* at least still keep the lights on at *.wikipedia.org, which is what I care about.

-Mark

Now this is a point that I can agree with on the pleas for funding, and I'm pleased to see it raised.

Coming from the community to work in the professional fundraising environment of last year's drive, I have no problems defending the banner usage and testing methods having learned what it takes for our Foundation to raise money through its largest base: the casual user with no clue of the Foundation's purpose. While donations go to support the tech and support of keeping projects alive, I can agree that we aren't really conveying the Foundation's goal of spreading the sum of all human knowledge, for free, around the world. A vast amount of expense is not spent on tech support to achieve this mission, so it would be nice to start turning the public eye toward this goal and not just keeping the English Wikipedia online.

This is a PR process, though, and it takes chapters and volunteers as well as the Foundation to move this focus. Considering how young Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation are and how much we've achieved, I'm optimistic that shifting perception will take years but will work with chapter building, university programs, and global outreach.