Hello!
We are coming up to that time of year again with the launch of our English fundraiser. Our E-mail campaign is already underway and in a little under three weeks time, the banner campaign will launch in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland on Giving Tuesday [1], November 29, 2016. We will continue to try and limit the disruption from these banners. Our current expectation is to run our banners for all traffic for the first two weeks. Following that we will some combination of either reducing the amount of traffic being shown banners or the number of times a banner is shown to each user. There will then be one last final push before the end of December. It is my hope to update you after both of these stages with our progress.
It is certainly no secret that it is a very important period for fundraising as our December activities are responsible for raising around 45% of all movement funds. As we reported in last years fundraising report [2] and at the September metrics meeting [3] we continue to adapt to the shift in our readership from desktop to mobile. Over the last two years, our e-mail efforts have played an increasingly major role in our fundraising to counter this shift and will certainly be the case over the next two months.
As always it’s critical for my team to have both broader staff and community input in our fundraising efforts. This year we have been working closely with the Reading product team along with members from both the Reading and Editing design teams to improve our fundraising flow, in particular, trying to keep closer to the new standardised Wikimedia UI guidelines [4]. In addition to this, over the last five months we ran a number of staff and community feedback sessions and we have been very grateful to everyone who took part in those. They proved very successful in providing both a constructive critical eye for existing banner and email appeals as well being a source for a plethora of new ideas.
The plan is that we will run more of these in conjunction with some of our major campaigns throughout the year. This will start with a series of sessions focusing on the English Campaign and would like to invite you all to a number of session being run over the next two weeks:
* Thursday 17th November @ 1300 UTC
* Thursday 17th November @ 1900 UTC
* Monday 21st November @ 0100 UTC
Please do sign up and find out more information [5]. Participation will be via IRC, Youtube live & via Google Hangout for ease of participation.
As always if you have ideas and are not able to participate in these sessions you can leave feedback on our Fundraising Ideas page where you can see links to our current fundraising banners and current appeal text [5]. Over the last year: use of Phabricator [6] for bug reporting; event and related content specific banners; improving the ease with which to dismiss banners; numerous improvements to the language used; and country specific images all came about from suggestions made on that page. So please do keep the ideas coming and I would like to thank you all in advance both for your input into the campaigns but more importantly the awesome work in building one of the largest sources of freely accessible knowledge in human history.
I look forward to working with you all in the coming weeks.
Many Thanks
Joseph Seddon wrote:
We are coming up to that time of year again with the launch of our English fundraiser. Our E-mail campaign is already underway and in a little under three weeks time, the banner campaign will launch in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland on Giving Tuesday [1], November 29, 2016. We will continue to try and limit the disruption from these banners. Our current expectation is to run our banners for all traffic for the first two weeks. Following that we will some combination of either reducing the amount of traffic being shown banners or the number of times a banner is shown to each user.
Thanks for this e-mail. I have a number of questions. I can post these on a talk page or elsewhere if that's better. For now, they're below.
Is there a place to see what the 2016 advertisements will look like and how they will behave? Some of the strongest objections in past years have come from the fact that these ads have stopped being 1-inch banners on desktop and instead consume the entire screen. Readers can get confused and think that they need to pay in order to read Wikipedia, when this is obviously not the case. When an advertisement consumes the whole viewing area, obfuscating the page content and demanding money, I think it's reasonable to assume that some of our millions of readers will mistake the ad for ransomware.
Where can the upcoming ad creatives be seen? I'd like to know if they'll be explicit about being able to simply dismiss the ad.
How long will dismissing the ad be effective for? Two weeks? Longer?
Will the ads be reasonable in size and in content? The other recurring criticism for these ads has been deceptive and misleading text. Sometimes we've even been simply wrong. I'd like to avoid any repeats of that.
And finally, as a show of good will and good faith to our editors, in past years we have not targeted these ads at logged-in users. Will logged-in users be targeted for ads in this upcoming fund-raising drive?
MZMcBride
Hey MZ,
So firstly you can see all of our standard banners here [1]. Those links will always contain our most current control banner designs and the control text will be updated regularly through the English campaigns. We are working to limit the number of banners each reader sees and it is important to note that readers will only see the large banner once. On the large banner, the close button is accompanied with explicit text. The smaller banner doesn’t have the text because of the more limited real estate but has an “X” around 45% large. Dismissing the banner or using the remind me later function will hide the banner for a period of 1 week.
We have worked hard over the years to rephrase many of the areas of criticism relating to our appeals taking into account both staff and community feedback. The most recent such change was a small edit from “small non-profit” to “non-profit”. I’ll be keeping that page up to date with the changes to our copy through the campaign. We are working with the Communications team on our new messaging for banners and emails not just for new ideas but to ensure it remains consistent with overall WMF messaging. The WMF Legal department also reviews all fundraising messages to ensure accuracy.
Finally, I foresee absolutely no reason for us to change our policy of not showing fundraising banners to logged in users and will definitely maintain this for the English campaign.
I hope that helps
Seddon
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2016-17_Fundraising_ideas#Curren...
On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 12:59 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Joseph Seddon wrote:
We are coming up to that time of year again with the launch of our English fundraiser. Our E-mail campaign is already underway and in a little under three weeks time, the banner campaign will launch in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland on Giving Tuesday [1], November 29, 2016. We will continue to try and limit the disruption from these banners. Our current expectation is to run our banners for all traffic for the first two weeks. Following that we will some combination of either reducing the amount of traffic being shown banners or the number of times a banner is shown to each user.
Thanks for this e-mail. I have a number of questions. I can post these on a talk page or elsewhere if that's better. For now, they're below.
Is there a place to see what the 2016 advertisements will look like and how they will behave? Some of the strongest objections in past years have come from the fact that these ads have stopped being 1-inch banners on desktop and instead consume the entire screen. Readers can get confused and think that they need to pay in order to read Wikipedia, when this is obviously not the case. When an advertisement consumes the whole viewing area, obfuscating the page content and demanding money, I think it's reasonable to assume that some of our millions of readers will mistake the ad for ransomware.
Where can the upcoming ad creatives be seen? I'd like to know if they'll be explicit about being able to simply dismiss the ad.
How long will dismissing the ad be effective for? Two weeks? Longer?
Will the ads be reasonable in size and in content? The other recurring criticism for these ads has been deceptive and misleading text. Sometimes we've even been simply wrong. I'd like to avoid any repeats of that.
And finally, as a show of good will and good faith to our editors, in past years we have not targeted these ads at logged-in users. Will logged-in users be targeted for ads in this upcoming fund-raising drive?
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Joseph Seddon wrote:
So firstly you can see all of our standard banners here [1]. Those links will always contain our most current control banner designs and the control text will be updated regularly through the English campaigns. We are working to limit the number of banners each reader sees and it is important to note that readers will only see the large banner once. On the large banner, the close button is accompanied with explicit text. The smaller banner doesn’t have the text because of the more limited real estate but has an “X” around 45% large. Dismissing the banner or using the remind me later function will hide the banner for a period of 1 week.
We have worked hard over the years to rephrase many of the areas of criticism relating to our appeals taking into account both staff and community feedback. The most recent such change was a small edit from “small non-profit” to “non-profit”. I’ll be keeping that page up to date with the changes to our copy through the campaign. We are working with the Communications team on our new messaging for banners and emails not just for new ideas but to ensure it remains consistent with overall WMF messaging. The WMF Legal department also reviews all fundraising messages to ensure accuracy.
Finally, I foresee absolutely no reason for us to change our policy of not showing fundraising banners to logged in users and will definitely maintain this for the English campaign.
This was an excellent reply and read. Thank you!
MZMcBride
Hey all!
I wanted to send a quick reminder that our English language fundraiser is launching tomorrow afternoon (29th Nov, ~1300-1500 UTC).
A few other reminders: * Have an idea? Leave it here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising /2016-17_Fundraising_ideas * Want to see the current control banner messaging and designs?: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2016-17_Fundraising_ideas#Curren... * Need to report a bug or technical issue with a banner or payments page? Create a Phabricator ticket - https://phabricator. wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?template=118862 * Here is also the ever present fundraising IRC channel to raise urgent issues: #wikimedia-fundraising ( http://webchat.freenode.net?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4 http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4 ) * You can also email me directly with feedback, ideas or issues ( seddon@wikimedia.org)
Finally we didn't get any interest in our fundraising feedback and design sessions last week and the week before so they were put on hold, however if there are individuals who are interested in taking part in such a session, one on one, then reach out to me and I would be happy to arrange a time with you.
Many thanks
Seddon
On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 12:57 AM, Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello!
We are coming up to that time of year again with the launch of our English fundraiser. Our E-mail campaign is already underway and in a little under three weeks time, the banner campaign will launch in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland on Giving Tuesday [1], November 29, 2016. We will continue to try and limit the disruption from these banners. Our current expectation is to run our banners for all traffic for the first two weeks. Following that we will some combination of either reducing the amount of traffic being shown banners or the number of times a banner is shown to each user. There will then be one last final push before the end of December. It is my hope to update you after both of these stages with our progress.
It is certainly no secret that it is a very important period for fundraising as our December activities are responsible for raising around 45% of all movement funds. As we reported in last years fundraising report [2] and at the September metrics meeting [3] we continue to adapt to the shift in our readership from desktop to mobile. Over the last two years, our e-mail efforts have played an increasingly major role in our fundraising to counter this shift and will certainly be the case over the next two months.
As always it’s critical for my team to have both broader staff and community input in our fundraising efforts. This year we have been working closely with the Reading product team along with members from both the Reading and Editing design teams to improve our fundraising flow, in particular, trying to keep closer to the new standardised Wikimedia UI guidelines [4]. In addition to this, over the last five months we ran a number of staff and community feedback sessions and we have been very grateful to everyone who took part in those. They proved very successful in providing both a constructive critical eye for existing banner and email appeals as well being a source for a plethora of new ideas.
The plan is that we will run more of these in conjunction with some of our major campaigns throughout the year. This will start with a series of sessions focusing on the English Campaign and would like to invite you all to a number of session being run over the next two weeks:
Thursday 17th November @ 1300 UTC
Thursday 17th November @ 1900 UTC
Monday 21st November @ 0100 UTC
Please do sign up and find out more information [5]. Participation will be via IRC, Youtube live & via Google Hangout for ease of participation.
As always if you have ideas and are not able to participate in these sessions you can leave feedback on our Fundraising Ideas page where you can see links to our current fundraising banners and current appeal text [5]. Over the last year: use of Phabricator [6] for bug reporting; event and related content specific banners; improving the ease with which to dismiss banners; numerous improvements to the language used; and country specific images all came about from suggestions made on that page. So please do keep the ideas coming and I would like to thank you all in advance both for your input into the campaigns but more importantly the awesome work in building one of the largest sources of freely accessible knowledge in human history.
I look forward to working with you all in the coming weeks.
Many Thanks
-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation*
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giving_Tuesday
[2] 2015-2016 WMF Fundraising Report:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2015-2016_Fundraising_Report
[3] September 2016 Metrics Meeting Presentation:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Septembe r_2016_Monthly_Metrics_Meeting.pdf
[4] Wikimedia Design Guide
Color palettes https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/M82
Collection of widgets: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/M101
Demo widgets in OOjs UI: https://doc.wikimedia.org/oojs -ui/master/demos/#widgets-mediawiki-ltr
[5] To sign up for a feedback session -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Community_Feedba ck_Series_2#Session_Details
[6] To suggest new banners ideas visit the test ideas meta page -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2016-17_Fundraising_ideas
[7] To file a bug report or technical issue, please create a phabricator Ticket -
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?template=118862
On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Finally we didn't get any interest in our fundraising feedback and design sessions last week and the week before so they were put on hold, however if there are individuals who are interested in taking part in such a session, one on one, then reach out to me and I would be happy to arrange a time with you.
Often, when an organization needs to get the sense of a stakeholder group, they work with a market research firm, which would have expertise in getting the needed feedback. It's common for that research to compensate those participating.
I've participated in such studies; and while some of them evaluate common products like refrigerators or cell phones, others are quite specialized. An interesting example: I actually participated in one that was modeled after a jury trial. The parties in an actual trial ran a process, which included four juries of (if I recall correctly) 11 people each. We heard expert testimony and lawyer arguments for two days before being sequestered for deliberation; our findings were used to determine the settlement in the case.
The kind of input the WMF seeks is fairly sophisticated. There are not many people with the depth of knowledge of the Wikimedia movement to give worthwhile input, and to be frank, I would imagine few of them, like me, would be reluctant to volunteer time for the kind of session you suggest.
Has the WMF considered seeking the assistance of an experienced market research firm, and/or compensating experts, to get the kind of input you desire?
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
So we have definitely worked with market research companies, mostly to help us get a better understanding of our audience rather than directly sourcing design input. We worked with Lake Research Partners [1], on our English Reader Survey in 2014-15 [2] and our Japan Reader Survey in 2015-2016 [3]. And we may consider commissioning similar research in other geographies but I don't believe we haven't taken any decision about future work at the moment.
The purpose of the sessions is try and do what we can to ensure that the messaging we use is as representative of the community as we can make it whilst also having a successful fundraiser. To do that we need to be able to offer as many possibilities to volunteers to be able to contribute to the Fundraiser, and this touches on many of the issues in Lodewijk's op-ed in the Signpost over the weekend (which I intend to provide a fuller response to soon).
Although we didn't run the second series in English we are still planning on running sessions for input in other languages next year. Most likely in Dutch and in Swedish where we've already gauged some early interest, and potentially other languages too if there is the desire for it.
We ran a successful couple of test sessions back in September with community members and with staff earlier in year. They produced some fantastic input into our processes with both a critique of our banners as well as being a source new ideas. These sorts of sessions help guide us towards the areas that are important to our communities, allowing us to focus our efforts on dealing with issues raised by the community such as getting rid of the ominous black banners, not describing ourselves as a small non-profit and doing our best to find alternatives to the infamous coffee cup line that has been present in our appeals for th. Outside experts can't provide that same touch we are looking for that members of the movement, staff or community can provide.
This particular way of garnering input wasn't successful at this moment in time but there will be other opportunities but it's not the only way and I am definitely hopeful to find other methods for the wider community to be able to get involved in the campaign.
Plus.... experts gave us this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-11-16/Fundra...
Regards Seddon
[1 http://www.lakeresearch.com/] [2 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c2/Wikimedia_Survey_2014... ] [3 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/ef/Report.WikimediaJapan... ]
On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 10:36 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Finally we didn't get any interest in our fundraising feedback and design sessions last week and the week before so they were put on hold, however
if
there are individuals who are interested in taking part in such a
session,
one on one, then reach out to me and I would be happy to arrange a time with you.
Often, when an organization needs to get the sense of a stakeholder group, they work with a market research firm, which would have expertise in getting the needed feedback. It's common for that research to compensate those participating.
I've participated in such studies; and while some of them evaluate common products like refrigerators or cell phones, others are quite specialized. An interesting example: I actually participated in one that was modeled after a jury trial. The parties in an actual trial ran a process, which included four juries of (if I recall correctly) 11 people each. We heard expert testimony and lawyer arguments for two days before being sequestered for deliberation; our findings were used to determine the settlement in the case.
The kind of input the WMF seeks is fairly sophisticated. There are not many people with the depth of knowledge of the Wikimedia movement to give worthwhile input, and to be frank, I would imagine few of them, like me, would be reluctant to volunteer time for the kind of session you suggest.
Has the WMF considered seeking the assistance of an experienced market research firm, and/or compensating experts, to get the kind of input you desire?
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Joseph,
Thank you for the timely and thorough response -- good info in there, and I'm especially gratified to know that Lodewijk's op-ed has sparked some worthwhile discussion.
However, I think I may not have been clear enough about what I was suggesting. (And I should note, I understand this is an unusual kind of approach, that might not feel very "wiki-like" to many in our community; but if I'm right in my hunch that it would be an *effective* approach, it might merit further consideration.)
I used the term "expert" to refer to two different kinds of efforts, which I think made my point hard to follow. This is what I suggest:
* Hire a service provider that is *expert at learning from a certain important audience* * Work with that service provider to properly incentivize and efficiently garner insights from those who are *expert about Wikimedia values* and how they might apply to the fundraiser.
Speaking for myself, I would hesitate to devote an hour or similar of my time to a feedback session run by the WMF. Partly, because I would want to be compensated for that time; and partly, because I have some skepticism about WMF's ability to run a session that would fully absorb the points I might have to make. (I do not suggest that my own perspective is especially important, but rather, that others might share one or both of my concerns. And I mean no disrespect to WMF by saying this; most people and organizations have difficulty fully absorbing feedback, and can benefit from skilled facilitation of some kind.)
Sometimes, a trained professional whose expertise lies in helping organizations understand what their stakeholders think can be very valuable.
In that way, what I suggest is fundamentally different from the expert (Jelly, who is indeed extraordinarily good at what he does, even if that one campaign did not turn out to everybody's liking), and is a fundamentally different kind of engagement, from what you mention at the end of your message.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org wrote:
So we have definitely worked with market research companies, mostly to help us get a better understanding of our audience rather than directly sourcing design input. We worked with Lake Research Partners [1], on our English Reader Survey in 2014-15 [2] and our Japan Reader Survey in 2015-2016 [3]. And we may consider commissioning similar research in other geographies but I don't believe we haven't taken any decision about future work at the moment.
The purpose of the sessions is try and do what we can to ensure that the messaging we use is as representative of the community as we can make it whilst also having a successful fundraiser. To do that we need to be able to offer as many possibilities to volunteers to be able to contribute to the Fundraiser, and this touches on many of the issues in Lodewijk's op-ed in the Signpost over the weekend (which I intend to provide a fuller response to soon).
Although we didn't run the second series in English we are still planning on running sessions for input in other languages next year. Most likely in Dutch and in Swedish where we've already gauged some early interest, and potentially other languages too if there is the desire for it.
We ran a successful couple of test sessions back in September with community members and with staff earlier in year. They produced some fantastic input into our processes with both a critique of our banners as well as being a source new ideas. These sorts of sessions help guide us towards the areas that are important to our communities, allowing us to focus our efforts on dealing with issues raised by the community such as getting rid of the ominous black banners, not describing ourselves as a small non-profit and doing our best to find alternatives to the infamous coffee cup line that has been present in our appeals for th. Outside experts can't provide that same touch we are looking for that members of the movement, staff or community can provide.
This particular way of garnering input wasn't successful at this moment in time but there will be other opportunities but it's not the only way and I am definitely hopeful to find other methods for the wider community to be able to get involved in the campaign.
Plus.... experts gave us this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/ 2009-11-16/Fundraiser
Regards Seddon
[1 http://www.lakeresearch.com/] [2 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c2/ Wikimedia_Survey_2014_English_Fundraiser.pdf ] [3 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/ef/ Report.WikimediaJapan.f.071916.pdf ]
On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 10:36 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Finally we didn't get any interest in our fundraising feedback and
design
sessions last week and the week before so they were put on hold,
however
if
there are individuals who are interested in taking part in such a
session,
one on one, then reach out to me and I would be happy to arrange a time with you.
Often, when an organization needs to get the sense of a stakeholder
group,
they work with a market research firm, which would have expertise in getting the needed feedback. It's common for that research to compensate those participating.
I've participated in such studies; and while some of them evaluate common products like refrigerators or cell phones, others are quite specialized. An interesting example: I actually participated in one that was modeled after a jury trial. The parties in an actual trial ran a process, which included four juries of (if I recall correctly) 11 people each. We heard expert testimony and lawyer arguments for two days before being
sequestered
for deliberation; our findings were used to determine the settlement in
the
case.
The kind of input the WMF seeks is fairly sophisticated. There are not
many
people with the depth of knowledge of the Wikimedia movement to give worthwhile input, and to be frank, I would imagine few of them, like me, would be reluctant to volunteer time for the kind of session you suggest.
Has the WMF considered seeking the assistance of an experienced market research firm, and/or compensating experts, to get the kind of input you desire?
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I think I better understand at where you are coming from.
One of the difficulties of the role stems from the particularly brutal nature of A/B testing. I don't mean that inasmuch as the decisions based on them them can be without care or thought (and I assure you, in the case of fundraising they aren't), but more that when 95 in 100 ideas turn out to be failures it's difficult to make people feel that they are appreciated when the testing machine appears at face value to have a personal vendetta against you. I am personally amazed that my colleagues who have been working in fundraising at this continuously for the last 5, 6 or 7 years still remain as optimistic as they do. Combined with that there are also only so many tests that the data allows you to run without reducing the effectiveness of testing. You have a finite number of opportunities for success, a system that failure is an inherent part of and all done against a background consisting of a budget that up until this year was increasing about 30% every year for the last five years. That's a pretty daunting task to be asked to be a part of and not exactly one that would be enticing to everyone. My colleagues do what they do because they know and believe in the values that are so important to this movement. You can't do that job, with the level of dedication they show, without that.
So part of the reason my position exists, and similarly those of the Community Liasons, is not simply to be the mouthpiece of the department. The role is there to act as a conduit between the teams at the foundation and the communities they serve. Much of that is facilitation of thought, ideas and conversation, ensuring that the team remains grounded and conscious of the community in its work. Certainly in this case the role itself was the embodiment of the team's desire for that to happen. Part of that involves being advocate for the community to colleagues, and particularly when the work is intense, fast paced and there are goal that need to be reached, ensuring they are keeping in touch with their own roots and the values they hold in being part of our movement that despite what many think, are no different to our own values.
Regards Seddon
On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 3:51 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Joseph,
Thank you for the timely and thorough response -- good info in there, and I'm especially gratified to know that Lodewijk's op-ed has sparked some worthwhile discussion.
However, I think I may not have been clear enough about what I was suggesting. (And I should note, I understand this is an unusual kind of approach, that might not feel very "wiki-like" to many in our community; but if I'm right in my hunch that it would be an *effective* approach, it might merit further consideration.)
I used the term "expert" to refer to two different kinds of efforts, which I think made my point hard to follow. This is what I suggest:
- Hire a service provider that is *expert at learning from a certain
important audience*
- Work with that service provider to properly incentivize and efficiently
garner insights from those who are *expert about Wikimedia values* and how they might apply to the fundraiser.
Speaking for myself, I would hesitate to devote an hour or similar of my time to a feedback session run by the WMF. Partly, because I would want to be compensated for that time; and partly, because I have some skepticism about WMF's ability to run a session that would fully absorb the points I might have to make. (I do not suggest that my own perspective is especially important, but rather, that others might share one or both of my concerns. And I mean no disrespect to WMF by saying this; most people and organizations have difficulty fully absorbing feedback, and can benefit from skilled facilitation of some kind.)
Sometimes, a trained professional whose expertise lies in helping organizations understand what their stakeholders think can be very valuable.
In that way, what I suggest is fundamentally different from the expert (Jelly, who is indeed extraordinarily good at what he does, even if that one campaign did not turn out to everybody's liking), and is a fundamentally different kind of engagement, from what you mention at the end of your message.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org wrote:
So we have definitely worked with market research companies, mostly to
help
us get a better understanding of our audience rather than directly
sourcing
design input. We worked with Lake Research Partners [1], on our English Reader Survey in 2014-15 [2] and our Japan Reader Survey in 2015-2016
[3].
And we may consider commissioning similar research in other geographies
but
I don't believe we haven't taken any decision about future work at the moment.
The purpose of the sessions is try and do what we can to ensure that the messaging we use is as representative of the community as we can make it whilst also having a successful fundraiser. To do that we need to be able to offer as many possibilities to volunteers to be able to contribute to the Fundraiser, and this touches on many of the issues in Lodewijk's
op-ed
in the Signpost over the weekend (which I intend to provide a fuller response to soon).
Although we didn't run the second series in English we are still planning on running sessions for input in other languages next year. Most likely
in
Dutch and in Swedish where we've already gauged some early interest, and potentially other languages too if there is the desire for it.
We ran a successful couple of test sessions back in September with community members and with staff earlier in year. They produced some fantastic input into our processes with both a critique of our banners as well as being a source new ideas. These sorts of sessions help guide us towards the areas that are important to our communities, allowing us to focus our efforts on dealing with issues raised by the community such as getting rid of the ominous black banners, not describing ourselves as a small non-profit and doing our best to find alternatives to the infamous coffee cup line that has been present in our appeals for th. Outside experts can't provide that same touch we are looking for that members of the movement, staff or community can provide.
This particular way of garnering input wasn't successful at this moment
in
time but there will be other opportunities but it's not the only way and
I
am definitely hopeful to find other methods for the wider community to be able to get involved in the campaign.
Plus.... experts gave us this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/ 2009-11-16/Fundraiser
Regards Seddon
[1 http://www.lakeresearch.com/] [2 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c2/ Wikimedia_Survey_2014_English_Fundraiser.pdf ] [3 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/e/ef/ Report.WikimediaJapan.f.071916.pdf ]
On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 10:36 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org wrote:
Finally we didn't get any interest in our fundraising feedback and
design
sessions last week and the week before so they were put on hold,
however
if
there are individuals who are interested in taking part in such a
session,
one on one, then reach out to me and I would be happy to arrange a
time
with you.
Often, when an organization needs to get the sense of a stakeholder
group,
they work with a market research firm, which would have expertise in getting the needed feedback. It's common for that research to
compensate
those participating.
I've participated in such studies; and while some of them evaluate
common
products like refrigerators or cell phones, others are quite
specialized.
An interesting example: I actually participated in one that was modeled after a jury trial. The parties in an actual trial ran a process, which included four juries of (if I recall correctly) 11 people each. We
heard
expert testimony and lawyer arguments for two days before being
sequestered
for deliberation; our findings were used to determine the settlement in
the
case.
The kind of input the WMF seeks is fairly sophisticated. There are not
many
people with the depth of knowledge of the Wikimedia movement to give worthwhile input, and to be frank, I would imagine few of them, like
me,
would be reluctant to volunteer time for the kind of session you
suggest.
Has the WMF considered seeking the assistance of an experienced market research firm, and/or compensating experts, to get the kind of input
you
desire?
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 2:51 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
However, I think I may not have been clear enough about what I was suggesting. (And I should note, I understand this is an unusual kind of approach, that might not feel very "wiki-like" to many in our community; but if I'm right in my hunch that it would be an *effective* approach, it might merit further consideration.)
I used the term "expert" to refer to two different kinds of efforts, which I think made my point hard to follow. This is what I suggest:
- Hire a service provider that is *expert at learning from a certain
important audience*
- Work with that service provider to properly incentivize and efficiently
garner insights from those who are *expert about Wikimedia values* and how they might apply to the fundraiser.
Speaking for myself, I would hesitate to devote an hour or similar of my time to a feedback session run by the WMF. Partly, because I would want to be compensated for that time; and partly, because I have some skepticism about WMF's ability to run a session that would fully absorb the points I might have to make.
Also speaking for myself, I think it's better that WMF staff do this kind of work themselves wherever possible - what we gain from direct engagement between staff and volunteers is quite significant, in terms of relationships, understanding and building skills - much more important than what we might lose from poor methodology.
Or another way of putting it, I think Seddon is likely to be better at consulting community members on the fundraiser than a market research consultant would be (as well as being cheaper ;) )
Also personally I don't tend to participate in these sessions as I assume everyone knows my often-repeated views on the importance of recurring gifts, payment channels that suit the donor's expectations, and tax-deductibility. ;)
Chris
why arent these types of session included in events like Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania where there is the capacity personal engagement with individuals and or groups of people
On 2 December 2016 at 18:56, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 2:51 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
However, I think I may not have been clear enough about what I was suggesting. (And I should note, I understand this is an unusual kind of approach, that might not feel very "wiki-like" to many in our community; but if I'm right in my hunch that it would be an *effective* approach, it might merit further consideration.)
I used the term "expert" to refer to two different kinds of efforts,
which
I think made my point hard to follow. This is what I suggest:
- Hire a service provider that is *expert at learning from a certain
important audience*
- Work with that service provider to properly incentivize and efficiently
garner insights from those who are *expert about Wikimedia values* and
how
they might apply to the fundraiser.
Speaking for myself, I would hesitate to devote an hour or similar of my time to a feedback session run by the WMF. Partly, because I would want
to
be compensated for that time; and partly, because I have some skepticism about WMF's ability to run a session that would fully absorb the points I might have to make.
Also speaking for myself, I think it's better that WMF staff do this kind of work themselves wherever possible - what we gain from direct engagement between staff and volunteers is quite significant, in terms of relationships, understanding and building skills - much more important than what we might lose from poor methodology.
Or another way of putting it, I think Seddon is likely to be better at consulting community members on the fundraiser than a market research consultant would be (as well as being cheaper ;) )
Also personally I don't tend to participate in these sessions as I assume everyone knows my often-repeated views on the importance of recurring gifts, payment channels that suit the donor's expectations, and tax-deductibility. ;)
Chris _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Also,
Speaking for myself, I would hesitate to devote an hour or similar of my time to a feedback session run by the WMF. Partly, because I would want to be compensated for that time;
Looking at this list and many many other fora there is scarcely a shortage of free advice from Wikimedians with their thoughts about what the WMF is, isn't, should or shouldn't be doing. Starting to pay for it is probably not a great use of donors' funds ;)
Chris
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org