Re Tom's suggestion that we have an RFC on meta to discuss what we are and
aren't prepared to do when fundraising; We already have a discussion at
Meta
.
Funny thing is that debate has almost been the mirror of here with the
Foundation proposing things like "Fundraising in line with our mission and
values: Our fundraising activities should aim to raise a movement budget
using only methods that strengthen our mission and values and communicate
them to all of our users and the world" and even "All Wikimedia fundraising
activities should be truthful with prospective donors."
May I suggest that we revive that overly quiet discussion?
WSC
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2012 17:28:39 +0000
From: Tom Morris <tom(a)tommorris.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Blink tag jokes are now obsolete.
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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<CAAQB2S-NYpP7AtTk8Aq6Q2o9bgc3HcFk5+Hxyya4b1OSSMBiUA(a)mail.gmail.com
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On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 14:50, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Fabricating a sense of urgency that donations are immediately
> necessary at the end of the campaign to keep the projects operational
> and freely available (ie, "Please help Wikipedia pay its bills in
> 2012" [1], "Last day to make a tax-deductible contribution to keep
> Wikipedia free in 2012" [2], etc) is as unethical now as it was in
> last year's campaign ("Please donate to keep Wikipedia free" in the
> banner you linked to [3], etc).
> This discussion about blinking
banners might seem trivial but it
> serves as a very obvious reminder, in style now as well as substance,
> of the disjoint between the fundraising team's work and the norms and
> ethos of the community and projects.
Would it be an idea to have some kind of RfC or something like that on
Meta where community members could come up with a list of things we
roughly agree are the limits for fundraising.
I think the fundraising team have done really well, but there have
been a few things we really need to fix for next year, starting with
the limits that the community are comfortable with regarding banner
length, tone, graphical style etc.
The other thing I think we really need to fix before next year is
making clear to OTRS volunteers exactly what the right channels and
actions are to handle fundraiser-related emails. And maybe it would be
useful if we could go through fundraiser-related emails in OTRS and
somehow tag the feedback into categories (perhaps on OTRS Wiki) and
then give back to the community some statistics about how many
complaints and emails we have had about fundraising and what the
nature of those complaints and emails are so the Foundation and
community can better tune the banners and fundraising for next year.
On a subjective level, there's lots of things I've seen in e-mail from
people: they would like to buy a t-shirt rather than donate (the
Foundation really need to sort out merchandise - other similar
non-profits like Mozilla Foundation, Creative Commons and so on have
really nailed merchandise), they want SMS donations in various
European countries, they want it so that if they've donated it removes
the banner for the rest of the fundraiser.
--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>