Oh, apparently this happens *after* you've dismissed it - it COMES BACK. The lucky victim is now asking how to add the fundraiser banner to AdBlock Plus. Well done, guys. (I posted this on my FB and I'm getting "HELL YES WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING THIS YEAR" comments from friends. But of course, that's anecdotal and doesn't show up in metrics.) On 31 December 2014 at 16:33, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 31 December 2014 at 16:37, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote: I just tested in Opera as well. First I got the HUGE OBNOXIOUS BANNER. I dismissed this and went to another page ... and it popped up with ANOTHER BANNER! So, the current code is ignoring people dismissing the banner. Someone has decided this is a good thing to do. Really - some person has *knowingly* coded this, considering this ethical behaviour to put into code and release into the wild. Who was this person? Who signed off on this decision? What is the process by which this decision was made? - d.

On 31 December 2014 at 17:18, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote: It is true that I'm assuming bad faith here entirely on the basis of the previous bad-faith behaviour. - d.

The large banner is set to only show up one time, regardless if a reader closes the banner or not. Most readers are not seeing these banners anymore. The blue banners at the top of the page do show up more than one time. If you close these banners, you won't see anymore banners. If the description above is not working for you, please let us know at donate(a)wikimedia.org so we can follow up. You may be noticing more banners because we have increased the traffic today for a final year-end push. Banners were running at limited traffic the past two weeks. The campaign will end today. Happy New Year! On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 9:41 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote: -- Megan Hernandez Director of Online Fundraising Wikimedia Foundation

David don't get your hopes up. Given the WMF's tendency to shove idiotic, untested, and often unwanted software changes down the throats of users this surprises you at all? Just take a look at how either VE or media viewer where pushed out. It took the introduction of the super protect right to ensure that the WMF's edicts are carried out regardless of how it impacts users or their wishes. On Dec 31, 2014 2:08 PM, "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 31 December 2014 at 18:43, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: I've had the same experience as Andreas - I have had to inactivate the banners multiple times on every computer I use. In fact, I've had banners almost 90% of the time when I go to Wikipedia without logging in, cookies or no cookies. Frankly, I am increasingly of the belief that Fundraising has sounded a klaxon alarm without any concern whatsoever about *next year*. The fact that the editorial community doesn't see the banners on a regular basis anymore is the only thing that has kept the voices of the community quiet; we tend not to complain too much about things we don't see. Frankly, I'd rather the fundraiser fell short of its goals (recognizing that there would be other impacts within the organization) than continue the current trajectory; I've had complaints from just about everyone who knows I edit Wikipedia about the banners, including a handful who said they were "former donors" who decided not to give this year because of how obnoxious the banners were. There's little doubt in my mind that more and more people are blocking those banners already - the more annoying they get, the more people block them, and the smaller the potential contribution pool. We're starting to chase our own tails here. Risker/Anne

*TL;DR summary: I don't want the discussion about fundraising principles to be forgotten for another year until we do the whole thing again in 11 months... We need to finish the discussion about whether it is acceptable for all other values to be made secondary to the goal of maximising fundraising efficiency.* Now that the 2014 Fundraising campaign has finished and which, according to a WMF blogpost from a week ago, "surpassed our goal of $20 million" (receiving donations from 2.5 million people in 4 weeks) [1], I hope that the fundraising team has had the time to get some well-earned rest and relaxation over the new-year period. With that "busiest time of year" now over, but with all the discussions still fresh in our mind, I was hoping that the Fundraising team or Executive would have the time to respond to the various concerns that were raised here (and elsewhere) about the theory and practice of WMF fundraising. If responding here isn't appropriate, then at least over on Meta at [[Talk: Fundraising Principles]] where a fair amount of detail has been compiled, particularly by WMF Board of Trustees member SJ [2]. There were some practical/specific questions, including: - why isn't fundraising using the same software to receive bug reports ( phabricator) as everyone else? - why haven't the crowdsourced banner text suggestions been A/B tested? - why were new banners shown to people who had chosen to dismiss previous ones, and why were they allowed take up such a large proportion of the screen/obscure content? - has anyone responded to the Russian community yet to their polite and important question? [This is a non-exhaustive list, of course] But there were also more fundamental/theoretical questions, including: - what degree of 'urgency' is morally acceptable in a donation request, especially when the financial situation of the WMF has never been healthier/stable? (e.g. threatening phrases like "keep us online and ad-free for another year") - Is the practice of "finishing the fundraiser period as fast as possible by any means" the correct interpretation of the the official fundraising principle of "minimal disruption"? - Is the official fundraising principle of "maximal participation" being adhered to? That principle calls for "empowering individuals to constructively contribute to direct messaging, public outreach..." Does the WMF Board believe this has happened? - Is the current "we don't like asking for money so just give it to us and we'll stop annoying you" approach to fundraising (implied by the final phrase in the final 2014 campaign email "Please help us forget fundraising and get back to improving Wikipedia.") potentially damaging to the Wikimedia brand value, even if it does raise the money in the short term? Lila said that there has been "sentiment analysis" done about this, what was the result? -Liam [1] http://blog.wikimedia .org/2015/01/05/thank-you-for-keeping-knowledge-free-and-accessible/ [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_principles

According to the data provided at https://frdata.wikimedia.org/ the Foundation seems to have taken $30.6 million over the period from December 2 2014 to December 31 2014. This is $10.6 million more than the $20 million fundraising goal indicated in the blog post. (At any rate, that's the sum I get; I'd welcome anyone double-checking my math.) This is my main concern too. As for the fundraiser's duration, I believe the 2014 fundraiser ran for 30 days (December 2 to December 31, 2014). This is longer than last year, and at any rate much longer than 2012, right? Because according to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2013 – "In 2012, we were able to shorten the fundraiser down to nine full days, the shortest fundraiser we've had." Andreas

On 12 January 2015 at 15:59, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: There is no scenario I can come up with where this is actually a good result. Sure, an extra $10.6 million might be nice in the bank, but it massively exceeds budget. The fundraiser met its goal, with plenty to spare, on December 17. And yet we put our readers and our users through another two weeks of fundraising. Given that we were already really pushing the goodwill of the broad Wikimedia community (that includes the users of our products)....well, as I say, this is not a good result. People were putting Wikipedia on Adblock because of those banners, and they were doing it long after the goal had been reached. I'd say I was speechless, but actually I am working extremely hard to hold my tongue here, awaiting an explanation for this. And yes, I think the Wikimedia community deserves to know why this happened. Risker/Anne

I think it's a matter of common sense that we shouldn't ask for more money unless we can credibly demonstrate with stuff like success metrics and improving trends that we can spend the money we've already been given effectively. Risker's comments made me wonder, however, about the more specific issue of how the WMF is measuring the cost/benefit of banner displays. The benefit should be fairly easy to figure out as denominated in dollars- roughly speaking, it would probably look something like the total amount raised over a defined period divided by the number of banner displays during that period. But what about those much more subtle and potentially lagging costs? I assume that the WMF is measuring stuff like session lengths and return rates. Is the WMF tracking on anything else for non-logged in users? In any case, what I would most like to see is a comparison of graphs of such metrics over the course of a full campaign. It seems like we all agree that the banners are annoying, but is there really a measurable "banner fatigue" phenomenon among our readers? For example, can we point out a distinct point of diminishing returns, beyond which the slopes of one or both graphs significantly steepens? If anyone has this data for the current or past campaigns, please forward it to me. I'll try some different visualizations that get past the dollars signs to the true cost of prolonged panhandling. Alternatively, we could pivot to a street performance model by getting the article on Thomas Jefferson to juggle fire batons and spray painting the article on Popping silver. After Jimmy finishes his extended plastic-bucket drum solo and we've warmed them up with a few mediocre jokes, we could pass around the banner for donations. It would probably only work on the tourists, tho. ,Wil

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 4:09 AM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: The claim in question was added to the page on November 7 2013[1] by Megan Hernandez, "Director of Online Giving, Wikimedia Foundation".[2] At the time the edit was made, her title was "Head of the Annual Fundraiser for the Wikimedia Foundation".[3] The paragraph read in full: *To briefly recap this year so far, banners have been up at a low level worldwide since the beginning of the current fiscal year on July 1, 2013. This does not mean that readers have been seeing banners all the time since July. We have our banners set to show to each reader just one time. This testing has been valuable to improve our banners while also to reach more readers. In 2012, we were able to shorten the fundraiser down to nine full days, the shortest fundraiser we've had. That's great. But we know that there are plenty of people who use Wikipedia and would be happy to donate who didn't happen to visit Wikipedia in those nine days that the banners were running. We started running banners in July to reach more people outside a of campaign that lasts just a few days. This year, we have the goal of raising the budget while showing readers fewer banners than previous years. We think this new schedule of running banners throughout the year will help us reach that goal.* Given that the statement came from the WMF Head of the Annual Fundraiser, I assume it's accurate (and it matches the 2012 donations pattern in the daily donations spreadsheet). As for the December 2013 fundraiser, if you look at the December 2013 figures in the spreadsheet, it is quite apparent that the money dropped off on December 17, about the same date that the fundraising target was met this year. Furthermore, in the July 2014 Wikimedia Metrics Video[4] it was reported that the year-round continuous campaign model had "relieved some of the pressure on the December campaign". So I do think the 2014 year-end fundraiser was considerably more intense than in previous years – oddly so, given that the money raised ended up being massively in excess of the fundraising target, as described in the recent blog post:[5] *Thank you for keeping knowledge free and accessible* *A month ago, the Wikimedia Foundation kicked off its year-end contribution campaign on English Wikipedia. Thanks to the generosity of everyday readers from around the world, we’re very happy to share that we’ve surpassed our goal of $20 million. Your support for this critical campaign helps cover operating expenses of the Wikimedia sites and global outreach programs in order to keep the largest free knowledge resource accessible to the world.* Again, the wording "keeping knowledge free and accessible" in the title of that blog post does not sit easily with the fact that over 90% of the money is spent on other things than keeping the sites "free and accessible". Given the Foundation's present financial status, I would like to see a clear repudiation of the "keeping Wikipedia online and ad-free" wording for future fundraisers. This wording may have been appropriate in 2005, when Jimmy Wales said,[6] *“So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee … We actually hired Brion [Vibber] because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes.”* This is a lo-o-o-ng way from what the Wikimedia Foundation with its approx. 250 paid staff (more if you count chapter staff) is today. It's not okay – ethically, morally not okay – to pretend the Wikimedia Foundation is still the same animal as it was ten years ago, just because this "online and ad-free" punchline "works" in terms of getting donors to part with their money. Andreas [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fundraising_2013&diff=6291… [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MeganHernandez_(WMF) [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:MeganHernandez_(WMF)&… [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=993lpGrittg#t=3364 [5] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/01/05/thank-you-for-keeping-knowledge-free-a… [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR0gx0QBZ4#t=275

2015-01-12 13:25 GMT+01:00 Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com>om>: I would like to see the answers to these questions myself. I have put them on [[:meta:Talk:Fundraising_principles]] and added a couple of my own. Feel free to add your own questions, my suggestion would be to use that section for questions only and put comments in another section. C [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_principles#Questions_to_th…

The fundraising team is currently wrapping up from the December campaign. Even though the banners are down, donations are still settling and we are reconciling with the finance department. This month, we are doing analysis on fundraising donation data as well as on feedback from readers, donors and members of this list. We will share an update on this analysis when it is complete, which will be a part of future discussions around fundraising practices. Thank you for providing questions/comments to the meta page and please continue to do so. Megan On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Megan Hernandez Director of Online Fundraising Wikimedia Foundation

We now have at least a partial understanding of the reason the fundraising campaign was extended, which is found in the minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting of November 2014.[1] "Board members asked Lila and Lisa to consider and evaluate ways to raise additional revenue to increase the reserve for future needs of the organization and movement, including the possibility of adjustments in fundraising methods as appropriate. " Risker/Anne [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2014-11-21#Executive_Update_fr…

Megan Hernandez, 16/01/2015 22:11: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help#Using_e-mail Nemo

Hi Andreas- Thanks for the questions. There are lots of differences between the 2013 and 2014 campaigns and there are many variables at play here. One big difference is mobile. In 2013, we were just experimenting with mobile. In 2014, we launched a mobile campaign a week after we launched the desktop campaign. We also had a more successful email campaign this year, which we delivered in small batches nearly everyday. Also, the data you are looking at includes foundations and major gifts as well. There is a lot going on there besides just desktop donations this year. We look forward to sharing more on all of this in our upcoming report. Best, Lisa On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 4:10 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 12:10 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: Further to this and prior threads discussing the fundraising banners, the Wikimedia Foundation last week released the Wikimedia Survey: Findings on Fundraising Questions.[1] This was covered in a report in the Signpost last week[2], and there is an op-ed by myself in this week's Signpost.[3] [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Wikimedia_2014_English_… [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-03-11/Speci… [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-03-18/Op-ed