A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
Obviously we're thrilled by the success of the fundraiser: many thanks to Rand and the rest of the team here for making it happen. :-) Special _huge, huge_ thanks to Casey and all the translation volunteers for their help throughout the process. It's hard to overstate the value of the volunteer contributions of time and effort to the fundraiser, and I think it speaks to the strength of our sustainability model. :-)
As always, there'll be lots to learn & improve as well. We'll start preparing some follow-up reports and analysis soon. (We still intend to share raw data files with the community, but we have to do some more clean-up, especially on check data, before it'll be useful.) In the meantime, if you already have some thoughts & immediate comments on the fundraiser -- what worked, what didn't, what we should focus on -- please feel free to post them in this thread.
Who is responsible for the code behind the fundraiser? I have a few proposals he or she may like. Its too late for this fundraiser but would help on the future ones
Additionally I think the foundation should set a donation goal for the end of the year. Not as a begathon like the 6 mil one but something more discrete (completely unadvertised). People will continue to donate if they see a new goal.
- White Cat
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
Obviously we're thrilled by the success of the fundraiser: many thanks to Rand and the rest of the team here for making it happen. :-) Special _huge, huge_ thanks to Casey and all the translation volunteers for their help throughout the process. It's hard to overstate the value of the volunteer contributions of time and effort to the fundraiser, and I think it speaks to the strength of our sustainability model. :-)
As always, there'll be lots to learn & improve as well. We'll start preparing some follow-up reports and analysis soon. (We still intend to share raw data files with the community, but we have to do some more clean-up, especially on check data, before it'll be useful.) In the meantime, if you already have some thoughts & immediate comments on the fundraiser -- what worked, what didn't, what we should focus on
-- please feel free to post them in this thread.
Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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Hoi, I think the foundation did great with the last fundraiser. When we *need *something like 6 million dollar we should ask for it and it is legitimate to ask for it. It is really sad that people do not realise how much our aims suffer from a lack of investment. We need to do better, we can do better and it *does *take money to do this.
When you have proposals to make for a next fundraiser, make them. If your ideas have merit, I am sure they will be taken up. If these ideas work out and provide us with sufficient funding to not need what you call a "begaton", fine. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We need to be funded for our activities and if this requires a fundraiser, we will have one. Thanks, GerardM
2009/1/7 White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com
Who is responsible for the code behind the fundraiser? I have a few proposals he or she may like. Its too late for this fundraiser but would help on the future ones
Additionally I think the foundation should set a donation goal for the end of the year. Not as a begathon like the 6 mil one but something more discrete (completely unadvertised). People will continue to donate if they see a new goal.
- White Cat
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
Obviously we're thrilled by the success of the fundraiser: many thanks to Rand and the rest of the team here for making it happen. :-) Special _huge, huge_ thanks to Casey and all the translation volunteers for their help throughout the process. It's hard to overstate the value of the volunteer contributions of time and effort to the fundraiser, and I think it speaks to the strength of our sustainability model. :-)
As always, there'll be lots to learn & improve as well. We'll start preparing some follow-up reports and analysis soon. (We still intend to share raw data files with the community, but we have to do some more clean-up, especially on check data, before it'll be useful.) In the meantime, if you already have some thoughts & immediate comments on the fundraiser -- what worked, what didn't, what we should focus on
-- please feel free to post them in this thread.
Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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2009/1/7 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
It is also a opportunity to further annoy our readers. IT's pretty clear they don't like it so the sensible thing to do would be to remove it or if you have some weird desire to keep it make it a lot smaller.
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 3:11 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/7 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
It is also a opportunity to further annoy our readers. IT's pretty clear they don't like it
and you know this because...?
2009/1/7 Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 3:11 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/7 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
It is also a opportunity to further annoy our readers. IT's pretty clear they don't like it
and you know this because...?
Because I run daily searches of blogs for the term wikipedia. Because complaints have turned up all over the place on wikipedia. Because or editors who also have to read the thing have gone so far as to have a gadget to get rid of it. Because adblock which targets banner ads among other things has 10,850,228 dowloads.
Because people come to wikipedia to read articles rather than thankyou messages and taking up significant significant screen space with stuff readers don't want is not generally considered a way to maximize the level of like for your site.
I think you guys did a great job, all in all. We can't and shouldn't expect it to be perfect, and obviously you can't please everyone. I'm happy to say that the disgruntlement I described in my "strong negative reaction" thread at the beginning of the fundraiser did not prevent a very successful outcome for the drive. It really shows the value of a professional staff, a value that we've seen in a number of areas around Wikimedia. There will always be people against asking for money, against banners, etc. But they don't come with ideas on what to replace money with... (perhaps WMF can get into providing natural gas to EU countries?), so in the mean time money it is!
Personally I appreciate that the foundation is working to make fundraising a year round project, particularly with respect to large donations from individuals and other foundations. I wonder if we can't work more closely with other, more established charitable foundations though. If we connected our fundraising drive to the fundraising of another charity, particularly one that is very well known (like the B&M Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Red Cross, etc.), wouldn't that make our drive more high profile in the press and the donor world? Right now we get a lot of online buzz, but it doesn't seem to translate into wider coverage. Working with them would also much more clearly establish our charitable credentials, which directly targets the major perception gap in the world about Wikimedia.
We could pair our whole drive with the drive of another major organization, or parcel out days or weeks separately (a week where our drive is "In cooperation with the American Red Cross, with donations split between these two very valuable organizations" etc.). I don't know if we would get more from the dual appeal than we lose by splitting donations, but we could always have separate "Click here to donate to Wikimedia" and "Click here to donate to the Red Cross."
Something to perhaps consider, anyway.
Nathan
Nathan wrote:
Personally I appreciate that the foundation is working to make fundraising a year round project, particularly with respect to large donations from individuals and other foundations. I wonder if we can't work more closely with other, more established charitable foundations though. If we connected our fundraising drive to the fundraising of another charity, particularly one that is very well known (like the B&M Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Red Cross, etc.), wouldn't that make our drive more high profile in the press and the donor world? Right now we get a lot of online buzz, but it doesn't seem to translate into wider coverage. Working with them would also much more clearly establish our charitable credentials, which directly targets the major perception gap in the world about Wikimedia.
Just to point out, but many charities that are well-known and have lots of money (including some you mention) do not actually do fundraising, so this wouldn't make sense. Their funds, and often their visibility, come entirely from one or more extremely wealthy individuals. We can't join in on the Gates Foundation's fundraising, because it doesn't do any - unless you imagine us sitting in on Bill talking to Warren Buffett about how to dispose of his wealth. Go to their website and see what they tell people who want to donate.
We could pair our whole drive with the drive of another major organization, or parcel out days or weeks separately (a week where our drive is "In cooperation with the American Red Cross, with donations split between these two very valuable organizations" etc.). I don't know if we would get more from the dual appeal than we lose by splitting donations, but we could always have separate "Click here to donate to Wikimedia" and "Click here to donate to the Red Cross."
I'm pretty confident that in our current model, any dual drive would siphon money away from Wikimedia to the partner, whoever that might be. It would basically allow them to ride along on what we've built. I suspect that even with the Red Cross - who have a good name, are much bigger than us, and deal with a much bigger volume of donations - even with all those factors, because the way they attract donor attention is not strongly web-based, we'd be giving them a benefit much more than they would be giving us one. There might be some other approach in which dual fundraising is mutually beneficial, but I'd want to know what that model is.
Also worth noting is that we are in fact giving multiple donation options already, because the drive includes a number of participating chapters. I would prefer to focus on improving that system and increasing its benefits to all sides, and I'd be concerned about how outside fundraising alliances might detract from it. The creative thinking is commendable, though, and I encourage more of it.
--Michael Snow
(Sorry for not threading my replies).
I realise (not being completely dense) that some of these large organizations don't solicit donations, but they might be willing to co-brand as a sort of "in-kind" donation to the WMF. My intent was more to name well known organizations to illustrate the point than to suggest specific candidates.
As for siphoning off money - certainly most large organizations that survive on donations (to name better ones, the Red Cross, United Way, Salvation Army, UNICEF, American Cancer Society, World Wildlife Fund, etc. and smaller operations like LiveStrong, Susan G. Komen, etc. ) don't have the same online penetration that we have. They do, however, have a far more sophisticated offline solicitation system and cultural penetration. What they lack, we've got - what we lack, they've got. Sounds like a recipe for a beneficial partnership. If one group were to include us in their mailing and other solicitation work for a period of time, for instance, in exchange for participation in our fundraising drive... it might afford both organizations access to groups of people they otherwise might not reach.
It would also, as I mentioned, provide the very valuable service of reinforcing with the public that the Wikimedia Foundation is charitable organization that depends on donations for all of its operations. That fact is implied in the very nature of a fundraising drive, but we saw from Jimmy's note that having a high profile advocate, a personal appeal and a clear expression of what Wikimedia is about really encourages people to donate.
Nathan
2009/1/7 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
It would also, as I mentioned, provide the very valuable service of reinforcing with the public that the Wikimedia Foundation is charitable organization that depends on donations for all of its operations. That fact is implied in the very nature of a fundraising drive, but we saw from Jimmy's note that having a high profile advocate, a personal appeal and a clear expression of what Wikimedia is about really encourages people to donate.
When it comes to fundraising, non-profits tend to be jealous guardians of their constituencies. Any kind of shared fundraising activity would seem to me to be most likely to be successful when conducted together with an active partner, e.g., if we deepened our relationship with OLPC, it might make sense to join forces on some fundraising initiatives, especially insofar as they relate to the projects both partners pursue together.
Sorry Geni but you are totally wrong. Each year the Foundation asks for more money than the year before, and each year the citizens of the world give it.
I challenge you to find 1% as many negative blog posts regarding the fundraiser as there are positive comments left by donors.
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 8:52 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/7 Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 3:11 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/7 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
It is also a opportunity to further annoy our readers. IT's pretty clear they don't like it
and you know this because...?
Because I run daily searches of blogs for the term wikipedia. Because complaints have turned up all over the place on wikipedia. Because or editors who also have to read the thing have gone so far as to have a gadget to get rid of it. Because adblock which targets banner ads among other things has 10,850,228 dowloads.
Because people come to wikipedia to read articles rather than thankyou messages and taking up significant significant screen space with stuff readers don't want is not generally considered a way to maximize the level of like for your site.
-- geni
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2009/1/7 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
Sorry Geni but you are totally wrong. Each year the Foundation asks for more money than the year before, and each year the citizens of the world give it.
I challenge you to find 1% as many negative blog posts regarding the fundraiser as there are positive comments left by donors.
I challenge anyone to miss the point more than you did.
I think your point was clear, but maybe not. Please restate it for me more clearly.
Because I run daily searches of blogs for the term wikipedia. Because complaints have turned up all over the place on wikipedia. Because or editors who also have to read the thing have gone so far as to have a gadget to get rid of it. Because adblock which targets banner ads among other things has 10,850,228 dowloads.
2009/1/7 Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu:
I think your point was clear, but maybe not. Please restate it for me more clearly.
You appear to be under the impression I'm objecting to the donation banner ads. I'm not. I am however suggesting that while the donation banner ads are a necessary evil (heh one of the complaints is that it doesn't go away when you donate) does not mean that we should then continue to have a massive banners once we've raised the money.
That people are supportive of wikipedia and donate does not in any way shape or form suggest that they like it having massive banners across every page.
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I challenge you to find 1% as many negative blog posts regarding the fundraiser as there are positive comments left by donors.
Apart from that interesting debate between you and geni, I had the personal impression that this year's fundraising drive created a bit more negative responses for example in the OTRS (both relative and absolute) than last year's. I don't have numbers to prove it, so it remains an anecdote.
Mathias
Supposing every blog post that mentioned 'wikipedia' and 'fundraiser' was negative, there would be 69,978.
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=wikipedia+fundraiser
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Mathias Schindler < mathias.schindler@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I challenge you to find 1% as many negative blog posts regarding the fundraiser as there are positive comments left by donors.
Apart from that interesting debate between you and geni, I had the personal impression that this year's fundraising drive created a bit more negative responses for example in the OTRS (both relative and absolute) than last year's. I don't have numbers to prove it, so it remains an anecdote.
Mathias
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Not really, if you give your eyes to blogosphere global and hence multingual, including mine. I hope some would go through mine to the fundraising page, and some of trackbacks to my entry were clearly positive ("I've donated them, you can do too") too.
It is still anectodal, but I think it good to show your commitment to the project on your blog, not only through your editing. A blog entry which reads "I love Wikipedia because xxx and will appreciate every support, specially financial one" has worked well, at least in Japanophone blogosphere.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
Supposing every blog post that mentioned 'wikipedia' and 'fundraiser' was negative, there would be 69,978.
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=wikipedia+fundraiser
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Mathias Schindler < mathias.schindler@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I challenge you to find 1% as many negative blog posts regarding the fundraiser as there are positive comments left by donors.
Apart from that interesting debate between you and geni, I had the personal impression that this year's fundraising drive created a bit more negative responses for example in the OTRS (both relative and absolute) than last year's. I don't have numbers to prove it, so it remains an anecdote.
Mathias
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Anecdotally, I thought it was about the same, but I did notice a LOT more questioning of what the money was going to. Like you, just impressions, no facts to back it up.
-Dan On Jan 7, 2009, at 6:15 PM, Mathias Schindler wrote:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I challenge you to find 1% as many negative blog posts regarding the fundraiser as there are positive comments left by donors.
Apart from that interesting debate between you and geni, I had the personal impression that this year's fundraising drive created a bit more negative responses for example in the OTRS (both relative and absolute) than last year's. I don't have numbers to prove it, so it remains an anecdote.
Mathias
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2009/1/7 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com:
Anecdotally, I thought it was about the same, but I did notice a LOT more questioning of what the money was going to. Like you, just impressions, no facts to back it up.
Perhaps so - an absolute increase of scrutiny is certainly to be expected as the overall number of donations nearly tripled, i.e. we have asked for, and received, a lot more attention than ever before. The upside and downside of the growing blogosphere with millions of micromedia is the same: There's a lot more voices and opinions. Rumors spread much more quickly, and false claims can be repeated (and monetized) much more easily than ever before. So can important statements of fact.
If we empower our volunteers through a high degree of operational transparency, facts should prevail. That principle has informed many decisions we've made this year: hence the detailed Q&As on the budget and the financial statements, the detailed Annual Report, etc. Overall we're very happy with these materials, and in my opinion they represent the highest degree of operational transparency that we've ever had.
In some areas, we've found our materials to be worthy of improvement, and I think it'll become clearer what those areas are as we further analyze the fundraiser as a whole. For example, while we've tried to explain that expense categories in the pie charts represent entire departmental budgets rather than individual salaries, they were still often misunderstood or misconstrued to be the latter. Being more specific and providing further data on how money is spent in each category should help both readers and volunteers who want to correct misunderstandings.
The flip side of the coin is communicating impact through hard data and personal stories. That, too, is an area in which we can improve, especially if we continue to grow operationally. How many more people edit due to usability improvements? What, if any, was the positive impact of the FlaggedRevs extension? Has site responsiveness and uptime increased? How many more videos have been uploaded thanks to new capacity? How many books have been printed via PediaPress? How many people have attended Wikipedia workshops around the world? How many static copies of Wikipedia are circulating as DVDs, on laptops, etc.? And how are people's lives transformed through our work?
As a 23-people organization, it's clear that our communication efforts need to culminate in volunteer-driven efforts of both a proactive and reactive nature. That's already the case to a great degree (thanks to volunteers like yourself), and I hope that we will continue to improve in that regard.
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 6:29 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote: <snip>
As a 23-people organization, it's clear that our communication efforts need to culminate in volunteer-driven efforts of both a proactive and reactive nature. That's already the case to a great degree (thanks to volunteers like yourself), and I hope that we will continue to improve in that regard.
In that regard, one thought I have had is to create an identified place (on Meta for example) to solicit questions and feedback about the fundraiser from potential donors (and community members) with volunteers to respond. In 2007, m:Talk:Fundraising_2007 sort of played that role in an informal way. Casey and I were among those who answered questions there, but no similar forum seemed to develop this year. Being seen as open and responsive to concerns and criticism (even if in a somewhat limited way) might help reduce the number of people who are inclined to go off and rant in blogs and the like. I also see benefit in having a place for clueful community members to answer the concerns of less clueful community members (like how does one hide the banner).
-Robert Rohde
2009/1/7 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com:
In that regard, one thought I have had is to create an identified place (on Meta for example) to solicit questions and feedback about the fundraiser from potential donors (and community members) with volunteers to respond.
A lot of that happened through donate@wikipedia.org this year, which is at the footer of every page in the new fundraising module, but I agree that a re-introducing a public forum of some sort would be a good idea. I think wiki pages are a bit user-unfriendly for people with no wiki experience. Perhaps a use case for LiquidThreads. ;-)
Erik Moeller wrote:
As a 23-people organization, it's clear that our communication efforts need to culminate in volunteer-driven efforts of both a proactive and reactive nature. That's already the case to a great degree (thanks to volunteers like yourself), and I hope that we will continue to improve in that regard.
Calling it "a 23-people organization" suggests a growing chasm between the volunteers and the hired hands.
Ec
Erik Moeller wrote:
As a 23-people organization, it's clear that our communication efforts need to culminate in volunteer-driven efforts of both a proactive and reactive nature. That's already the case to a great degree (thanks to volunteers like yourself), and I hope that we will continue to improve in that regard.
on 1/8/09 4:30 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Calling it "a 23-people organization" suggests a growing chasm between the volunteers and the hired hands.
And that chasm is growing wider in more ways than just numbers, Ray.
Marc Riddell
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Calling it "a 23-people organization" suggests a growing chasm between the volunteers and the hired hands.
Well, I do indeed feel that chasm too, although perhaps it's more a case of a felt distance between the foundation and the projects. When I'm editing on Wikipedia or fighting vandals on wiktionary or whatever, I don't feel I'm volunteering for the foundation. Rather, I consider myself a volunteer of the project(s), and the only connection I feel with the foundation in that is that I am working on the same projects the foundation is supporting. I don't really, to be honest, feel part of, or even closely connected to, the foundation as such.
on 1/8/09 4:30 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
As a 23-people organization, it's clear that our communication efforts need to culminate in volunteer-driven efforts of both a proactive and reactive nature. That's already the case to a great degree (thanks to volunteers like yourself), and I hope that we will continue to improve in that regard.
Calling it "a 23-people organization" suggests a growing chasm between the volunteers and the hired hands.
The Foundation - and those who represent it - seem to have forgotten that people are at the heart of what they are there to do. And, without the heart, it cannot live.
Marc Riddell
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
The Foundation - and those who represent it - seem to have forgotten that people are at the heart of what they are there to do. And, without the heart, it cannot live.
Marc Riddell
When this sort of thread devolves into tangential sniping, bickering over word choice and amorphous "the foundation has lost its way!" claims, it loses its usefulness. When it happens often, even to threads opened by a Foundation staffer for a specific purpose, it degrades the usefulness of the entire list. People don't have to append their normal disagreements to every single thread. Start your own thread, label it accurately and post there so the rest of us know to stay away.
Nathan
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I challenge you to find 1% as many negative blog posts regarding the fundraiser as there are positive comments left by donors.
Apart from that interesting debate between you and geni, I had the personal impression that this year's fundraising drive created a bit more negative responses for example in the OTRS (both relative and absolute) than last year's. I don't have numbers to prove it, so it remains an anecdote.
My anecdotal opinion is exactly the opposite. My impression, based mostly on comments left at either enwiki, meta, or the public mailing lists, is that this years' drive was substantially less negatively recieved than last years. That impression may be skewed toward community member (rather than reader) reactions based on my source material.
While anecdotal, I'd suggest several factors that would favor a less negative reaction to this drive:
Last year was the very first year with a boxy banner (rather than a one or two line text announcement).
The messaging in the 2007 drive was poor (in my opinion). The drive highlighted things like bringing information to kids in Africa, and said little about how donations improved the online encyclopedia. I can recall numerous examples of people saying they supported Wikipedia but didn't want to see money spent towards those far flung third world projects when there was so much still to do with the website. I don't recall seeing any reaction like that towards the 2008 drive.
Last year was the first time a drive had ever exceeded 40 days in length, and with it running to nearly 80 days it really seemed to drag on. This year was also well over 40 days, but I think the negative reaction this time was reduced by not having it be the first long drive.
This year, from the beginning, the presentation generally seemed to be accepted as much more professional. In 2007 the drive started in a very ad hoc manner with an ugly pink box and scrolling marquee that many people hated (not to mention anecdotal reports that the javascript scrolling banner crashed some older browsers). Last year there were very active discussions, supported by some admins, for enwiki to outright block the banner due to how distasteful and unproffessional many found people it. I don't think the reaction to this year's drive ever rose to that level of vitriol.
The only factors that really weighed against this year's drive seemed to be that the banner was too big and too bold in many people's opinion (myself included), and that it was hard to comletely banish. I'd renew my call for the height of the banner to be decreased 30% next year. However, my anecdotal opinion is that those factors didn't raise people's frustrations as much as in 2007.
Since we now seem to have three different opinions on how this drive was recieved, I'd love to see if anyone can figure out a way to quantify the reaction more directly.
Ultimately though, the one objective measure I can point to is money. If Alexa is to be believed, the traffic to Wikimedia sites year over year has decreased about 10% while the income raised from small donors more than doubled (despite harsher economic conditions and fewer days in this drive as well). So whatever the overall reaction, people were ultimately more willing to give us money this year than last year. At least at some level that suggests this year's drive was significantly better recieved than last years.
-Robert Rohde
geni geniice@gmail.com writes:
Because I run daily searches of blogs for the term wikipedia. Because complaints have turned up all over the place on wikipedia. Because or editors who also have to read the thing have gone so far as to have a gadget to get rid of it. Because adblock which targets banner ads among other things has 10,850,228 dowloads.
Whiners has always been quicker to the keyboard, then those without opinions either way. That's a human trait, i suppose. Failing to take this fact into the equation effectively invalidates your assesment. And since you haven't mentioned it by now, I will not accept any delayed claims to the opposite.
2009/1/7 Anders Wegge Keller wegge@wegge.dk:
Whiners has always been quicker to the keyboard, then those without opinions either way. That's a human trait, i suppose. Failing to take this fact into the equation effectively invalidates your assesment. And since you haven't mentioned it by now, I will not accept any delayed claims to the opposite. -- /Wegge
This only works if you are seriously trying to suggest that there are people who feel that large banners add to the wikipedia experience.
Most people come to wikipedia to read articles. Generally having font-size: 33 banners between the top of the page and the article is not a good way to facilitate this.
Now we can agree that fundraising banners that size are apparently effective which is good but thankyou banners that size less so. If a thank you is required one the size of the collapsed banner would appear to suffice.
geni geniice@gmail.com writes:
2009/1/7 Anders Wegge Keller wegge@wegge.dk:
Whiners has always been quicker to the keyboard, then those without opinions either way. That's a human trait, i suppose. Failing to take this fact into the equation effectively invalidates your assesment. And since you haven't mentioned it by now, I will not accept any delayed claims to the opposite.
This only works if you are seriously trying to suggest that there are people who feel that large banners add to the wikipedia experience.
I think that the large majority who doesn't feel the need to whine about them accepts them as a nescesary thing to fund WM.
Most people come to wikipedia to read articles. Generally having font-size: 33 banners between the top of the page and the article is not a good way to facilitate this.
Having no banners and no servers to serve the artuicles are even worse. Having payed the dangeld to get rid of them, I think most are happy being acknowledged for the fact.
Now we can agree that fundraising banners that size are apparently effective which is good but thankyou banners that size less so. If a thank you is required one the size of the collapsed banner would appear to suffice.
I don't agree on that point. Having extorted 6+ million $ out of the readers with a Jesus headline, and then switching the thank you note to leagal flyspeck, would send the wrong signal. If we NEED Joe Bloggs meney, we'd better THANK him in the same way. Otherwise he may OVERLOOK the plea next time it comes around.
2009/1/7 Anders Wegge Keller wegge@wegge.dk:
geni geniice@gmail.com writes:
2009/1/7 Anders Wegge Keller wegge@wegge.dk:
Whiners has always been quicker to the keyboard, then those without opinions either way. That's a human trait, i suppose. Failing to take this fact into the equation effectively invalidates your assesment. And since you haven't mentioned it by now, I will not accept any delayed claims to the opposite.
This only works if you are seriously trying to suggest that there are people who feel that large banners add to the wikipedia experience.
I think that the large majority who doesn't feel the need to whine about them accepts them as a nescesary thing to fund WM.
Most people come to wikipedia to read articles. Generally having font-size: 33 banners between the top of the page and the article is not a good way to facilitate this.
Having no banners and no servers to serve the artuicles are even worse. Having payed the dangeld to get rid of them, I think most are happy being acknowledged for the fact.
You miss the point. The banners are not fundraising any more (unless you collapse them)
I don't agree on that point. Having extorted 6+ million $ out of the readers with a Jesus headline, and then switching the thank you note to leagal flyspeck, would send the wrong signal. If we NEED Joe Bloggs meney, we'd better THANK him in the same way. Otherwise he may OVERLOOK the plea next time it comes around.
Any evidence for those claims? And how about thanking him by not degrading his wikipedia experience?
geni geniice@gmail.com writes:
Having no banners and no servers to serve the artuicles are even worse. Having payed the dangeld to get rid of them, I think most are happy being acknowledged for the fact.
You miss the point. The banners are not fundraising any more (unless you collapse them)
Most of the whining you have seen is about the actual fundraising banners. Unless you google alaert for wikipedia and wikimedia gives you other results than mine.
I don't agree on that point. Having extorted 6+ million $ out of the readers with a Jesus headline, and then switching the thank you note to leagal flyspeck, would send the wrong signal. If we NEED Joe Bloggs meney, we'd better THANK him in the same way. Otherwise he may OVERLOOK the plea next time it comes around.
Any evidence for those claims? And how about thanking him by not degrading his wikipedia experience?
I claim nothing else than it's my own opinion. Excuse me for getting that part wrong (I'm not a native english speaker), but I would've thought that "I think" would indicate that.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Anders Wegge Keller wegge@wegge.dk wrote:
geni geniice@gmail.com writes:
2009/1/7 Anders Wegge Keller wegge@wegge.dk: Now we can agree that fundraising banners that size are apparently effective which is good but thankyou banners that size less so. If a thank you is required one the size of the collapsed banner would appear to suffice.
I don't agree on that point. Having extorted 6+ million $ out of the readers with a Jesus headline, and then switching the thank you note to leagal flyspeck, would send the wrong signal. If we NEED Joe Bloggs meney, we'd better THANK him in the same way. Otherwise he may OVERLOOK the plea next time it comes around.
Or in the more emphasized way, I from Japan say. In some cultures people think of appreciation expression quite seriously. Lack or shortage of that may be taken as a sign of rudeness and would cause a huge negative reactions.
I don't know. Everyone knows the fastest way to remove a begathon is through generous donations. ;) - White Cat
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:11 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/7 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
A quick update: the "Thank You" banner is currently scheduled to stay up until January 9, 4 PM PST. We're keeping it up a while longer in part because it's the first work week after the holidays for many people, and in part because it's an opportunity for chapters to get some more visibility (we may have reached our goals ahead of time, but the chapters were operating under the assumption that the fundraiser would continue until January 15). As explained in the "Thank You" letter, the funds donated to WMF from now until the end of the fiscal year will go into our reserve fund and will help us to not live from hand to mouth as we head into the new fiscal. We'd always planned to raise at least $1.3M in reserve funding throughout the fiscal year.
It is also a opportunity to further annoy our readers. IT's pretty clear they don't like it so the sensible thing to do would be to remove it or if you have some weird desire to keep it make it a lot smaller.
-- geni
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And - the banners should now be gone in all languages.
In the coming days & weeks we'll discuss what a consistent, non-obnoxious but visible "Donate / We're a non-profit" link could look like across projects. (Right now we have a Donate link in the sidebar, and some projects have experimented with occasional mini-messages in the sitenotice.) Suggestions appreciated!
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