[Foundation-l] fund drive update - why was the message removed from en.wikipedia?

[Dietrich von Hase]

Hi,

>
>How about this:
>* Change the color of the "Donations" sidebar link, and bold it
>* Add a short, sweet note, perhaps at the bottom:  "Please help keep
>this site running!
>     <link>'''Contribute'''</link> to the <link>Wikimedia Foundation</link>.
>  
>
I really support the second suggestion to put a permanent Teaser as a 
bottom line - after the copyright notice and set apart clearly from it. 
The message of this Teaser could be changed in time.

I suggest to put such a small teaser notice on every page, on every 
article of Wikipedia and I would like to make some comments on it, 
because I think I have some experience here since 1996:

1) All who discuss the fundraising issue on this list should feel a deep 
responsability for the thousands of authors and millions of users of 
Wikipedia. Users, Authors and Admins have the right that we discussing 
the flow of money for Wikipedia make the right decisions to guarantee:

* the best technical environment for user have easy and fast access 24 
hours a day
* the same for all the authors and admins giving their free time for 
publishing and maintenance

Bad technical performance in the past due to hardware issues should 
therefore never happen again. As the numbers of users, authors, traffic, 
etc. grows exponentially, there is a need of exponential growth of 
hardware, housing space, traffic and therefore also a need of 
exponential growth of funding. Funding needs - as have been shown here - 
can be quite precisely projected out of past growth statistics. And - as 
there is the responsability towards the users and knowledge workers 
contributing to Wikipedia - there should be always some money on the 
bank as a special case reserve fund and not a living on a nearly blank 
purse. At the same time money from donations should be spent as 
economically as possible to meet the responsability towards the people 
donating funds.


2) The fund raising issue should therefore be split between:

a) a constant funding for constant needs with respect to the growth rate 
of Wikipedia, hardware needs etc. This need of constant funding should 
not be met by special calls "we have problems, please give us some 
money", but by a constant, better publication of this funding issue on 
the websites leading to constant flows of money meeting the constand 
needs of growing Wikipedia & Co.

b) special funding calls for new, special projects as special funding 
events to start new projects, etc.


3) Establishment of a constant funding scheme

The constant funding must be a scheme guaranteeing that the incoming 
money growth rate meets the growth rate of Wikipedia. As this growth 
rate is caused by the number of visitors, pages viewed etc. we need a 
mechanism that a doubling of visitors, page views at least leads to a 
doubling of the funding, etc.

It is evident, that the present link for donations on the upper left on 
Wikipedia is not enough to guarantee this relation of more visitors fund 
enough for more hardware etc. It is clearly to weak for this at the 
moment. I suppose this could be quite easily solved if we put more ideas 
together here. My suggestions:

a) Put a teaser as proposed above

"Add a short, sweet note, perhaps at the bottom:  "Please help keep
this site running!
 <link>'''Contribute'''</link> to the <link>Wikimedia Foundation</link>."

on the end of each article, not only on the homepage. A Website like 
Wikipedia is like an Ants heap, millions of people are coming in by 
hundredthousands of entry pages and leave them by other or same 
hundredthousends of doors. We tend to see Websites from the homepage 
point of view, thats how the website makers see it. But in reality only 
a small percentage of people ever see the homepage. Therefore it is 
advisable to put a message on every page, but to put it at the end of 
the page so it does not disturb people in their reading.  When people 
arrive by reading at the end of the page then you most probably have 
those people who liked what they read. That means you have most probably 
also those people who are more likely to donate then others, who stop 
reading after the first lines.

b) Adapt the FSF funding idea - recommend people to buy their books over 
Wikipedia affiliate links -

The ISBN numbers on Wikipedia lead to the page where you find different 
options for finding the books including online bookshops. If Wikimedia 
would register at Amazon, Barns & Nobles and other online bookshops and 
change the present links on this page to affiliate links, there would be 
also a constant flow of money for the foundation without any 
advertising, without changing anything from non commercial to 
commercial. Only the links have changed, not the page and the online 
bookshops themselves. I hope you get what I mean - do not change any 
text here in order to get funds, just keep it free of greed ;-) but 
offer them as affiliate partner links like FSF seems to do it.

On the funding information pages one could also inform every reader that 
he can make a donation automatically if he is buying book, media etc. 
anyway but chooses a link via the wikipedia links for online bookshops 
on the general information page about where to find books. I think that 
many people would be happy to buy their books knowing that Wikimedia 
gets a funding by doing this and they do not have any trouble in 
transferring money to the foundations, credit cards, Pay Pal etc. and 
they even do not pay more then they would do otherwise.

I think that Jimbo made a good point in his last e-mail suggesting that 
different options should be tested and what will be the results. Its my 
own experience with the internet - it is much better to do small tests 
and if it works go that way further on, if it does not work just leave 
it again.  It saves much time of discussions what will happen when -  
you mostly just don't really know it before testing.


4) Save the funding calls for special occasions

As already said, my feeling is that special calls for funding should be 
left for special occasions, special project ideas etc. But not for 
constant money needs like hardware etc. I am  confident, that this money 
needed for all normal operations will be received with ease by just 
implementing a charming, also alterating bottom line donation message on 
every page plus affiliate links for bookshops which are mentioned anyhow 
on the page.

just my 2 cents

Dietrich
hase at akademie.de