[Foundation-l] Fundraising idea

[lars]

Anthony wrote:

> This a good point, and one the board should think long and hard about.
> I was somewhat disturbed by the fact that "money" received the
> largest value under "opportunities" during the SWOT exercise.

Please don't over-interpret the report from that SWOT exercise.  
Money was not given "the largest value", it was the term mentioned 
by most of the participants.  That only means it is the least 
original idea, one that everybody can think of.  Really original 
ideas, such as "Wikipedia can change the way humans breath oxygen" 
would only be mentioned by very few participants, and could be 
completely wrong, or could be completely revolutionary.  The most 
interesting and important aspects are probably somewhere at the 
middle of this scale, between radical and trivial.

> That said, I think there is a lot that could be done by the
> foundation, if only the foundation had more money.

No, I don't agree.  This is the trap I'm warning against.  You are 
about to fall into it.  Rather than paying more programmers, we 
should think of ways that more programmers can be stimulated to 
contribute for free.  Today that can be quite difficult, because 
only very few have access to the centralized running server.  Two 
important methods are already in place: Anybody can download a 
database dump and analyze it on their own computers and develop 
new services such as those running on the German Toolserver.  And 
since Mediawiki is free software, many develop their own plugins 
for special functions.  These are examples of distributed software 
development that don't require money to run through the WMF.  
Instead of collecting more money, we should think about how we can 
achieve even more without involving money.

Also the Knams proxy in Amsterdam is paid for by an external 
organization (Kennisnet), and that saves the WMF a lot of money.  
Why not ask for similar proxies inside the USA, rather than 
collecting more money to buy more servers.

> But...then Wikimedia doesn't get to spend that money...

There is a lot of money in the world that the WMF doesn't spend.  
I just had breakfast for money that I spent, without passing 
through the WMF.

> Why should Wikimedia be concerned over whether or not someone is
> silent?  I don't have a problem acknowledging *every* contribution.
> If every donor wants acknowledgement, then we should give it to them.

Of course.  What I'm against is that special treatment should be 
given to people who want to make things more complicated.



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se