[Foundation-l] Fundraising and site notice

[Walter van Kalken]

Let me first state that I do not write fancruft articles as I am not 
interested in them. I do feel though that they have their place on a 
project like wikipedia. And I am getting tired of the relatively very 
small group on NL. wikipedia who try whatever they can to get these 
articles deleted. They have been trying this for years. This proposal 
from them is in my opinion to xxxxth attempt to accomplish this.

>2) Communities have to grow. This was the same with Wikipedia, Wikibooks and
>so on. I don't see why a Fanpedia would not grow.
>  
>
There could be many reasons. Like people simply choose not to work on 
this, but go elsewhere.

>3) Fanstuff is a part of Wikipedia. There are people fully devoted to these
>mini-projects, they would move to the new project, even more when they share the same ideals as we have.
>  
>
They would not. If I would ban you from a website writing about the 
stuff you like, would you go and work on a new website I set up for you 
to do your thing? The answer is no! I have seen it tried at fora where 
people wrote OT stuff. The siteowner stopped it set up a seperate forum 
(a new site). But instead of the people going there the people set up a 
totally new place where they could combine the new topics with the old. 
So the old forum lost a lot of its contributors. And the new forum never 
had the amount of contributors to get a good forum going. So both lost 
out. People do not like in general to go from site to site. People are 
usually dedicated to only one or two places on the internet. The other 
places they go to marginally. It is a time issue.

Also look at our own projects. People usually contribute really a lot to 
one project and only marginally to other projects. Which means that 
apart from the fancruft writing we would loose out on the spellchecking 
and other contributions these people do when exiled somewhere else.

Also splitting up means we are setting up new fiefdoms where people can 
go by their own rules etc.

>4) I have no idea how much cash it could or would generate. People involved
>in Wikia might have an answer though.
>  
>
The last I heard (over 6 months ago though) was that Wikia was turning a 
loss.


>5) Until now I have heared answers why it would not work, but not much
>answers which say what *would* work to raise to at least 1.5 million per
>fundraiser. There are not many acceptable ideas, are there? I see your point in the necessity of  loads of money, but there must be alternatives for advertising on all projects.
>  
>
MAybe because people only see reasons why it would not work?

>This is the core of the proposal: we have one project which generates cash
>so the other projects can be funded without advertising. It doesn't have to
>be fanstuff, but that is popular and will generate a lot of traffic and
>therefore money. It might also help keep editors who have a problem with
>advertising on the projects.
>
>I still don't understand the problems and would like to ask if we could make a pilot-project. Let's say on the dutch projects and then see how this would develop.
>  
>
Never on the Dutch projects, it is already hopelessly divided and 
splintered. nl.wikiquote, nl.wikinews, even nl.wikibooks and 
nl.wikisource barely have contributors. Why? Because people do not like 
to be send somewhere else. Same when I go looking for something I do not 
like having to visit different sites if one has it all. If you want the 
Dutch project to be a guinea-pig better first discuss it amongst the 
community, instead of assuming the nl: projects will blindly follow you 
on this. If you want to try it out why not seperately from the 
foundation yourself and when it seems to work have it become a part of 
the foundation. More things have been tried out that way.

Waerth