[Foundation-l] Video fundraising and YouTube Non-profit Program (Wiinews)

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 9/30/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps the best setup might be an umbrella channel for all the
> Wikimedia Foundation. It could have Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other
> projects' videos on it as well as Wikinews (who might find it the most
> useful). However, I see no need for a seperate nonprofit organization
> for an individual project, as that could potentially create all sorts
> of confusion. ~~~~

You should be aware that, as mentioned in prior discussions, YouTube's
terms of service are clearly incompatible with copylefted freely
licensed content.

By posting copylefted content authored by third parties on youtube you
will almost certainly be violating the license of thoses works and
will open yourself up to the normal remedies available.

Your own content, OTOH, is of course your decision... although I think
is unfortunate to see Wikimedia involved folks submitting content to a
site with a terms of service which is so unfriendly towards the free
dissemination of knowledge.

On 9/30/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> This seems like something WMF may want to sign up for in order to
> broadcast its own fundraising messages.

As it stands Wikimedia doesn't even have passable basic graphic banner
ads to promote the fundraiser and you're expecting us to somehow pull
out an effective video fundraiser message?

I'm all for exploring new promotional methods but it is important to
get the basics right.  I think it's easy to argue that we're not even
close to on-target in terms of basic fundraising skills.

As it stands now the vast majority (all but a few percent) of the
people who hit out fundraising pages drop out and don't donate.

It seems that we don't have the knowledge, skills, motivation, or
resources to produce a fundraising page which doesn't scare people
away. ... and we don't apparently have the staff resources to setup
tracking so we can measure the effectiveness of different messages.

With this in mind I think that this out-of-the-blue mention of video
fundraising makes me wonder if anyone has clearly established the
priorities around here.