[Foundation-l] Fundraising banner ad

[Matthew Britton]

No, two months ago it was announced that there would be a
fundraiser (something that was expected anyway)

I imagine most people assumed, as I did, that the effect on
project pages would be the same as it has been in previous
fundraisers - a small green progress bar and a snippet of
"please donate" text, and that alternative ways of raising
funds would be the main subject of discussion.

If it had been announced two months ago that the UI would
look like it does now, rest assured there would have been
complaints.

Also, what is silly about threatening a fork? Is that not
one of the key arguments (in theory at least) for free
content, and thus the whole point of the Wikimedia
projects' existence? Or does the Foundation no longer care
about that either?

-Gurch

--- GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hoi,
> In a previous post it was mentioned that the English
> language Wikipedia has
> to do something about its attitude. Threatening forks is
> one of those silly
> things where you take yourself way to seriously.
> 
> When it comes to being involved in preparing for the
> fundraiser, it was
> announced some two months ago and the amount of feedback
> gives you exactly
> the right reasons for blame, apathy and the notion that
> there is always time
> enough to bitch.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
> 
> On 10/23/07, Matthew Britton
> <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thanks for waking me up this morning with a honking
> great
> > flashy scrolling monstrosity at the top of every page.
> The
> > marquee tag was a nice flashback to 1997.
> >
> > And how much opportunity for feedback were users given
> on
> > this? Not an awful lot. The SVN commit logs show that
> the
> > marquee thingy was committed just minutes before
> appearing
> > project-wide, for example. I still almost managed to
> file a
> > bugzilla request before it showed up.
> >
> > Now, the way I see things, the Wikimedia Foundation has
> two
> > options:
> >
> > (1) Actually ask for feedback from the community before
> > making such dramatically visible, or at least allow
> more
> > than a few minutes for feedback to present itself.
> > (2) Make an official announcement that the opinion of
> the
> > community does not matter, rather than pretending that
> it
> > does.
> >
> > The choice is yours. (1) would of course be preferable,
> but
> > (2) would make an excellent argument for a fork, so
> feel
> > free to go ahead and do it.
> >
> > -Gurch
> >
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