[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales donation appeal

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some pretty nice comments mixed in there. ;-)  They also do a good job
> explaining why we need money.
>
> [Jay: interesting to look at, might be nice to use some like their
> comments in the future]

Some of it is just hopeless.

"Why can't they be self sufficient?"  is the sort of question that
reflects a simple lack of consideration on the part of the asker.  Had
they considered that question more carefully they would likely have
answered it themselves.

I.e. that asking for money *is* a form of self-sufficiency no less
than any other method other than "spending no money at all" (which has
obvious problems). So then the question is why ask rather than run ads
or let company X pay for the ability to control the content, etc...
and many counter arguments to these sorts of alternatives are obvious
even to people who know nothing of our internals.

Although my own experience is that many Americans are a bit baffled
that we don't run ads. They've often not even heard the multitude of
arguments against pervasive/invasive advertising.  I don't believe
it's Wikimedia's place to argue against advertising, but there might
be an opportunity for some of our community members to work with
anti-consumerist groups like Adbusters to make a public argument as to
why our current lack of advertisements is laudable from their
perspective.


On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:42 PM, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wait. Is donating supposed to make the banner go away?
> Because it didn't.......

Why would it? You can collapse it even without donating.

(Or log in and make it vanish entirely with the gadget— the reason for
it to not vanish entirely on collapse is that a lot of people will
collapse then decide they want to donate later…)

Though I suppose that might not be a bad feature, but on the other
hand… we're not trying to hold people for ransom. You shouldn't have
to pay to dispel the notice, requiring that wouldn't reflect
Wikimedia's or our communities values well.