[Foundation-l] Fundraiser update

[Mike Godwin]

geni writes:

>>> It is also a opportunity to further annoy our readers. IT's pretty
>>> clear they don't like it
>>
>> and you know this because...?
>
> Because I run daily searches of blogs for the term wikipedia. Because
> complaints have turned up all over the place on wikipedia. Because or
> editors who also have to read the thing have gone so far as to have a
> gadget to get rid of it. Because adblock which targets banner ads
> among other things has 10,850,228 dowloads.
>
> Because people come to wikipedia to read articles rather than thankyou
> messages and taking up significant significant screen space with stuff
> readers don't want is not generally considered a way to maximize the
> level of like for your site.

No could dispute that some people dislike the donation-solicitation  
banner or that some people complain about it.

But it seems worth underscoring here that we can't categorically say  
that everyone -- or even a majority of users -- are troubled by it to  
any great degree.  The people who are untroubled by it are the ones  
who don't bother (a) to complain about it on their blogs or (b) to  
engage with those who complain about it on Wikipedia.

This is not a dismissal of anyone's complaints about the manner of the  
solicitation of donations on Wikipedia and elsewhere.  Quite possibly  
we could do things better, and we will certainly try to. But it's a  
classic instance of sampling error to assume that the complaints are  
necessarily representative of the community of Wikimedians or the  
communities served by the projects.

(Confession:  In another life I was a student of statistics and  
polling.)


--Mike