[Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening

[Andrew Gray]

On 1 March 2011 20:44, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

> It's not really about my personal preferences (I originally asked how this
> job opening fits within Wikimedia's strategic plan or mission). You've
> chosen to side-step the actual questions being asked here (twice now). Based
> on my past discussions with you, I generally take this to mean that you
> agree with the premise, but don't want to say so aloud. (Your brand of
> Wikimedia criticism is much more diplomatic than my own, to be sure.) If I'm
> wrong and you really do believe that this job opening is a good idea,
> perhaps you can explain why you think that. :-)

Here's one line of reasoning:

a) Our fundraising was effective (it brought in money) but also pretty
tedious for readers - it relied heavily on variants of one banner,
with the side-effect that millions upon millions of people were forced
to stare at one J. Wales for quite a while, only lightly alleviated by
staring at someone else for a short time before reverting to the
original.

b) This was widely derided (see discussions passim), with people
objecting to it for reasons including (in no particular order): i)
undue focus on "figurehead" personality; ii) stylistic issues; iii)
terminology (mostly of non-Wales banners, sometimes of letters); iv)
sheer tedium of seeing the same thing for a month; etc. etc. ...

c) ...but pretty much everything else we tried didn't work very well...

d) ...even though, anecdotally, people liked seeing the other ones
much more than they liked the routine banners.

e) Running another fundraiser is probably inevitable.

Given these points, it seems a good idea to try to ensure that when we
next throw big banners up at a million people to ask them for money,
we do so in a way that is less tedious and irritating. It seems a
fairly good approach (anecdotally, at least) that people like the
varied individual user banners; the problem is that there's something
not quite working about them.

Hiring someone to make them work - thus allowing us to do away with
the All Wales, All The Time approach which was, to say the least, not
universally loved - will hopefully mean the next donation campaign
annoys fewer people. That doesn't seem too unreasonable, to me.

(The actual job description did make my eyes roll a bit, though.
"Storyteller", oh dear.)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk