[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Website

[Amgine]

I agree with Delphine's assessment of the goals for the  
WikimediaFoundation.org site:

1) Inform, generally, what the Foundation does, who is part of it.
2) Serve as a platform for official announcements.
3) Serve as an interface for donations.

I would like to restate this in a somewhat more honest way: IMO the  
goal of the WikimediaFoundation.org site is to solicit funds and  
publicity.

Where there is multi-lingual content, use of dynamic tools to  
automate the presentation to minimize maintenance should be  
encouraged. (For example, using DynamicPageList to display the most  
recent press releases in a given language, avoiding the need to  
update every language main page as the press release is translated.  
This could also allow the page to display the most recent releases in  
more than one language.) I also agree we should select a limited set  
of languages to try to always translate for; I think the translation  
subcommittee has identified this set of languages and is working on  
doing this.

I'm not sure I agree with SJ's suggestion of presenting detailed  
information about the Foundation and its members, projects, and so  
on. The reason comes back to the maintenance issue. The more detailed  
the information presented, the more likely it is that some or most of  
that information will need to be updated as small details are  
modified. Consider the number of edits per month to the en.Wikipedia  
article on the Wikimedia Foundation[1], nearly 100 edits (including a  
major rewrite) in July alone.

Providing enough detail to describe the Foundation and its projects  
as well as figures within the Foundation is similar to other NGOs and  
corporations; enough detail to answer most questions but not so much  
the site becomes a burden to maintain.

Providing a very intuitive interface to the donations system which is  
painless and, if possible, enjoyable is a really important role for  
the site.

Amgine

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