[Wikimedia-l] Rationale for fundraising record?

[James Salsman]

> people are not contributing in the English language markets this
> year as opposed to last

What is the evidence for that?

> because of trends when the English Wikipedia's popularity has not
> significantly changed.

English projects per http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/pageviews

November 2010: 7.6 billion
November 2011: 8.3 billion or +9%
November 2012: 9.6 billion or +15%

Along with my questions about lowered fundraising expectations which
Zack specifically asked to re-post to this list, I would also like
answers to my earlier questions about why multivariate testing can't
be used to measure donations, because all of the multivariate tests
published so far were used to measure donations. There is no doubt in
my mind from the distribution of message performance that if we tested
the remaining volunteer-submitted appeals from 2009-10, we could do
twice as well per day as we did at the beginning of this month, and
not just during these last days of the year when we are probably
sacrificing $7 million to slashed growth rates, jettisoned Fellowships
without community consultation, and salaries pegged well below that of
other Bay Area technology employers.

As for the reserve fund investment, I would like to point out that
investment in securities which are expected to return less than
inflation are a guaranteed risk that the purchasing power of donors'
funds will diminish before they are spent. As far as I can tell from
messages off list at Garfield's request, all reserve investments were
expected to perform below the rate of inflation when they were
purchased.

Sincerely,
James Salsman