[Wikimedia-l] Rationale for fundraising record?

[Oliver Keyes]

(personal capacity, for a moment)

I make this the...third or fourth? currently active thread on this mailing
list that has been turned into "make more money, pay more money and invest
it in credit unions".

James, I don't think there's anything you've said here that you haven't
said 2, 3, 5 or 20 times before. Regardless of if you're right or wrong -
and I'm not making a judgment call on that, because things like financial
investments are not in my skillset or domain knowledge - your suggestions
are not being put into practise. I've seen no sign from the replies that
anyone is planning on actively pursuing your (many) suggestions, for a
variety of reasons. At this point the best thing to do is probably to drop
the stick.

On 28 December 2012 17:13, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 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
>
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-- 
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation