On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 9:44 AM, WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Two weeks ago I emailed the fundraising team with the following note,
quietly and discretely pointing out an error in their messaging. Sadly I
haven't had a reply and I think that in the UK they are still using the £3
buys a coffee for a programmer line:
Aside from the incidental nature of the appeal,
£3 and $3 are very
different sums of money. When I saw $3 I thought that was an
expensive way
to buy coffees and that the WMF should invest in a kettle and some mugs.
But £3 for a coffee, now that just looks wasteful, even to someone living
in an expensive part of London. I dread to think what it looks like to
someone living in other parts of England, let alone cheaper parts of the
world. "£3 gets coffee and biscuits for a potential wikipedian coming to a
training session", that I could defend.
There's also the honesty/credibility factor. I doubt I am the only
person
seeing different versions of these ads including different
currencies, if the sums are this far apart the suspicion has to be that
none of the figures are to be trusted. Not a great help to our program of
improving Wikipedia quality and getting such details right in our articles.
That is the problem of having the same message translate in all languages.
If you have a centralised fundraising it's inevitable.
A part for currency (which is a problem), I want to emphasize the fact that
even the best translation maybe dosen "sound right" in different languages
and cultures.
There is for example an American rhetoric that simply doesn't translate in
other languages.
I've translated (as a volunteer) several WMF messages to donors in Italian
and always felt that those messages where made for an American audience.
I would love to see an A/B test with "culture-localized" messages (I think
it is part of the "honesty discourse" above).