Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the explanation - much clearer to me now! I can understand it is not always possible to give advance notice - I'm mainly suggesting to give notice when possible (even afterwards) to the people who may have to face the journalists/angry donors. The level of detail you describe above seems to go a long way in that.
Best, Lodewijk
On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Geoff Brigham gbrigham@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello rubin16 and all,
I wanted to follow up on Lisa's email. As she said, the decision to limit fundraising in Russia was not a political decision or a response to sanctions or US laws on Russia.
We are a diverse, global movement that spans the world, and we exist mostly online. However, our work takes place in the physical world, and each country has its own unique operating environment. At the WMF, we are constantly assessing what this means for the work of the movement.
In that context, we feel that laws in Russia offer a number of possible interpretations. So, out of an abundance of caution, we are not taking donations from Russia right now. If we feel the situation changes, we'll let people know.
As Lisa also said, this does and will not have any impact at all on how the WMF continues to support the Russian language Wikipedia, and its sister projects. We pool our funding and make our budget decisions independently from the geographical source, if any, of the funding.
We hear your point on transparency and advance notice, and it is a fair one. That said, sometimes we will need to quickly pause fundraising operations in different places while we gain clarity around how best to operate. We are making numerous decisions every day to respond to a wide variety of issues and considerations. I would like to commit to advance notice, but I don't think that will always be possible given the need for flexibility and speed at times. Nevertheless, I am reflecting on how to better address an issue like this in the future.
I appreciate the additional questions, but, as these are matters currently under consideration, I'm not in a position to share further right now.
Thank you,
Geoff _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe