I know the history of our content and I know the slip ups that have been made along the way but the team take this seriously. Our internal review processes have significantly improved over the years and for this fundraiser it's definitely been our most rigorous yet and I think it's proven to be pretty effective. The scale of the fundraiser means that things will slip through because there are human beings involved. But I promise you that the people I work with are holding themselves to a standard of honesty in our content. I and others wouldn't work here if that wasn't the case.
Seddon
On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 7:05 AM MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Samuel Klein wrote:
[Some banners are so delightful that they are a welcome improvement to a page without; and I've occasionally thought we should run some of those, w/ low probability, continuously year-round.]
Which banners are delightful? The ones I've seen this year take up two pages of scrolling on mobile. This isn't cute or endearing; as you and others note, it's alarming to many people.
As I imagine I've said previously, I think it's helpful to call this type of behavior what it is: spam or advertising. Calling it "fundraising" or speaking of "banners" makes it a lot easier to brush aside how intrusive and obnoxious this code is and the damaging impact it has.
Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Isn't it about time that the Wikimedia Foundation came to terms that /plenty/ of money is made through sensible fundraising, without every year embarrassing the whole Wikimedia Community by promoting the impression that Wikipedia is about to close down if the public don't give them enough money to keep their servers powered up over Christmas? Making 10% more money every year is growth for the sake of it unless we can understand in an accountable and transparent way where that extra 10% is needed; preferably right there in the fundraising banner so folks don't get the impression that Wikipedia is about to vanish.
Yes, absolutely. While there's often talk of "Wikimedia values", it's always been incredible to me to see the exact confines of those values from Wikimedia Foundation Inc. staff who are charged with bringing in money. For years, there have been complaints about this spam being borderline deceitful; in some cases the spam has been outright misleading or wrong. How does tricking people into thinking that Wikipedia will stop surviving if they don't give $5 an acceptable practice?
MZMcBride
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