Short answer: I don't think it's a cynical lie. I think that the donations
our donors give do results in benefits to the community, even if they
aren't transactional or tangible things. We definitely don't want to give
any misleading impression that the benefits are tangible so we will look
into this and if we can, try and to improve it.
Long answer: If I look at where things are now versus where things were
when I first started editing, it's amazing the amount of progress the
editing experience has made. Even some of the projects with the bumpiest
entries into the movement have been profoundly impactful. Some might raise
an eyebrow in my use of it as an example, but I am astounded by how much
easier the visual editor makes writing articles. Especially with the tools
that are built into like Citoid. It is a dream to use.
Or on the multilingual front with the content translation tool which has
seen 700,000 articles at last count? In the last couple of years we will
finally have integrated editor onboarding tools that are being worked on
which are critical for the health of our communities? From personal
experience, having better onboarding will massively improve community
projects that aim to engage and bring in new editors to the movement.
At one level you have the discrete improvements being worked on or
completed with things like partial blocks, revision scoring, visual diffs,
real time watchlists. At a more global level things like Structure Data on
Commons or Abstract Wikipedia have the potential to solve massive problems
the community has faced like multilingual categories or global templates.
Those have the potential to bring huge benefits to the editing community on
the projects.
The benefits aren't always tangible to a specific individual and can often
be invisible even if it enables or supports community focused work further
downstream. It's worth noting that many of the pragmatic and mission driven
choices made cumulatively over 15 years have made this work harder for us.
The limited resources in the earlier years meant that we accumulated a huge
amount of technical debt and digging out of that is always harder after the
fact. I'd defer to the opinions of my colleagues but the increasing
investment over the last few years has allowed us to start actually making
headway, even if there is still a long way to go.
On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 1:37 PM Pelagic via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
[ Cross-posted from
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Donations_-_show_the_editors_you…
]
I had the misfortune of visiting Wikipedia logged-out the other day, and
was struck by the large size of the donation banner, and the odd wording of
the appeal. (Something about awkward and humble.) Re-checking now, the
"awkward" bit is gone, but the following sentences are still there:
"If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge, take a minute to
donate. Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified information
that their work matters."
As an occasional editor I want to know: how do the donations show me that
the work matters? Is there some W?F "appreciation fund" that's going to
start handing out disbursements to editors? Will the money hire more dev's
to implement all the unfinished items from the Community Wishlists? Will
funds be used to run better "community consultations" where the communities
are actually listened to? Or is it just a big fat cynical marketing lie?
[Add: okay, I get it that donation appeals have to phrased in a way that
actually causes people to donate. But this skates very close to implying
that Wikipedia's editors are paid from donors' money.]
Cheers,
Pelagic
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Seddon
*Senior Community Relations Specialist*
*Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation*