Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Fred Bauder]

> No, I do not think the situation was solved two years ago. Some of the
> topics discussed here over the last year have indicated some of the
> continuing problems.
>
> The attitude that the volunteers are here only to write articles, and
> should leave the general concerns of the site  to the professionals,
> is a good part of the problem. Many organizations do work that way,
> and they can be successful in their own terms.  Wikipedia is an
> attempt to do something different.

The problem, of course, is that the "professionals" are often not
professionally trained in what we do, at present only practical
experience prepares someone. Not that a rigorous academic program in wiki
administration could not be developed. Care would have to be taken to
hire people with actual knowledge to teach in such a program rather than
the usual crowd on the short list that is usually interviewed in media
explorations of Wikipedia. Some of them have been out of the game for
quite some time. One wonders who would pay substantial tuition and spend
years learning such skills, but some people do prepare themselves
academically for volunteer work.

Language such as "In her role as executive director of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Sue Gardner oversees none other than Wikipedia," is fine for
outside observers. I'm sure Sue Gardner understands her powers of
oversight, or even understanding of internal processes, are limited; and
that a clear grasp of those limitations is one of the qualifications for
her position.

Fred


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Goodman]

For those who have experienced it, the availability of immediate
access to a very wide range of resources is an incredible advantage.
The same is true for the availability of print resources.

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:54 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> -- On Wed, 9/3/11, SlimVirgin  wrote:
>
>> The nearest university to me will give access to databases
>> for $150 a
>> year, but they make non-students and staff travel to the
>> university
>> itself to do it; no logging in from home, and that turns
>> into a
>> serious hassle over time (travelling there, very high
>> parking fees,
>> not being able to browse at leisure).
>
> These are my feelings too. It's just not practical. By the time I've spent
> three-quarters of an hour in traffic (each way) and have paid $15 or more
> for 3 hours' parking, I'm better off shelling out $20 to buy an article
> online, where I can take time to digest it, make myself a free coffee, and
> do the work without worrying about my parking meter, or closing time.
>
> Andreas
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
David Goodman

DGG at the enWP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Goodman]

No, I do not think the situation was solved two years ago. Some of the
topics discussed here over the last year have indicated some of the
continuing problems.

The attitude that the volunteers are here only to write articles, and
should leave the general concerns of the site  to the professionals,
is a good part of the problem. Many organizations do work that way,
and they can be successful in their own terms.  Wikipedia is an
attempt to do something different.




On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 9 March 2011 23:02, David Goodman  wrote:
>> Until recently, the foundation has been increasing its staff by hiring
>> the best person immediately available, rather than a person good
>> enough to do the necessary job.
>
> I don't think that's true, at least not for the past couple of years.
> The WMF often takes a long time over recruitment and has been known to
> re-list jobs if there were no good applicants.
>
>> 1. keep the job unfilled , and search again and again until there is a
>> suitable applicant -- except for a critical replacement, this is
>> nearly always possible, & if it is a critical position, there should
>> have been a in-house person qualified to back up the position as long
>> as necessary. I've known major libraries leaving   key senior
>> positions unfilled for 10 years, until a suitable candidate was found.
>
> If you can get by without a position filled for 10 years then clearly
> it isn't a necessary position (or the position has been filled and you
> just haven't updated that person's job title). You can't have someone
> else fill in for a position indefinitely since then they won't be
> doing their own job.
>
>> 2. redefine the job so that there are available applicants who can
>> fill them. this may require rearranging other positions, including
>> asking people at higher levels to take on responsibilities they would
>> rather delegate.
>
> The WMF has definitely done that with some of the recent hires to the
> community team.
>
>> 3. Increase the financial and non-financial aspects of the position,
>> in order to attract a wider range of candidates. This is especially
>> necessary to get applications from highly qualified candidates who
>> would need to relocate. Some organizations may be too poor to do this,
>> or be dealing with controlling outside bodies that limit their
>> flexibility, in which case they can do the 4th option, an option which
>> often has benefits even for the richest:
>
> Working for Wikipedia is a big non-financial aspect that attracts a
> wide range of candidates.
>
>> 4. rely more on the volunteers, even for things one would not normally
>> expect a volunteer to do.  Wikipedia has some unusually well-qualified
>> volunteers available, as compared with most any other organization.
>
> Things one would not normally expect a volunteer to do, such as
> writing encyclopaedia articles, say?
>
> So, in summary, your suggestions are good but they are already being
> done and the problem you observe was fixed years ago.
>
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-- 
David Goodman

DGG at the enWP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Andreas Kolbe]

-- On Wed, 9/3/11, SlimVirgin  wrote:

> The nearest university to me will give access to databases
> for $150 a
> year, but they make non-students and staff travel to the
> university
> itself to do it; no logging in from home, and that turns
> into a
> serious hassle over time (travelling there, very high
> parking fees,
> not being able to browse at leisure).

These are my feelings too. It's just not practical. By the time I've spent 
three-quarters of an hour in traffic (each way) and have paid $15 or more 
for 3 hours' parking, I'm better off shelling out $20 to buy an article 
online, where I can take time to digest it, make myself a free coffee, and 
do the work without worrying about my parking meter, or closing time.

Andreas




  

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Thomas Dalton]

On 9 March 2011 23:02, David Goodman  wrote:
> Until recently, the foundation has been increasing its staff by hiring
> the best person immediately available, rather than a person good
> enough to do the necessary job.

I don't think that's true, at least not for the past couple of years.
The WMF often takes a long time over recruitment and has been known to
re-list jobs if there were no good applicants.

> 1. keep the job unfilled , and search again and again until there is a
> suitable applicant -- except for a critical replacement, this is
> nearly always possible, & if it is a critical position, there should
> have been a in-house person qualified to back up the position as long
> as necessary. I've known major libraries leaving   key senior
> positions unfilled for 10 years, until a suitable candidate was found.

If you can get by without a position filled for 10 years then clearly
it isn't a necessary position (or the position has been filled and you
just haven't updated that person's job title). You can't have someone
else fill in for a position indefinitely since then they won't be
doing their own job.

> 2. redefine the job so that there are available applicants who can
> fill them. this may require rearranging other positions, including
> asking people at higher levels to take on responsibilities they would
> rather delegate.

The WMF has definitely done that with some of the recent hires to the
community team.

> 3. Increase the financial and non-financial aspects of the position,
> in order to attract a wider range of candidates. This is especially
> necessary to get applications from highly qualified candidates who
> would need to relocate. Some organizations may be too poor to do this,
> or be dealing with controlling outside bodies that limit their
> flexibility, in which case they can do the 4th option, an option which
> often has benefits even for the richest:

Working for Wikipedia is a big non-financial aspect that attracts a
wide range of candidates.

> 4. rely more on the volunteers, even for things one would not normally
> expect a volunteer to do.  Wikipedia has some unusually well-qualified
> volunteers available, as compared with most any other organization.

Things one would not normally expect a volunteer to do, such as
writing encyclopaedia articles, say?

So, in summary, your suggestions are good but they are already being
done and the problem you observe was fixed years ago.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Michael Snow]

On 3/9/2011 3:09 PM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 9 March 2011 23:02, David Goodman  wrote:
>> Until recently, the foundation has been increasing its staff by hiring
>> the best person immediately available, rather than a person good
>> enough to do the necessary job.
> Citation needed.
It depends on your definition of recently. We were still making mistakes 
along these lines a couple years ago, but I think the relevant lessons 
were learned, certainly by the time we had to hire a CTO to replace 
Brion (who it's so wonderful to have back with us, not that he fully 
left or anything). And of course regularly reviewing and applying those 
lessons is good, not just for hiring but any kind of recruiting. For 
example, the process that led us to find Bishakha went through a number 
of iterations and took longer than we would have liked, but ultimately 
it was what we needed to find the right person for that position on the 
board. I would generally agree with much of David's advice as a matter 
of theory, regardless of how familiar he is with actual current practice 
at the foundation.

--Michael Snow

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 9 March 2011 23:02, David Goodman  wrote:

> Until recently, the foundation has been increasing its staff by hiring
> the best person immediately available, rather than a person good
> enough to do the necessary job.


Citation needed.


> 1. keep the job unfilled , and search again and again until there is a
> suitable applicant -- except for a critical replacement, this is
> nearly always possible, & if it is a critical position, there should
> have been a in-house person qualified to back up the position as long
> as necessary.


I understand this is the present practice. It certainly has been for a
few jobs lately, even rather large ones.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Goodman]

Until recently, the foundation has been increasing its staff by hiring
the best person immediately available, rather than a person good
enough to do the necessary job.  I''ve seen this sort of situation
numerous times in my library career, and dealing with it in this  way
is  not good practice. Good practice is to do one of several things:
1. keep the job unfilled , and search again and again until there is a
suitable applicant -- except for a critical replacement, this is
nearly always possible, & if it is a critical position, there should
have been a in-house person qualified to back up the position as long
as necessary. I've known major libraries leaving   key senior
positions unfilled for 10 years, until a suitable candidate was found.
2. redefine the job so that there are available applicants who can
fill them. this may require rearranging other positions, including
asking people at higher levels to take on responsibilities they would
rather delegate.
3. Increase the financial and non-financial aspects of the position,
in order to attract a wider range of candidates. This is especially
necessary to get applications from highly qualified candidates who
would need to relocate. Some organizations may be too poor to do this,
or be dealing with controlling outside bodies that limit their
flexibility, in which case they can do the 4th option, an option which
often has benefits even for the richest:
4. rely more on the volunteers, even for things one would not normally
expect a volunteer to do.  Wikipedia has some unusually well-qualified
volunteers available, as compared with most any other organization.

If anyone asks me if I have particular people in mind, this is
obviously not for the list, but I have had a few confidential
discussion as appropriate on the matter. I believe most of the people
at the foundation & on the board who know the situation would agree
with me, even though I do not expect them to say so. There was one
change that indicated that the situation was recognized, and I think
things are   improving.


On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Jason donovan  wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:59 AM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
>
>> On 09/03/2011, at 10:15, MZMcBride  wrote:
>>
>> > All of this makes for one of the stronger arguments for a more
>> decentralized
>> > office structure at this point, in my opinion. (Lightly echoing what Liam
>> > said.)
>> >
>> > MZMcBride
>>
>> That's actually not what I said, or at least not what I meant to say.
>> I am very supportive of the WMF being headquartered in San Fran and also of
>> having offsite employees when applicable (being one myself for this year).
>> But by "decentralising" I was referring to a focus more on building up the
>> professional capacity of the Chapters and did not mean to refer to expanding
>> the number of WMF offices (nationally or internationally). The strategic
>> projects to create 'catalyst' teams/offices in India, Middle East and Brazil
>> are very cool/worthy/useful projects and I support them fully. Ultimately
>> though I would like to see these being developed with an aim to the
>> infrastructure being "handed over" to the local chapter once it too is up to
>> an appropriately professional standard. This is not the same as saying that
>> the WMF should decentralise.
>>
>> I think the question that makes this debate the clearest is when you ask:
>> "should there be a Wikimedia USA chapter". If you think "Yes" then that
>> implies there will be a USA office (in NYC?) that is for domestic issues and
>> the WMF office in San Fran for the movement generally - rather like the way
>> there is a Red Cross Switzerland and also the International Committee of the
>> Red Cross/Crescent in Geneva. If you think "No" then that implies that
>> Chapters need only be in places/roles that the WMF choses not to focus on.
>> Unsurprisingly - I think "Yes".
>>
>> -Liam
>>
>> Wittylama.com/blog
>> Peace, love & metadata
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>
>
> I am new to this but from my impression of things- I believe the core issue
> here is that the Foundation appears to be growing fast, almost too fast.
> It's losing its identity, on one hand its trying to compete with the top ten
> "big boys" by choosing San Francisco as its base of operations and behaving
> like the other 9 - expanding into emerging markets for example. It's also
> still trying to appear like a small non-profit with a limited staff and
> shoestrings budget that was evident in the early phases taking on the other
> big companies. The appearance seems to switch between those two identities,
> there is probably nothing wrong with that, but their seems to be some lack
> of vision at the helm.
>
> My impression from the finance reports linked to earlier by someone is that
> the foundation is raising more money than it actually needs, 

Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Jason donovan]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:59 AM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:

> On 09/03/2011, at 10:15, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
> > All of this makes for one of the stronger arguments for a more
> decentralized
> > office structure at this point, in my opinion. (Lightly echoing what Liam
> > said.)
> >
> > MZMcBride
>
> That's actually not what I said, or at least not what I meant to say.
> I am very supportive of the WMF being headquartered in San Fran and also of
> having offsite employees when applicable (being one myself for this year).
> But by "decentralising" I was referring to a focus more on building up the
> professional capacity of the Chapters and did not mean to refer to expanding
> the number of WMF offices (nationally or internationally). The strategic
> projects to create 'catalyst' teams/offices in India, Middle East and Brazil
> are very cool/worthy/useful projects and I support them fully. Ultimately
> though I would like to see these being developed with an aim to the
> infrastructure being "handed over" to the local chapter once it too is up to
> an appropriately professional standard. This is not the same as saying that
> the WMF should decentralise.
>
> I think the question that makes this debate the clearest is when you ask:
> "should there be a Wikimedia USA chapter". If you think "Yes" then that
> implies there will be a USA office (in NYC?) that is for domestic issues and
> the WMF office in San Fran for the movement generally - rather like the way
> there is a Red Cross Switzerland and also the International Committee of the
> Red Cross/Crescent in Geneva. If you think "No" then that implies that
> Chapters need only be in places/roles that the WMF choses not to focus on.
> Unsurprisingly - I think "Yes".
>
> -Liam
>
> Wittylama.com/blog
> Peace, love & metadata
> ___
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>


I am new to this but from my impression of things- I believe the core issue
here is that the Foundation appears to be growing fast, almost too fast.
It's losing its identity, on one hand its trying to compete with the top ten
"big boys" by choosing San Francisco as its base of operations and behaving
like the other 9 - expanding into emerging markets for example. It's also
still trying to appear like a small non-profit with a limited staff and
shoestrings budget that was evident in the early phases taking on the other
big companies. The appearance seems to switch between those two identities,
there is probably nothing wrong with that, but their seems to be some lack
of vision at the helm.

My impression from the finance reports linked to earlier by someone is that
the foundation is raising more money than it actually needs, bloat would be
the most likely outcome. If its not apparent now, then it probably will be
later. My advice would be better financial planning.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Fred Bauder]

> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:50, aude  wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Andreas Kolbe 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --- On Tue, 8/3/11, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>>> > From: Fred Bauder 
>>> > Fred Bauder 
>>> > I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and
>>> > databases
>>> > such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit
>>> > into our
>>> > budget.
>>>
>>>
>>> I would like to second that as well -- this is a very important way in
>>> which
>>> the Foundation could support high-volume content contributors, and
>>> which
>>> would make a significant difference to article quality.
>>>
>>> This should be a part of university outreach as well. Many university
>>> students have log-in IDs enabling them to log into academic databases
>>> from
>>> their homes. Please tell universities who would like to support
>>> Wikipedia
>>> that this is a really important way in which they can support the
>>> project,
>>> by allowing established content contributors access to these
>>> databases.
>>>
>>> And as Sarah says, if numbers are limited, access should be given to
>>> editors
>>> based on merit, based on a history of content work that would benefit
>>> from
>>> such access.
>>>
>> I'm not a university student but for $300/year, could get borrowing
>> privilege at the local university. (
>> http://www.library.georgetown.edu/associates)  I bet as part of our
>> university outreach, from WMF, they might just grant access to some
>> wikipedians.  Access to academic databases would also be super useful.
>>
>
> The nearest university to me will give access to databases for $150 a
> year, but they make non-students and staff travel to the university
> itself to do it; no logging in from home, and that turns into a
> serious hassle over time (travelling there, very high parking fees,
> not being able to browse at leisure).
>
> I think those of us who criticize the Foundation have to take some
> responsibility for not asking for these things. For my own part, I get
> discouraged because the Foundation seems distant, and seems to have
> other priorities. But in fact I've never put together a proposal for
> the kind of thing I'd like to see the Foundation help with, so
> actually I'm criticizing them for failing to be psychic.
>
> Let's get together and try to write something about how the Foundation
> could help more Wikipedians gain access to good databases. It's
> something that would definitely transform the quality of content.
>
> Sarah

Excellent,

I'll start researching possibilities. My situation is very similar. I'm
good friends with the folks that run the local college library (even to
the point I might get a password) but it is 50 miles away and not driving
all over is very much one of my goals these days.

I'm going to check out the possibilities. There might be some
opportunities we're not aware of. To say nothing of expanding our
listings of free databases.

Fred



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[SlimVirgin]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:50, aude  wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
>> --- On Tue, 8/3/11, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> > From: Fred Bauder 
>> > Fred Bauder 
>> > I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and
>> > databases
>> > such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit
>> > into our
>> > budget.
>>
>>
>> I would like to second that as well -- this is a very important way in
>> which
>> the Foundation could support high-volume content contributors, and which
>> would make a significant difference to article quality.
>>
>> This should be a part of university outreach as well. Many university
>> students have log-in IDs enabling them to log into academic databases from
>> their homes. Please tell universities who would like to support Wikipedia
>> that this is a really important way in which they can support the project,
>> by allowing established content contributors access to these databases.
>>
>> And as Sarah says, if numbers are limited, access should be given to
>> editors
>> based on merit, based on a history of content work that would benefit from
>> such access.
>>
> I'm not a university student but for $300/year, could get borrowing
> privilege at the local university. (
> http://www.library.georgetown.edu/associates)  I bet as part of our
> university outreach, from WMF, they might just grant access to some
> wikipedians.  Access to academic databases would also be super useful.
>

The nearest university to me will give access to databases for $150 a
year, but they make non-students and staff travel to the university
itself to do it; no logging in from home, and that turns into a
serious hassle over time (travelling there, very high parking fees,
not being able to browse at leisure).

I think those of us who criticize the Foundation have to take some
responsibility for not asking for these things. For my own part, I get
discouraged because the Foundation seems distant, and seems to have
other priorities. But in fact I've never put together a proposal for
the kind of thing I'd like to see the Foundation help with, so
actually I'm criticizing them for failing to be psychic.

Let's get together and try to write something about how the Foundation
could help more Wikipedians gain access to good databases. It's
something that would definitely transform the quality of content.

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Liam Wyatt]

On 09/03/2011, at 10:15, MZMcBride  wrote:

> All of this makes for one of the stronger arguments for a more decentralized
> office structure at this point, in my opinion. (Lightly echoing what Liam
> said.)
> 
> MZMcBride

That's actually not what I said, or at least not what I meant to say.
I am very supportive of the WMF being headquartered in San Fran and also of 
having offsite employees when applicable (being one myself for this year). But 
by "decentralising" I was referring to a focus more on building up the 
professional capacity of the Chapters and did not mean to refer to expanding 
the number of WMF offices (nationally or internationally). The strategic 
projects to create 'catalyst' teams/offices in India, Middle East and Brazil 
are very cool/worthy/useful projects and I support them fully. Ultimately 
though I would like to see these being developed with an aim to the 
infrastructure being "handed over" to the local chapter once it too is up to an 
appropriately professional standard. This is not the same as saying that the 
WMF should decentralise.

I think the question that makes this debate the clearest is when you ask: 
"should there be a Wikimedia USA chapter". If you think "Yes" then that implies 
there will be a USA office (in NYC?) that is for domestic issues and the WMF 
office in San Fran for the movement generally - rather like the way there is a 
Red Cross Switzerland and also the International Committee of the Red 
Cross/Crescent in Geneva. If you think "No" then that implies that Chapters 
need only be in places/roles that the WMF choses not to focus on. 
Unsurprisingly - I think "Yes".

-Liam

Wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Andrew Gray]

On 9 March 2011 00:24, Pedro Sanchez  wrote:

> Thank you for your enlightening response.
> * Reddit ... a project with values similar to ours
> * Google  ... a project with values similar to ours
> * OWA  ?¿
> * CivicCRM  ... this one offers services to help internal management
> * Creative Commons  ok, finally one project with similar values than
> ours: free content
>
> Now, out of the five, only one is actually related and shares similare
> values with our purpose.

I note that Arthur qualified his list with "...at least in the
technology department". From that perspective, WMFs similarities to
the first two are more along the lines of "running very large
websites" than they are "generating free content". The latter is the
fundamental goal, of course, but we'd have problems if the *technical*
staff spent all their time working on it!

CiviCRM, incidentally, is the main software WMF uses for internal
donations management.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Michael Snow]

On 3/8/2011 4:24 PM, Pedro Sanchez wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Arthur Richards  
> wrote:
>> I don't know much about any official partnerships the Foundation has,
>> but a non-trivial amount of in-person collaboration and information
>> sharing goes on on a regular basis in the office between other tech
>> organizations/companies (like Reddit, Google, OWA, Creative Commons,
>> CiviCRM, etc) that would be impossible if we were working in an office
>> in, say, Duluth, Minnesota.  Or St. Petersburg, Florida for that
>> matter.  This has extraordinary benefit for us, at least in the
>> technology department
> Thank you for your enlightening response.
> * Reddit ... a project with values similar to ours
> * Google  ... a project with values similar to ours
> * OWA  ?¿
> * CivicCRM  ... this one offers services to help internal management
> * Creative Commons  ok, finally one project with similar values than
> ours: free content
>
> Now, out of the five, only one is actually related and shares similare
> values with our purpose.
>
> Then if you're part of staff,  you're ina much better position to know
> about the benefical exchanges allowed by the move (which I agree, it's
> pointless to discuss now, what's done it's done). But now, if there
> are so many benefits over these years, but even people working closely
> don't know, this only hilights how disconnected are the elite from the
> working community.
>
> Now, actual exchanges  that have got a lot of publicity and results:
> Kaltura: SF? No.. NY
A big part of Kaltura's contribution was to sponsor the work of Michael 
Dale, who works out of the San Francisco office, and who previously was 
at the university in relatively nearby Santa Cruz.

--Michael Snow

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Arthur Richards]

> * Reddit ... a project with values similar to ours
> * Google  ... a project with values similar to ours
> * OWA  ?¿
> * CivicCRM  ... this one offers services to help internal management
> * Creative Commons  ok, finally one project with similar values than
> ours: free content
>
> Now, out of the five, only one is actually related and shares similare
> values with our purpose.
I didn't mention those orgs in my most recent reply to suggest they had 
similar values.  Regardless, they have an enormous amount of experience 
in a very similar problem space (technologically speaking) as we do - 
and in that, there is tremendous value in exchanging ideas/sharing 
information/collaboratively problem solving/etc.

Also, while sarcasm may be considered by some to be the highest form of 
wit, I find that it can be difficult to detect and properly understand 
in emails - particularly for users who are reading in a non-native 
language.  For better clarity and the sake of non-native readers, please 
keep it to a minimum when illustrating your points.

Arthur

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Pedro Sanchez]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Arthur Richards  wrote:
>
>> Yes, that was what we were said several years ago
>>
>> and I think now there's ample evidence to show it was true, look at
>> all the partnerships and support we got
>
> I presume you meant that sarcastically?
>
> I don't know much about any official partnerships the Foundation has,
> but a non-trivial amount of in-person collaboration and information
> sharing goes on on a regular basis in the office between other tech
> organizations/companies (like Reddit, Google, OWA, Creative Commons,
> CiviCRM, etc) that would be impossible if we were working in an office
> in, say, Duluth, Minnesota.  Or St. Petersburg, Florida for that
> matter.  This has extraordinary benefit for us, at least in the
> technology department.
>
> Arthur
>
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Thank you for your enlightening response.
* Reddit ... a project with values similar to ours
* Google  ... a project with values similar to ours
* OWA  ?¿
* CivicCRM  ... this one offers services to help internal management
* Creative Commons  ok, finally one project with similar values than
ours: free content

Now, out of the five, only one is actually related and shares similare
values with our purpose.

Then if you're part of staff,  you're ina much better position to know
about the benefical exchanges allowed by the move (which I agree, it's
pointless to discuss now, what's done it's done). But now, if there
are so many benefits over these years, but even people working closely
don't know, this only hilights how disconnected are the elite from the
working community.

Now, actual exchanges  that have got a lot of publicity and results:
Kaltura: SF? No.. NY
PediaPress:  SF? No, Germany

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Arthur Richards]

> Yes, that was what we were said several years ago
>
> and I think now there's ample evidence to show it was true, look at
> all the partnerships and support we got

I presume you meant that sarcastically?

I don't know much about any official partnerships the Foundation has, 
but a non-trivial amount of in-person collaboration and information 
sharing goes on on a regular basis in the office between other tech 
organizations/companies (like Reddit, Google, OWA, Creative Commons, 
CiviCRM, etc) that would be impossible if we were working in an office 
in, say, Duluth, Minnesota.  Or St. Petersburg, Florida for that 
matter.  This has extraordinary benefit for us, at least in the 
technology department.

Arthur

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Pedro Sanchez]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Arthur Richards  wrote:
>
>> As Wikimedia's paid staff continues to grow, the decision to move to San
>> Francisco (and its consequences) actually gets amplified, doesn't it? It
>> would only be offset by the benefits that Wikimedia gets for being in that
>> particular location (partnerships with other San Francisco-based companies,
>> presumably).
> Since I wasn't an employee when the Foundation made the move to San
> Francisco, I can't speak for all of the motivations.  From my
> perspective as an open source software developer working on such a novel
> project, there are a lot of advantages to being in the Bay Area - namely
> proximity to lots of other projects with similar values (for
> partnerships, support, networking, etc) as well as a large pool of
> excellent developer talent.  Of course, excellent developer talent is
> not unique to SF (evidenced by the fact that so many of our developers
> are remote), I believe it exists here in a much more concentrated
> fashion than elsewhere.  Also, the Bay Area has a ton of non-engineering
> talent with non-profit and community focused experience.  I can only
> speak from my own experience and anecdotal evidence, but I would argue
> that the Bay Area is a hub (at least in the US) for both engineering and
> community development/non-profit professionals.
>
Yes, that was what we were said several years ago

and I think now there's ample evidence to show it was true, look at
all the partnerships and support we got

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Arthur Richards]

> As Wikimedia's paid staff continues to grow, the decision to move to San
> Francisco (and its consequences) actually gets amplified, doesn't it? It
> would only be offset by the benefits that Wikimedia gets for being in that
> particular location (partnerships with other San Francisco-based companies,
> presumably).
Since I wasn't an employee when the Foundation made the move to San 
Francisco, I can't speak for all of the motivations.  From my 
perspective as an open source software developer working on such a novel 
project, there are a lot of advantages to being in the Bay Area - namely 
proximity to lots of other projects with similar values (for 
partnerships, support, networking, etc) as well as a large pool of 
excellent developer talent.  Of course, excellent developer talent is 
not unique to SF (evidenced by the fact that so many of our developers 
are remote), I believe it exists here in a much more concentrated 
fashion than elsewhere.  Also, the Bay Area has a ton of non-engineering 
talent with non-profit and community focused experience.  I can only 
speak from my own experience and anecdotal evidence, but I would argue 
that the Bay Area is a hub (at least in the US) for both engineering and 
community development/non-profit professionals.


> I think the (relatively) low salaries make it even harder to
> attract people when the cost of living is as high as it is in San Francisco
> as well. There are plenty of other people on this mailing list who could
> speak better to this than me, though. Maybe some of them will chime in.
Again, I can only speak from my experience and anecdotal evidence - it's 
true that the salaries for engineers are significantly lower than they 
would be if we working for for-profit software projects - particularly 
at any of the other top-5 websites.  At the same time, it means that our 
engineers (and I presume this is true for the other departments as well) 
are not here for the money - we're here because we truly believe in the 
mission.

Arthur

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[MZMcBride]

Birgitte SB wrote:
> But seriously it's 2011, can we be stop discussing "the move to SF".
> Is anyone seriously complaining about funds from the 2006 fundraiser?

Sure, in a sense, what's done is done. However, it has (or had) little to do
with the relocation costs. You have to maintain salaries, buy office space,
etc. in that market going forward until the office moves again. That is, the
initial costs are bad enough, but expanding in that market is even worse.

As Wikimedia's paid staff continues to grow, the decision to move to San
Francisco (and its consequences) actually gets amplified, doesn't it? It
would only be offset by the benefits that Wikimedia gets for being in that
particular location (partnerships with other San Francisco-based companies,
presumably). I think the (relatively) low salaries make it even harder to
attract people when the cost of living is as high as it is in San Francisco
as well. There are plenty of other people on this mailing list who could
speak better to this than me, though. Maybe some of them will chime in.

All of this makes for one of the stronger arguments for a more decentralized
office structure at this point, in my opinion. (Lightly echoing what Liam
said.)

MZMcBride



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Birgitte SB]

- Original Message 
> From: SlimVirgin 
> To: fredb...@fairpoint.net; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
>
> Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 10:03:48 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

> 
> Why is there a  feeling alienation? Because the Foundation is raising
> millions of dollars  from people who read our articles, but isn't
> spending the money on helping to  increase the quality of the articles,
> or make life easier for the volunteers.  It's all about moving to San
> Francisco (how did that help?), opening new  offices overseas,
> employing new fundraisers, etc. Let me apologize here if  that sounds
> too cynical or unfair. I'm just giving a worm's eye view, which  I
> accept may be uninformed, but it's what things look like from down
> here  in the mud. :)
> 

I think you have to consider the context of the timing of the move to SF before 
declaring the decision as blatantly  unhelpful.  It was before the financial 
meltdown.  Attracting and keeping talent, especially given the stress of having 
the quality their work and even the basic decision to pay someone to their job 
regularly attacked, was a big concern. For historical accuracy think what Danny 
dealt with (or search foundation-l archives if you weren't around) and forget 
anything recent that may or may not be such an attack. I thought Danny was 
absolutely crazy to work at WMF, and I work in a family business where 
task-irrelevant stress and a complete lack of boundaries make corporate jobs 
seem fabulously pampered.  Asking people to relocate to some random place when 
they were probably already worried about whether they will be able to handle 
working under that kind of strain was going to be quite difficult in what was 
it; 4.7% unemployment?  SF has a big internet and tech base. It has always made 
sense to me that WMF would be able to both find likely candidates already in SF 
and attract better candidates to SF where the obvious back-up plans for a  WMF 
job not working out seemed rather palatable to the sort of people WMF would 
want.  Given how the larger world events turned out, those concerns seems less 
relevant.  8.9% unemployment leaves good candidates sitting around just about 
everywhere.  


But seriously it's 2011, can we be stop discussing "the move to SF". Is anyone 
seriously complaining about funds from the 2006 fundraiser? Who should be 
brought to account for SF being a sub-optimal location?  The staff who were not 
yet employed by WMF?  The board which includes more people who where not board 
members when that decision was made than where involved in the decision? What 
is 
the point of bring this up? 


WMF is located in San Francisco. Not in Boston, London, New York, DC, St. Pete, 
nor in any city that was never even under consideration.  Can we please count 
this point as a given and consider those people who were alienated from WMF 
back 
in 2007 as below the threshold of relevance at this point in time.

Birgitte SB



  

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[aude]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 2:20 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:

>
> I don't mean to derail this thread off-topic ... but I'm a Wikipedian,
> I can't help myself :)
>
> Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
> vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
> university. The library pays according to how many people that is.
> Giving access to others is generally a violation of that contract, and
> could variously: a) cause the library to lose access to the resource
> altogether, if the publisher determines that many 'unauthorized'
> people are gaining access or a great deal is being downloaded; b)
> cause the student to be sanctioned by the university for mis-using
> their log-in ID. So, uh, yeah, let's not do outreach asking for this.
>
> Sadly, most pay-for-privileges schemes like Aude describes, at least
> for American universities, are only for checking out books, not access
> to e-resources.
>
>
Being able to borrow books would still be hugely useful.  I could finish
with some of my featured articles and work more on content. (reason I'm
here)

While I'm at the university getting my books, it's possible to access
databases and download anything & everything I want.  Not ideal, but okay
when combined w/ what's accessible via the public library and other means.

-Katie




> (You can probably figure out what this means yourself -- to get access
> to databases, the WMF would likely have to negotiate similar
> contracts. For reference, my university employs a full-time person +
> several other people's time just for this job. Are we special? yes.
> Are we likely to get publishers to talk to us and do special things?
> Probably! But it's not totally simple.)
>
> /librarian :)
> phoebe
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Juergen Fenn]

Am 08.03.11 21:19, schrieb phoebe ayers:

>> As far as Wikipedia is concerned, the German chapter of Wikimedia has
>> just negotiated the first settlement for a premium database provider in
>> chemistry, see
>> .
>> There are plans to expand this programme.
>>
> Cool I look forward to hearing more about this.
> 
> (And I'm certainly not saying it's impossible for the WMF, just saying
> it's not only a question of money)

That's what I think, too. However, the main problem seems to be that
database providers (i.e., scientific publishers) are somewhat reluctant
to negotiate with Wikimedia representatives. On the one hand, they are
interested in having their literature cited in Wikipedia, on the other
hand they have a hunch that "liberating" knowledge under free licenses
could make commercial publishers obsolete someday. So, we have to make
clear that the latter is clearly not the case because Wikipedia depends
on scientific sources, but is not a scientific source itself.

Regards,
Jürgen.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Andrew Gray]

On 8 March 2011 19:20, phoebe ayers  wrote:

> Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
> vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
> university. The library pays according to how many people that is.
> Giving access to others is generally a violation of that contract, and
> could variously: a) cause the library to lose access to the resource
> altogether, if the publisher determines that many 'unauthorized'
> people are gaining access or a great deal is being downloaded; b)
> cause the student to be sanctioned by the university for mis-using
> their log-in ID. So, uh, yeah, let's not do outreach asking for this.

I was about to reply and say much the same thing! (with the same hat on...)

A sample contract, for OUP journals:
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/help/instsitelicence.pdf

It's a pretty standard limitation: "... affiliated with the Licensee
as a current student, faculty, library patron, employee, ... or
physically present on the Licensee's premises."

Note the last caveat - many institutions will allow use of some
otherwise-restricted electronic resources to non-students when
physically on site. In these cases, accessibility is usually
comparable to that of reading room access - the conditions whereby
they'll let you come in and use a desk. Some institutions have an
entirely open-door policy, some just ask to fill in a form, some
charge a relatively nominal fee, some want evidence of a reason to be
there, etc.


Getting people in here is one way the WMF (or local chapters) could
play a part - the financial side of things fits well with the
microgrants programs some chapters have run to pay for books, etc, in
the past, and whilst I don't believe we currently sign things to say
people are doing valid research, there's no reason we couldn't start
doing so.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Juergen Fenn  wrote:
>
>
> Am 08.03.11 20:20, schrieb phoebe ayers:
>
>> Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
>> vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
>> university.
>
> This may hold true for the U.S., but as far as Europe is concerned the
> situation is different in some points. E.g., in Germany all residents
> are entitled to access some commercial databases that a national license
> has been obtained for, cf.  and
> . What's more, university
> libraries are open to all residents in its vicinity, offering on-line
> access at least on campus to every user of the library.

Yes, on-site access is also true in the U.S. for public
(state-supported) universities. Additionally many public libraries
offer access to research databases, though these may not be scholarly
enough for Wikipedia work.

> As far as Wikipedia is concerned, the German chapter of Wikimedia has
> just negotiated the first settlement for a premium database provider in
> chemistry, see
> .
> There are plans to expand this programme.
>
Cool I look forward to hearing more about this.

(And I'm certainly not saying it's impossible for the WMF, just saying
it's not only a question of money)

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Juergen Fenn]

Am 08.03.11 20:20, schrieb phoebe ayers:

> Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
> vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
> university.

This may hold true for the U.S., but as far as Europe is concerned the
situation is different in some points. E.g., in Germany all residents
are entitled to access some commercial databases that a national license
has been obtained for, cf.  and
. What's more, university
libraries are open to all residents in its vicinity, offering on-line
access at least on campus to every user of the library.

As far as Wikipedia is concerned, the German chapter of Wikimedia has
just negotiated the first settlement for a premium database provider in
chemistry, see
.
There are plans to expand this programme.

Apologies for the links provided in German only, please use a
translation service such as translate.google.com if you do not not speak
German.

Regards,
Jürgen.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> --- On Tue, 8/3/11, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> From: Fred Bauder 
>> Fred Bauder 
>> I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and
>> databases
>> such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit
>> into our
>> budget.
>
>
> I would like to second that as well -- this is a very important way in which
> the Foundation could support high-volume content contributors, and which
> would make a significant difference to article quality.
>
> This should be a part of university outreach as well. Many university
> students have log-in IDs enabling them to log into academic databases from
> their homes. Please tell universities who would like to support Wikipedia
> that this is a really important way in which they can support the project,
> by allowing established content contributors access to these databases.

I don't mean to derail this thread off-topic ... but I'm a Wikipedian,
I can't help myself :)

Most (all?) university libraries sign contracts with database/journal
vendors restricting access to only faculty/staff/students at the
university. The library pays according to how many people that is.
Giving access to others is generally a violation of that contract, and
could variously: a) cause the library to lose access to the resource
altogether, if the publisher determines that many 'unauthorized'
people are gaining access or a great deal is being downloaded; b)
cause the student to be sanctioned by the university for mis-using
their log-in ID. So, uh, yeah, let's not do outreach asking for this.

Sadly, most pay-for-privileges schemes like Aude describes, at least
for American universities, are only for checking out books, not access
to e-resources.

(You can probably figure out what this means yourself -- to get access
to databases, the WMF would likely have to negotiate similar
contracts. For reference, my university employs a full-time person +
several other people's time just for this job. Are we special? yes.
Are we likely to get publishers to talk to us and do special things?
Probably! But it's not totally simple.)

/librarian :)
phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[aude]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> --- On Tue, 8/3/11, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> > From: Fred Bauder 
> > Fred Bauder 
> > I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and
> > databases
> > such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit
> > into our
> > budget.
>
>
> I would like to second that as well -- this is a very important way in
> which
> the Foundation could support high-volume content contributors, and which
> would make a significant difference to article quality.
>
> This should be a part of university outreach as well. Many university
> students have log-in IDs enabling them to log into academic databases from
> their homes. Please tell universities who would like to support Wikipedia
> that this is a really important way in which they can support the project,
> by allowing established content contributors access to these databases.
>
> And as Sarah says, if numbers are limited, access should be given to
> editors
> based on merit, based on a history of content work that would benefit from
> such access.
>

+1

I'm not a university student but for $300/year, could get borrowing
privilege at the local university. (
http://www.library.georgetown.edu/associates)  I bet as part of our
university outreach, from WMF, they might just grant access to some
wikipedians.  Access to academic databases would also be super useful.

I don't have $300 out of my pocket to spare for this.  Right now, without
being able to checkout books, I'm unable to contribute in any meaningful way
to the enwiki US Collaboration of the Month (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:USCOTM), [[George Washington]]. :(  But,
know the university has oodles of excellent reference materials about him.

Yet, I would love to see efforts like USCOTM succeed and sad I can't really
help.

Cheers,
Katie



>
> Andreas
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Dan Rosenthal]

On Mar 8, 2011, at 12:14 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 8 March 2011 13:24, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
>> On 3/5/11 7:48 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
>>> While most donations come from people outside the Wikimedia (editing)
>>> community, the people within the community often feel that the very small
>>> staff of the past was more productive, more agile, less bloated, and overall
>>> more efficient than the larger staff of today.
>> 
>> I think this is not true as a matter of content, and certainly not true
>> as a matter of how people view the Foundation.  Perhaps you don't
>> remember how completely unresponsive and broken the Foundation was in
>> the old days.
>> 
>> The largest staff today is: more productive, more agile, and overall
>> more efficient than the larger staff of today.
>> 
>> I remember the bad old days, I was there.  Woefully understaffed, we
>> were unable to respond to just about any and all requests from chapters,
>> potential partners, etc.
> 
> The WMF is certainly able to do (and does) a great deal more useful
> stuff now. It probably is less efficient, though. When Brion was the
> only staff member, he probably spent 99% of his time on programme
> work. Now there are quite a few staff members that don't do any
> programme work and just support the rest of the office. That isn't
> bloat, though, it's an inevitable part of growth. If the WMF tried to
> do everything it is currently doing without those support staff, it
> would be far *less* efficient.
> 

That's how it should have worked in theory (efficiency), but my experience was 
that small size of the office back in the St. Pete days didn't actually lend it 
any favors.

-Dan


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Thomas Dalton]

On 8 March 2011 13:24, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> On 3/5/11 7:48 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
>> While most donations come from people outside the Wikimedia (editing)
>> community, the people within the community often feel that the very small
>> staff of the past was more productive, more agile, less bloated, and overall
>> more efficient than the larger staff of today.
>
> I think this is not true as a matter of content, and certainly not true
> as a matter of how people view the Foundation.  Perhaps you don't
> remember how completely unresponsive and broken the Foundation was in
> the old days.
>
> The largest staff today is: more productive, more agile, and overall
> more efficient than the larger staff of today.
>
> I remember the bad old days, I was there.  Woefully understaffed, we
> were unable to respond to just about any and all requests from chapters,
> potential partners, etc.

The WMF is certainly able to do (and does) a great deal more useful
stuff now. It probably is less efficient, though. When Brion was the
only staff member, he probably spent 99% of his time on programme
work. Now there are quite a few staff members that don't do any
programme work and just support the rest of the office. That isn't
bloat, though, it's an inevitable part of growth. If the WMF tried to
do everything it is currently doing without those support staff, it
would be far *less* efficient.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Andreas Kolbe]

--- On Tue, 8/3/11, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> From: Fred Bauder 
> Fred Bauder 
> I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and
> databases
> such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit
> into our
> budget.


I would like to second that as well -- this is a very important way in which 
the Foundation could support high-volume content contributors, and which 
would make a significant difference to article quality. 

This should be a part of university outreach as well. Many university
students have log-in IDs enabling them to log into academic databases from 
their homes. Please tell universities who would like to support Wikipedia 
that this is a really important way in which they can support the project,
by allowing established content contributors access to these databases.

And as Sarah says, if numbers are limited, access should be given to editors
based on merit, based on a history of content work that would benefit from
such access.

Andreas


  

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Jimmy Wales]

On 3/5/11 7:48 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
> While most donations come from people outside the Wikimedia (editing)
> community, the people within the community often feel that the very small
> staff of the past was more productive, more agile, less bloated, and overall
> more efficient than the larger staff of today.

I think this is not true as a matter of content, and certainly not true 
as a matter of how people view the Foundation.  Perhaps you don't 
remember how completely unresponsive and broken the Foundation was in 
the old days.

The largest staff today is: more productive, more agile, and overall 
more efficient than the larger staff of today.

I remember the bad old days, I was there.  Woefully understaffed, we 
were unable to respond to just about any and all requests from chapters, 
potential partners, etc.

--Jimbo

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 7:21 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:

> On the target itself, I want to note that the strategic plan numbers
> aren't set in stone. The financial targets for the 2011-12 fiscal year
> are defined in the annual plan process, which just kicked off. This
> plan, when approved by the Board, will decide the target that we're
> aiming for in the next fundraiser, and the process is informed by the
> most recent projections. It's also very much informed by these kinds
> of discussions (versions of which are happening internally all the
> time), and it will be, every year.

+1. I just want to say that these kinds of conversations -- how to
balance fundraising intrusiveness with raising the money needed, how
much money we need, which projects get priority, etc. etc. -- is what
"strategic planning" entails, whether it's at the WMF level or in
general.

I would love to hear what projects "the community" (our many
communities) value the most, or find the most effective in daily work.
I'd love to know if there's general discontent over WMF spending
levels, and if so why. I'd be glad to know the opposite; I'd be
unsurprised to learn there's no consensus. I'm not sure that
information can be gotten comprehensively from a foundation-l thread
(actually, I'm pretty sure it can't) but I am glad we are having the
discussion.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[SlimVirgin]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 22:32, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and databases
> such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit into our
> budget.

That would be amazing. There was a company that offered 100 accounts
to a database, I forget which one, and a page was put up so that
people could apply randomly for them -- first come, first served. This
meant the accounts went to quite a few people who don't edit much, yet
it was a substantial donation. I felt it was a good example of the
Foundation not seeing things from the point of view of content
contributors.

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Liam Wyatt]

On 8 March 2011 03:54, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> My own feeling is that the amount of money is so small, as is the staff,
> and special projects, in relationship to potential needs that I never
> thought of having a bad feeling, at least not about that.
>


I have the same impression. There's no shortage of things that need to be
done, things that should be done, and things that would be really nice to
have sometime - and that's just in the software/operations side of things.
At the same time I agree that we should have some principles of fundraising
that mean agree what should/shouldn't be done (e.g. stringent privacy, no
animated banners...)

I often get the feeling that on the one hand we are always pointing out
things that need to be improved ASAP (e.g. making the editing interface not
such an awfully complicated experience or making sure that the database
dumps happen) but on the other hand complaining about the increase in staff
numbers and budget. Certainly, it's not necessarily the same people at the
same time making these arguments but as a community we can't have it both
ways.

Just focusing on the technical side of things, consider the large number of
projects that are currently underway - many of which are structural to allow
easier development of future projects e.g. data centre, test framework,
analytics, documentation[1]. Whilst we might debate about the
prioritisation/speed/funding for these, I think it is clear that these
things need to happen are not going to happen by themselves.

I am certainly not a 100% fan of every project decision that the WMF has
made (for example, I would like for the WMF to focus more on building the
capacity of the Chapters in order to distribute the professional capacity of
outreach/technical/fundraising/Press more globally rather than centralising
professional capacity to San Francisco). However, criticizing the spending
prioritisation and fundraising principles is different to saying that "...we
seem to be raising more money than we need".

-Liam

[1]
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/03/wikimedia-engineering-february-report/

wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Fred Bauder]

> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 21:54, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>>> The point is that we seem to be
>>> raising more money than we need, which is arguably unfair to donors,
>>> then not spending it in ways that increase quality or help the
>>> volunteers, which is arguably unfair to us. That's causing bad
>>> feeling. Whether it's fair or not is beside the point. The bad feeling
>>> is fairly widespread, and is only going to get worse.
>>
>>> Sarah
>>
>> I wonder if this is a fact, fairly widespread bad feeling?
>>
>> That established, the next question would be why.
>>
>> My own feeling is that the amount of money is so small, as is the
>> staff,
>> and special projects, in relationship to potential needs that I never
>> thought of having a bad feeling, at least not about that.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>
> I don't know how to judge how widespread it is. I'm judging only by
> the fact that these issues keep being raised on various lists and not
> addressed, and by contact I have with Wikipedians who've not commented
> here.
>
> Politicians in England used to say that, for every constituent who
> writes a letter, another 100 have the same concerns but haven't taken
> the time to write.
>
> Why is there a feeling alienation? Because the Foundation is raising
> millions of dollars from people who read our articles, but isn't
> spending the money on helping to increase the quality of the articles,
> or make life easier for the volunteers. It's all about moving to San
> Francisco (how did that help?), opening new offices overseas,
> employing new fundraisers, etc. Let me apologize here if that sounds
> too cynical or unfair. I'm just giving a worm's eye view, which I
> accept may be uninformed, but it's what things look like from down
> here in the mud. :)
>
> Some light shed in our direction would help enormously.
>
> Sarah
>


I guess I would like editors to have access to archives and databases
such as those ProQuest sells. Not sure how that would fit into our
budget.

Yeah, moving to San Francisco does seem a bit dumb. High rent, high cost
of living, killer fault with the "big one" coming soon. What were they
thinking? People do like living there though. I know how damn hard it is
to hire anyone in rural Colorado, especially when a job must also be
found for their partner.

Fred


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[SlimVirgin]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 21:54, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> The point is that we seem to be
>> raising more money than we need, which is arguably unfair to donors,
>> then not spending it in ways that increase quality or help the
>> volunteers, which is arguably unfair to us. That's causing bad
>> feeling. Whether it's fair or not is beside the point. The bad feeling
>> is fairly widespread, and is only going to get worse.
>
>> Sarah
>
> I wonder if this is a fact, fairly widespread bad feeling?
>
> That established, the next question would be why.
>
> My own feeling is that the amount of money is so small, as is the staff,
> and special projects, in relationship to potential needs that I never
> thought of having a bad feeling, at least not about that.
>
> Fred
>
>
I don't know how to judge how widespread it is. I'm judging only by
the fact that these issues keep being raised on various lists and not
addressed, and by contact I have with Wikipedians who've not commented
here.

Politicians in England used to say that, for every constituent who
writes a letter, another 100 have the same concerns but haven't taken
the time to write.

Why is there a feeling alienation? Because the Foundation is raising
millions of dollars from people who read our articles, but isn't
spending the money on helping to increase the quality of the articles,
or make life easier for the volunteers. It's all about moving to San
Francisco (how did that help?), opening new offices overseas,
employing new fundraisers, etc. Let me apologize here if that sounds
too cynical or unfair. I'm just giving a worm's eye view, which I
accept may be uninformed, but it's what things look like from down
here in the mud. :)

Some light shed in our direction would help enormously.

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Fred Bauder]

> The point is that we seem to be
> raising more money than we need, which is arguably unfair to donors,
> then not spending it in ways that increase quality or help the
> volunteers, which is arguably unfair to us. That's causing bad
> feeling. Whether it's fair or not is beside the point. The bad feeling
> is fairly widespread, and is only going to get worse.

> Sarah

I wonder if this is a fact, fairly widespread bad feeling?

That established, the next question would be why.

My own feeling is that the amount of money is so small, as is the staff,
and special projects, in relationship to potential needs that I never
thought of having a bad feeling, at least not about that.

Fred



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[SlimVirgin]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 18:11, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 8 March 2011 00:03, MZMcBride  wrote:
>> Andrew Garrett wrote:
>>> We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
>>> hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
>>> budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds
>>> of millions to billions of dollars.
>>
>> Which websites would those be? I can't think of any websites that Wikimedia
>> is competing with that have budgets on the scale of millions or billions of
>> dollars, but I'm probably just being daft.
>
> "Compete" is probably the wrong word. I think Andrew means sites that
> have a similar number of users.
>
We're non-commercial and supposedly run by volunteers, so there's no
point in comparing us to those sites. The point is that we seem to be
raising more money than we need, which is arguably unfair to donors,
then not spending it in ways that increase quality or help the
volunteers, which is arguably unfair to us. That's causing bad
feeling. Whether it's fair or not is beside the point. The bad feeling
is fairly widespread, and is only going to get worse.

Therefore, it would be great if the Foundation could discuss what we
can do about this -- how we can bridge the gap between perceptions --
rather than people telling us we're wrong, which doesn't help.

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Erik Moeller]

2011/3/4 church.of.emacs.ml :
> In that regard, I believe we have to think about how we can ensure that
> we're being friendly and respectful towards our readers and donors,
> raise enough money, define what 'enough money' is and how all that
> affects our mission.

Yes, I think we're all in agreement on that. Thanks for raising these
points again. I do want to note that there's been quite a bit of
discussion on some of these issues back in January already. In
response to Domas I wrote these two posts, which included some
possible strategies we could employ to reduce the "annoyance factor".

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-January/063299.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-January/06.html

New ideas are very much welcome, and now's a good time to raise them.

I do think it's important not to conclude too much about other
people's experiences based on your own -- the experience of a heavy
Wikimedia project user of the 2010-11 fundraiser, for example, was
very different from someone who uses one site, in one language, a few
times per month. Some members of the former group experienced the
banners as disruptive/invasive.  Many members of the latter group may
not even have noticed them.

It's IMO very likely the case that for the vast majority of our 400M
or so readers, the experience of the 2010-11 fundraiser was a
uniformly positive or neutral one: either they didn't notice it, or
they did notice it but would characterize it as positive or neutral. I
can't prove that, and I'd love to see better data on that, but I'd be
very surprised if that wasn't true.

In addition to being transparent, honest and true to our values, I
think there are two variables we want to optimize: the percentage of
our audience who experience the fundraiser as positive or neutral, and
the number of donations in support of our cause. I'm optimistic that
we can do better on both counts in 2011-12 -- we don't have to cause
more disruption or annoyance to raise more funds. Wikimedia is an
amazing cause, and if we can tell our story well, we will be able to
motivate more and more people to join it. (Gee, perhaps we should hire
someone for that storytelling job. ;-)

On the target itself, I want to note that the strategic plan numbers
aren't set in stone. The financial targets for the 2011-12 fiscal year
are defined in the annual plan process, which just kicked off. This
plan, when approved by the Board, will decide the target that we're
aiming for in the next fundraiser, and the process is informed by the
most recent projections. It's also very much informed by these kinds
of discussions (versions of which are happening internally all the
time), and it will be, every year. To not continually iterate and
revise our assumptions would be madness.

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Thomas Dalton]

On 8 March 2011 00:03, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Andrew Garrett wrote:
>> We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
>> hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
>> budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds
>> of millions to billions of dollars.
>
> Which websites would those be? I can't think of any websites that Wikimedia
> is competing with that have budgets on the scale of millions or billions of
> dollars, but I'm probably just being daft.

"Compete" is probably the wrong word. I think Andrew means sites that
have a similar number of users.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[MZMcBride]

Andrew Garrett wrote:
> We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
> hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
> budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds
> of millions to billions of dollars.

Which websites would those be? I can't think of any websites that Wikimedia
is competing with that have budgets on the scale of millions or billions of
dollars, but I'm probably just being daft.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Joan Goma]

I agree in the right measure. Planed income was 5M$ bigger than planed
expenses. Thats fine.

But actual income were 3M$ higher than planned. And actual expenses were
2,3M$ lower than planned yielding in more than twice savings than planed.

And it makes even more difficult to me to understand why we have 0,5M$
expenses in bank fees, 0,4M$ in capital expenditures and not a single cent
in financial incomes.



Message: 10
> Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 18:48:34 +
> From: David Gerard 
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>
> Message-ID:
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On 7 March 2011 18:19, Joan Goma  wrote:
>
> > Perhaps there is something I don't understand. It seems strange to me
> that
> > having 24M$ of current assets we don't have any financial income but
> 0,5M$
> > bank fees.
>
>
> AIUI, it was long a goal for the foundation *not* to be living hand to
> mouth, but to start keeping an actual reserve to hand.
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 7 March 2011 18:19, Joan Goma  wrote:

> Perhaps there is something I don't understand. It seems strange to me that
> having 24M$ of current assets we don't have any financial income but 0,5M$
> bank fees.


AIUI, it was long a goal for the foundation *not* to be living hand to
mouth, but to start keeping an actual reserve to hand.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Joan Goma]

I totally agree with Gerard. And what Gerard says is just a small example.

I think we are raising much less funds than what we need.

But this is only one half of the problem.

The other half is that we are spending much less than what we raise:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/d5/Jul-Dec%2710_Mid-year_financials.pdf

Perhaps there is something I don't understand. It seems strange to me that
having 24M$ of current assets we don't have any financial income but 0,5M$
bank fees.



Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 13:56:42 +0100
> From: Gerard Meijssen 
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>
> Message-ID:
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hoi,
> So far the balance has been seriously wrong. Because of the underinvestment
> many of our Wikipedias are not doing as well as they should. There are for
> instance technical solutions to give many of the Indian language Wikipedias
> the traffic back they lost.
>
> As this is not considered as a problem/priority, as we do not have
> developers dealing with this we are seriously underachieving.
>
> The notion that we are raising more funds then we need is therefore
> obviously flawed.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On 7 March 2011 13:11, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
>
> > On 7 March 2011 11:44, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> > > On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 2:50 AM, Thomas Dalton  >
> > wrote:
> > >> On 6 March 2011 10:14, Pavel Richter 
> > wrote:
> > >>> But who says that the sole purpose of the WMF is to keep Wikimedia
> > wikis
> > >>> running?
> > >>
> > >> I don't think many people would say that's the sole purpose of the
> > >> WMF, but I think most would agree that it is the primary purpose. The
> > >> amount of other work the WMF does in addition to that should be
> > >> balanced by the harm caused by the extra fundraising required.
> > >
> > > I think this articulates the issue very well.
> >
> > Except that what I've actually written is that the WMF must, under no
> > circumstances, do any other work unless they do an equal amount of
> > harm by fundraising for it. That's not exactly what I meant!
> >
> > "Balanced by" in the last sentence should be "in balance with"!
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Juergen Fenn]

Am 07.03.11 18:41, schrieb church.of.emacs.ml:
> On 03/07/2011 06:30 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>> Indeed. Juergen, are you saying the X wasn't present, or that it
>> didn't work for you? It seemed to for everyone else that tried it.
> 
> There were some reports that banners came back after a short while,
> probably because of client-side cookie problems.

As I said, I may be wrong on the details, but I remember having problems
with switching the banners off anyway.

However, I would like to dwell on the questions raised in the beginning,
viz. how aggressive should fundraising be in the future, and could we
scale it all down next time?

Regards,
Jürgen.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

On 03/07/2011 06:30 PM, David Gerard wrote:
> Indeed. Juergen, are you saying the X wasn't present, or that it
> didn't work for you? It seemed to for everyone else that tried it.

There were some reports that banners came back after a short while,
probably because of client-side cookie problems.

I'm not sure if I remeber this correctly, but afaik there was a cookie
for each wiki. Not a big problem for most readers, but a bit annoying
for Wikimedians doing crosswiki work early on the fundraiser (when
banners were still shown to logged-in users).

But other than that, I don't recall there being any problems.

-- Tobias



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 7 March 2011 17:29, Philippe Beaudette  wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Juergen Fenn  wrote:

>> this time it
>> was not possible to switch the banners off, even you were logged in as a
>> user.

> It's disturbing to hear you say that:  every banner run by WMF (and, i
> believe, every banner run by a chapter as well) had a "hide" button on it
> (an X in the right hand corner to turn it off).


Indeed. Juergen, are you saying the X wasn't present, or that it
didn't work for you? It seemed to for everyone else that tried it.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 7 March 2011 17:19, church.of.emacs.ml
 wrote:

> I don't know if you're directing this at me, but if you are, I seriously
> would be interested why you think that I'm trolling or assuming bad faith.


I'm not, several others in this group of threads are.

The essential issue is the underlying attitude people have that they
weren't consulted and should have been. They were and the attempt to
do so ran for months at huge effort. Posting to foundation-l shrilly
pretending they were grievously ignored is pretty much inexplicable
given the effort put into strategy.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Philippe Beaudette]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Juergen Fenn  wrote:

> this time it
> was not possible to switch the banners off, even you were logged in as a
> user.
>



Juergen,

It's disturbing to hear you say that:  every banner run by WMF (and, i
believe, every banner run by a chapter as well) had a "hide" button on it
(an X in the right hand corner to turn it off).

pb
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Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

phili...@wikimedia.org
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

On 03/07/2011 06:08 PM, David Gerard wrote:
> Indeed. This thread appears to have been an exercise in:
>
>  [a whole lot of insults]

I don't know if you're directing this at me, but if you are, I seriously
would be interested why you think that I'm trolling or assuming bad faith.
To clarify: I don't. I'm not really interested in past decisions. They
were made, some of them good, some bad, but mostly harmless.
What I was trying to discuss was this: How can we make sure that
negative impact stays at a tolerable level _for_futute_fundraisers_?
I realize that the discussion has gone off-topic in some subthreads, but
I think the original point of my question remains valid.

Regards,
Tobias



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Andrew Gray]

On 7 March 2011 16:02, Juergen Fenn  wrote:

> Well, I think there is no "right" measure for a fundraiser. But I would
> like to return to the point Tobias raised in the first place: Fundraiser
> marketing is growing more aggressive year by year. E.g., this time it
> was not possible to switch the banners off, even you were logged in as a
> user. And banners appeared to be bigger than they used to be, but I may

As I recall, the banners could be removed with a small button in the
upper right corner. It was occasionally a bit bad at remembering this
between sessions, but I'm sure there was *some* kind of "close"
option.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Mike Godwin]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 9:13 AM, aude  wrote:

>
>  Andrew Garrett writes:
>>
>> We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
>>
>>> hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
>>> budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds
>>> of millions to billions of dollars.
>>>
>>>
>> This point can't be overstressed. Compared to organizations running the
>> other nine of the top ten websites, Wikimedia Foundation is miniscule,
>>
>
> Don't forget we have many thousands of volunteers. We are not like those
> other websites at all and don't think those are good comparisons.
>

I don't think anyone's forgotten the volunteers. But Andrew's remark
referred specifically to the "shoestring budget."  In that sense, the
Wikimedia Foundation is miniscule, compared to organizations running the
other top ten websites.


--Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[aude]

On Mar 7, 2011, at 12:02 PM, Mike Godwin  wrote:

> Andrew Garrett writes:
>
> We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
>> hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
>> budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the  
>> hundreds
>> of millions to billions of dollars.
>>
>
> This point can't be overstressed. Compared to organizations running  
> the
> other nine of the top ten websites, Wikimedia Foundation is miniscule,

Don't forget we have many thousands of volunteers. We are not like  
those other websites at all and don't think those are good comparisons.

Katie


> and
> should still be considered so even if/when the Foundation meets the  
> goals
> set in the strategic plan.
>
>
> --Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 7 March 2011 17:02, Mike Godwin  wrote:
> Andrew Garrett writes:

> We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
>> hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
>> budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds
>> of millions to billions of dollars.

> This point can't be overstressed. Compared to organizations running the
> other nine of the top ten websites, Wikimedia Foundation is miniscule, and
> should still be considered so even if/when the Foundation meets the goals
> set in the strategic plan.


Indeed. This thread appears to have been an exercise in:

1. Why Wasn't I Consulted? [1]
2. I wasn't consulted! You set out to ignore me!
3. Therefore, I have the right to troll for months and assume the
worst faith of everyone.
4. In fact, I have a *moral obligation* to make a massive dick of myself.

None of these are, in fact, the case, even a little bit.


- d.


[1] http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Mike Godwin]

Andrew Garrett writes:

We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
> hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
> budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds
> of millions to billions of dollars.
>

This point can't be overstressed. Compared to organizations running the
other nine of the top ten websites, Wikimedia Foundation is miniscule, and
should still be considered so even if/when the Foundation meets the goals
set in the strategic plan.


--Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Juergen Fenn]

Am 07.03.11 13:56, schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
> Because of the underinvestment many of our Wikipedias are not doing
> as well as they should. There are for instance technical solutions to
> give many of the Indian language Wikipedias the traffic back they
> lost.

> The notion that we are raising more funds then we need is therefore 
> obviously flawed.

Well, I think there is no "right" measure for a fundraiser. But I would
like to return to the point Tobias raised in the first place: Fundraiser
marketing is growing more aggressive year by year. E.g., this time it
was not possible to switch the banners off, even you were logged in as a
user. And banners appeared to be bigger than they used to be, but I may
be wrong on that, taking lots of space on my small MacBook screen. And,
yes, that *was* a nuisance. And it all started with Jimmy Wales right
away, who formerly was last in line in the banner messages. So, I
wondered, too, if we could make the fundraiser less annoying in the future?

Regards,
Jürgen.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
So far the balance has been seriously wrong. Because of the underinvestment
many of our Wikipedias are not doing as well as they should. There are for
instance technical solutions to give many of the Indian language Wikipedias
the traffic back they lost.

As this is not considered as a problem/priority, as we do not have
developers dealing with this we are seriously underachieving.

The notion that we are raising more funds then we need is therefore
obviously flawed.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On 7 March 2011 13:11, Thomas Dalton  wrote:

> On 7 March 2011 11:44, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 2:50 AM, Thomas Dalton 
> wrote:
> >> On 6 March 2011 10:14, Pavel Richter 
> wrote:
> >>> But who says that the sole purpose of the WMF is to keep Wikimedia
> wikis
> >>> running?
> >>
> >> I don't think many people would say that's the sole purpose of the
> >> WMF, but I think most would agree that it is the primary purpose. The
> >> amount of other work the WMF does in addition to that should be
> >> balanced by the harm caused by the extra fundraising required.
> >
> > I think this articulates the issue very well.
>
> Except that what I've actually written is that the WMF must, under no
> circumstances, do any other work unless they do an equal amount of
> harm by fundraising for it. That's not exactly what I meant!
>
> "Balanced by" in the last sentence should be "in balance with"!
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Thomas Dalton]

On 7 March 2011 11:44, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 2:50 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
>> On 6 March 2011 10:14, Pavel Richter  wrote:
>>> But who says that the sole purpose of the WMF is to keep Wikimedia wikis
>>> running?
>>
>> I don't think many people would say that's the sole purpose of the
>> WMF, but I think most would agree that it is the primary purpose. The
>> amount of other work the WMF does in addition to that should be
>> balanced by the harm caused by the extra fundraising required.
>
> I think this articulates the issue very well.

Except that what I've actually written is that the WMF must, under no
circumstances, do any other work unless they do an equal amount of
harm by fundraising for it. That's not exactly what I meant!

"Balanced by" in the last sentence should be "in balance with"!

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[John Vandenberg]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 2:50 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 6 March 2011 10:14, Pavel Richter  wrote:
>> But who says that the sole purpose of the WMF is to keep Wikimedia wikis
>> running?
>
> I don't think many people would say that's the sole purpose of the
> WMF, but I think most would agree that it is the primary purpose. The
> amount of other work the WMF does in addition to that should be
> balanced by the harm caused by the extra fundraising required.

I think this articulates the issue very well.

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Andrew Garrett]

On Sunday, March 6, 2011, geni  wrote:
> I know you follow the media with regards to wikipedia to at least some
> extent. You must have noticed the "WMF is a tiny little organisation
> running a great big website" story played well. The foundation was
> still trying to play that card until fairly recently.

We might be growing, but I don't think anybody in the industry would
hesitate to say that we're still "small" and "running on a shoestring
budget". The websites that we compete with run budgets in the hundreds
of millions to billions of dollars.

--
Andrew Garrett

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

On 03/05/2011 11:56 PM, geni wrote:
> A skin targeted at users with limited bandwidth would probably help.

Yes, that'd be awesome! Also for mobile users with a small bandwidth.
(Did I mention Wikipedia mobile needs a complete re-write?)

--Tobias



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Thomas Dalton]

On 6 March 2011 10:14, Pavel Richter  wrote:
> But who says that the sole purpose of the WMF is to keep Wikimedia wikis
> running?

I don't think many people would say that's the sole purpose of the
WMF, but I think most would agree that it is the primary purpose. The
amount of other work the WMF does in addition to that should be
balanced by the harm caused by the extra fundraising required.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Thomas Dalton]

On 6 March 2011 09:48, geni  wrote:
> On 6 March 2011 09:12, David Gerard  wrote:
>> Indeed. That claim's a definite "citation needed".
>
> I know you follow the media with regards to wikipedia to at least some
> extent. You must have noticed the "WMF is a tiny little organisation
> running a great big website" story played well. The foundation was
> still trying to play that card until fairly recently.

It's great for getting donations and encouraging other organisations
to work with us. It isn't why people read Wikipedia, though. They read
it because it is useful and free (as in beer).

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

2011/3/6 geni :
> ...
>
> A skin targeted at users with limited bandwidth would probably help.

That's a top priority for me.

> Something like &printable=yes with the pics replaced by links (is
> there a way to detect low bandwidth connections and serve that
> automatically?) but I can't see that being a $3 million project.

That's technically feasible as Gmail does it.

Yann

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Juergen Fenn]

Am 06.03.11 11:14, schrieb Pavel Richter:

> But who says that the sole purpose of the WMF is to keep Wikimedia wikis 
> running? Wikipedia is much more than just a website where people get 
> information fast and for free. Wikipedia is a cultural phenomenon and 
> spearhead of a large movement for free knowledge. And WMF (and the 
> chapters, for that matter) should improve the enviremonet of this 
> movement, educate the public, run campaigns to advocate free knowledge 
> and help the movement in any way possible. I think our mission is way 
> bigger than just keep the wikis running.

I gather that these are two sides to a coin. However, the basic question
seems to be, do the WMF and the local chapters support the community in
making Wikipedia and other projects, or does the community support the
former in running more projects than just operating the wiki servers?
The amount of money you need to raise depends on the answer to this
question.

Regards,
Jürgen.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Pavel Richter]

Am 05.03.2011 13:48, schrieb MZMcBride:
> church.of.emacs.ml wrote:
>> However the main point of mail was to discuss how we're going to raise
>> funds without being annoying to readers, and I welcome any input from
>> WMF staff, chapters and volunteers :-)
> There's a fairly easy solution: raise less money. It costs about $2
> million/year to keep the Wikimedia wikis running. That gets raised fairly
> quickly (it took about five days for the 2010 fundraiser) without many
> annoying banners. :-)
>
But who says that the sole purpose of the WMF is to keep Wikimedia wikis 
running? Wikipedia is much more than just a website where people get 
information fast and for free. Wikipedia is a cultural phenomenon and 
spearhead of a large movement for free knowledge. And WMF (and the 
chapters, for that matter) should improve the enviremonet of this 
movement, educate the public, run campaigns to advocate free knowledge 
and help the movement in any way possible. I think our mission is way 
bigger than just keep the wikis running.

Pavel Richter
Executive Director
Wikimedia Germany

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[geni]

On 6 March 2011 09:12, David Gerard  wrote:
> Indeed. That claim's a definite "citation needed".

I know you follow the media with regards to wikipedia to at least some
extent. You must have noticed the "WMF is a tiny little organisation
running a great big website" story played well. The foundation was
still trying to play that card until fairly recently.


-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[SlimVirgin]

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 03:12, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 6 March 2011 04:03, Dan Rosenthal  wrote:
>> On Mar 5, 2011, at 4:30 PM, SlimVirgin  wrote:
>
>>> The attraction of Wikipedia -- to editors, readers, and donors -- was
>>> that it was run on a shoestring by a bunch of volunteers, for the
>>> benefit of other people.
>
>> I sincerely doubt that poverty is anyones attraction to wikipedia.
>
>
> Indeed. That claim's a definite "citation needed".
>
Well, perhaps someone could answer the question. Why does the
Foundation need so much extra money every year?

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 6 March 2011 04:03, Dan Rosenthal  wrote:
> On Mar 5, 2011, at 4:30 PM, SlimVirgin  wrote:

>> The attraction of Wikipedia -- to editors, readers, and donors -- was
>> that it was run on a shoestring by a bunch of volunteers, for the
>> benefit of other people.

> I sincerely doubt that poverty is anyones attraction to wikipedia.


Indeed. That claim's a definite "citation needed".


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Fred Bauder]

Well, it is nice that our editors are not getting paid $100,000 a year to
write from the perspective of whoever is paying them. There is a
connection between well-paid writing and editing and control of content.
Wealthy, or powerful, people don't usually put out big money for the
publishing of material that does not agree with their interests.

Fred

> I sincerely doubt that poverty is anyones attraction to wikipedia.
>
> --
> Dan Rosenthal
>
> Sent from my iPhone. My apologies for any brevity.
>
> On Mar 5, 2011, at 4:30 PM, SlimVirgin  wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 06:48, MZMcBride  wrote:
>>> church.of.emacs.ml wrote:
 However the main point of mail was to discuss how we're going to
 raise
 funds without being annoying to readers, and I welcome any input from
 WMF staff, chapters and volunteers :-)
>>>
>>> There's a fairly easy solution: raise less money. It costs about $2
>>> million/year to keep the Wikimedia wikis running. That gets raised
>>> fairly
>>> quickly (it took about five days for the 2010 fundraiser) without many
>>> annoying banners. :-)
>>
>> I was just thinking the same when I saw this post. Can someone explain
>> why we need to raise so much money each year, then hire people to
>> raise even more, which means we need more money to pay them?
>>
>> The attraction of Wikipedia -- to editors, readers, and donors -- was
>> that it was run on a shoestring by a bunch of volunteers, for the
>> benefit of other people.
>>
>> Sarah
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Dan Rosenthal]

I sincerely doubt that poverty is anyones attraction to wikipedia. 

--
Dan Rosenthal 

Sent from my iPhone. My apologies for any brevity. 

On Mar 5, 2011, at 4:30 PM, SlimVirgin  wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 06:48, MZMcBride  wrote:
>> church.of.emacs.ml wrote:
>>> However the main point of mail was to discuss how we're going to raise
>>> funds without being annoying to readers, and I welcome any input from
>>> WMF staff, chapters and volunteers :-)
>> 
>> There's a fairly easy solution: raise less money. It costs about $2
>> million/year to keep the Wikimedia wikis running. That gets raised fairly
>> quickly (it took about five days for the 2010 fundraiser) without many
>> annoying banners. :-)
> 
> I was just thinking the same when I saw this post. Can someone explain
> why we need to raise so much money each year, then hire people to
> raise even more, which means we need more money to pay them?
> 
> The attraction of Wikipedia -- to editors, readers, and donors -- was
> that it was run on a shoestring by a bunch of volunteers, for the
> benefit of other people.
> 
> Sarah
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[SlimVirgin]

On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 06:48, MZMcBride  wrote:
> church.of.emacs.ml wrote:
>> However the main point of mail was to discuss how we're going to raise
>> funds without being annoying to readers, and I welcome any input from
>> WMF staff, chapters and volunteers :-)
>
> There's a fairly easy solution: raise less money. It costs about $2
> million/year to keep the Wikimedia wikis running. That gets raised fairly
> quickly (it took about five days for the 2010 fundraiser) without many
> annoying banners. :-)

I was just thinking the same when I saw this post. Can someone explain
why we need to raise so much money each year, then hire people to
raise even more, which means we need more money to pay them?

The attraction of Wikipedia -- to editors, readers, and donors -- was
that it was run on a shoestring by a bunch of volunteers, for the
benefit of other people.

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

On 03/06/2011 12:06 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
> It seems to me that we spent a year building a strategic plan, which
>  included huge business planning components for exactly this 
> conversation

There are numbers for estimated expenses: $51M for 2014/2015
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF_Expenses.png
Other numbers make this seem far less certain: $30M-$70M
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_30M-70M.png

A quote from
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF#Projected_Revenue:
> "The primary source of revenue for Wikimedia Foundation will be 
> community giving (through on-line donations)"

So somehow normal donations are supposed to be increasing by 500% until
2014/2015 compared to the numbers of 2009/2010... (yes, I realize that
there will be a big increase in 2010/2011 with $16M already having been
raised)

But how this is going to happen is not described in detail:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_fundraising#Opportunities_exist

My approach would be to estimate how much money we can raise, set our
goals accordingly, and then look into the issue of spending that money
efficiently. It seems to me that it was done the other way around: Ask
what do we want to do, where do we want to spend money and how much need
we, and then setting this as a fundraising goal.
Then again, I'm not a financial analyst, so my concerns might be naïve
(sorry for that).

-- Tobias

Ps.: Sorry if I missed something on Strategy Wiki. It's a large Wiki and
not always super easy to find the information you need :)



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[geni]

On 5 March 2011 23:06, Philippe Beaudette  wrote:
> It seems to me that we spent a year building a strategic plan, which
> included huge business planning components for exactly this conversation

Which page of the document covers why the foundation needs 188
employees in 2014-2015 to archive it's goals.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[geni]

On 5 March 2011 23:16, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 5 March 2011 23:06, Philippe Beaudette  wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that we spent a year building a strategic plan, which
>> included huge business planning components for exactly this conversation
>
>
> Yes, you'd think lots of smart people had not only thought about this
> precise question in detail, but written down their answers in detail.
> But that can't be the case, because otherwise people wouldn't be
> writing here as if this hadn't in fact happened.

Oh yes a lot of smart people were involved. And yes there is simply
acres of text on the stratergywiki . How much it had to do with the
resulting document when it comes to spending is rather more open to
question.

I draw your attention to page 16.

I admit I didn't follow every part of the stratergywiki debate but I
doubt that anyone proposed admin spending should be front loaded. But
hey at least it's a plan. So we have to wait a bit for the tech stuff
to kick in. Well we are used to that (first rule of getting things
done on wikipedia, if you are not a programer stick to solutions that
don't need code changes). Still its coming right. Well.

If we turn to page 6  we see that the foundation aims to increase the
total number  of people served to by wikipedia to 1 billion. That's an
increase of 150%. This is the currently proposed methiods of doing so
basically boil down to "we hope to do a little PR" but meanwhile
linear growth would get us to around 710 million an increase of 78%.
Worse still from a financial POV the obvious growth areas are less
affluent than the US and western europe. Why is this a problem?
Because the budget is meant to grow by 155%. The entire plan beyond
"build it and they will come" (a good plan but in this case the stats
say not enough will come) is:

Expand public awareness and support
for the Wikimedia movement.
•   Spread information about Wikimedia’s
mission, vision, values and practices.
Help people better understand our
work, and motivate them to help us
do it


Thats it. Everything else is build it and they will come. It not much
to bet quite a budget increase on. And yet nowhere in the document do
we encounter any statements about what happens if the money isn't
there.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 5 March 2011 23:06, Philippe Beaudette  wrote:

> It seems to me that we spent a year building a strategic plan, which
> included huge business planning components for exactly this conversation


Yes, you'd think lots of smart people had not only thought about this
precise question in detail, but written down their answers in detail.
But that can't be the case, because otherwise people wouldn't be
writing here as if this hadn't in fact happened.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Philippe Beaudette]

:: remove Head of Reader Relations hat, and put on "I worked on the
strategic plan" hat ::


On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 12:31 PM, church.of.emacs.ml  wrote:

>
> Sure. I'd love to get opinions from more people (perhaps at Wikimania,
> too?)
> The (editing) community should to be comfortable with Wikimedia raising
> funds, and if it isn't, we need to find ways so that it will be
> (disabling banners for logged-in users is a low-hanging fruit, taking
> their wishes in the selection (not only creation) of banners into
> account might be another).
>
> > If some people think the foundation should be much smaller, and shouldn't
> be
> > raising a budget this size, then let's have that discussion.
>
> It's hard to tell. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it should be
> smaller, but it is obvious that we need to think about stop growing at
> some point (and in my opinion sooner than later).
>
> -- Tobias
>
>
It seems to me that we spent a year building a strategic plan, which
included huge business planning components for exactly this conversation

pb
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[geni]

On 5 March 2011 20:51, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 5 March 2011 20:38, Sebastian Moleski  wrote:
>>  the mission, e.g. allow every human to freely share in
>> the sum of all knowledge?
>
>
> Indeed. Although it's quite possible Tobias is correct and WMF can
> achieve the mission with its current budget and staff, I'd like to see
> those who think so give their map of how they get from the goal to the
> current size or just over the current size. Show all working.


Err thats not the foundation's mission though. The real mission is:

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
people around the world to collect and develop educational content
under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it
effectively and globally.

No sum of all knowledge and not every human.

Which allows us to attack the problem in less absolute terms.

Okey lets make up some figures to play with. $3 million to keep a
stripped down foundation and the servers going and $3 million for
approaches additional to that.

Keeping wikipedia going takes care of most of the collect and develop
educational content part (wikimedia already has the budget of
Britannica and doesn't appear to be doing much content generation).

So time for disseminate it effectively and globally.

Well dead tree is out. It cost gideons $120.9 million to distribute
79.9 million of their bibles.

So digital. A tempting solution is to do nothing. If you have web
access you have Wikipedia. There are groups far richer and far more
experienced than wikimedia developing greater global web access. Much
the same with languages. Of the handful of languages that are likely
to survive with significant monolingual populations for more than the
next few decades the only one I think we are really weak on is Chinese
and that's due to government action and hoodong (some may argue for
Swahili and Hindi but in both cases I'd argue that the fate of those
wikipedias are closely tied to the fate of the languages).

By-passing the web has only limited viability. While there may be
other groups out there like SOS schools prepared to pay for the
distribution of CDs themselves I suspect their numbers are limited and
attempts to do so directly run into much the same issue as the dead
tree problem. I don't believe any off the various offline wikipedia
tools have proven that popular.

A skin targeted at users with limited bandwidth would probably help.
Something like &printable=yes with the pics replaced by links (is
there a way to detect low bandwidth connections and serve that
automatically?) but I can't see that being a $3 million project.

I suppose we could blow a million or so hiring people to talk to the
likes of the peace corps and age concern to see if we could get them
to distribute Wikipedia in various forms.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[MZMcBride]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 5 March 2011 21:15, MZMcBride  wrote:
> 
>> "Defined by what the Foundation wants to accomplish"? I think you've
>> highlighted the problem pretty well, right there.
> 
> Then please answer my question, and give your plan, working backward
> from the mission statement to the necessary Foundation. Show your
> working, so we can see you don't fudge "oh, but that number's too big"
> at any stage - you're saying it's too big/too wasteful/whatever, but
> you've been snide as hell for the past few months, and I want you to
> actually justify your last few months of posts on a strictly "how do
> we achieve the actual goal?" basis.

I think you missed my point. The Wikimedia Foundation exists to serve the
Wikimedia projects. To me, that's a key point and it's one that's slowly
getting lost. It isn't about what goals the Wikimedia Foundation wants to
accomplish, it's about what goals the Wikimedia community wants to
accomplish that require the help of a Wikimedia Foundation.

Regarding your question, let's re-paste it.

David Gerard wrote:
> Indeed. Although it's quite possible Tobias is correct and WMF can
> achieve the mission with its current budget and staff, I'd like to see
> those who think so give their map of how they get from the goal to the
> current size or just over the current size. Show all working.

I half-wrote a reply to this before closing the window and moving on, but
since you're pushing, I'll try to write something coherent.

I read and re-read what you wrote/asked, and it seems to me that you're
asking the Wikimedia community to justify the Wikimedia Foundation's growth.
That seems rather backward to me. The Wikimedia Foundation (and its
employees) have to justify their own existence, not the other way around, as
I see it. From the way I read what you've written, you're making the
assumption that the current size is acceptable or necessary. The reality, as
I see it, is that the current size is completely arbitrary.

There are a few rather major points in what you're writing that I think
aren't as settled you think they are (or perhaps they're not as settled as I
think they should be). When you talk about "the mission," it's become fairly
clear that the current mission statement isn't serving its purpose. It's too
vague to be useful or meaningful in any real sense. This consequently means
that any attempts to build toward it are almost inherently flawed.

The Wikimedia Foundation has made it clear through its actions over the past
few years that its primary focus is Wikipedia. Its primary focus is not
Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, or any of the other projects,
it's Wikipedia. There is a finite amount of resources on the Wikimedia
Foundation side, so I think it makes sense to focus on the project that's
vastly and undeniably more successful than any of the others. But I think it
also makes sense to be more explicit about what the Wikimedia Foundation's
mission now is. It isn't to (generically) "empower and engage people around
the world to collect and develop educational content," the mission is to
build Wikipedia and the Wikipedia brand.

It isn't fair to people working on the Other Projects to pretend as though
they're any kind of priority, now or in the near future. It isn't fair to
the Other Projects to pretend as though they're soon going to see the same
level of resources that Wikipedia currently gets or that they're going to
see any increase in resources whatsoever. I think it would be fair to
disband those projects and be honest and upfront about what Wikimedia's
prioities and goals actually are. The goal of the Wikimedia Foundation isn't
to build a free content news service and it isn't to build a free content
... whatever it is that Wikiversity is. The goal of the Wikimedia Foundation
is to build a free content encyclopedia (Wikipedia) and its surrounding
brand.

And I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with that goal. Rather than trying
to do many things and doing all of them unspectacularly, why not make the
focus (in spirit and in writing) Wikipedia? Why not make the focus building
the best free content encyclopedia that we can? That goal is definable and
achievable. That goal is something that can be done well (following the Unix
philosophy, it's better to do one thing well rather than try to do many
things poorly).

Beyond the vagueness of the mission statement and going back to your
original question, there are views that the Wikimedia Foundation is being
wasteful. Even under the current mission statement, there's nothing in it
about the "necessary Foundation" relocating to one of the most expensive
areas in the United States and then expanding there. Of course a higher rate
of growth in the budget is going to be inevitable when you have to pay staff
a living wage in an area that's incredibly expensive to live in. Would most
non-profits actively choose to be in or expand in such an area? I don't
think so. It makes sense if you're Google o

Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

On 03/05/2011 09:38 PM, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
> In terms of annoyance, I think we all need to be careful not to
> substitute our own judgment for that of others. Just because you or I
> find banners annoying, it's a far jump to argue that our readers in
> general also found them annoying. In fact, from what I've seen in terms
> of complaints, there have been few that didn't result from the Wikimedia
> project communities.

It'd be nice to have some data. Perhaps a survey or some way to measure
how many people are annoyed by which banner.
Perhaps I'm oversensitive since I normally use AdBlock and I'm not used
to big banners. I just think we need to find out, how Wikimedia's
readers and authors see this.

> It's hard to tell. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it should be
> smaller, but it is obvious that we need to think about stop growing at
> some point (and in my opinion sooner than later).
> You allude to an interesting point here: growth. Why do you think growth
> needs to stop, and why sooner than later?

Because the amount of money WMF can raise is limited.
We're already forced to use annoying and big banners in order to keep up
with WMF's expansion plans. How are we going to raise $20M? $30M? $100M?
Unless we come up with some brilliant new fundraising technique, it's
going to be very difficult to keep the balance between justified
fundraising interests, and the readers' interests not to be annoyed.

Perhaps "stopping growth" is to strong and I should say "slowing down
growth" instead.

> I would venture that growth, or rather size, is defined by what the
> Foundation wants to accomplish and what resources are needed for that.
> Would it be inherently wrong if, for example, WMF were an organization
> with a headcount of 10,000 and a budget of a billion dollars, if that's
> what it takes to accomplish the mission, e.g. allow every human to
> freely share in the sum of all knowledge?

No, it would not be inherently wrong. It'd probably be great.
But one has to take into account the effects that the methods we use to
raise funds might have on our readers and the editing community.

-- Regards, Tobias





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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
As far as I am concerned, there are so many things we could do if we had the
capacity that would still only be about enabling our communities to write
their Wikipedia in their language. There are development projects that will
not benefit all our projects.

We are still at a stage where there is a hard line between those who benefit
from an excellent resource written to exacting standards and those who are
happy when they are able to find something in their language on the Internet
in the first place.

As long as Dutch is in the top 15 of most visited Wikipedias we are not
achieving what our motto says we aim for.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 5 March 2011 22:15, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Sebastian Moleski wrote:
> > I would venture that growth, or rather size, is defined by what the
> > Foundation wants to accomplish and what resources are needed for that.
> Would
> > it be inherently wrong if, for example, WMF were an organization with a
> > headcount of 10,000 and a budget of a billion dollars, if that's what it
> > takes to accomplish the mission, e.g. allow every human to freely share
> in
> > the sum of all knowledge?
>
> "Defined by what the Foundation wants to accomplish"? I think you've
> highlighted the problem pretty well, right there.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 5 March 2011 21:15, MZMcBride  wrote:

> "Defined by what the Foundation wants to accomplish"? I think you've
> highlighted the problem pretty well, right there.


Then please answer my question, and give your plan, working backward
from the mission statement to the necessary Foundation. Show your
working, so we can see you don't fudge "oh, but that number's too big"
at any stage - you're saying it's too big/too wasteful/whatever, but
you've been snide as hell for the past few months, and I want you to
actually justify your last few months of posts on a strictly "how do
we achieve the actual goal?" basis.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[MZMcBride]

Sebastian Moleski wrote:
> I would venture that growth, or rather size, is defined by what the
> Foundation wants to accomplish and what resources are needed for that. Would
> it be inherently wrong if, for example, WMF were an organization with a
> headcount of 10,000 and a budget of a billion dollars, if that's what it
> takes to accomplish the mission, e.g. allow every human to freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge?

"Defined by what the Foundation wants to accomplish"? I think you've
highlighted the problem pretty well, right there.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[David Gerard]

On 5 March 2011 20:38, Sebastian Moleski  wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 9:31 PM, church.of.emacs.ml  googlemail.com> wrote:

>> It's hard to tell. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it should be
>> smaller, but it is obvious that we need to think about stop growing at
>> some point (and in my opinion sooner than later).

> You allude to an interesting point here: growth. Why do you think growth
> needs to stop, and why sooner than later?
> I would venture that growth, or rather size, is defined by what the
> Foundation wants to accomplish and what resources are needed for that. Would
> it be inherently wrong if, for example, WMF were an organization with a
> headcount of 10,000 and a budget of a billion dollars, if that's what it
> takes to accomplish the mission, e.g. allow every human to freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge?


Indeed. Although it's quite possible Tobias is correct and WMF can
achieve the mission with its current budget and staff, I'd like to see
those who think so give their map of how they get from the goal to the
current size or just over the current size. Show all working.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Sebastian Moleski]

On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 9:31 PM, church.of.emacs.ml  wrote:

> Sure. I'd love to get opinions from more people (perhaps at Wikimania,
> too?)
> The (editing) community should to be comfortable with Wikimedia raising
> funds, and if it isn't, we need to find ways so that it will be
> (disabling banners for logged-in users is a low-hanging fruit, taking
> their wishes in the selection (not only creation) of banners into
> account might be another).
>

If I remember correctly, banners were disabled for logged-in users some time
into the fundraiser. It would be easy to do that again, maybe a little
earlier.

In terms of annoyance, I think we all need to be careful not to substitute
our own judgment for that of others. Just because you or I find banners
annoying, it's a far jump to argue that our readers in general also found
them annoying. In fact, from what I've seen in terms of complaints, there
have been few that didn't result from the Wikimedia project communities.


> It's hard to tell. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it should be
> smaller, but it is obvious that we need to think about stop growing at
> some point (and in my opinion sooner than later).
>

You allude to an interesting point here: growth. Why do you think growth
needs to stop, and why sooner than later?

I would venture that growth, or rather size, is defined by what the
Foundation wants to accomplish and what resources are needed for that. Would
it be inherently wrong if, for example, WMF were an organization with a
headcount of 10,000 and a budget of a billion dollars, if that's what it
takes to accomplish the mission, e.g. allow every human to freely share in
the sum of all knowledge?

Best regards,

Sebastian
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

On 03/05/2011 08:37 PM, Zack Exley wrote:
> I promise that we kept the annoyance of the fundraiser almost to a minimum
> given the amount of money we had to raise.

"we had to raise" sounds absolute, but it is relative to a self-set
(some would say "arbitrary") fundraising goal. This year the goal was
very ambitious, perhaps too ambitious.
If it is not possible to reach the goal without too much annoyance, then
perhaps something is wrong with the goal, not just the methods to reach
that goal.

> If some people want to hear more about that, or want to suggest things we
> might not have thought of to make the fundraiser less annoying, then let's
> have that discussion.

Sure. I'd love to get opinions from more people (perhaps at Wikimania, too?)
The (editing) community should to be comfortable with Wikimedia raising
funds, and if it isn't, we need to find ways so that it will be
(disabling banners for logged-in users is a low-hanging fruit, taking
their wishes in the selection (not only creation) of banners into
account might be another).

> If some people think the foundation should be much smaller, and shouldn't be
> raising a budget this size, then let's have that discussion.

It's hard to tell. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it should be
smaller, but it is obvious that we need to think about stop growing at
some point (and in my opinion sooner than later).

-- Tobias



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Zack Exley]

On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 1:30 AM, church.of.emacs.ml  wrote:

> However the main point of mail was to discuss how we're going to raise
> funds without being annoying to readers, and I welcome any input from
> WMF staff, chapters and volunteers :-)
>
>
I promise that we kept the annoyance of the fundraiser almost to a minimum
given the amount of money we had to raise. We did learn some things and this
year we'll be able to reduce the annoyance-per-dollar somewhat. But if you
thought last year's was annoying, you'll still find this year's annoying.

If some people want to hear more about that, or want to suggest things we
might not have thought of to make the fundraiser less annoying, then let's
have that discussion.

If some people think the foundation should be much smaller, and shouldn't be
raising a budget this size, then let's have that discussion.

For clarity's sake, I think they should be kept as two different
discussions.

If some people want to have the second discussion, please don't wait for
Foundation staff or leaders to argue in favor of the current size of the
budget. I think that would just be silly. If you think it's too big, speak
up -- and if you think it's about right, please also speak up!

Z
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Robert Rohde]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 11:50 AM, church.of.emacs.ml
 wrote:


> Our banners are getting more annoying every year. We're being more
> aggressive. And we're putting words like "Urgent"[2] on the banners and
> suggest that we haven't paid our bills for 2010 yet[3] (which is at the
> very least misleading).



This year and 2009 WMF did some direct comparison testing on the
effect of different messages.  As far as I know though, we have never
done direct comparison testing on banner size.  And yet, the 2010
banner was some 40% taller than used in 2008 or 2009.

It is plausible to me that making the banner larger gets more eyeballs
and hence more donations.  However, I doubt that 40% larger translates
to anywhere close to 40% more income.  Rather, I would suggest that
one is well into the realm of diminishing returns.  At the same time,
my personal opinion is that the large banner is much more annoying.
Personally, I'd support running a longer fundraising drive with
smaller banners rather than continuing with the current large size.
However, in order to really make those decisions one ought to know how
much the donation rate changes with banner size, and to my knowledge
no one in WMF has tested that.

It is easy for the new folks to not know that from Wikipedia's
inception until 2009, the most successful fundraiser campaign
(expressed as donations received per page view) was the 2005 Q4
"personal appeal" [1], which had a vertical footprint of only 93
pixels (vs. 163 in the typical 2010 banner and 115 in 2009).  Size
matters, but I suspect that message matters a lot more.

Before we rush down a path that could lead to popups and
blinkenlights, I'd like to suggest we seriously consider going back to
the 2009 banner size (or even smaller).  And by seriously consider, I
mean testing what the impact is likely to be, and have a conversation
about whether a somewhat longer campaign is a worthwhile trade-off for
less annoying banners.

-Robert Rohde

[1] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sitenotice&direction=prev&oldid=33486512

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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Huib Laurens]

I still think it was a bad thing that the fundraiser crew decided to use
"Sue Gardner director of Wikipedia" in the banners because it raised more
money... A very bad thing because everybody knows here that she isn't the
director for Wikipedia.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[MZMcBride]

church.of.emacs.ml wrote:
> However the main point of mail was to discuss how we're going to raise
> funds without being annoying to readers, and I welcome any input from
> WMF staff, chapters and volunteers :-)

There's a fairly easy solution: raise less money. It costs about $2
million/year to keep the Wikimedia wikis running. That gets raised fairly
quickly (it took about five days for the 2010 fundraiser) without many
annoying banners. :-)

I think a lot of people choose not to donate because they feel Wikimedia
doesn't need the money. They feel that the money is being spent on ways to
add more staff (fundraising and non-fundraising), not to keep the site
operational. And in large part, what people think is mostly right. It's a
fairly small, quirky pool of people who donate to Wikimedia; this applies to
both financial and non-financial donors.

While most donations come from people outside the Wikimedia (editing)
community, the people within the community often feel that the very small
staff of the past was more productive, more agile, less bloated, and overall
more efficient than the larger staff of today.

There's also a view that the "wait till the end" approach isn't the best or
most effective approach to take. There were prototype donation buttons for
the sidebar that were made years ago, but that have never been implemented
on a content project, as far as I know. You can view them in the sidebar at
. These are arguably less annoying
than large banners and could be used throughout the year to raise money,
rather than the current approach, which consists of increasingly annoying
banners to reach an arbitrary goal.

I'm not saying I agree with all of these points, but they're points that
I've heard mentioned both privately and publicly, and I think they're
relevant to any discussion about how to raise funds.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

On 03/05/2011 06:28 AM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
> So that we're not hypothesizing, I'll say it:  I sincerely regret the way I
> put that.  I was attempting  to say that the choices that we make have real
> world consequences.  I used a terrible example to point that out.

Thanks Philippe, I appreciate your comment.

However the main point of mail was to discuss how we're going to raise
funds without being annoying to readers, and I welcome any input from
WMF staff, chapters and volunteers :-)

-- Tobias



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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 11:22 PM, Zack Exley  wrote:
>
> "The Wikimedia movement doesn’t owe you a job; You are here to serve the
> Wikimedia movement; If you want a job, start looking." I'm very serious
> about that.
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+1

I'm quite comfortable back in my volunteer skin.

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Philippe Beaudette]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Zack Exley  wrote:

>
> > I think he'd tell you he regrets the way he put that. Our jobs don't
> matter
> at all if they're not significantly helping the movement. And I know he
> feels that way too.
>
>
So that we're not hypothesizing, I'll say it:  I sincerely regret the way I
put that.  I was attempting  to say that the choices that we make have real
world consequences.  I used a terrible example to point that out.

Philippe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Zack Exley]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 11:50 AM, church.of.emacs.ml  wrote:

> I found that comment to be very disturbing. It makes the Wikimedia staff
> look like it is mostly concerned with keeping their jobs,[4] instead of
> making Wikimedia's mission succeed. Money is not something inherently
> good that we should strive for. It is but a tool, in pursuing our mission.
>
> I think he'd tell you he regrets the way he put that. Our jobs don't matter
at all if they're not significantly helping the movement. And I know he
feels that way too.

Two days ago in the Community Department, we had a staff gathering to talk
about the values and principles that should inform our thinking. One that I
included was:

"The Wikimedia movement doesn’t owe you a job; You are here to serve the
Wikimedia movement; If you want a job, start looking." I'm very serious
about that.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[Thomas Dalton]

On 4 March 2011 19:50, church.of.emacs.ml
 wrote:
> Previously, we limited our efforts to text
> banners. Only if our fundraising goal wasn't going to be met, we used
> our Joker card "Personal appeal by Jimmy Wales".

I agree with your sentiments, but I don't think that point is true. It
was always the plan last year to use the Jimmy appeal, it wasn't a
reaction to the fundraiser not going well (the fundraiser was going
well). I believe the same has been true in previous years as well,
although I wasn't involved in them.

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[Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser

[church.of.emacs.ml]

Hi,

perhaps now that most of the fundraising stress is over, we can discuss
the direction WMF should be taking in terms of raising funds. While I'm
glad that WMF and most chapters reached or exceeded their fundraising
goals, I feel qualmishly about where we're heading.

In order to meet a very ambitious goal, standards have shifted in the
2010/2011 fundraiser. Previously, we limited our efforts to text
banners. Only if our fundraising goal wasn't going to be met, we used
our Joker card "Personal appeal by Jimmy Wales". Now the standard for an
banner of acceptable efficiency is Jimmy's appeal, and all other banners
have to be of comparable efficiency. (This lead to the fact, that almost
none of the hundreds of text banners created by the community were
used.[1] Not exactly a respectful interaction with Wikimedia's
volunteers, as I already wrote on another mailing list.)

Our banners are getting more annoying every year. We're being more
aggressive. And we're putting words like "Urgent"[2] on the banners and
suggest that we haven't paid our bills for 2010 yet[3] (which is at the
very least misleading).

We simply can't keep up with expectations of a (nearly) exponential
growth in revenue WITHOUT drastically changing the way we raise funds.
Since the changes WMF already implemented are undesirable ("make the
banners bigger and more annoying every year"), I think we either have to
come up with completely new ways to raise funds, or become aware of what
our limits are and at which point WMF needs to stop growing.

I'm not a financial analyst, I'm simply a volunteer concerned about
the direction Wikimedia is heading at.

One comment by a Wikimedia Foundation staff member made me think a lot
about this. He said:
> Asking us to change messaging to something that impacts performance
> costs the Foundation and the movement real money.  These are not
> theoretical decisions: my coworkers keep their jobs based on our
> performance on this fundraiser. Chapters that get grants are funded
> based on the success of this fundraiser. Real people and their
> families lose money based on the performance of these banners.  So
> yeah, we're doing everything we can to maximize the income.

I found that comment to be very disturbing. It makes the Wikimedia staff
look like it is mostly concerned with keeping their jobs,[4] instead of
making Wikimedia's mission succeed. Money is not something inherently
good that we should strive for. It is but a tool, in pursuing our mission.

In that regard, I believe we have to think about how we can ensure that
we're being friendly and respectful towards our readers and donors,
raise enough money, define what 'enough money' is and how all that
affects our mission.

Best regards,
Tobias
User:Church of emacs

[1] Hundreds of banners, contributions of more than 200 volunteers in 24
languages, over a thousand comments:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Messages
[2] e.g.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=20101217_JA022A_US
[3] e.g.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=20101227_JA045_US
[4] I do not believe that they are, but the thought has certainly
crossed my mind after reading the aforementioned quote.



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