Hi all, Thank you for sharing your concerns. We hear them and we take them seriously. *As of today, we have pulled this subject line from our testing rotation.*
On the Fundraising team, we pride ourselves on making data-driven decisions, and there are many types of data inputs we process outside of dollar amount raised. For example, how many people choose to unsubscribe from our list or submit an abuse complaint when we send an email? Does a certain subject line get very high opens but a low rate of donations per open--indicating that it is more clickbait than effective content? How much and what kind of feedback is our Donor Services team getting? We watched these inputs closely while sending this subject line to donors. Our unsubscribe and abuse rates were low, the donation per open rate was even higher than usual, and while our Donor Services team flagged some negative responses from donors, they determined these comments were not in a significant volume. That said, there is a final input which is harder to measure on a per-test basis: how do we, our colleagues, and volunteers feel about our messaging? This team cares deeply about Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, and about the mission we all work to achieve. We want to represent it faithfully, and do so in a way our readers and donors can engage with and understand. This balance can be really hard to strike and it will always be an ongoing challenge in our work. We are grateful to be presented with this challenge and with the joy of telling millions of people about this movement. Thank you for caring so deeply, for all your contributions, and for keeping this feedback loop alive. Sincerely, Caitlin On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 1:47 PM Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Seddon, > > While the fundraising appeal may be successful, the problem that I have > with this subject line is that it can mislead readers into thinking that > someone with the ability to do so is seriously considering, or making an > effort to, delete Wikipedia in entirety. I think that a subject line of > "Block Wikipedia?" might be okay, and I am supportive of encouraging people > not to take Wikipedia for granted. But regarding "Delete Wikipedia?", as > far as I know that generally misrepresents the current situation. I believe > that using "Delete Wikipedia?" as a subject line is inconsistent with > Wikipedia's goals of providing neutral, verifiable, and reliable > information. > > I am starting to think that if WMF wants to use the Wikipedia brand name > for WMF fundraising then WMF should first publicly discuss its proposed > uses of the Wikipedia brand name with Wikipedians. > > On a related issue, I don't know if it's happening this year, but in the > past another concern that I've had is the conflation of donating to > Wikipedia with donating to WMF. Wikipedia and WMF are related but there is > not a 1:1 relationship, and I hope that WMF makes that clear in its > fundraising. The use of "Delete Wikipedia?" reminds me of these concerns. > > I would prefer to avoid diverting the community's limited time into > reviewing WMF's choices, but unfortunately the issues are too significant > to ignore. I don't know how many community members want to volunteer their > time to review fundraising appeals before they go into production, but I > think that it would be good for WMF to ask. > > Pine > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> -- Caitlin Cogdill Senior Fundraising Email Manager Wikimedia Foundation Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
