Fundraising 2009/Launch Feedback/Archive 1

Fundraising 2009
General
Plan Timeline
Design and message (Meta)
Original website design mock-ups Alternative banner ideas Launch feedback
Translations
Translations main page Core messages Supplementary messages FAQ Translatewiki extensions Thank You Appeal
Live donation pages (WMFwiki)
Main donation landing page (en) Donor comments feed
Raw statistics
FundraiserStatistics ContributionStatistics ContributionTrackingStatistics csv
Public relations/Announcements
Opening press release Closing press release Blog posts
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It doesn't matter how important you think Wikipedia is...

Dear Wikimedia Foundation. The internet needs and uses wikipedia. But you NEED to find a way to make money instead of asking for handouts. Find a workable business model and stick to it, because you can't just keep asking for money... the public will eventually tire of it, and you will kill the site. The banner is a BIG mistake, because you are beginning to seem like that needy friend who is always asking for money for gas, for rent, etc.

I don't need Wikipedia, I can walk away any time! I can! I'll just do it tomorrow

But then you will have to add search engines for Moby games and IMDB while you can just use wikipedia!

Wikipedia, where facts don't matter. Wikipedia, which everyone can edit but no one can

Re Jimmy's personal appeal. You know, Jimmy, if Wiki was not such an activist nest, I would have donated. But alas, it is the place where facts don't matter and if an activist decides, no one can edit. Is that what you wanted? Did you want a propaganda piece where unemployed 'volunteers' issue verdicts from their mom's basements? Where a Ph. D. cannot add information because a school dropout decided it was not suitable? Dude, the sane people of the world laugh at Wikipedia and forbid their children to use it. It is doing nothing but damage, except for a handful of articles created and maintained by subject matter experts in case your 'volunteer wikipedian' thugs are so clueless that they are simply unable to screw up the contents. Wikipedia is the place where scientific facts can only be published if they were previously published in a media approved by (see above) the unemployed school dropouts. But it's a cash cow for a whole bunch of people, so it's Ok to misinform the young generation.

Yep, pretty much. Wikipedia is a cesspool, and will be getting none of my money. 99.67.64.169 04:04, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Wait... let me get this... there is ACTUALLY someone out there who KNOWS what it is like to "fight" the wikipedian system? Congrats! Wikipedia has one use for me really, and that is urban info, stuff no reputable encyclopedia would touch but is certainly on wikipedia... and I mostly care about the links or the first ten words of the article.

Yeah. After fighting a long and tedious edit war just to get the bare mention of certain crucial, undisputed, and referenced facts added to the Sacco and Vanzetti wikipedia page, as well as similar nonsense on other pages, made me give up on it being what Jimmy Wales thinks it is supposed to be. 99.67.64.169 09:12, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

When I read the entry on Harry Perry, a Venice Beach musician, and found it was rated as 'mid-importance' by the 'Los Angeles Task Force' I decided I'd had enough of Wikipedia. Try finding accurate information regarding real community leaders, businessmen and entrepreneurs and you won't find any.

Wikipedia is becoming a receptacle; the vast floating garbage pile of popular culture, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean of the creator's mind.

I agree. I was banned for life from Wikipedia for making an article that was similar in title to one the administrators had voted against 3 years ago. No joke. The Wikipedia community has been nothing but adversarial to me, and until this administrator problem is fixed, I won't donate a dime.

Wikipedia admins abuse of power means it wont be sum of human knowledge

I tried adding a bit of pertinent information about a show cancellation status and an admin kneejerkingly deleted it because he rubberstamped it with a "link to be avoided". the link was a petition from the show creator to have the show resumed. pertinent information to any reasonable mind. people come look for information about the show and they should find the true status of it. to conform to the fascist idiot admin I added the section again but without the petition link and just a reference to the show creators website that contained the information about the show's status. it was immediately removed again because now a flock of morons had set it in their mind that I was a trouble maker. I added the section again insisting it was pertinent. then I was banned for edit warring. the others weren't touched at all. I had contributed, they had deleted. I was right, they were wrong, but I was banned for a week. The original admin hu12 even blatantly celebrates abuse of power on his wiki page. All this was without an account, just my IP. I later realized I already had an account on wiki and using this I changed the wording on the same page in a different section from "ran for three seasons" to "has run for three seasons" because ran sounds past tense and the last ep was only weeks ago and the show might still be renewed for many more seasons. for that I was permanently banned as a "suck puppet". no debate, no warning, no chance of parole. when the wikipedia leadership is that sick that power mongers and vogons are in charge, why should anyone give money to it? when it is that sick how can it hope to be anything but mediocre knowledge? judges should have the absolutely highest of wisdom or it will be accordingly. with such an infestation of idiots in power it will not be the ideal you want it to be and I certainly wont support it financially as such a thing cannot stand. it would be like donating to fox news.

-The wikipedia admins are complete fascists who know how to play the game and are bigtime losers who have nothing better to do with their lives.

Credit card form

The credit card processing form is far from being in a usable state and IMO should not be deployed as is; see my notes on internal-l for specific issues. --brion 14:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Well that's scary. Did they get fixed?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 06:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Improvements are said to be in the works, but it's still pretty spotty. The only change I recommended that's live so far is that the amount is now editable. Currency isn't, and we're still missing a credit card type, shouldn't even be asking for a credit card type in the first place (should just list them), have broken state and country fields that don't retain values across submissions, don't indicate which fields are required, don't give any interactive feedback on whether fields values are valid until submission (at which point half your fields reset their fvalues), and use a "first/middle/last" name breakdown which is unnecessary and doesn't translate well outside the US. (More generally there's a whole UI on that page including sidebar links that doesn't do anything useful and just sends you to dead-end pages.)

It's ok for new untested code to be rough, but if it wasn't tested and ready it really shouldn't have been deployed in the fundraiser at this stage; continuing to send people through the PayPal form until this was ready would have been much better for our donors. --brion 14:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I tried it twice two hours ago. Nothing happened (I think) but before I try again I have to wait two days to be sure that no money has been withdrawn from my bank account. //StefanB 18:39, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

red links on Chapters/en

I am seeing two redlinks on wmf:Chapters/en.

the links are rendered as red links:[1][2] but when I click on them, they take me to the correct pages:wmf:Resolution:Approval_of_Wikimedia_Australia and wmf:Resolution:Approval_of_Wikimedia_Brasil. John Vandenberg 05:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. Cbrown1023 talk 05:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

IE6 support

wmf:Donate says "To give using IE6 or last year's form, please click here."

Is IE6 not supported in the current implementation?

According to SquidReportClients.htm, IE6 accounts for 13.18% of traffic. John Vandenberg 05:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

• We are working to resolve this. But it may take a few days...hence the workaround. Rand Montoya 05:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Support buttons link to dev website

wmf:Support/en provides links to the "dev" website; e.g.

<a href= "http://dev.donate.wikimedia.org/index.php/Donate/en"><img border="0" alt="Wikipedia Affiliate Button" src="/w/extensions/skins/Donate/images/banners/Banner_125x125_0000_A.jpg" /></a>

John Vandenberg 05:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. Cbrown1023 talk 06:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The collapsed banner

The text in the hidden banner is almost impossible to read on high screen resolutions. From testing on 1920x1200: Firefox - not too bad, but pretty small. Opera - almost completely illegible. Safari - probably the best. Chrome - almost readable. IE8 - hard to read (also centered for some reason). Additionally, every browser except Firefox puts the text on a white background but gives the box a gray background, which is kind of awkward looking. Mr.Z-man 05:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

When I'm logged in in de:wp and collapse the banner, everything else on the page (not the sidebar on the left) disappears too. I'm using Beta; Opera browser, WinXP SP3. -- 87.123.197.8 11:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: After having left Beta, it's OK again. -- 87.123.197.8 13:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

CSS problem

Whoever wrote the embedded CSS for the notices, didn't realize that those styles would propagate globally to the entire page under most browsers, in particular messing up people A styles.

The following is a quick and dirty rewrite to specify that the styles apply to the site notice only. I don't have an easy way to test it with Wikimedia's full setup, but I think this should be sufficient to force it to apply the styles only with the id="siteNotice" div. It would need to be installed in the central notice templates. Dragons flight 06:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

New CSS

/* Styles for Notices */ #siteNotice a { text-decoration: none; } #siteNotice a:hover { text-decoration: underline; } #siteNotice a:hover table tr td #no-link-underline { text-decoration: none; } #siteNotice a table { text-decoration: none; color: #6e98c2; } #siteNotice a:hover table tr td { text-decoration: underline; } #siteNotice a:hover table tr td #use-underline { text-decoration: underline; } #siteNotice a:hover #no-link-underline { text-decoration: none; } #siteNotice .text-one-line { font-size: 3.08em; font-weight: bold; } #siteNotice div.grayBorder { border: 1px solid #bbb; background-color: #fbfbfb; font-family: helvetica, impact, sans-serif; overflow: hidden; } #siteNotice .nobr { white-space: nowrap; } #siteNotice img { border-style: none; } #center-logo { padding: 0 20px; background-color: #fbfbfb; margin-bottom: 10px; } #siteNotice .notice-wrapper { position: relative; width: 100%; height: 100px; border: 1px solid #bbb; background-color: #fbfbfb; font-family: helvetica, impact, sans-serif; overflow: hidden; } #siteNotice .toggle-box { float: right; font-size: 0.6em; } #siteNotice .blue-text { font-weight: bold; font-family: helvetica, impact, sans-serif; background-color: #fbfbfb; color: #6e98c2; text-align: left; margin:auto; width:100%; } /* Notice 2 and up */ #siteNotice .notice-collapsed-wrapper { position: relative; border: 1px solid #bbb; background-color: #fbfbfb; padding: 1px 20px; font-family: helvetica, impact, sans-serif; color: #6e98c2; } #siteNotice .notice-collapsed-wrapper img { padding: 0 5px; margin-bottom: -1px; } #siteNotice .collapsed-text { margin-left: 10px; font-size: 0.7em; font-weight: normal; font-family: helvetica, impact, sans-serif; color: #333; } #small-links { float: right; margin-top: -25px; margin-right: 30px; font-family: helvetica, impact, sans-serif; font-size: 0.7em; } #small-links2 { position: absolute; bottom: 16px; right: 32px; font-size: 0.7em; } #siteNotice .quote-text { } #siteNotice .quote-data { font-size: .8em; color: black; font-weight: normal; } #siteNotice .center1 { font-weight: bold; color: #6e98c2; vertical-align: middle; } #siteNotice .meter-text { color: black; } #siteNotice .lines-1 { font-size: 2.25em; } #siteNotice .lines-2 { font-size: 1.85em; } #siteNotice .lines-3 { font-size: 1.52em; }

I've already attempted to fix this (by adding yet another class (notice-all)). Please see MediaWiki:Centralnotice-template-2009 Notice1 and MediaWiki:Centralnotice-template-2009 Notice1 Wikipedia2; if there are issues, please post here and I'll try to implement them as quickly as possible. I haven't modified the other CSS entries as I don't believe there's a reasonable chance of collision (and I don't want to introduce too many new variables at this point). Also, it should be noted that there's a delay (about 30 minutes, I think) between new code and seeing it live. --MZMcBride 06:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yay! My underlines are back. (Well not yet live, but whatever.) BTW, secure.wikimedia.org renders site notices immediately with no delay, so you can go there to test changes, just clear your cache when there. Dragons flight 06:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Seems the CentralNotice cache at en.wiki (and elsewhere) has now cleared. Things seem better. Thank you very much for the secure.wikimedia.org tip. :-) --MZMcBride 07:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Whitespace in IE

Right now, IE is adding extra whitespace above the slogan, so it is pushed down towards the bottom.

I've been playing with this and the best I've come up with is to set "height:0;" on the <a style="display:block;margin:0;padding:0;" href="{{{donate-url}}}?utm_source=2009_Notice1&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=fundraiser2009">. That gets FF 3 and IE 8 to render the same vertical placement; however, I'm a little worried that some older browsers might not respect the height:100px on the enclosed table and thus ignore it. Dragons flight 07:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Banner not clickable in IE

As someone else pointed out, the banner is not clickable at all in IE 8. Dragons flight 08:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

yes, it doesn't work on IE 8.0.6001 ~Pyb

Shocked

I'm really shocked by this banner. So ugly, so big. Unprofessional, childish. The least you should do, is to make it 5 times smaller. Absolutely not clear that it is an invitation to donate. (But if it would be, I would actually withdraw my money if I was a donor). By the way, why should anyone donate if it is already sure that Wikipedia and even Wikimedia will last forever? Really, I think you have now found the ideal way to frighten away any donors. 132.229.117.120 09:07, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The banner is indeed very big and ugly. Also very 'American' in its message (by that I mean it is SHOUTING to the reader). 195.235.227.10 09:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

And clearly you are anti-American and an idiot.

If WMF wants a stupid banner to get money off people -- less than a fifth of which is actually spent on anything related to Wikipedia, and none of which goes to any of Wikipedia's contributors or maintainers -- can it at least say something less lame? 144.32.58.96 (talk) 09:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. That banner is big, ugly and annoying. In addition, some of the comments are laughable. I about fell off my chair when I read one banner that said something like "I'm a scientist and use wiki daily". Uh, that's not reassuring, that's frightening. Wiki is not an encylopedia. It's a nice place to get added information with the very obvious notion that each and every letter written needs to actually be verified. Quoting a CNN article is hardly adequate....particularly for a scientist! Wiki is not even a permitted source in the grand majority of respected colleges. How an established scientist thinks it's ok to use wiki is beyond me.

I think the banners are meant to get rid of the people who try to built Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, it seems they do not care at all about the readers and the workers on the many projects. Sad situation - Romaine 14:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Community Backlash

If your after feedback, see this fantastic collection of views on the english wikipedia village pump. You guys really did screw up on this one I'm afraid. Seddon 09:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

If the plan was...

...to get Wikipedia's need of donations into the news, then that's probably going to work. If that wasn't actually the plan, then I propose adopting it as Plan B. Let's make a big drama out of the removal of these childish banners, until the press starts reporting about it. There is no such thing as bad news. Hans Adler 09:18, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The news that we're too incompetent to hire someone to put forth a slogan that doesn't make you cringe with embarrassment does not send the message that wikipedia has a future as a legitimate resource encyclopedia. It just makes us look childish and amateurish. How could it be incentive to donate to wikipedia knowing they'll waste the money? Please rethink. --IP69.226.103.13 10:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

As Craig Ferguson said, it takes money to be incorrect.

The fund raising has certainly made the news http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/19/lawrence-solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor.aspx

You can help us translate the 2009 fundraising messages.

"OUR SLOGAN WRITER USES A C-64."

"The community response to this will cause more drama at an ad agency than a series of Mad Men."

"You know we argued really hard for a <blink> tag, but it got shot down."

"Our arrogance knows no boundaries."

I just don't think I'm conveying the nuance of the original, maybe other people need to help me out here. You can help us translate the 2009 fundraising messages. Fifelfoo 09:45, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

yeah at least they didn't get the fucking <marquee> tag on there this time... sheesh.... 144.32.58.96 09:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, please don't transfer that message, "Wikimedia Forever" into any other languages. It will still sound like the drivel it is. --IP69.226.103.13 10:32, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Forever?

Seriously, if WMF actually paid money for this eyesore, then they got ripped off. This is something I would have felt nervous about using in my high school newspaper, and to have such an amateurish (and evidently widely hated) slogan on the top of a top-10-in-the-world-website is frankly embarrassing. The whole fundraising shebang should be put on hold until someone comes up with a slogan that's not so utterly cringeworthy. Craig Franklin 08:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC).

+1 --79.247.31.125 08:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC) And: Not one cent!

[Fixed your Wikipedia link. Should probably be a permanent link, though.] --MZMcBride 09:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks like GDR propaganda. See the discussions at German Wikipedia and German translation page here. --Pjacobi 10:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Better German translation

"Wenn Sie uns nicht Ihr ganzes Geld überweisen, werden Kleinkinder wegen dieses Banners an Augenkrebs sterben!" 82.113.121.24 09:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Erinnert mich irgendwie an die DDR. Da gab auch so schöne Banner für Blinde, wie Ewige Freundschaft mit den Völkern der Sowjetunion!. --91.41.91.225 10:19, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Where's that? It's bizarre. (Oh, it's a sarcastic recommendation.) Incidentally the German translation of "Wikipedia forever" is "Strengthen Wikipedia [logo] for the future", which is not too bad (the donation page has the rather clumsier "Wikipedia [logo] For the future!"). Rd232 13:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Politbureau will be contacting all of you shortly. Wekipediya tikdem! -- Llywrch 18:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Translation suggestions should be placed on the translation's talk page: Talk:Fundraising 2009/core messages/de. Cbrown1023 talk 23:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Harhar, there were several. But they were obviously ignored. --Catfisheye 00:34, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

That was a sarcastic suggestion: "If you don't send us all of your money, your toddlers will die from eye cancer." The other comment was about banners in the GDR like "Friendship forever with the peoples of the Soviet Union". --X-Weinzar 04:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Explanation?

How exactly are we supposed to interpret "Wikipedia forever"? I guess that it was meant to be aspirational, as in "Wikipedia: it should be forever" or "Give the gift of Wikipedia forever". But the way I read it (helped along by the 'shouting'), it sounds like an appeal to en:ingroup - along the lines of "I am with Wikipedia forever!", "You're part of Wikipedia, forever!". Judging by all the complaints of "propaganda", I think this is how other people are reading it too. For all of us not knowing what's in the minds of the Wikimedia Foundation, what was it meant to be? AySz88 04:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Jesus Christ

What a horrible obnoxious banner. Imbeciles. 89.100.67.231 11:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Lessons to learn

Note: This section is in progress.

Some of the lessons to be learned for the next banners / next year:

1. Wiktionaries and other non-Wikipedia projects want their logos used, not the Wikipedia globe;
   • On Wikipedia-projects, the Wikipedia globe is now two times on top of the page. Just leave the logo away. 132.229.117.120 09:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
2. Be sure to test in every major browser in multiple configurations — the current banners are entirely unclickable in IE8 and the collapsed banner is nearly illegible with high resolutions;
3. <style> tag elements need to be specific; the banners broke link underlining behavior for a few hours;
4. Come up with a less lame slogan;
5. The "hide" button should actually HIDE the effing thing. If we don't want to see it we don't want to see it. I'm not going to give you any money regardless.

Please feel free to add other lessons to learn. --MZMcBride 09:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

1. Less is more. People get angry of big fonts and caps. Big fonts and caps express anger, impatience, shouting, childisness, and / or arrogance (and possibly many more negative emotions) in at least some cultures. 132.229.117.120 09:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I thought lesson 1 was already learned! This has been a running problem for years  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 14:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Please remove the exclamation mark "！" in the zh- variants

The mark is not in the translation page, I don't know for sure why that appears. But, please could anyone remove that from the Central Notice, because it just breaks the balance between the words. Thanks.--Jimmy Xu 10:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Done. Cbrown1023 talk 23:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

A chat log

• bleh, connection dropped
• Did you see my request for opinion?
  • Becky: no
• you use Wikipedia every now and then, right?
• not regularly, but.... sometimes.
• Right?
  • Becky: use it as in a reference, yes.
• Right
• okay. We've got a fundraiser going now
• and
• with the fundraiser
• comes a BANNER AD
• I'd like your opinion on the banner ad
  • Becky: bleh. that's my opinion.
• Did you look?
  • Becky: no. you didn't give me a link or anything.
• ah
• it's on every single Wikipedia page now
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_page
  • Becky: that sure is a banner.
  • and it certainly doesn't encourage you to click on it.
  • it doesn't tell you that it's something important, if in fact it is.
• do you see a button marked 'hide' ?
  • Becky: yes
• try clicking on that
  • Becky: it doesn't actually hide it.
  • that's retarded.
• ....no?
  • Becky: it just makes it smaller.
• well, it works for me, but I'm logged in.
• oh, does it say anything different when you shrink it?
  • Becky: yeah, the text is almost too small to read and still doesn't encourage me to do much.
  • it's very ignorable.
• okay
• Are you okay with me relaying this chat log to the relevant people?
• you would be identified as "Becky"
  • Becky: you can if you want.

so that's my friend Becky's opinion. DS 13:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Becky seems very sensible. Pretzels 23:07, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

My dad, only a casual Wikipedia user who is also a project manager, says it "doesn't really mean anything - it doesn't convey a message". He says it looks like an anniversary celebration or somesuch rather than a request for money, people wouldn't know to click on it. Orderinchaos 01:12, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

severe Bug in Beta/IE8

On nl.wikipedia, a severe bug has been reported when clicking on "hide" in IE8 using Beta. See this figure. 132.229.117.120 14:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Big Bug in "hidden" fundraiser

This is how the "hidden" banner looks on my screen

The fundraising banner looks to me as Wikipedia showing off after several doses of highly illegal steroids: a lot of muscle, no brains.

But I have a more urgent objection: when I want to use my brain, I have to click hide, but then the encyclopedic content gets more or less hidden, pushed down by a large white space around the petite "hidden" banner, see illustration. I don't know whether IE8 or the new Dutch standard skin (In its last Beta tests) or something else is to fault, but please, can someone kill this big bug?

Thanks, B222 14:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Rendering of donation message with Opera 9.64 and Opera 10

Please have a look at the rendering with Opera 9.64 and Opera 10. The "donate by credit card" and "donate via paypal" buttons are very hard to read as you can see. I have no screenshot of the top-banner because it is not displayed anymore, but it was about the same, and was also hard to read. The top-banner is fine now, either it was fixed or I was wrong. But the donation buttons need to be fixed, they look horrible. I hope someone can fix this issue. Yours, Dodoïste 23:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

End of (work) Day update for 11/11/09 PST

Lots of progress made today:

1. Working on the IE6 and related browser glitches. Mostly fixed (some banners will just always look funky in some browsers). Final testing of banners tomorrow morning.
2. Un-capitalizing all the banners. (Done and done: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=2009_Notice1&wpUserLanguage=all). And new banners will not be all caps.
3. Re-working the display and back code for the credit card payment system. Half done. More adjustments were made. More on the morrow...none of the remaining issues are showstopping.
4. Another critical issue was resolved regarding our Anonymous/non-Anonymous showing on our Donor Comments page.
5. The Geo IP testing and implementation. This is working well, but we still expect a slow launch. It's tested, but we need to review under actual load conditions. Want to try it?

Click on this: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GeoLite?lang=fr&?utm_source=2009_Notice11&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=fundraiser2009

If you live in France, you should see this page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Global_Support/fr . That's the French Chapter donation page.

If you don't live in France, you should see the regular French donation page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia/fr

What's happening Thursday?

1. Last testing of banners on different browsers.
2. We relaunch on Wikipedia only with the following messages: 'Wikipedia Forever' (33%), 'For your great, great, great grandson' (16%), 'For your great, great, great granddaughter' (16%) and 'Free Knowledge Forever. Ad-Free Forever. Wikipedia Forever.' (33%). (Maybe someone could link to them from the staging page?).
3. We monitor GEO IP settings and load in France as well as overall performance of our banners.
4. We work on tracking numbers for our banners and buttons.
5. We work on the infamous Ariel Extension (keeps users on their project pages when they give). It could go live shortly.
6. We continue work on project specific banners with project specific logos.

I appreciate all your help and comments. Please feel free to post on this page on any issues or questions. Rand Montoya 03:34, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Counter-productive message by me deleted but still in the page history. I needed to vent. --Daniel Mayer (mav) 04:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

"Ad-Free Forever." Well, actually I'm one of the few (?) Wikipedians that is in favour for ads, if well organized. We could do many good things with the money obtained from ads! I find it a very bad thing that by this campaign a position is taken in the debate about ads.

Moreover, saying "Add-free Forever" in an ad seems a bit self-contradicting to me... 132.229.117.120 09:06, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Since the wikimedia foundation has now accepted donations under the banner of "ad free forever"… Well, in my book it would be unethical to reverse on something like that. It seems ill-considered to close off that possibility for the future, though the messages being mildly embarrassing seems to be catching more attention. --Gmaxwell 16:25, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

So... basically, the community's views on the theme of the campaign are being set aside and we're continuing forward? Hm. Tony Fox 16:48, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know the slogan "Ad-Free Forever" has not yet been displayed. Not yet - still it is not to late. But as Gmaxwell says, as soon as the first donation has been accepted, there is no way back from an ethical perspective. So please PLEASE please Do Not Show The Slogan "Ad-Free Forever". 16:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• (e/c) Quoting from Rand Montoya's comment above: "We relaunch on Wikipedia only with the following messages: 'Wikipedia Forever' (33%), 'For your great, great, great grandson' (16%), 'For your great, great, great granddaughter' (16%) and 'Free Knowledge Forever. Ad-Free Forever. Wikipedia Forever.' (33%)." There's one significant issue about these slogans that nobody seems to have addressed: none of them imply that it's part of a fundraiser. They don't convey any meaning, or even suggest that the banner can be clicked. The casual reader might think that we were just bragging about ourselves. This would, at the least, look silly and unprofessional. Feedback from from some non-WP users suggests they also feel this way. If we're obliged to use the slogans (which I still think are completely unsuitable), we could at least add a "Donate today!" or "Please support" message below them to clarify what the whole thing is about. Tempodivalse [talk] 16:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Cultural awareness

As the protests at :EN have shown, all of this "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER" Wiki-cultish stuff is even too heavy for an American audience. For the US you do need rather aggressive advertising but can you imagine how much more in-your-face-ish this campaign comes across to people in countries that value understatement more? In Germany, for example, being shouted at with "FOREVER" stuff reminds people of communist party slogans in the GDR and also the Nazi propaganda in Hitler's "Tausendjährigem Reich" (= the empire that was supposed to exist 1000 years = "forever"). Same thing applies to wiki-cultish stuff like "Our shared knowledge. Our shared treasure. Help us protect it." or "We write it. We share it. We improve it. Now let’s protect it." Those are slogans you would expect in China, for example. What may come to a German's mind is Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer — "One People, One Nation, One Leader". Ouch! Has anyone over there ever heard of such a thing called cultural awareness? By the way, some people felt reminded of en:George Wallace's "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" so "forever-slogans" are probably not a good choice even in the US. --X-Weinzar 04:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Point of information: Americans are not that fond of aggressive advertising either. As a result, it is only used to promote such quality goods as payday loans, fast food, cheap furniture, used cars and politicians. (On the plus side, at least we don't have to deal with sound trucks -- although there have been a few elections where I would have preferred them to the campaign ads.) -- Llywrch 18:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not just Germans who feel that way. "Ein Volk..." was the first thing to come to my mind as well. --65.101.119.25 23:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The banner is just agressive - I pressed "hide" instantly. Luckely its now gone from the DE:WP, but it threatens to reappear. Has the foundation already paid the designer of this desaster? --Eingangskontrolle 16:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Cultural awareness is taken into account in the translation process. I know of three specific groups of translators (Germans, Dutch, and Scandinavians) who adjusted the language of the slogans to fit better in their cultural contexts – we encourage this: Fundraising 2009/Translations. I'm assuming you didn't see it on dewp, otherwise you'd know that it said: "Stärke Wikipedia für die Zukunft!" which isn't really the same as "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER". Cbrown1023 talk 23:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Why do have the unpaid volunteers to take the cultural awareness into account, when a PR company was paid with donation money to create a PR campaign for the Wikimedia projects? Shouldn't that company take care of that too, the majority of Wikimedia projects aren't en.Wikipedia after all? --89.246.212.83

Moreover, especially en.wikipedia is read in many, many cultures. So especially the campaign on en.wikipedia should prevent cultural bias as much as possible. 132.229.117.120 16:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The German blogosphere is laughing about Wikipedia and is ranting in promoting one euro donations. Of course the costs for receiving such donations are more expensive. The WMF did damage the project with this unprecedented unprofessional banner campaign. Thank you very much. --88.102.101.245 06:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

links? My understanding is that this "one-euro donation" thing relates to the recent German Wikipedia "Relevanz" (notability) debate, not the banners, with the one-euro-donation giving people a chance to leave prominent protest comments. Rd232 12:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

• That and "[name] Forever" is what I'd expect a fourteen-year-old girl to scrawl on her binder, declaring her everlasting love for this week's romantic partner. --24.79.231.57 16:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• That ^^ is an offense to the more emotionally stable fourteen-year-old girls out there, me being one. But point taken. Š¡nglî§h §Þëªk£r 00:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Open source --> Free knowledge

Please change 'open source' to 'free knowledge' or 'free software', as noted here: Talk:Fundraising_2009/core_messages#.22Open_Source.22 Thanks, Sj+ translate 13:45, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I second this motion. 88.148.208.105 06:08, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

So? Is this going to be changed?--OsamaK 02:47, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Put the logo on the right for rtl languages

Wikipedia logo should be on the right side for right-to-left languages (ar,he,fa,ur,..), instead of left. Please change that.--OsamaK 02:57, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed that not only the logo needs to be rtl, but the whole message.--OsamaK 02:59, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Can someone please do something about it? It looks ugly.--OsamaK 14:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

What are you talking about? All the places I see the logo, it is in the middle. Cbrown1023 talk 21:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

This was an issue when there was "Knowledge For Ever - Ad-Free For Ever" banner. I think these messages aren't shown anymore. Are you going to return them sometime in the future?--OsamaK 12:44, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Pointers to this page

Please consider putting pointers on Talk:Support_Wikipedia/en and http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Talk:Support_Wikipedia/en as well as similar pages in other languages that let people know they can provide feedback here. Jokestress 04:39, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I added a link there, thanks. Cbrown1023 talk 13:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Full localization

Please add "&uselang=xx" and, in case of right-to-left languages, "&rtl=1" to the link of the donations page for a better localization. BTW, isn't the non-MediaWiki-style interface (that was used last year) more beautiful?--OsamaK 06:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

We try to not use &uselang because it doesn't stick... when the people navigate to other pages, the ?uselang setting is lost and they assume they did something wrong/get worried. Cbrown1023 talk 13:49, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Issue with Geo-IP

When clicking on the banner in de.wikipedia.org, I do not allways land on the right landing page (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Global_Support/de), but sometimes on the landing page for users from outside of Germany (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia2/de). Could this please be fixed?--Pavel Richter 07:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Same issue for France. Actually, I tried many many times and it seems the majority of time the banner is the general one. Anthere 13:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

50% of the time you should land on Global Support/de and the other 50% on Support Wikipedia/de. Tomasz is working on fitting the second landing page into GeoIP (we need to make sure that we can get Special:GeoIP to redirect people to Support Wikipedia *and* Support Wikipedia2). This should be fixed soon, it's just a temporary issue at the beginning. Cbrown1023 talk 13:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

• Working on this issue now. If you're here and having problems, would you post your IP address as well? It will help us track down the problem. Thanks. Rand Montoya 18:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I do not see the chapter page at all since this morning. Ant. My IP:l 90.52.172.60 18:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

This is likely because of our load testing as we only have GeoIP on for 50% of banner views. To test explicitly please follow this link and report back which page you hit.

I believe this issue to be resolved, but I am easily proven wrong. Please post additional problems here. Rand Montoya 01:55, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I always get "global support/nl", no matter which language edition. I live in NL but my browser settings are German. --Ziko 15:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a known issue. It currently only does country-based redirection. We'll want to take into account browser and website language settings in a future revision, but to do so, we'll also need chapter landing pages in different languages.--Eloquence 03:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia forever

It is just embarassing that the fundraising banner says "Wikipedia" instead of "Wikimedia" forever... I could understand this on a banner at Wikipedia itself, but at other projects it is just wrong...--Kozuch 16:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Which projects are you talking about? I'm under the impression that the banner is only live on certain Wikipedias (de.wiki and en.wiki, mostly) right now. I don't see it on projects like en.wiktionary (though that could be my cache). Where do you see it? --MZMcBride 16:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The banner seems to be on strategy: (but not on any other non-WP projects, as far as i can tell). Tempodivalse [talk] 16:49, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

For the record, I have asked - many times - to have that changed. For some reason, there's a technical hiccup. We're working on it, Kozuch. In the meantime, I just spoke with Rand and we disabled the banners locally at Strategy, since theoretically those users are being served the banner other places. --Philippe 18:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

why?

Why should I donate? What is the vision? Where is a link to the data or finances or anything?

I have donated in the past (look it up). But I don't feel compelled to this time.

And why should I donate, if a not small part of the Money is blown out of the window? (See next paragraph). --Carbenium 17:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If you decide to click through the banner, and then manage to find the FAQ link on the landing page, you'll find links to actual details like this. This was all much more prominent in previous years. --brion 22:26, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

$250,000 ???!

Hi, I really CAN'T imagine, what part of the campaing takes so much money. I consider the expense of such an amount of mones (more than 6% of the outcome of (one of) the last fundraising campaigns!) as an irresponsible, unaccountable and unjustifiable waste (you could also say: as a misappropriation) of hard acquired donated funds. And not only as we have as an international poject w/ many of thousands contributors surely many marketing experts between us who would also surely do the work ik a wiki-like way for free, but also because I think, it would be possible to engage a marketing company for a way less money and to a much more reasonable price.
I'd highly like to have a look at a detailed line-up of this project. Greetz, Carbenium 17:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

somebody redo the banner. please. Quarkedcharm 14:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is extremly bad value for money. As an IT professional, I hold the opinion that neither the visual nor technical design, nor the content of this banners is worth anything near a quarter million dollars. It's more like something a student would have happily stiched together for 1000 dollars, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly how Fenton did it. -- Theoprakt 07:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

See Talk:Fundraising_2009/Alternative_banners#An_update_on_the_fundraiser for WMF response. Rd232 11:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, I just read the text. Since it is a cooperation for 11 months, there is spent ca. $23K a month. In other words: Fenton has to accomplish the work of possibly 5 full-time-equivalents. What are they doing all the time? Wasn't it better to recruit one or two own marketing-people (if the foundation believes, it can't trust / use the community's experience and knowledge – which in my eyes is a confession of failure) for a longer period of time – $250K could possibly pay two people for at least 2 years. And: Since WP is one of the world's widest-known internet-sites, I don't see necessity for other PR-Work than the fundraising-related one.

Furthermore the investment must generate an appropriate refund – that means, the work of Fenton has to cause an increase of donations of more than $23K per month to be an adequte return-of-investment. I can't imagine, how this should work. --Carbenium 17:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not just about fundraising. They also want Fenton to help modify the public image of Wikimedia. I don't really know what that means, but it could be things like increasing the awareness of Wikimedia (as opposed to Wikipedia), increasing the awareness of our licensing model, making people see Wikipedia as more reliable, or any number of other things. Dragons flight 19:42, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: I think, it would be really effective and helpful to mention this in the fundraising banner. --Carbenium 17:20, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Landing page redux

If I click on the banner I am offered the page at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Global_Support/uk?utm_source=2009_EM1Notice&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=fundraiser2009&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSpecial%3AWatchlist. Note the "/uk?" in the middle there: that I am located in the UK is being recognised. So whey then am I being asked to donate in US$? --Alison Wheeler 18:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

We let the chapters control their own landing pages, so the reason you're being asked to donate in USD is because they didn't change it. I changed it. Cbrown1023 talk 20:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The form on that page is for the donations to the WMF only, not for WMUK, so it's up to the WMF to modify it. WMUK's form is at http://donate.wikimedia.org.uk/ - and that has GBP only on it. Mike Peel 21:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Ariel extension?

There was mention above of an extension which will allow donations whilst staying within a project. Is there any more information available on this, and any idea when it could be implemented. It sounds like it would resolve some of the concerns at other projects (e.g. on Wikinews) which have been about the Wikipedia centred donation page. the wub "?!" 23:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oh yeah...I would love to have that up and working and implemented. Sadly, it's going to have to wait until next week. It'll be a nice feature. We absolutely have tried to take the other projects into account and the Ariel Extension is a large part of that work. It won't solve the banner logo issue, that's a separate fix. Sorry, I don't have a way to show it off yet. Rand Montoya 01:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I would be very interested in getting an early look at this. Is there even a high-level specification available for this somewhere?

Incidentally, perhaps worth taking a look at the main page of en.wikinews right now. There is a Donate link in the page header now — not just intended to be fundraiser-only — to feature there permanently. For this in Wikinews-specific use the linked-to page would have to be on-project with full access to all the other MediaWiki extensions (Flagged Revisions, Dynamic Page Lists). A news wiki soliciting donations should up-front justify asking; that means the donate page would feature a list of latest news, or the current top 2-3 lead stories.

A last point on Ariel is that — to me — it would be very important to be able to filter donor's comments that originated from Wikinews. These are the ones where project admins could select examples to highlight on the project-specific donate page. And, per a point of mine RJD imported, the page should be secure (https); not the convoluted 'standard' secure domain, but http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Donate --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:12, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

seamonkey 1.1.17

Still borken Geni 02:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

To be honest, that looks like a SeaMonkey / local issue to me. Split globe? WTF. --MZMcBride 06:38, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

payments server is currently offline

I get the following message when trying to doante by credit card: "The payments server is currently offline due to a scheduled maintence window. Please check back after 4AM PST. If you would like to donate during this time window please follow the link from our Support Page to donate through paypal." I suppose such things happen, but I do hope you're tracking somehow how many people end up with this message, this could mean a lot less money received. Regards, Finn Rindahl 10:45, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Security of Donate page

I saw this point made at Wikinews:Fundraiser, and copy it here:

• "There is a form to fill in if you wish to donate; the page is not secure (https:), and there is no notice emphasising the next step will be secure."

Rd232 11:43, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Secret Advertising

I know wikipedia doesnt want to advertise, but would it be profitable to put a google ad on, perhaps, the adsense article, or the google article, not only as a reference but to make some profit too? Maybe even use the adsense searchbar at the bottom of the page (since theres not already a web search system). It could effectivly earn money (since it is one of the most visited sites in the world) without giving the appearance of advertising at all. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.138.50.226 (talk)

No. Gigs 16:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Partly translated sitenotices

1. In zh-yue:, "Wikipedia Forever" and "Donate Now" is displayed in Cantonese, but "Knowledge Forever Ad-Free Forever Wikipedia Forever" is still in English.
2. In zh-classical:, "Wikipedia Forever" and "Knowledge Forever Ad-Free Forever Wikipedia Forever" is displayed in Classical Chinese, but "Donate Now" (the blue button) is still in English.

--Manyin 14:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The Ad banner remains even after donating

I would appreciate the ad banner for "Wikipedia Forever" being removed after donating. Job's done, so it doesn't need to be there, and it's starting to irritate. It's like donating money to your favourite charity (like, say, Wikipedia), and they still knock on your door every day to ask for money. The irony is that the banner says Ad-Free Forever! SilkTork 15:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

I think its pretty easy to fix when you press hide after donating, I do not think its technical possible to remove the banner after donating because you could work from a internet cafe, open proxy and all kind of stuff that makes sure it can be hidden per person, and ofcourse the possible way to donate anonymous. Just press Hide and its gone :)

Best regards,

Huib talk 19:47, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

If your "home wiki" is enwiki, go to en:Special:Preferences, then the "gadgets" tab, then check "Suppress display of the fundraiser banner." Killiondude 20:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Which will suppress fundraising messages indefinitely, and the donater won't see future fundraising campaigns. Not ideal! Rd232 10:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Credit Card form

If someone know where it lives, the banner on the credit card form (reached by clicking "donate by credit card" on the donation landing page) is still all uppercase. Dragons flight 09:09, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

some points

• 1) defective fundraising-box on wp
• 2) defective hidden fundraising-box
• 3) fundraising-box collides with geo-coordination
• 4) hidden fundraising-box collides with the fundrising message-text
• 5) the message was (until the local community rewrite it. thx to Pavel for example) a total desaster for the german campaign. some of the original messages are historical (in D-A-CH more than bad) associated. others are simply embarrassing for a global project with educational emphasis and colides with the core of the trademark.
• 6) some spanish users told me, that the spanish subtext isn`t better localized (other example)
• 7) media feedback? well, i have read nothing in the european press
• 8) no single project adjustment. no special slogans for wikiquote, commons, etc.

the core question is: why is this campaign a local (us-american) concept with a global validity claim?

• request local chapters & community to localize the core message to the most important markets beside usa: unknown (but if the german example is representative....)
• test of the box, included the potential conflicts with local features like geo-coordinates?: insufficient

let's hope, that this campaign reaches its target und collects 250000 $ more than planned, regards --Jan eissfeldt 12:17, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia a gossip project?

There are media like NY Times whose design reminds me of reliability and quality contents. There are other papers like The Sun whose design reminds me of paternalism, gossip content and half-truth.

There are unobstrusive banners and there are our banners. I truly believe that this year's campaign is not good at all for the project's reputation. I plead for more decent campaigns in the next years, but I'm afraid that in future I'll have to scroll to get to the banners' bottom (at least this fear illustrates the last years' trends). → «« Man77 »» ^[de]·[bar] 18:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Banner height

I'm not sure if it is intentional or not, but the two banners definitely appear to be different sizes on FF 3. The Wikipedia Forever one is taller. If that's not intentional, then perhaps someone should look at standardizing the height. Dragons flight 19:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Twitter Integration

Surely wikimedia isn't so far behind the times to use 200 characters (60 too many) to provide feedback with a donation, and then not to give the option to instantly tweet it out! Twitter and Wikipedia both allow anyone to contribute to the collective knowledge of the culture, wikipedia should be big-sibling-ing and toss some integration over. Could also do it for edit history comments. Of course, on twitter no one has to agree with you. --98.26.55.181 05:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Use of JavaScript in the banner ad

is stupid and unnecessary. You don't want glitz, you want donations. --User talk:88.148.208.105

I think people like being able to collapse the banner. JavaScript is used for these global banners in general to avoid search engine cache pollution and as it allows for quick updates. --MZMcBride 06:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the biggest factor is to avoid thrashing Wikimedia's internal squid caches every time a banner is changed or rotated. Dragons flight 07:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Also means you never see the things in any way with JS turned off. --89.246.209.255 09:21, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Also you can't open the page in a new tab, which takes you away from the page you were currently reading, which instantly makes you want to go back instead of reading the page.

Project-specific page render bugs

• Kurdish: moves the whole article page to the right one screen. Not sure what combination of the page's wikimarkup and the banner's makes this happen -- http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destp%C3%AAk

Number of Wikipedia articles banner

[http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=2009_Notice14]

A couple comments on this:

1. Its not really necessary (and technically wrong) to specify "in millions" in the title, then add a "M" after the number. I'm pretty sure we don't have 13 trillion articles :)
2. Where did the 25 million target come from? Was this arbitrarily chosen, or are we just going to shut down the sites once we hit it?

-- Mr.Z-man 04:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I brought this same issue up in the Wikipedia main talk page, but nobody seems to have paid any attention to it :( Cribananda 06:16, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Completely agree the million million thing makes us look very amateurish. Also wondering why 25 million? Should we now stop adding articles once we reach 25 million? - Dumelow 10:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In addition to the above issues, I can think of no better way to convey that we value quantity over quality. A great many of those articles are rubbish, and we're proudly trumpeting their existence and encouraging people to keep creating them as rapidly as possible. —David Levy 13:57, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't believe that the million/M problem still hasn't been fixed after nearly a whole day. It must have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people now. If this had been an error on wikipedia's main page it would have been dealt with within half an hour at most - Dumelow 20:54, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Number of wikipedia articles banner should be removed

[relocated from lower on the page]

I think that banner should be removed asap, due to following:

• it gives the signal we are planning to make 10.5M articles this fundraiser
• it gives the impression we have a target of 25M articles
• it gives the signal we think quantity if better than quality

AzaToth 19:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with talking about the number of articles we've created (quantity also matters, and our breadth is a large part of our utility), but it isn't good to suggest that there is a specific goal (and certainly not a near term goal).

Perhaps could say something like: "Your support has helped Wikipedia grow to X million articles. Donate today.", but without including the thermometer. Dragons flight 20:41, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree 100%. Who the hell came up with the figure of 25 million articles? I know you think thermometers are good, but they have to make some kind of sense... Trebor 23:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that we should so publicly solicit money. It is clear that we have enough, so why the huge banner? Also, it detracts a lot from the content.123Mike456Winston789 20:09, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Update for Monday 11/16 PST

Hey All--

Acknowledging that our early fundraising efforts extremely slow (less than 50% from last year) so we are switching up messaging and testing some new messages and approaches.

In addition, we continue to make strides to our significant technical hurdles:

1. GEO IP: I believe, but could be wrong, that this is working well. I continue to monitor things here. I'm finally going to knock this one off the list.
2. Credit Card Payment gateway page has been re-skinned (in addition to other improvements) for an even better donor experience.
3. Tracking: We continue to make progress towards both cleaning up some errant data and providing accurate public reporting. I expect that we will have something presentable on Wednesday at the earliest.
4. The titles of our primary donation page on WikimediaFoundation.org is no longer visible and annoying.
5. New Site Notices: After a weekend of data, we have significantly adjusted our messaging to both test and explore how our users respond to different messages.

We are running these on Non-English Wikipedia sites:

• Wikipedia Forever 50%
• Thermometer - Article 25%
• Thermometer - Users 25%

We are now in the following rotation on English Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia Forever 20%
• Thermometer - Article 20%
• Now WP needs you 20%
• WP Powered by you 20%
• Ad Free WP 20%

Still on the list for tomorrow (smaller items not included):

1. Tracking!
2. Cleaning up our errant data.
3. Plan next set of banners including a possible community banner. We should have a post up soon @alternate banners for process.
4. The infamous and dreaded Ariel Extension.
5. Project Specific Banner
6. Discussion of solution to Javascript banners and donation page.
7. Do reasonable followup on some possible fraudulent donations.

As always, I appreciate your questions and comments. Rand Montoya 04:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Why not just ditch "Wikipedia Forever" once and for all. Its hugelly unpopular among editors and from what you've said it's been a disaster in terms of performance aswell. Acer 10:49, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh and this "...Omidyar Network has generously offered to provide up to $500,000 to match individual donations between $100 and $9,999 made during the Wikimedia Foundation's 2009-10 fundraising drive. The purpose of the matching grant is to encourage people to donate a slightly larger amount than they otherwise might have..." needs to be prominently displayed somewhere. Its not going to encorage people to donate if they don't know about it! Acer 13:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the thermometers for articles or users - I assume they're raising awareness that we're growing in more ways than simply financially - but where are the upper numbers coming from? At least, this is the question that I suspect potential donors will be asking: if they are telling me that they need $7M, do they similarly 'need' xM users/articles? Cormaggio ^@ 17:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I find that confusing too, I'm worried people will take that to mean that they need to go to Wikipedia and create a bunch of articles... which isn't really a good thing, since they'll probably end up getting speedied. Cbrown1023 talk 02:38, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm moderately more comfortable with the current group of banners with the thermometers; these at least are providing goals, stronger statements, and a less in-your-face attitude than the terrible "Wikipedia Forever" smack-upside-the-head banners. The thermometers give an indication of where the program is aiming to go, and should provide viewers with a greater sense of need. This is more like it - still not hugely thrilled with the whole thrust of the campaign, but at least this is a step forward. Tony Fox 23:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

How many total articles on WP?

The currently running banner says that there are 13.3 million articles in total on Wikipedia, but List of Wikipedias reports closer to 14.4. Where is the 13.3 number coming from?--Danaman5 06:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It says 14.3 now, thanks for the note. Cbrown1023 talk 02:36, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Articles notice translation

Despite the fact that normally this message has been localized and published in lb, I nevertheless got the message in english. Is there someting additional that has to be done from the tranlators part? Robby 06:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you still experiencing this issue? It looks fine to me now. Cbrown1023 talk 02:34, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Ongoing link problems

Some Wikipedia banners continue to have javascript GoToDonationPage() problems. "Donate Now" buttons all work.

Clicking the text link or the thermometer on a thermometer template (instead of the button) sends donors here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia/en&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=fundraiser2009&utm_source=2009_Notice30&target=Support_Wikipedia2

Also discussion pages should take people somewhere or have a soft redirect:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Talk:Support_Wikipedia2/en

Could someone who has been granted a Foundation account please check all links as they go live? Jokestress 07:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Which browser/OS are you experiencing the link issues on?--Eloquence 07:49, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Firefox/Mac (both latest/greatest). I don't think it's a browser issue, though. Some (not all) banners don't have the images and text linked to the donation page. Jokestress 08:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't reproduce this, but we'll investigate.--Eloquence 08:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Jokestress, are you still experiencing this issue? Is anyone else?--Eloquence 02:58, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I think I experienced it once or twice a day or two ago, but I haven't had any issues since then. They were probably just minor hiccups in GEOIP's redirecting. Cbrown1023 talk 03:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Not seeing the javascript problem today. Still a redlink at:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Talk:Support_Wikipedia2/en

Also, very glad to see the garish ALL CAPS removed from banners. Jokestress 17:52, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

banner showing number of wikipedia articles

The banner showing 'Number of Wikipedia articles (in millions)' is still in English on Welsh Wikipeida (cy) although the rest of the core messages appear to be all in Welsh. Can somebody let me know how to fix this? Lloffiwr 13:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems like this has already been fixed, sometimes it takes time for the translations to update. Cbrown1023 talk 02:32, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the prompt reply. Lloffiwr 13:12, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

currency not updated

The donate form lacks logic handling change of currency in the input filed, and still has the pre filled USD amounts which is possibly irrelevant for other currencies. AzaToth 19:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

USD duplicated in drop down

In the dropdown of currencies USD is found twice. AzaToth 19:11, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a feature, not a bug. ;) The default currency is listed at the top (no matter what it is), above the --, followed by the list of all possible currencies. See wmf:Support Wikipedia/de and wmf:Support Wikipedia/zh-hant for example. Cbrown1023 talk 01:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not a feature, it's a bug, because you didn't understand what AzaToth had meant. Right, the default currency is listed at the top, but USD is listed three times in total, twice below (!) the --. But it should only appeare once at that location. --ThE cRaCkEr 12:00, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Who can get things done?

This is a general question. If there is a problem with a banner or a donation page, etc., then who is actually able to fix it? Since CentralNotice is administered from Meta, does that mean that Meta admins in general have the ability to fix problems with the banners? What about the donation pages temselves, who controls them? Dragons flight 22:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

If it's an obvious, clear-cut, technical fix, I'd say that any person who has access to the interface can fix it. If it's a more complicated issue, a message here or to someone like Rand would definitely be better than trying to tackle the issues alone. The same stands for the donation pages – anyone who has access (those with WMFwiki accounts) should feel free to make changes that are obvious. Cbrown1023 talk 02:25, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

500 million?

The banner says that already 330 million are contributed and 500 Million is the goal. Sometimes it shows "12 Million of 25 Million". But of what? I cannot image that half a billion USD or euros are needed. Could you please add the currency unit? Merlissimo 22:49, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not talking about money, it's talk about readers. Since you're from the German Wikipedia, I assume this question is about the German Banner([3]). It says we have 330 Millionen *Leser* der Wikipedia (readers), not that we have $330 million. Cbrown1023 talk 02:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-secure site notice

I was put off from donating by the message that my information was about to be transmitted to a non-secure site. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Coreillygreen (talk) 04:13, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Moved here from talk page. AySz88 00:34, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

At what point in the process do you see such a notice? Dragons flight 01:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Update for Tuesday 11/17/09 PST

Hey All--

Another day of testing and tweaking and improvement.

Most of the day was spent on fixing our various donation streams, tracking, and reporting.

I'm very happy to say that this page is mostly accurate: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionStatistics with about 550 gifts missing from our start. We are still tracking why these donations were not passed through to CiviCRM, but our audit was able to identify them and we'll get them uploaded over the coming days.

In addition, we got most of our 'bad' data corrected (like the 25000 yen(?) donation that was registering as 25000 USD).

I was able to breathe a bit and sent out long late emails to WM HU, WM RU, & WM IL about getting chapter donation pages up.

Yesterday's banner switch has generated some nice results: nearly 2000 donations and over $60K in total.

We continue to tweak things to find some messages that resonate with people. I really believe that different messages appeal to different people. At the same time, we still work with our Fenton partners to keep our messages on the overarching theme.

As of 5:30 today, we're on the following rotation:

Non-English Wikipedia:

• Thermometer Articles 25%
• Thermometer Users 25%
• Wikipedia Needs You 50%

English Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia Needs You 60%
• Wikipedia Ad-Free 20%
• People Powered You 20%

Tomorrow:

1. Work on the banner plan for the next 9 days..several key staff want to go home on weekends and during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and want to prepare as much in advance of that as possible.
2. Additional updates to the CC Payment Page.
3. Continued work on our tracking statistics, including entering in missing gifts.
4. The oldies: the nefarious "Ariel Extension" and Project Banners (someday these will get working...I keep dreaming).
5. Work on our Paypal-WMF reporting and reconciliation. Need to do refunds better and more quickly.
6. Numerous and varied other things.

As always, I appreciate your questions and comments.

-Rand

You depreciate our comments by your actions. The low revenue is high justice. These Projects are made by one principle, and a multitude of contributors, both of which you ignore at your loss. Wisdom is for you to find in the established and earnest traditions of these wikis. Start anew, here. 74.104.96.51 11:07, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

If you claim to be so into Wikimedia, you should also remember to be civil to one another. It seems totally unjustified to me to state that the WMF is not listening. However, listening does not mean that they do exactly what /you/ say they should be doing. Not all wisdom one can achieve, can be achieved through editing Wikipedia. Please try to be somewhat more respectful, and give your feedback in a constructive way. Especially if you expect the WMF to keep reporting here... Lodewijk 11:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

They did nothing based on the overwhelming and constructive feedback prior to the launch. They changed the most egregious CAPS LOCK after the launch, which would be more virtuously attributed to late common sense than to small appeasement. They removed the abominable banners because of poor revenue, not because of the constructive feedback from thousands of contributors. The wisdom lacking is about Wikimedia. You suggest they will further disrespect the Projects because of the accurate feedback of an anonymous comment on a wiki? 74.104.96.51 20:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Looking much better. Dragons flight 23:30, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Translatable and specified fundraising progress

Hello. It's important to have a translatable progress bar ("M" and "USD" should be translated). Also, it'd be more "real"/interesting if it was more specified progress bar, say $714,103 instead of only 0.7M (like Creative Commons').--OsamaK 13:07, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

We have some graphical limitations that keep the total from being less precise. We will try to improve that as we move forward. And we'll be adding the M/USD translations to our next batch. Rand Montoya 17:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It now uses 9 characters ("$0.7M USD"), it's possible to replace them with 8-character string ("$700,000"). When you do that, there will be no need to translate "USD" or "M".--OsamaK 19:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It is a bad idea to use "$" without clarification. There are lots of currencies that use that symbol. There is no need to have both "$" and "USD", though. "USD 0.7M" would be a character shorter, allowing either a more accurate thermometer or an extra digit of precision. --Tango 23:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

You're basically right, but to me as well as most other users "$" is by default the symbol of the American dollar, and we need to consider it like that because we don't have enough space. We can clarify it in the donation page, where there is actually the space. It's not, obviously, only us: Creative Commons uses it.--OsamaK 02:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

It is not the default in other countries that use that symbol, though. If you show a dollar symbol to Australians, say, they will first think of their dollar, not the US one. --Tango 19:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Last year, it was only "$" AFAICR, and people didn't get confused. Wikipedia is an American-based website, so "$" should directly mean the American dollar. If it's really serious problem, then OK, let's use 'USD' with smaller font, but "$0.8M USD" isn't very interesting.--OsamaK 05:30, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

How about just US$? I like that a lot better. Cbrown1023 talk 21:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Still like "$" only. Anyway, the thing that should be done now is to add specific donation bar. This way, we'll show people that small donations (less than 100K) is appreciated.--OsamaK 10:35, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Why does "USD" need translating? It is an international currency code. -Tango 23:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe that is true in French or Germany, but it'd be weird to use Latin characters in the context of non-Latin ones (i.e. Arabic).--OsamaK 02:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Now we have enough space to add the exact amount of donations WMF got. Can you please make it that way?--OsamaK 20:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Typo

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionStatistics says that the "Highest Donation" in USD (US dollars) is $10.00. That may be the mode but it can't be the highest. The statistics for other currencies are consistent with being the highest donation in that currency, not the mode. Art LaPella 17:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks...I'll see if I can get that fixed. Rand Montoya 17:16, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thermometer proportions

The donation thermometer visually indicates we are over 25% to our goal, when as of this post we are in fact under 10% of goal (0.7 of 7.5). How is that graphic being generated? Is it really set to 7.5 as the end mark? Based on the proportions, it's set to about 3. Jokestress 18:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It's set that way so we can fit in the starting dollar amount...nothing more. We were trying to make it look clean even if it's not completely accurate. As we go, we'll have it fit more appropriately and accurately. The start is just tough. Rand Montoya 21:43, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Co-founder

Jimmy Wales is CO-founder of Wikipedia, not "founder." His Wikipedia article accurately reflects this, but the fundraising page does not. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 161.203.16.1 (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2009

Oy. That would look ridiculous on the page. Wasn't he the founder of Wikimedia/the Wikimedia foundation though? (My knowledge of the history is rather limited.) If so, I think it would make sense to say that rather than putting "co-founder" as that doesn't sound quite as impressive, nor does it carry the same weight as if it says "co-founder". --Yair rand 23:07, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

But the banner and appeal do not say "Wikimedia founder, Jimmy Wales". They say, "Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales". So whether he was found of Wikimedia or not is not relevant here. He was not "the" founder of Wikipedia. I came here to comment on this ugly, glaring error and found it was already noted without agreement from anybody. --Geniac 03:26, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

'Ad-free forever'

I'm not sure if the 'ad-free forever' message is still running, but it was a few days ago, and the thought occurred to me: you guys do get the irony of saying 'ad-free forever' in an ad, right? Perhaps it should have said 'ad-free forever... except for this one'. :) Robofish 00:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I will not donate a single penny until Wikipedia accepts corporate sponsorships or paid membership for ad-free browsing at the least. Accepting advertising does not mean doing the advertiser's bidding. Such a silly policy that "ad-free" is. Today's kids, hell, even my parents, don't even notice advertising anyway. So why not take their dollars? TeenageCynic 21:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Update for Wednesday 11/18/09 PST

Hey All--

I'm feeling less need to do these updates unless there is something crucial to post or a critical update to make.

For UTC 11/18/09, we had 2660 contributions and over $84500 raised. The updated contributions page http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionStatistics and http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics create a pretty good snapshot of how we are doing.

Currently, we are still experiencing some random disruptions with information passing from Paypal into our CiviCRM database from which these charts are generated. This is still a top priority for us. We hope to do another audit tonight/tomorrow to ensure everything is being captured correctly.

Again, as the technical fundraisers we aspire to be, we are switching around banners to increase our donations.

English Wikipedia:

• SiteNotice30 WP needs You 60%
• SiteNotice31 Ad Free WP 20%
• SiteNotice33 One entry became... 10%
• SiteNotice34 You depend on us... 10%

Non-English Wikipedia:

• SiteNotice30 WP needs You 60%
• SiteNotice14 # of articles thermometer 20%
• SiteNotice15 # of WP users thermometer 20%

SiteNotice33 and 34 were pulled off the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Alternative_banners page from our community. If they test well, we'll increase their visibility.

Chapter reporting: From the chapters that have reported so far (DE, FR, UK, & NL), they have made a combined $39,059 in the first week.

Tomorrow:

1. Continue to work on and update our tracking and reporting.
2. New banners for the weekend & upcoming holiday.
3. Various other fixes and updates.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Rand Montoya 02:45, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks as always for the update, Rand. It's great to have the nearly real-time insight into all the work you and the team are doing. Two quick questions: 1) do the numbers in Special:ContributionStatistics and Special:FundraiserStatistics include the matching gifts from Omidyar and 2) is your analysis evaluating the performance of different banners available somewhere? It would be great to look at if it is, but don't go to the effort to put up if right now it exists only on a whiteboard in the office (or in someone's head). Thanks again. Stu 04:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

This is for tracking banners, but it doesn't entirely work right now. Dragons flight 05:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, Stu. I hope to have a blog post soon explaining some things. Like Dragons Flight says, we don't have a working public reporting process page yet. We still continue to work on things. Our tech resources are limited right now. Rand Montoya 20:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Alternative Donation Methods

Many people shop with Amazon or use Google Checkout to avoid giving their credit card numbers to numerous agents; similar to why people use Paypal. If one or both of these could be added to methods for donation it would facilitate more people (such as this individual) being able to donate.

Some of us don't have money to donate

Help fund Wikipedia. On/off button for ads.

Why not let us click a button to view ads? At least during the fund-raising campaign. See w:Wikipedia:Advertisements#Arguments for optional adverts.

Fewer and fewer people in Wikipedia Village Pump discussions oppose opt-in ads. All users would see no ads unless they specifically choose them. The "look and feel" of Wikipedia remains the same. --Timeshifter 02:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

While mandatory or opt-out ads could probably make serious income, I doubt one would do much with opt-in ads. Typical rates are a few dollars per thousand ad impressions, so you'd need considerable participation before it would make much difference to the budget. And in the mean time, having an opt-in option might discourage donors. If someone who might donate $20 instead opts to see $5 worth of ads, then that's not really a good deal for Wikimedia. Dragons flight 03:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I wondered about that for awhile until I looked at Wordpress.com and how few ads it uses. WordPress.com uses a minimal number of ads, as needed. Most people don't know that the millions of free blogs (see the timeline charts) on the Wordpress.com site are funded partially by ads, since only a few ads are used throughout the many blogs. It is unlikely that most readers will ever notice an ad. From Wordpress.com: "To support the service (and keep free features free), we also sometimes run advertisements. If you would like to completely eliminate ads from appearing on your blog, we offer the No-Ads Upgrade." [4]. Wordpress.com is almost as popular as Wikipedia. It has a worldwide Alexa traffic rank of 18 compared to Wikipedia's rank of 6 (as of November 2009). [5] [6]. That means only 17 sites get more monthly page views than Wordpress.com. It opened to the public in November 21, 2005, and has had even more explosive growth than Wikipedia. It is only 4 years old this month. --Timeshifter 06:02, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Wordpress doesn't do an opt-in system, so they almost certainly show more ads than Wikipedia would be able to show from opt-ins. (Also, Wordpress is four times smaller than Wikipedia — those gaps at the top are bigger than they seem. But theoretically, size shouldn't have a big impact since we could also have 4x more users that might see ads.)

Regardless, I'm also not convinced that this is a net gain. I reckon that maybe a hundred people would need to opt in just to replace one person that opted into ads instead of donating. And when people get motivated from an external source, they tend to do just one thing before calling it done (er, [citation needed], maybe this). Promoting an opt-in into ads would probably have a detrimental effect, because it'd likely start competing with donations. Supposing we don't promote, then from en:Special:Statistics, only 160k logged in users did something on the English Wikipedia in the last month and might possibly be active enough to opt in. That seems like a paltry bound on the audience for ads (at least, for en). And we'd have to beware of bots and such trying to game things, and so on and so forth.... AySz88 07:09, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) We are all making assumptions. After this fund-raising period try out opt-in ads for a few months. And see how much money it raises. Watch to see if the number of people opting in increases over time. Keep a running total of the funds raised. I think more and more people will opt in if they see results. If it works, then keep using it. If not, ... nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Public radio and television have advertising, but it doesn't stop people from donating. Public radio and TV have multiple sources of help. During fund drives they tell people how much money they are trying to raise, and people either donate or they don't. Advertising has little to do with their decision to donate. --Timeshifter 09:24, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

A realistic suggestion

Instead of long-range musings about "opt-in" ads (what a waste), let's consider that people who cannot give to the Wikimedia Foundation monetarily can still give time, energy, and effort in the form all of us do here. We can encourage readers to donate money, and we can also encourage readers to become donors of their editing, which may be as important as fiscal resources for the larger movement. I'm not sure there is an easy way to get such appeals onto the banners directly, but we can certainly incorporate that into the donation page, etc. Even people who do donate can still edit - perhaps the 'thank you' email could mention that, if it doesn't already.

Thanks  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

A more realistic suggestion

Mike.lifeguard. I suggest you be less dismissive in your communications. "long-range musings", "what a waste". You have a habit of this incivility, in my opinion. Being an admin does not make you better than anybody else. I am an admin at Wikia. Being dismissive of other people's ideas does not encourage people to donate either money or time. In fact, I think rude admins and editors are a key reason why many people do not donate more to Wikipedia.

See: strategy:Question of the week. Civility enhancement might be a way to help with this: "What ratio of contributors to readers should Wikimedia aim for? What could be done to increase the number of active contributors to the projects?" It is the current question of the week. See also: strategy:Attracting and retaining participants. For example; this talk section there: High reversion of edits for less experienced contributors. It is common to revert new editors. How they are reverted is key to their donation of money to the project. A rude reversion may discourage their enthusiasm. In particular, many spamfighters, and some spamfighter admins, seem to feel that being uncivil is justified at times. It is never justified, at least according to w:Wikipedia:Civility. Even when we have disagreements, and when we get frustrated with other editors at times, which happens to most of us. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Million in millions

• In phase 3 it currently says 330 million (in millions). I believe this is double talk. It is either 330 (in millions) or 330 million. I suggest that we take out the (in millions) and (in thousands) parts. Kind regards, Taketa 20:41, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Future ad campaigns

As millions of us donate our time and effort to make Wikipedia what it is I dearly hope that the Wikimedia foundation asks for our views and inputs in the future before hiring an outside ad campaign.Jmh649 14:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary and other sister projects

Are project-localized banners being planned? Or use of the current project-neutral banners on Wiktionary and sister projects? 23:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC) — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 18.85.46.242 (talk)

• We will have project specific banners up as soon as we can. Our technical resources have been stretched at end of year. I expect it should happen this week. Rand Montoya 22:03, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Five facts about Wikipedia that you will never know...

I've been made so curious by the slogan "Five facts about Wikipedia that you may not know" that I clicked on it. That was a disappointment: I was linked to the Dutch donation site (I have a Dutch IP) which does not tell anything about these interesting facts... 132.229.117.120 08:31, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I suggest "Five facts about Wikipedia" should be included in Fundraising 2009/supplementary messages/en so that the message can be spreaded in many languages. --202.40.137.198 12:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

That's not the point: The page simply does not tell what are the five facts. --Ziko 14:11, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Do the facts exist in some language? They don't appear to me either. (also if you try to open the banner in a new tab, it fails) Conrad.Irwin 17:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Does this only work from US? I have the same problem as 132. I'm from an Dutch IP as well. -- Bryan (talk|commons) 15:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a weird quirk with our GEO IP localization that was put in place to accommodate our Chapters. The "5 facts" banner is only enabled on English Wikipedia...however, if you are reading English Wikipedia but are currently located in Germany, France, the Netherlands, etc...you will be taken directly to the Chapter Giving page. It's an odd thing that we haven't been able to address yet. We are working on solutions. Rand Montoya 18:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Message weightings

Is there any way to get the historical message weightings used in the banners? One can read the current settings from Special:CentralNotice and Rand posted some of the values in his announcements, but it seems to be in flux almost every day and I was wondering if there was a record of the historical settings anywhere? Dragons flight 01:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

• We are working on getting our stats worked out (tracking of said banners). We have been tweaking the banners and % since Day 1 to try to get the best performance. I have what has been posted on an internal document that I hope to share in the future. Rand Montoya 22:00, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Ten day "spike" in 2008 fundraiser?

Hi. I didn't see any logical place to ask this, so I'll try here --

The chart "Fundraiser statistics" -- http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics -- seems to show an impressive "spike" for Day 50 of 2008 Fundraiser through Day 60 of 2008 Fundraiser. What produced this? Or is it an artifact of some sort? Thanks. -- Writtenonsand 04:35, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Don't quote me on it but I believe that was when the personal appeal from Jimbo came out. Jamesofur 04:41, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. That's all about the personal appeal. Dragons flight 05:14, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

PS. The appeal text is here. At the time the banner read "Please Read: A Personal Appeal From Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales" and linked to that letter. Something like that is planned for later this drive too. Dragons flight 05:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much for responses. So it would appear that a "personal appeal" or "personal appeal from Jimmy Wales" is a very effective fundraising tool. Always interesting to see the psychology of these things. -- Writtenonsand 14:47, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone know who designed that? (here ) It strikes me as quite effective. -- Writtenonsand 14:50, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe the success of the Jimmy letter was a combination of a strongly worded direct appeal combined with the messaging of the previous weeks. We will have a similar appeal in December and hope to replicate the success. Rand Montoya 22:02, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally I doubt the prior messaging made much difference, but that's not exactly an easy thing to test. Dragons flight 05:48, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree and disagree. I know it's hard to test, but when the #1 reason people give to us for not giving (I can't wait to do a full survey of this) is "I didn't know Wikipedia was a non-profit", I choose to believe that our previous messaging to the contrary might have been an aid. Rand Montoya 17:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Why can't you test it like any other parallel site change which could be offered to, say 1%? If it's that effective, the sooner the better, no? 99.62.186.125 03:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Are the donation totals stuck?

When I get the thermometers on the banners, I've been seeing $1.4 million as our total for, like, a week - are we really still stuck at $1.4 million, or has there been nobody to update the banners? Or am I having cache issues or something? Tony Fox 16:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

No, not stuck. They will be updated today. Rand Montoya 17:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Fundraising 2010 - powered by people

We can do it better as wikimedians. Without risk (without bugs, without not acceptable texts etc., choise by people), without costs - 250k could be spend for wikigrants (or for winners - T-shirts "Master of wiki PR":) ). The wikinomics model is better than preffesional old school model. Be wiki and think wiki. Donation from pl - it is maybe 1k $ (or less). Smaller baner, better text (by people from pl wiki) and Wikimedia Polska have 50k$ from spring action. It is very simple, more simple than my English. Regards. Przykuta 06:45, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I will be happy to discuss well in advance of next year's fundraiser. Rand Montoya 17:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thx :) We will discuss this problem. Przykuta 19:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Tout le monde n'est pas encore anglophone, à ce que je sache...

Alors Wikimédia Foundation, ils veulent bien de notre argent, mais quand-même pas au prix de s'adresser à nous dans notre langue ! Sur la page d'accueil, beaucoup de liens mènent vers des pages écrites en anglais ! Vous voulez en savoir plus, savoir exactement à quoi servira votre argent, quelles garanties vous avez ? Lisez donc la FAQ ! Mais apprenez l'anglais, auparavant… Bref, je donnerai peut-être, dans 10 ans, quand j'aurai appris l'anglais… En attendant, mon argent ira ailleurs…
À bon entendeur, salut.

Please see http://fr.wikipedia.org and the link on the fundraising banner at the top of the page. The link leads to more info in French. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

???

Height of quote banners

Are the new quote banners suppose to be 30% taller than the previous banners? Cause that's how they appear to me on Firefox 3.5.5. Dragons flight 04:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

We aspire to keep a consistent size on all our banners but due to design factors some banners may be smaller or bigger to enhance the visual appeal. In addition, depending on browser variation and various other factors, some banners can be an inconsistent size. Rand Montoya 22:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Vague much? So are these particular banners supposed to be distinctly bigger or not, and if not, is this an issue you'd like to fix? Dragons flight 22:27, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

to darn large and broken to boot

Not only unreasonably big but broken in firefox 3.5.5.Geni 02:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

LOL

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."

Are you guys for real!? LOL You mean, "freely share knowledge, as long as it's in lock step with our extreme socialist agenda", no? Do you guys really think WE don't know that you're completely biased, and you squelch and quash all dissent of your leftist views? Do you really think we're that stupid that we can't see what you're doing? 64.53.136.29 03:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

If you don't like Wikipedia, why are you here? Go and read Conservapedia instead. --Tango 19:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with author of "Are you guys for real!?" above. Since when does the world require Wikipedia to free share in the sum of all knowledge? That's laughable, much like the rest of Wikipedia. It's pretty good to find ideas, but far too unreliable to be a useful tool for research. I've attempted to correct several articles but iditots always revert my changes. I gave up... why bother correcting all the errors? It isn't worth it... why bother contributing? It isn't worth it.--Lacarids 00:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

-->I can't agree more. This is just some serious money grubbing. A new way to monetize what is already free. LOL!

I have to admit that the political bias that pops up in Wikipedia has me concerned. Where once I donated, I now question how objectively information on sensitive topics is being portrayed on Wikipedia. I question the agenda of certain Wikipedia volunteers/committees. I think that Jimmy's vision for Wikipedia is amazing. I hope it can be achieved. For now, I won't be helping to achieve it because I'm not sure that the emperor's clothes aren't in storage somewhere.

These aren't exactly the arguments why I won't contribute, but the sooner it goes down and gets forked by people who actually care about knowledge and not about stroking their egos, the better.93.108.188.176 19:09, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

If the matter of discussion here were (and it is not, so I don't quite understand why you brought it up) whether Wikipedia is a reliable source of information, we should always remember that no source is completely reliable. If you’re conducting a study you should base it on a number of sources, not just one and even more, not just one ONLINE non-professional source. However, I enjoy Wikipedia a lot and it helps provide the guidelines to follow in order to get more knowledge. I admit, I don’t know how exactly editing here works and this is the first time I’ve done it, but it seems to me that all this hateful words about a great idea that is… working, is unfitted for the situation. I admire Jimmy Wales vision and I feel for him being called what he isn’t. You should all think twice before you post because, well, you wouldn’t even be able to post if it weren’t for him letting you to do so. Also remember how many times you’ve come to Wikipedia for guidance. I’m behind Mr. Wales this time, a simple donation is not much for what Wikipedia is, unfortunately I can’t donate, but I encourage those that are hesitating to do so.

If you have never edited, then it is impossibe for you to understand the frustrations of those who do. It is the real reason Whales is having trouble raising money - he's lost his core audience.

Evolution of Wikimedia's expenses

Hi, it occured to me that your demand for donations has grown considerably, so I took a quick look at your financial reports and here is what I found, all amounts in USD

fiscal year expenses expense growth (year over year)

• 04 23,463
• 05 177,670 657%
• 05/06 791,907 346%
• 06/07 2,077,843 162%
• 07/08 2,239,524 70%
• 08/09 5,617,236 59%
• 09/10 9,444,000 68%

Out of the expenses of 08/09 1.2 million were spent on fundraising.

09:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

You are correct. The number of people using the projects has also massively increased during that time, as have the size and quality of the projects. --Tango 19:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Translation upload of Donors' quote sitenotice

The translation of Donors; quote sitenotice (e.g. “There is never a day without Wikipedia.”) of zh, yue & zh-classical etc. are not uploaded to the system yet. Please fix that. -- 202.40.137.201 11:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

According to Special:NoticeTemplate, only 14 languages (including en) are available. Besides zh, there are other major languages such as pt and ru which are not available (i.e. have to show en version) yet. It is a pity that only a few people have rights to update the sitenotice, but they are all too busy to do so. I suggest that the Central notice system should be adjusted: if a language is not available yet, the sitenotice should not be shown (instead of showing en version). -- Kevinhksouth 01:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Are they really so busy that the sitenotice has remained in English for nearly a week while the translation had been ready for a long long time? It seems that the developers have no intention to use the rest of the languages for the sitenotice. (Maybe because the donations are rare from pt, ru, zh and other minor language versions of Wikipedia?) The effort of translation by volunteers has been wasted anyway. --Worrydoes 05:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Most of the translations are published now. Sorry about the delay in getting these posted. Publishing translations takes time and I do have a life outside of Wikimedia... sadly it's been taking up quite a bit of my free time recently. (Note: I'm also a volunteer - I'm not paid to do any of this.) --Az1568 (talk) 09:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Arabic banner

in the new banner "There is never a day without Wikipedia" The Arabic translation of the word Date & Amount repeated twise At the same line. and it looks like this

Date: Date: .....

Amount: Amount: ....

can you fix it.77.30.131.182 19:55, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Serious translation error?

See en:Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#False ads in fundraising campaign? Nanonic 02:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Retitled section so more understandable/obvious. The error in question is a bit concerning. --Cybercobra 03:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Javascript donate link doesn't work

"Thanks, Wikipedia" and "Here's My Donation" both link to "javascript:GoToDonationPage()", which does absolutely nothing (not even a script error).

I'm using IE 8. No -- I'm not launching Firefox for this. If this is a browser issue affecting IE, that means that at least 50% of visitors see a dead banner.

So: Thanks, Wikipedia!  :) But no donation because I can't.  :(

I asked Trevor to look into this and he thinks it's fixed. Please let me know if the behavior persists. Sometimes browsers do weird things. Rand Montoya 00:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I've seen the "Thanks, Wikipedia" banner again and it still doesn't work. Others seem ok.

Edit: this one is broken too: "Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you. "

I agree, the "Thanks, Wikipedia" banner does nothing in IE8. I can't work out why not... --Tango 20:02, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I take it back, I can see why not. The "Thanks, Wikipedia" banner has this code:

<div class="notice-all siteNoticeBig" align="center">

where the others have:

<div class="notice-all siteNoticeBig" onclick="goToDonationPage()" align="center">

That would seem to be the problem. --Tango 20:05, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

We added that additional click handler because technically placing things like divs and tables inside anchors is not guaranteed to be supported. I've added the click handler to notice 30. Other's seem to be working in IE. Trevor Parscal 20:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It's still not working - the click handler still isn't there. Will it take some time to propagate or something? --Tango 20:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Should be fixed now...it does take time to propagate. Thanks for your help. 216.38.133.254 17:17, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia as a Gift (PDF)

• Is it possible to give wikipedia when it's free?
• My idea is built around getting more donations and publicity for wikipedia.
• It's soon christmas, and a lot of people is wondering what to give friends and family that have everything.

the idea

I want a automated PDF, that those who donates can print and give as a Christmas or birthday present? Or as xeno said it: providing an easy to print out certificate confirming a donation.

Sample document

• Her is the sample document of my Idea
• Her is a simple visualisation on how easy this can be. But I would love a red tint or some christmas graphics.

benefits and toughs.

• This is just a option for a normal donation.
• Maybe more people will donate more christmas money to Wikipeida?
• This is a green idea, it reduce consumption.
• I believe that people will donate higher amounts as presents, compared to the average donation.
• This is a way to make more people get involved, people who don't use it often, but like the cause.
• I'm just a student, but if you likes the gift idea, will I donate 250$ this christmas. --Gmdahl (talk) 00:22, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
• When I donate 250$ I can give that to all my friends. In one way am I Giving 250$ to everyone.

I'm new to the inside of wikipedia, and I didn't know where to post this until now. But I hope there is time left to make this possible before Christmas. (as Soon as Possible)--Gmdahl 01:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

QUESTIONS

• Do wikipedia foundation/community like this idea?
• ( )Yes, ( )No, ( )Maybe later.
• Does the wikipedia foundation/community have to say waht they think? Or should we just try it?

Yes, we like the idea. However, our ability to implement it (as easy as it may seem) is quite limited, especially when compared to current priorities. We would certainly like to implement in the near future. Rand Montoya 21:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

That's cool, all I wanted to hear. Contact me whey I can helpe out, you have my e-mail or you can find it on: gmd.no. I also have some more ideas and thoughts on my talk. --Gmdahl (talk) I have now donated what I wanted and I got this nice respons: I can offer you is to send a personalized thank you letter from our Executive Director to your friend. Sincerely, Anya (donate@wikimedia.com)

• I will thank (coṁrá) that directed me her and out of Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) not much helpe to get there.--Gmdahl 01:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

More Currencies (INR)

Why cant there be more currencies? I would love to make a donation, but I am from Bangalore, India and cant findany options to make donations in INR (Indian Rupee). I think if you added more currecies you would get more dontations.

We would love to accept Rupees as a currency. Sadly, we don't have a way to way to accept currently. We aspire to do so...however, we hope that our Wikimedia India chapter will be up soon and they will be able to process INR. Rand Montoya 21:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

craiglist advert breaks in firefox

Alighnment of text within the image is about a line down from what it should be.Geni 03:49, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Which version? Looks correct in Firefox to me. Dragons flight 05:22, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Banners continuing to cause horrible offense

See this piece at UTalkMarketing. --MZMcBride 04:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

What an odd page to link to; it seems to be more concerned with our use (or lack thereof) of contextual advertising than with any hypothetical or actual offense. The kind of contextual advertising they suggest has been responsible for countless "gaffes" much worse than a donor quote above the article about the Holocaust. Indeed, when I looked up the article about Auschwitz in an advertising-supported encyclopedia, it showed a contextual ad for "extermination services". The whole point of contextual advertising is to find ads that are related to the content, which can cause juxtapositions that are much more terrible than a generic fundraising banner.

We take the juxtapositions of our messages with the project content very seriously, and I've suggested weeks ago to use the Holocaust article, and articles about similar topics, as guidelines when determining which messages to run. It's for this reason that we're not running banners that use very strong humor, for example -- we're trying to be at most lighthearted. We're also generally trying to very clearly separate the banners from the content. All this is a balancing act while also searching for effective messages.--Eloquence 08:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

To tranlation publishers

Please notice that the messages in Cantonese ( zh-yue.wikipedia.org ) and Classical Chinese ( zh-classical.wikipedia.org ) would display properly only if they are published in zh-yue and zh-classical. They cannot display if they are published in yue and lzh. Thank you for your attention. --Worrydoes 09:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that all the notices we are currently running are already published to both locations (the MediaWiki software should do it automatically, but it doesn't so we have to publish all the messages twice). Please let us know if there are any notices (please be specific) that are showing up in English when they shouldn't and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can. Thanks! Cbrown1023 talk 21:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. There were really some notices displaying in English in these 2 sites in last phase, but the notices in this phase (personal appeal) are all correctly displayed. I will report here if there are problems in next phase.--Worrydoes 01:44, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Not happy with Wikipedia

I recommend that you permanently delete pages you don't wish to host. What you're creating is an embarrassing situation for the person who is being addressed in the article. If Wikipedia wants to survive the growing number of online resources, it must become more friendly to its users and contributors- else, how can you expect people to contribute financially when their informational contributions are prowling in Wikipedia’s graveyard? 70.45.91.75 12:03, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is not for free hosting, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - the compendium of knowlege. Przykuta 15:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

No Money for Wikipedia !

I have been trying to assist the 2012 articles to make sense and have been consistantly verbally abused and then blocked by a few "ignorant" power players. Wikipedia is NO WHERE CLOSE to what this "appeal" makes it out to be. Sincerely yours, Raymond Mardyks earthlove2013@gmail.com

Dear Wikipedia, When you consider allowing Sean Hannity's "waterboarding for charity" scandal to show up on the article about him, I'll consider donating.

Eradicate Corruption of Wikipedia First

... then ask for donations! Respect those who are experts, suppress ignorance and frivolity of Wikipedia administrators!

http://www.israelnewsagencyREMOVETHIS.com/wikipediacorruptioncensorshipisraelnews480710.html
http://knol.googleREMOVETHIS.com/k/carl-hewitt-see-http-carlhewitt-info/corruption-of-wikipedia-http/pcxtp4rx7g1t/5#
http://www.wolfsheadonlineREMOVETHIS.com/?p=1108#78763--138.88.246.181 00:30, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

It appears I'm not the only one frustrated by idiots with power. of course there will be people who are beyond reason yet still feel abused but there is nothing really to do about that. what is of concern is when the intelligent are stifled by the mediocre and looking at the others who complain about wiki admins it would appear that the legitimate concerns often deal with controversial subjects, subjects involving conflict or disagreement of sorts. that these vogon admins are afraid of anything that demands thinking or speaks of tension. they are see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. It's a special herd mentality that if it deviates from some sort of unspoken sheep herd group mind and requires their eye lids to go above half way on their eyes that it scares them to no end and they will attack it ceaselessly. for lack of a better word they are the mindless bureaucrats. and that doesn't really seem to do justice to their depravity. it's almost demonic. like trolls under a bridge whose sole content in life is to kill life for they have none of their own. Whipped into a frenzy of violent stupidity. Einstein no doubt shared this frustration when he said there are only two things infinite. So founder of wiki, it will be a result of the people you give power and the message you send them. As it stands now wiki can only contain the concensus view and will stifle the few and the high. As I write this I'm amused to think about what chaos is present on pages about things such as global warming because it is left to a democracy of idiots and governed by random fascists.

Government and Google Funding?

As you all know, just about any search on Google or Yahoo yields Wikipedia as the top link. It is hard to believe these search engines do not benefit from these links to Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia's budget is rather small compared to Yahoo and Google's budget. Wikipedia would also be a very small "shovel-ready" government project. So, where is the money from the search engines and the government given to Wikipedia? Is it under-the-table?

No

No --Burstwaves 04:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Egalitarian and respectful

I am among those who guessed wrong about housing prices and do not have any disposable income to share this year. But ... Wikipedia is my most used reference page. I find the entire idea of Wiki to be egalitarian, respectful and community oriented. That personal philosophy is one of the reasons I am migrating to Ubuntu. In short, I use Wikipedia gratefully and will become a donor when my financial boat is afloat again (soon, I hope).

I miss the Old Wikipedia

I remember a time three or four years ago when Wikipedia struggled to stay on the net. Literally. The site was growing so fast that Jimbo couldn't buy/build servers fast enough to keep up. I remember eagerly reading the maintence updates at that other wiki and commisserating with other editors about "when the Hell will Wikipedia get some decent servers!?" Back then there was ONE employee: A (seriously overworked) server tech. Everybody else was a volunteer. Even the lawyers worked for free.

That was a project I would have been proud to donate to--if I had had any money to spare. As it happened, I didn't. But it was OK. Wikipedia didn't need much. It kept costs down by purchasing used hardware and making the most of what it had on hand. Back then volunteers were vital to the project's continued well-being. We shaped the site's policy, policed the site, fact checked the articles, and Defended the Wiki against those who would use to to exploit others. Remember the fire brigade? What about the events that lead to the creation of Defender of the Wiki barnstar. In return we got the reap the benefits of an ever-more-comprehensive encyclopedia and the satisfaction of knowing that what we did mattered.

These days....? Not so much Nowadays the site is run by a Foundation with a gilded logo based in San Francisco. What was wrong with keeping it in St. Petersburg"? Too rural? Nowadays we are told, "YOU CAN HELP US TRANSLATE OUR SLOGAN". I gotta tell ya, seeing that brought back memories of Mommy telling me I could help her bake cookies in the kitchen. You made it sound like it we had been bestowed some great privledge. When in actuality it was an insult and a betrayal of the Wiki Way. Because none of the regular community liked the slogan or the motto, let alone where and how it was displayed.

Which isn't to say that the Old Wikipedia is dead and gone. Its not. The spirit is still there. This is the site that published the Inkblot plates and banned the Scientologists and anti-scientologists from posting. But with every passing year, the spirit fades a bit more. With every passing year, the Foundation looks more like a Board of Directors and less like a Congress.

Please. Take Wikipedia back to its roots. Go back to doing your utmost to save money and then use that money on the projects you want us to fund. Then I'll donate. --*Kat*

This is what you get for volunteering to 'police' the site, using your own language.

<insert eyeroll here> What would you call the finding and removing of vandalism? Don't worry about answering. I won't be coming back. --*Kat* 22:33, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm with Kat. I'll help edit if I see something that needs to be done as I'm passing through, but Wikipedia's just no fun anymore. Having largely supplanted Britannica, its administrators now seem hell-bent on making the same mistakes. (And, like Kat, I won't be coming back here, so don't expect a decent argument. I've tried to fight this before, but I just don't have the time to spend trying to deal with the local bureaucracy. You've won. I've lost. I recognize that, and cede the field peacefully.) 98.218.172.206 17:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm also on your side. The new rules are too bland and they don't respect the seperate wikis or noteworthy sites and pretty much refuse to acknowledge many of these seperate wikis as alternatives. Not to mentioned they are Hell-bent on sources so much that its like people have no faith in common knowledge. I wish for the old Wikipedia to come back or for wikipedia to show better respect to other wikis and help promote alternatives to avoid causing someone to develop of grudge against Wikipedia. So pretty much a solution needs to be done about this new style. -67.171.250.39

Unified, integrated watchlists

As for makings things "more easily accessible" money is needed to develop and implement unified, integrated watchlists [7] [8]. This could greatly increase participation in other Wikimedia projects such as Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, etc.. Plus there are the meta, strategy, and other peripheral wikis here, and their watchlists. Many editors dislike checking multiple watchlists for all those projects.

If people could have some integrated watchlists of their choosing then there would be more participation, growth, and donations. More projects are not being done in my opinion because there is not enough participation in (and thus donations for) existing projects. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:28, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd preffer to see some ad's instead of having this guy asking money every single day.

==========================================

If this site was unbiased, I'd consider donating. But try posting something negative about Barack Hussein Obama. True or not, the censors of Wikipedia will have it removed instantly. I'd rather see Wikipedia die the slow natural death it deserves. Your bias has been your undoing. It has caused mistrust. It is the reason for the downturn in your site. Good for you. You deserve it.

Chickens Roosting & All That

I'm having a well deserved moment of schadenfreude with this whole donation thing. Several years ago as I watched scores of regular editors finally give up and stop contributing because they had just had enough of dealing with the clubby circle of self-protected & overly-picky "guardians," I remarked that Wikipedia would ultimately miss them. For these were exactly kind of folks who would have helped out and recruited others to pitch in. But when hours of work gets deleted repeatedly based on just one jerk's idea of "relevance", eventually they find other outlets. 24.24.210.206 23:05, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Whiggishpedia: where facts are irrelevant and hagiography leads to current consensus

The name ought to be changed to Whigghishpediea. I make sure to teach my children the truth about its NOT being a place to "access ... the sum of all human knowledge." In fact, it may well become a source of gross misinformation for the unwary and naive!

It is not even a good encyclopedia, let alone a source of "all human knowledge." Often articles are biased and exclude any published evidence that call into question the pet bias of any given editor. No one wants to spend an inordinate amount of time arguing with someone who holds a bias that despite clear factual evidence is wrong. Why waste one’s time.

Hence, Whigghishpedia.

Whigghism is a term comes from historian Herbert Butterfield (1931), who used it to characterize the presentation of British political history as progress toward Whig (liberal) democracy and the tendency to judge each person or event on the basis of helping or hindering that progress. Wikipedia is little more than “whig” history, with each article marching along with its selectively edited “facts” that only support the “right answer” of the current “consensus” opinion, yet ignoring what might well be an overwhelming body of factual evidence that reveals are more nuanced situation.

"The origin of the Solar System is one of the oldest unsolved problems in science. It was first perceived as a scientific question distinct from the origin of the universe as a whole, in the 17th century. The introduction by Copernicus of the heliocentric theory made it meaningful to use the modern phrase “Solar System.” Astronomers began to think of the Sun as one of many stars; it became conceivable that our Solar System was one of many such systems, and that it had been affected or even created by celestial bodies from other systems. René Descartes, in the 1630s, developed a qualitative hypothesis for the development of the Solar System within a larger system, using his theory of vortexes. Thus the most fundamental question one could ask about the origin of the Solar System is: Did it develop autonomously along with the Sun itself, or did it come into existence because of the action of outside entities? (Brush 1996a: 3)

"Twentieth-century astronomers have argued that these two alternatives, known as the “monistic” and “dualistic” kinds of theories, lead to radically different conclusions about the probability of finding life elsewhere in the universe. If the development of our Solar System was monistic, then we may infer that planet formation is a natural consequence of star formation, and hence there are many habitable planets. But if a dualistic process like the close encounter of two stars is needed to explain the origin of the Solar System, then because of the great distance between stars, planet formation will be a rare event and the chance of life extremely small.

"Sometimes people want to know the presently accepted “right answer” to a question before studying its history. Is the monistic or dualistic theory really correct? The last time I consulted the experts, they were quite convinced that the origin of the Solar System was monistic, although they disagreed about some important aspects of planetary development. But the history of planetogony during the last two centuries doesn’t give much reason for confidence that this conclusion is final. Throughout the 19th century scientists accepted the monistic Nebular Hypothesis; then they switched to a dualistic theory (close encounter of another star with the Sun). But this theory was rejected after 1935, and a monistic theory (collapse of a gasdust cloud) was revived in the 1940s. Between 1976 and 1984 the dualistic “supernova trigger” theory was accepted, then rejected. It was revived in 1995. The time scale for reversing the answer gets shorter and shorter as one approaches the present, giving us very little reason to think that today’s answer will still be considered correct tomorrow. That’s why I said that the problem is unsolved.

"For the historian of science, this uncertainty about the correct answer does have one important advantage. It undermines the tendency to judge past theories as being right or wrong by modern standards. This tendency is the so-called “Whig interpretation of the history of science” that one usually finds in science textbooks and popular articles. The Whig approach is to start from the present theory, assuming it to be correct, and ask how we got there. For many scientists this is the only reason for studying history at all; Laplace remarked, “When we have at length ascertained the true cause of any phenomenon, it is an object of curiosity to look back, and see how near the hypothesis that have been framed to explain it approach towards the truth” (1966: vol. 4, 1015).

"But Whiggish history is not very satisfactory if it has to be rewritten every time the “correct answer” changes. Instead, we need to look at the cosmogonies or planetogonies of earlier centuries in terms of the theories and evidence available at the time." (Brush, Stephen G. Fruitful Encounters: The Origin of the Solar System and of the Moon from Chamberlin to Apollo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1996; 3(A History of Modern Planetary Physics.)

I think I will keep my money and buy a good encyclopedia that actually cares about providing some real context for "facts" and making a modicum of effort to present a balanced viewpoint.

The Sum of All Knowledge That Can Be Found With A Google Search But Not Personal Experience Or Other Human Knowledge

If I had been eating when I read the bit about Wikipedia being "the sum of all human knowledge," I would've had to look elsewhere for screen cleaning solution, because I know I wouldn't find it on Wikipedia.

It's funny. To me "the sum of all human knowledge" would include knowledge heard by people at, for example, an unrecorded conference. It would include citations of speakers whose presentations were not in session notes, or the notes for which aren't published on the web. It would not include tons of "this article has uncited material that will be removed on a whim" notices. It would not include notes about, for example, w:Chuck Smith's opinion noted in the w:Calvary Chapel article, even though somebody decreed that 24 hours of no response was sufficient for "consensus" (as if anyone who doesn't stay logged in does not deserve to be included in this nebulous "consensus" concept).

Wikipedia is the sum of all knowledge that an elect few choose to allow. I have no reason or incentive to support such a foolish notion. --w:User:Joe Sewell 06:06, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree. I'm fine with either "wikipedia is an encyclopeida only" or "wikipedia is the sum of all human knowledge." However, it seems dishonest to say one thing in a fundraiser and another in policy. In fact, such an action might even open the encyclopedia up to tort if somebody could argue that they were misled as to the purpose of the organization in making a contribution.--Rich0 22:46, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

How far should Nobility go

My point here is that with the way nobility goes should it be possible to lighten the rules or for fictional subjects should it be possible for Wikipedia to show better respect to the seperate wikis since some of them are good, and have plenty of good resources but are being ignored for not being notable enough are for Wikipedian editors who have good intel on those subjects but are refuse to work to help those sites. As long as Wikipedia's rules are too strict it will just lead to more hatred and distrust against Wikipedia, when it is better to seek alternatives to ease the pain. As a former official member, I understand this pain deeply, and believe links to other wikis or sites. For example as a member of the Pokemon site Bulbapedia, it has a strong administrator working force but is ignored by Wikipedia members, despite the work these administrators do. -67.171.250.39 03:03, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh Bulbapedia! I remember when I found that little gem *promptly pisses on the usless wikipedia* THAT is how a wiki should be, some flaws here and there, but all connected... and nice *pisses some more* and no bots telling you that your edit is bad pleas do not pass go, and to go to hell.

This is why Wikipedia should also focus on promoting alternatives like this, instead of choosing to rely on its stubborn unreasonable rules that would only turn more people against them, when they should find ways of maintaining more supporters. -67.171.250.39 17:23, 20 December 2009 (UTC)