Talk:Fundraising 2011/archive/4

Why I won't donate this year--- AKA Pls try to learn from me so more people WILL donate.

Wikipedia used to be something you could be proud of.

What did we do in 2011 that we didn't do in 2007? Nada.

Worse. The incivil and the vandals have taken over the culture. I won't mention names, because they'd just block me for exposing them, but there are users who go around bragging about how many legal images they delete and hoping to delete 420K more.

And this is what we were paying you for? Rudeness, social thuggery, and more and more money every year for an ever-worsening product with no new features and a horribly crumbling community? En wikipedia may still be worth reading for now, but it's not worth donating to, and it's not worth paying extra for anymore.

I've been a wikimaniac for a long time. this is the first christmas I won't be giving anything to you-- and I hate it. But you can only treat people so disrespectfully in one year, and your administrators crossed that line with me this year. I stopped feeling like part of a team and felt like a source of unappreciated cheap labor. And I work too hard to be treated like an outsourced volunteer.

Something is rotten at Wikipedia, and I worry we're headed towards being the next Myspace-- cool once upon a time, but you'd rather be caught dead than working on your myspace in 2011.

I've reported the problem in more detail to the property authorities. Please put your house in order so I can again invest in it with confidence. At minimum, stop the punks from starting riots and torching the place-- it used to be a really nice little spot on the internet.

For anyone in my predicament-- hopeful towards are Wikipedia's goals but realistic about how it's culture is utterly dysfunctional, let me suggest what my partner and I are doing-- donate the tithe or whatever yearly charitable allotment you have to a Wikipedia-allied organization, like the Free Software Foundation. That can keep the larger free knowledge moment sustained, benefit WMF indirectly, but still signal that something is a little rotten in denmark...

I apologize if my remarks are unwelcome here-- i don't mean to dissuade others from supporting us, I merely felt utterly compelled to say why I can't. PLease learn from me so that there will be as few of me as possible. --Nobody who will be missed.

I find your post a bit distressing but not unwelcome. We need to hear from everyone not just the people that agree with us.

Sorry to hear that your "good faith" has been shaken. I too feel at times that some articles and interactions are uphill battles that just don't feel worth the effort. We all do. I find that walking a way for a while helps. No one can blame you for not donating to something that are unsure of any more. I hope you and the project find a way to come back together in the future.

Cbarr (WMF) - Production Coodinator 12:44, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

WIKI Donate

Copied from English Wikipedia help desk [1] Chzz 20:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi guys.

You know, I can make regular donations, but current payment systems is not so comfortable for Russian region (where I live). Really, easy to use for me it's QUIWI or Yandex.Money. So, I guess, it will be good idea for you to integrate those payment systems. Integration of one of them will be great! And easy to make donations for people like me.

-- cheers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.74.128.134 (talk) 14:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

We are working on increasing payment options as much as possible in all countries. I know that Yandex is being deployed slowly but surely:)

Cbarr (WMF) - Production Coodinator 11:31, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you want the money or not?

I'm receiving angry mail from people in Italy who donated but seemingly did not see any confirmation/recapping page after that (how hard can it be to realize it is a needed passage? and no the Thank You page is not enough). Plus, on the Ways to Give page, the Select continent for our country leads to a standard donation page where there is no damn option to donate through a bank account. You know what? I'm redirecting all these people to WM IT, at least they have a page where people looking for more traditional means of giving can find what they are looking for. And put the stats back, for God's sake. --Elitre 12:04, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I heard about paying problems from Dutch people, too. I hope that the WMF is going after the problems. --Ziko 19:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Elitre,

Several of these problems would probably be better approached when fundraising would be more localized. I think it would be helpful to collect as many of these problems as possible so that this becomes clear. After all, in each country things work differently and preferences differ too. For the stats, I understood that they have been taken down because they became too popular and were dragging down other parts of Wikimedia too. Too bad this has not yet been resolved, but I can imagine that other things (such as your confirmation page) get priority right now. Effeietsanders 14:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

We are working on localizing the payment methods per country and we have greatly expanded the currencies offered. The system is new this year so we are tackling these problems as we come across them. Very soon we should have bank transfers in a lot more countries. As to the angry people, are they not getting "thank you" emails as receipts or are getting the emails but they would still like another page? There are some known issues being worked out with "thank you" pages and emails.

Cbarr (WMF) - Production Coodinator 11:47, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Bank transfers are now enabled for Italy [2]. And the stats page is back again. Peter Coombe (WMF) 12:05, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I can't tell whether it's solved or not, I haven't heard complaints lately. I could read a copy of the Thank You mail and if I donated I'd be fine with it, but I understand that the average Italian netizen would not even read it as it's in English, and the relevant information (how much I donated, where's my receipt) are at the bottom. Thanks for reading. --Elitre 09:06, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Appeal link does not work

Copied from English Wikipedia help desk [3] Chzz 20:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I feel sure this has been raised before, but I couldn't find it in a quick search of the help desk archives. The "personal appeal" link on the home page does not work for me at all. When I hover over it, the link appears active, but the URL shown at the foot of the page is just "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page#". Then when I click the link, nothing happens – I remain on the home page. I suspect this may be a browser issue – I'm using IE7. Many thanks, --Viennese Waltz 08:44, 7 December 2011 (UTC)\

This could be due to a breakage of JavaScript on your system. There might be a non-JavaScript link around, let me look for it. If you have the ability to upgrade your browser, you could try that :) I'll look at the banner as well to see if there is something there.

Cbarr (WMF) - Production Coodinator 11:55, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Activation of debit card payment / net banking Donations

Moved from enwiki VPT [4] Chzz 01:23, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Dear Recipient, I was trying to donate but could not do so, as the website does not accept net banking payment / debit card payment. Please activate net banking / debit card payment for donations. You all are doing great job and people like to support such organisations but not all have credit cards. Regards Mandeep — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mandeep1662 (talk • contribs) 04:56, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Mandeep, we've received our registration to enable Verified by Visa and Mastercard Secure Code which will hopefully be live on the site by early next week (Either Tuesday or Wednesday the 13th and 14th Indian time Monday/Tuesday US Pacitic time) after our testing is complete. This registration should allow us to do most if not all debit cards branded with MasterCard or Visa from India. Net Banking has been tough because of Indian laws but we're looking into ways to do it and other payment methods for India. Jalexander 23:01, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

INR donations in WMF main donation page

Hi guys, you're doing a great job with the introduction of INR donations this year. Of course, I do hope the debit card problem will be sorted out soon. I wanted to draw attention to another aspect of INR donations: I don't think there's any other method to access the INR donation page other than clicking the banner. When I click the "Donate to Wikipedia" button on the sidebar, it takes me to this. This, sadly, does not include INR. For an user who hides the banner, but still wants to donate, he will have a hard time. Can you look into this? Thanks, Lynch7 14:48, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Hey Mike, thanks for the note we're incredibly excited to finally have a way to donate with INR. We finally got the registrations to do Verified by Visa and Mastercard Secure Code for INR at the end of last week and I'm going to be testing it this weekend and early next week. Hopefully we'll be able to have that activated quickly which should allow us to finally accept debit cards branded by MC and Visa.

The issue with the sidebar should be fixed very soon too. It's on a slightly different system because we had to make sure it would work with the chapters who were fundraising on their own. We've designed a system where this won't be needed anymore and are almost done testing it so hopefully by Monday or Tuesday they should work as expected sending you to a page for your country in the language you're reading. In the mean time if you go to / it will redirect you to an English page for INR (assuming you're in India at the time, it auto detects country). Jalexander 22:54, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

A good idea in the Forum

I really like the idea proposed at Wikimedia Forum#And yet another way to ask for money - basically, use images of the cute animals who want informative articles to be written about their species. BD2412 T 19:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

That may be worth testing: never underestimate the power of Charismatic megafauna. It might work better as an appeal to contribute content rather than money. ~ Ningauble 21:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Please read:
A personal appeal from a puffer fish.

Read the story

I was photographed in Hawaii by a volunteer photographer. My image was uploaded to Wikipedia by a volunteer contributor. Another volunteers wrote article about me. My image is absolutely free. You may use it for your school projects, to print it, and to hang in your office and so on. But images and articles require lot's of space on servers, and servers cost some money. So, if you'd like to see more images of me, and more images like these ones and and please donate to Wikipedia today. Thank you.

(The above text would be the letter after clicking "Read the story".)

Comment re fund-raising copied from English Wikipedia help desk

The following is copied from [5] [6] [7] Chzz 12:05, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

---

This could be the wrong place to post this message, but I find your personal appeals at the top of the page a bit creepy. It looks like a scam. I'm not sure if its the graphics or what, but I feel like you are pressuring people for money every time I go on your website! Admittedly I use wikipedia quite a lot to quickly gain information, but do not feel I should have to pay a monthly fee to access this! If I wanted to spend money I would not be on the internet, I would be in a book shop buying an encyclopaedia. If wikipedia didn't exist, it would just take a bit longer to trawl through other websites to get information. No biggie. I think you should take a leap out of Facebook's ideas. Probably the most used website in the world, and the adds don't bother me AT ALL. I use it everyday, facebook makes money, advertising companies are happy. Every one is happy. Just whack some adverts on your site to break even! you don't have to do it for profit. No-one will care!! I know you have your morals, but have some business sense!

Hope this helps,

C

(Could you pass this on to the right people if this is the wrong place to post it? Thank you kindly) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.19.126.18 (talk) 11:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I will certainly pass your message along to the Wikimedia Foundation, yes.

However, it's really the Wikipedia community which has - after lots of discussion - rejected adverts. Part of the reason is, because we strongly want to keep it neutral. You can see some of the reasoning in en:WP:PEREN#Advertising.  Chzz  ►  11:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Running a week long banner educating this will help? "Thank you + Why there should not be ads" banners from Jan 1? Logicwiki 17:58, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

See en:Wikipedia:Advertisements. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:54, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

GlobalCollect outage

GlobalCollect is experiencing an outage. Banners have been taken down for all of the world except US (which directs to a PayPal only form) and chapter countries which do their own processing. Kaldari 21:57, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Glitch in fundraising headline

This morning I saw the fundraising message from J Wales shown in this screengrab [8]. There is obviously some kind of glitch causing the word 'AMOUNT' to show instead of a number. What could be causing this? --Viennese Waltz 09:25, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback Viennese Waltz!! Could you let us know on what country you saw this problem? (I dont want to assume its Austria) ;) Ppena (WMF) 16:54, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Well guessed though, yes I am in Austria. --Viennese Waltz 18:40, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Viennese Waltz- Austria seems to be fine now- let us know if you see something wrong again!! :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ppena (WMF) (talk • contribs) .

Sorry but it's still showing up as '%AMOUNT' in the English Wikipedia, although it looks fine on this Meta-Wiki (see second screengrab [9]). I don't care particularly but I just thought you should know. --Viennese Waltz 09:02, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

This is also showing up that way on Meta for me all day today, when not logged in. In US, using Chrome. Logging in seems to make it go away. X011 04:36, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

This ought to be fixed now, there was a mistake made when cleaning up some old banner code. Peter Coombe (WMF) 18:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Unusual grammar (German Banner) - Ungewöhnliche Grammatik im deutschen Banner

Nur noch 3 Tage Zeit für
eine steuerlich absetzbare
Spende an Wikipedia in 2011!

in 2011! should be better 2011! or in diesem Jahr! or im Jahr 2011!. in 2011! is English.

Thank you. -- Rillke 11:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Rilke, danke für den Hinweis. Auch wenn du Recht hast (im strengen grammatikalischen Sinne), ist "in 2011" umgangssprachlich durchaus möglich. Es klingt jedoch nicht sehr schön (ja, und auch ein wenig englisch). Wir schauen mal, wie eine "korrektere" Version aussehen würde. Till Mletzko (WMDE) 12:21, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Accept Bitcoin donations

Bitcoin is a new currency created by netizens. It is already accepted by the NYC chapter of Wikimedia, the Internet Archive and many others. Accepting this currency without having to deal with currency conversion could probably be handled easily and for free via bitpay's arrangement for Non-Profits. (I also added this suggestion to the Idea Lab section of the Village pump.) Wcoenen 11:36, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation does not accept "artificial" currencies - that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change. Peter Coombe (WMF) 18:42, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The policy of not accepting artificial currencies seems a reasonable one. After all, nobody can predict Bitcoin's future and your options for spending Bitcoin are still very limited. However, that's why I mentioned bitpay: they make it possible to use Bitcoin as a payment mechanism to accept dollars. They handle the currency conversion on exchanges for you (unless you chose otherwise) so that you never have to deal with bitcoins. When used this way, Bitcoins become just another way to accept dollar payments, like credit cards or paypal. The bitcoin aspect of the transaction only concerns the donator. Wcoenen 02:25, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem in the current banner in Hebrew

Hi,
The current banner (If everyone reading this donated %AMOUNT%, our fundraiser would be over today) actually shows "%AMOUNT%" in the Hebrew translation instead of "$5", as it used to be till about yesterday. Please fix it or at least meanwhile, till fixing it, stop showing it. Thanks and have a wonderful new year, Ldorfman 23:03, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. Do you still see %AMOUNT%? Jon Harald Søby (WMF) 00:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

No. It's fine now. Thanks. Ldorfman 00:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

New Zealand donations

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but it's copied from en.wp New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board. sonia 02:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Doing end of year housekeeping (of the virtual kind) I've found the e-mail exhorting me to make a donation. Noting the modest size of my intended donation, I looked around for an efficient way to pay, not involving fees or currency conversions, and found that the only method I can pay in NZD is Paypal, which for me goes on my credit card. Investigating,

• I see on https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en that in, f. ex., Fiji or the Cook Islands, I can make donations by credit card, eWallet, bank transfer, direct debit or internet banking but not New Zealand.
• https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters shows no chapter in New Zealand
• after clicking on Donate, http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising Donate, if I change the currency to NZD the donate by credit card button disappears.

I searched the notice board archive for a discussion on these, and found none. Is there a reason there is no local chapter?

Jlittlenz (talk) 01:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops sorry, it seems that some of the countries in Oceania didn't get added to the Ways to Give page. I've put them up there now. The donation page for New Zealand is [10], where you can donate via Visa, Mastercard, Amex, PayPal or Bank Transfer.

Thank you. Donate->other ways to give->Oceania->New Zealand->Donate by bank transfer gave me a page with a bank account number on it, and a reference to use. I had to be slightly persistent; three extra clicks. I presume there is a reason the main page donate buttons don't go the same page.Jlittlenz 03:25, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately there isn't a New Zealand chapter yet, it looks like there was a site set up some time ago for discussing it. You could maybe contact some of the people listed there if you're interested in reviving discussion. Peter Coombe (WMF) 04:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

See also: Wikimedia New Zealand, and Category:New Zealand. And the OER Foundation/WikiEducator is based in NZ. -Pete F 17:35, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Alexa ranking

Congrats to you guys on a successful fundraising this year. Much appreciated. I just want to point out a small error in Sue's thank you messages (as well as the fundraising banners, which are obviously taken down now). I really don't like to say this, but Alexa ranks Wikipedia 6th, and not 5th, as shown in Sue's message (of course, I don't know which rankings you mean when you say 5th). I don't know if its an oversight or if I am mistaken but I'd like a clarification on this anyway. We don't want people (or worse, the media) accusing us of reporting rankings wrongly do we. Thanks, Lynch7 10:06, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

It is a bit of a moving target, but you are right about the latest ranking. The Alexa rank has been fluctuating between 6 and 5 since September. Perhaps Sue's message could have used some constructive ambiguity or lawyerly vagueness in expressing the point, but I'm not worried about critics who might quibble about this sort of braggadocio. ~ Ningauble 15:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it has been oscillating, but just thought I'd let people know anyway; we should be wary of people taking the message too literally and actually accusing us of misrepresentation. Lynch7 07:30, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

WMF has long used comScore, not Alexa, as the source for those rankings. comScore uses a different methodology from Alexa, and according to my understanding it's a more reliable, scientific one. Wikimedia sites have been #5 on comScore for over 2 years. -Pete F 07:36, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Hard to say which agency's self-selected survey base is less unreliable. (I hang up on surveyors, so I don't count.) Promotional messages that don't say according to whom can be taken with a grain of salt, especially when the stated metric is popularity. I don't think Sue's message needs footnotes because it is not really a matter on which customers/donors might reasonably place material reliance. ~ Ningauble 20:31, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly the difference, as I understand it -- I believe comScore's numbers are not based on self-selected numbers, but on scientific sampling. (They also rank web properties as opposed to web sites, so Wikimedia sites are taken as a whole, as opposed to Wikipedia being ranked separately from Commons, which is how Alexa works, I believe.) But I can't really offer proof of that -- I'm not an expert, I'm not WMF, and I'm not comScore. But that's my understanding of why WMF chose to base its numbers on comScore. They've been using the "#5" claim for some time, and in alignment with what you suggest, it's usually footnoted to comScore. -Pete F 22:36, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

There is some interesting analysis on Trustee Stu West's page and also herre: Wikipedia.org is more popular than... I do think it would be great if WMF could publish a clear and concise essay on why it uses comScore instead of Alexa or other options -- this is good background analysis, but they did make a decision at some point, and it would be great if that decision were publicly and thoroughly documented. -Pete F 22:43, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

It's been discussed multiple times on mailing lists; i think there might be an actual page about it on strategy:. Nemo 22:30, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Fundraiser statistics page

Resolved.

The Foundation Wiki page foundation:Special:FundraiserStatistics has been disabled since November 27, 2011. This page has provided up-to-the-minute statistics about incoming donations during the last few annual fundraising drives. It was disabled after Wikimedia Foundation designer Brandon Harris linked it during a high-volume Reddit conversation; the incoming clicks disabled Wikipedia.

On email lists and in IRC, several Wikimedians have agreed that there is no great need for live database queries; that hourly or even daily reports would be tremendously useful, and would put much less strain on servers. Thomas Dalton indicated that setting up such a cacheing system would be pretty simple.

Currently displayed on the page:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:DisabledNotice This page has been temporarily disabled due to high volume. Please try again later.

• UPDATE A message from Kaldari (talk · contribs) on December 8, 2011 indicates the page is back online. (If there is interest in preserving the more specific request below, about adding geographic data, I think it might get more attention in its own section.) -Pete F 19:12, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Some miscellaneous suggestions:

• There is a Google Doc that contains some of these statistics: [11]
• Could the extension also provide a breakdown by geography? And if possible, a way of ingesting data for donations from chapters? Mike Peel 20:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Indian Rupees

Resolved.

There is interest in donations in Indian Rupees.