Talk:Fundraising 2013

Please help us out by leaving your comments & feedback. Thanks! Meganhernandez (talk) 18:53, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Hungary

(Please see my e-mail from 8 January.) –Bence (talk) 17:31, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Languages

Hi, I was just wondering if there was any testing or focus groups on the use of languages on non-native language projects? For example, the other day, I was quite surprised to see an English language appeal in Hungary on top of the English Wikipedia asking me to donate in Hungarian forints (of course, being on the English WP, I, the reader am expected to speak the language, but might consider the appeal meant for a different demographic [people in English countries]). I know that in the past people on mailing lists have shown preference to have appeals shown in the minority language on minority language projects, and that makes perfect sense. I just wonder, in countries where it is feasible, whether banners shown in the local majority language on the English and other international language Wikipedias would have an advantage over the English/French/etc. banners? –Bence (talk) 17:38, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey Bence,

This is something that has been talked about numerous times over the last two years and now we are transitioning to an all year round fundraising model we may revisit this idea and conduct some tests later in the year. Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you seeing banners? How often are you seeing banners?

We've been testing banners at a low level for about two weeks now. We've been showing just one banner impression to 5% of anonymous users (excluding the 5 countries where banners ran in December: US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and excluding the chapter countries that ran banners in December: Germany, France, and Switzerland).

Hiding banners after one impression is new for us, and any feedback we can get on how it's working will really help us. We are trying to minimize the number of banners our users see each year.

If you visit Wikipedia anonymously (and you're outside of the 5 English countries), have you seen any fundraising banners in the last two weeks? If so, how many times have you seen a banner?

Thanks for your help! Meganhernandez (talk) 15:06, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi! I've seen the banners very often these weeks (before logging in, of course). In my opinion, those shiny colours look very cheap, like an unprofessional commercial website. You should use more discrete colours, like blue or yellow - also I prefer light background. Contrast is also an issue: don't use dark text on dark background.

Also, there's WAY too much text, people won't read any. If there were under 30 words, they would actually read them. It's so long that I can't comment on the words themselves. Like I stated at Google Groups, I prefer positive messages that focus on good things, with simple, polite, semi-formal, soft language.

Keep in mind that many users will have low English skills, so you should try to use as many basic words as possible. And stay away from phrasal verbs.

I've seen that donations start at US$ 5 dollars here in South America, which is just perfect. Don't ask more as standard, because that number is 1% of a minimum wage already.

If you have any other questions, please contact me. Good luck! --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:02, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Megan! I've been editing heavily the past few months, so I've been logging very often. So I'm not sure how often I've seen the banner, because I typically navigate while logged, which isn't the case during studies. Have in mind that I delete all cookies every Firefox session, so that may do the trick. Later I'll keep reporing. Bye! --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:41, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, NaBUru, thanks for the info! That explains it. If you clear you cookies on your browser, we don't have a way to count if you've already seen a banner so we show you a new banner the next time you visit. Thanks for helping clear that up. Meganhernandez (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, I have the Do Not Track feature enabled, and I've read that it affects MediaWiki banners. By the way, I just saw "if you donate %SOMEVARIABLE%, ...", so it seems that the code got broken. Bye! --NaBUru38 (talk) 12:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixed it! Thanks for spotting. Meganhernandez (talk) 16:26, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Megan, Just wanted to let you know that I saw the banners twice today, although one in English and one in Hungarian, on the same computer while logged out. I guess the cookies do not work across domains...

Also this landing page seems to use different formatting of the donation amounts in the appeal and the donation box. --Bence (talk) 15:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Jennifer here. I am in the U.S. and did not see any banners, because I often use my husband's computer...so when the banner already displayed its one time, he was the one who saw it. I didn't even know about the fundraiser at all, until we happened to be discussing charities today. So right away that seems like a problem to me. Also, even if I had seen the banner, I would likely have wanted to think about a donation for a few days, and would have been surprised/dismayed that when I returned to Wiki a few days later to donate, the banner wouldn't be there, and I was now going to be put in the position of having to do extra work in order to even figure out how to give you money (and that's NOT the mindset you want your donors to have!). Thirdly, one of your reasons for the new fundraising approach was wanting to be sure you catch the people who might not have used Wiki during the few weeks of a once-a-year fundraiser. Well, how likely are those people to donate anyway? It seems pretty unlikely. Whereas with people like me, who use Wiki multiple times a day, I will be VERY annoyed to see, or know about, multiple fundraisers per year.

Saw the banner once yesterday in the UK, clicked hide or x or whatever and haven't seen it since. The banner I saw (very yellow with lots of text) looks like something from the 90s, please don't use it. Wikipedia Zero would be a good subject for a banner perhaps? It must be hard to fit everything you want to say into a small space....... Mrjohncummings (talk) 12:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Fundraising as an Outreach activity

The result of the Fundraising team and all the people involved has lead to an impressing abilities to minimize the time of display of the banners, and then decreasing the perturbation for the reader. I personally think that we reach an acceptable level of "perturbation" and that we should move from a strategy of "less perturbation for the reader" to "motivation of the reader". We will get back as soon as possible with numbers, but during the fundraising periods in general, and especially during the last one, we notice in switzerland a significant increase of the interest of the readers about how Wikipedia works, and the project of our chapter. During the last fundraising, we have been contacted by people wanting to join our chapter or becoming editors. In this period where renewing the pool of editor is a major challenge, I think we should not underestimate the power of the fundraising campaign. One simple way to use this synergy would be to redirect the donors (after their donation) to a thank you page that could incorporate a link to the corresponding chapter's page, or a thematic group's page, or an announce for a meet up, etc... the list is open.--Charles Andrès (WMCH) 15:06, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Russian Landing page - "rubles"

By link from banner i seen translated Jimmy Letter's text, but one piece is not translated - "100 rubles". Should be "100 руб.". as in other phrases at this page. Where it configured?--Kaganer (talk) 21:34, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe in Translations:Fundraising 2012/Translation/Jimmy Appeal/1f/ru, the currency name in the "$donationamount" variable isn't localised? Can we get someone from the Fundraising team to help? πr² (t • c) 15:04, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for reporting this! Great fix, we're correcting this. Meganhernandez (talk) 18:09, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Glitch in Vector in Safari

The fundraising banner seems to displace the tabs in Vector, as shown in the screenshot. wctaiwan (talk) 14:30, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Orange screen of death

Please, see discussion at ruwiki about design of this banner and comment it. Saint Johann (ru) 15:00, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

To summarize the mentioned discussion: in a humble but a firm opinion it is a nutty nut creation where every single one of design and readability rules has been sadistically yet creatively violated. To avoid thinking of any possible rudity from my side, please feel free to contact any design professional for her opinion (but run away before she takes a look at the screenshot). --NeoLexx (talk) 01:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
P.S. Unless it is decided to explore this season the "baby is crying out loud" approach: thus to make something so irritating that you have to either kill it or to gently pacify it, and the killing by default is not an option. In this case though what the "close" button is doing there? (and Wikipedia is not a baby btw). --NeoLexx (talk) 01:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

This banner is just disgusting. It pushes people, not attraction. Already suggested - forcibly disable banner in the Russian section with a script. You need a big scandal? --Wanderer777 (talk) 08:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for leaving some notes, I'm not sure I understand all these comments. Are you actually seeing some error or are these comments that you don't like the current banner? Meganhernandez (talk) 15:59, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Megan. I think they are saying they don't like the banner, and I can understand why. It's a massive block of text. I don't understand Russian, so I have no idea what it says, but even if I understood the language I doubt I would actually read it... At least add some paragraph breaks or bullet points. --Tango (talk) 17:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Fundraising 2012/Translation/Community review - ru --Wanderer777 (talk) 09:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Valentine Video Statistics

Hi, I've just read in the report that the Valentine video spurred "many" positive responses. Is it possible to have actual statistics for it? Opening rate, click rate etc., maybe also the number of emails received in response to it? It would be interesting to see what that kind of very targeted timely actions actually bring in. Thank you! notafish }<';> 21:34, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Good question. These are not posted yet, but we'll gather this info & let you know when it's up on meta. We're still running banners in most countries and languages right now, so we probably won't be able to put this up until April. Sorry for the delay. Meganhernandez (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

More than one banner

If you read Wikipedia anonymously and see more than one banner, please let us know

Is this request still valid? Please update the page if not. In my experience, I always see the banner when visiting logged out, in the last few weeks (or months). On Firefox I'm logged in, but on Chromium I'm not and every single time I visit it.wikipedia.org I'm served the orange banner, despite cookies enabled and everything. I'll tell you if I ever happen not to see a banner. --Nemo 09:17, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Nemo. Thanks for letting us know you always see the banner. Right now the banner in Italy is set to show to each user 5 times. Would you refresh it.wikipedia.org to see how many times you get a banner and let us know? Would you mind doing that on each browser you use to see if you see the same number of banners? Meganhernandez (talk) 16:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this will ever be possible, I didn't keep count. Was the existence of this setting ever mentioned somewhere? It would be very useful if you could post such numbers for all languages/countries, so that one knows what to expect/test and what not. --Nemo 16:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Now I'm seeing two banners at the same time (one below the other). --NaBUru38 (talk) 12:02, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for reporting this! Can you tell us what operating system & browser you're using? Meganhernandez (talk) 15:36, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know about the two banners showing up at the same time. Our tech team fixed this problem yesterday. Please do let us know if you spot anything like this again. Thanks! Meganhernandez (talk) 15:48, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

2011 and 2012 reports

Copying here an unanswered question:

The fancy up-to-the-minute accurate graph was nice; but if it's too server intensive, isn't there a way to at least give regular updates about how the fundraiser is going? A table with a few numbers, updated daily, doesn't seem like it should take up any server time at all.. for example, how much money has been raised so far (roughly)? I haven't been able to find this information anywhere.. 24.84.9.97 17:39, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Also, I can't find any report (like Fundraising 2010/Report) on Fundraising 2011 or Fundraising 2012, where are they? I found Fundraising 2011/Tech stats and resources but there isn't even that for 2012. --Nemo 09:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi guys, Here's the 2011 report: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/report

We're currently working on editing the 2012/2013 report to include donation info the end of 2012 as well as from the last two months, but it's not posted yet.

We had banners running in most countries (excluding the 5 English countries that got banners in Nov./Dec. 2012) throughout March and took them down on March 31. We're still sorting through and organizing this info. I'll send a note to the mailing lists when the report is up on meta. Meganhernandez (talk) 11:32, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's the report from the 2012 fundraiser: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/Report Meganhernandez (talk) 11:17, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

5% of logged out users

My informal experimenting suggests that "5% of logged out users" actually means that there is a 5% chance that any logged-out user will see a banner on each enwiki page view, although that will be the only one they see until they clear their cookies. Is that indeed the case? That seems like a very large number of banners. Can we please see daily statistics for how many banner impressions and total funds raised? 70.59.0.60 21:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it means that. In some countries it's not 1 but 5 (and sometimes more perhaps) views per browser per cookie. We're waiting for actual numbers at Talk:Fundraising 2012/Report. --Nemo 21:07, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

2012? After poking around a little, I think you mean https://frdata.wikimedia.org/ which is at present apparently current. Furthermore, WOW! 71.212.227.127 20:43, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, actually all banners worldwide are set to show up to 5% of readers for only 1 impression. Cookies have not been set to 5 or more impressions since we started running banners in this new fiscal year (since July 1, 2013). Are you seeing banners more frequently? Could you please let me know if you are seeing banners more than 1 time on the same device? Meganhernandez (talk) 07:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Outdated translation request

For the past 15 minutes I've been trying to find a single string User:Amire80 needed to translate, and I'm unable to. This page sends people to Fundraising 2012/Translation, which has a huge sidebar containing links to manual pages like Template:Translate-status/Fundraising 2012/he, which has not been updated since the autumn and contains links such as [1] which are surely wrong because they are about page translation and not banner translation (I'm going to remove all those).

If I try and use the new group selector on Special:Translate (but not the old group selector on other special pages) I can find the automatically created group "CentralNotice Banners", but that has 113 subgroups as of now (each of them translatable to all languages) so I have no clue which to choose and even if I had I would not be able to run a subsearch on those 113 results. --Nemo 11:30, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, Amir emailed us and we sent him the correct page. I realise translations are a bit of a mess at the moment, I'm planning to clean them up and update them over the next couple of weeks. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Year-to-date sum isn't / need banner impressions

https://frdata.wikimedia.org/yeardata-day-vs-ytdsum.csv are daily totals, not cumulative as stated. 71.212.227.127 21:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, can the total number of banner impressions displayed please be added to the frdata? Not necessarily historically, but ideally for the current July 2013 5% logged out campaign, and going forward from the present, to help estimate donor fatigue rates, please? 71.212.227.127 02:39, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

We're working on getting these numbers, but do not have them available to post yet. We'll be posting more data coming up soon. Meganhernandez (talk) 07:40, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

So what does the July experiment say?

Assuming that the trend continues to fall off along the same curve, is it reasonable to say that total fundraising capacity is now about $30 million per month sustained? [Remainder of paragraph moved to Talk:Endowment#What would raising a perpetuity endowment with sustained traditional fundraising look like?] 71.212.227.127 21:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up and asking these questions. Each day we run banners, donations decline. If we ran banners at 100% for a month, it's true we would be able to raise $30 million -- but we would not be able to keep that up every month. Meganhernandez (talk) 07:39, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the donations increased very substantially on the 21st and 22nd of July. Any idea why? If you were to extrapolate that out, it would be closer to $50 million per month than 30, just from enwiki alone. It's natural to be cautious, but the esteem in which the average potential donor holds Wikipedia rises with each page view, and each quality-improving edit, the former of which continue to grow exponentially and the latter having been more or less at a constant rate over the past years. That suggests that conservative extrapolations are likely to be as wrong as they have been in the past. I can't wait to see the write up for the details of the experiment. 97.122.187.243 08:34, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Scale suggested donation by median wealth?

Please see the table on pp. 93-96 here which lists median wealth per adult in different countries. Please test scaling the suggested donation amounts by these values using IP address geolocation. 70.59.30.138 16:35, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

We do this to an extent already, using lower amount suggestions for generally less wealthy countries. There are other factors taken into account in choosing the amounts as well e.g. what other charities in the location are asking, and people's preference for round numbers. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 03:48, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

No reaction for the feedback for months

Why does Meta community ignores comments of Russian users? It seems that someone occasionally removed "100 rubles", and all the rest remained as bad as it was. So it wouldn't be a gross overstatement to say that user opinions weren't taken into account at all. It's very sad. =( 92.100.77.108 20:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry they went ignored for so long. I have replied to some of the comments there. It is supposed to be a place to comment on translations though (like the 100 rouble coffee, which was fixed) rather than aspects like the colour or amount of text in the banner. We have tested these things and they are consistently the best we have found for fundraising. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Please describe the parameters of experiments in public

There is obviously something very interesting going on with the recent data at https://frdata.wikimedia.org/

Is it too much to ask that the parameters of ongoing experiments including the number of banner impressions, their text and form, and who they are being displayed to be shared here as they are ongoing in the interest of transparency, please? 69.246.249.168 02:25, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, what in particular did you find interesting? We are still aiming to post tests and results at Fundraising 2013, but admittedly have fallen behind a bit due to staff changes and Wikimania. I know that Megan is working on a backlog of analysis now, and am sure more info will be posted soon. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Translations

The July and August 2013 update makes mention of translations having been done, but the fundraising message groups were removed in July. Anybody know when we are going to be able to translate again? I have been waiting for MANY MONTHS for the translations that I did on the amendments to the donations landing page and the translation of the donations thank you e-mail to be published. As you are aware these messages are live every second of every minute of every hour of every day all year round, via the 'donate' link in the sidebar, see here. I would appreciate some information on when we can expect to have access to these messages again and who we can request to publish them? Lloffiwr (talk) 20:40, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about that, they should all be published now. Some were actually up already, but the {{Languages}} template on wikimediafoundation.org was missing Welsh, so they weren't showing up. Thanks for your help! Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I've added another question to the translations talk. --Nemo 10:48, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks. I have checked the links from the landing page (now 100% translated) and note the following:

• On the tax deductibility page, the link text "Scan of 501(c)3 status letter" is in English and also the section heading "Other countries". I seem to remember that these strings were not available for translation during the last fundraiser. Having said that they seem to be available in German. When the fundraising messages are eventually resurrected could you please check that these strings are available to translate.
• The link 'Make a monthly donation' goes to the page 'Make your donation now - Donate' for the monthly donation. This whole page is in English instead of Welsh, although I am pretty sure that I translated the strings for this.

Lloffiwr (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Make a monthly donation is fixed (there was a bug with the links.) Tax deductibility I'm looking into. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 00:26, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Once more I thank you for fixing the monthly donation. All these errors are however begging another question. If this is the error rate on just one language, how many errors are there on other languages? Potentially, someone has got a lot of work on their plate to check the whole landing page/donation cycle for errors. Lloffiwr (talk) 12:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Wonderful updates

Are there data dumps for people who want to do their own current or historical analysis? 192.54.222.3 20:28, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

There are, at https://frdata.wikimedia.org/ Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 12:47, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense sentence in Italian yellow banners

C'mon........ --2.232.136.252 10:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Banner design

What was the objective of this rather offensive unfortunate design? John Reaves (talk) 19:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Which banner are you talking about? We are testing many different designs. Do you happen to have a screenshot? Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 10:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The last one I saw was yellow and looked very...dated. John Reaves (talk) 06:37, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

We've been testing yellow/gold banners for a while now, and haven't had many other complaints. They also do significantly better than other designs we've tried. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

@Pcoombe (WMF):Personally, I've answered two user emails via OTRS that were both written by people found the banner suspicious and unappealing. otrs:2013120210021597 Here is one from moments ago. I've gotten the impression there and elsewhere that the color scheme and general wording (specifically that it says "credit card") are turning people off. Also, is this the best forum to discuss this? Or is there somewhere with more traffic? John Reaves (talk) 02:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

You could use mail:fundraiser; the list is almost abandoned because WMF doesn't post any update there, but there are still several list members from the times when the fundraising campaign was more distributed. --Nemo 13:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC) P.s.: They're trying something different too now.

December 2013 banner

This is the best place to discuss. As Nemo has spotted, we are using a new design now, which we just discovered yesterday does better than the gold (or about the same). Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. Frankly, it still looks like a pop-up or maleware attempt at first glance. It doesn't fit the aesthetic of other Wikimedia sites. John Reaves (talk) 23:16, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

You can also move OTRS emails to do with fundraising to the wm-donations queue. My team checks that account on a regular basis, and we're happy to respond to questions or concerns Jvandavier (talk) 00:40, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

@Jvandavier:, @Pcoombe (WMF): Here are 15 more complaints. These are all from the info-en queue:

• 2013120910002505 - Looks like malware
• 2013120510003075 - Looks like malware; design
• 2013120610010403 - Wording
• 2013120510010058 - Wording; asks if it is "genuine"
• 2013121410001694 - Use of "Paypal"
• 2013111210005991 - Looks like malware
• 2013102310014747 - Looks like malware
• 2013092810001218 - "Is this legitimate?"
• 2013110610000514 - Scam/phishing
• 2013121310014995 - "Authentic?"
• 2013120610016176 - "Scam?"
• 2013120310006905 - "Scam?"
• 2013120310005755 - "Spam?"
• 2013112710017084 - "Scam?"
• 2013122810001828 - "Malware?"

John Reaves (talk) 05:03, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

See this feedback about the donation timeframe and this feedback about the banner and FAQ.

Please reply to both. PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:25, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Fundraising FAQ (for donors)

I update Fundraising 2012/Translation/FAQ based on wmf:FAQ/en. Maybe need to expand his translation's scope for more languages? --Kaganer (talk) 15:45, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi! Thank you! this is a valid point you are making. It would be great to get more translations of this page. I will do my best to contribute to achieving that objective. Jrobell (talk) 12:47, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Good. In my opinion, as first step, may be do moving these pages (base page with its translations) into Fundraising/Translation/FAQ. As second step, may be remove the restriction languages for translation. I can make myself step 1 and 2 if you take such a decision. --Kaganer (talk) 13:07, 15 January 2014 (UTC) For the future, we will be using the base page for FAQ in order to not create too many new pages and create confusion between the pages. Jrobell (talk) 14:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)