2011/3/4 church.of.emacs.ml <church.of.emacs...@googlemail.com>: > In that regard, I believe we have to think about how we can ensure that > we're being friendly and respectful towards our readers and donors, > raise enough money, define what 'enough money' is and how all that > affects our mission.
Yes, I think we're all in agreement on that. Thanks for raising these points again. I do want to note that there's been quite a bit of discussion on some of these issues back in January already. In response to Domas I wrote these two posts, which included some possible strategies we could employ to reduce the "annoyance factor". http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-January/063299.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-January/063333.html New ideas are very much welcome, and now's a good time to raise them. I do think it's important not to conclude too much about other people's experiences based on your own -- the experience of a heavy Wikimedia project user of the 2010-11 fundraiser, for example, was very different from someone who uses one site, in one language, a few times per month. Some members of the former group experienced the banners as disruptive/invasive. Many members of the latter group may not even have noticed them. It's IMO very likely the case that for the vast majority of our 400M or so readers, the experience of the 2010-11 fundraiser was a uniformly positive or neutral one: either they didn't notice it, or they did notice it but would characterize it as positive or neutral. I can't prove that, and I'd love to see better data on that, but I'd be very surprised if that wasn't true. In addition to being transparent, honest and true to our values, I think there are two variables we want to optimize: the percentage of our audience who experience the fundraiser as positive or neutral, and the number of donations in support of our cause. I'm optimistic that we can do better on both counts in 2011-12 -- we don't have to cause more disruption or annoyance to raise more funds. Wikimedia is an amazing cause, and if we can tell our story well, we will be able to motivate more and more people to join it. (Gee, perhaps we should hire someone for that storytelling job. ;-) On the target itself, I want to note that the strategic plan numbers aren't set in stone. The financial targets for the 2011-12 fiscal year are defined in the annual plan process, which just kicked off. This plan, when approved by the Board, will decide the target that we're aiming for in the next fundraiser, and the process is informed by the most recent projections. It's also very much informed by these kinds of discussions (versions of which are happening internally all the time), and it will be, every year. To not continually iterate and revise our assumptions would be madness. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
