Talk:Fundraising

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Welcome to the Fundraising team's talk page. Content March - September 2022 moved to archive

The content has been moved to Archive 7. Please ask questions or start constructive discussions around the WMF’s fundraising on this talk page. If you would like to help with our translation and localisation efforts please ping me and I will get you on touch with the team. JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 09:13, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

English Wikipedia RfC on fundraising emails

The English Wikipedia RfC on the wording of the fundraising emails has now been open for the best part of a month. Throughout this time, the fundraising email review has been advertised on the English Wikipedia's "Centralized discussion" template.

The results were quite clear: Of the roughly 50 volunteers who have participated to date, –

• 42 objected to the wording of the fundraising emails, describing them as "misleading",
• 6 volunteers differentiated between parts of the mails they thought were okay, and other parts which they thought were not,
• 3 volunteers, all with links to Wikimedia affiliates, endorsed the emails.

A more comprehensive summary of the status as of September 4, 2022 can be found here on the Wikimedia-l mailing list: [1] (see also related Hacker News discussion).

According to the schedule overleaf, the email campaign should have started yesterday.

Were any changes made to the email wordings found misleading in the RfC, or do the emails still ask donors for money "to keep Wikipedia online" etc.? Andreas JN466 20:45, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning perhaps that of the six current candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation board, three supported the following statement:

WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever.

A fourth candidate (a current WMF board member) did not support the statement, but offered milder criticism of WMF fundraising as part of her response.

See Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Election_Compass/Answers (candidates' responses to Statement #5). Andreas JN466 20:52, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Was it an RfC? That requires use of the RfC templates, which I didn't see? (It was listed at CENT, though, so this is perhaps not important). I wasn't a big fan of the way you framed the question, which asked volunteer editors on Wikipedia whether they "endorsed" the entirety of three salesy fundraising emails. Even if the language weren't problematic (and part of it was), I can't imagine our crowd "endorsing" that, just as I wouldn't "endorse" when my local public radio station guilts me into donating, saying some program wouldn't be possible without me. Meh.

The main reason I'm commenting here is to say this: It's disappointing that your updates about WMF finances (which I do appreciate, by the way, because it's all complicated, difficult to follow, and worth having some checks) come packaged with a predictable POV. The results of the discussion were indeed lopsided. So why do you have to go out of your way to poison the well for the three people who endorsed the emails? I was not among them (I registered "ambivalent"), but I am also connected to a Wikimedia affiliate. Those of us who engage with a local affiliate do so because we are dedicated volunteers, not because it comes with any money. The extent to which I am compensated for volunteering with WikiNYC is measured in pizza (and the occasional empanada, budget allowing) served at events. We do it because we want to bring more people and institutions in to the wiki world, not because of any particular affinity for the wikimedia foundation. This may be news, but many affiliates and members thereof have just as messy a relationship with the foundation that the English Wikipedia community does. :P — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:42, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. To answer your question: Usually on Wikipedia we declare conflicts of interest. We expect anyone who has a financial interest in an article to declare it. As far as I could make out, two of the people endorsing the fundraising emails were former board members (chairman and vice president) of national Wikimedia affiliates, and one had taken a paid job as a contractor working for another kind of WMF affiliate. They or the organisations they'd headed had therefore benefited from WMF grant money (not pizza! ). I was disappointed none of them said so, because I thought the same standard that we apply quite naturally to article work should also apply to an internal discussion about Wikimedia funds.

I am sure you are right that there is a palpable POV in my reporting. I am distressed when I see people online bemoaning the fact that "Wikipedia is broke", knowing that nothing could be further from the truth. Or when I hear from VRT volunteers that people on or below the poverty line are pressured into donating. Or when I see people on social media calling in distress on others to please "save Wikipedia". I feel it lets the whole movement down because it's a case of Wikipedia being used to give people a completely erroneous idea of reality rather than educating them. We would never let it stand in an article, but seem to acquiesce to it when it's about us.

That's incompatible with the whole idea underlying the effort as I understood it when I signed up. I very much regret it if that makes my reporting less effective, or if it makes me come across as tiresome. Andreas JN466 22:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

It is concerning that, as far as I can see, the total response by WMF employees has been: changing of the image attribution (showing that the WMF are aware of the discussion) and one employee in an unofficial capacity dismissing the en.wiki community's input in an off-wiki forum. — Bilorv (talk) 20:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

In the interests of shifting the Overton Window, how about WMF fire so-called "Movement Communications Specialist" Ckoerner for his dismissive attitude or cancel this year's beg-a-thon? There is evidence that the fundraising is done against the wishes of the editing community and I bet we could make this a lot uglier for WMF. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:07, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: It is not appropriate to call for a staffer's firing. There are very few things that definitely should be within the WMF's exclusive scope (ie no volunteers getting involved), but individual hiring and firing decisions are certainly among those. The call for firing is not going to help things. I'm not going to try to remove the comment unilaterally, but I ask that you please consider self-reverting. --Yair rand (talk) 05:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@Yair rand: WMF would not have a dime without the hard work of volunteers. Andreas has been very thorough and thoughtful in his criticism of how WMF disparages us while raking in funding dishonestly. For someone seemingly charged with communicating with the movement, Ckoerner's reply to Andreas:

"This criticism, like much of yours over the years, attempts to simplify a complex situation, of which you know very little given your limited perspective, into a soundbite to get attention and garner community affectation. Wikimedia needs better critics."

is condescending in just the way you would expect from a landowner to their tenant farmer. While my preference is to dissolve WMF entirely, we could start with reifying that personnel is policy by terminating a tone-deaf employee. Your kowtow to WMF is unbefitting your role as a trusted editor elected by our volunteer community. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Well, as I said on Hacker News – nobody likes their critics, that's human. There's been another discussion on HN the last couple of days, based on this Twitter thread. --Andreas JN466 07:11, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

A correction. I was not "dismissing the en.wiki community's input in an off-wiki forum", I was criticizing Andreas comment regarding foundation staff not being qualified because they do not know how to edit. Please don’t misrepresent my comments. I said this, as clarified in my edit summary to your misplaced comment, in my opinion as a volunteer.

Also, where's the lie? Andreas does not work at the Foundation and is not involved in any committees, affiliates, boards, or other bodies that work directly with teams at the foundation in any ongoing or formal capacity. He is, given the limitations of what he is aware of and privy to (as we all are) unable to know all the details. Regardless he continues to derive simple and often incorrect conclusions about the work of the foundation.

Or at the very least he continues to push a perspective that is very unfamiliar to me as someone who works at the foundation - with admittedly more access to information - while also being a volunteer.

If anything I wish the Foundation did a better job talking about the work they do. Maybe we’d have less disconnect and more trust in the spaces where we work together. In my capacity as staff I work hard to encourage this as do many others. Ckoerner (talk) 15:34, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

@Ckoerner: It doesn't take insider knowledge to find the WMF's attitude dismissive while observing the tens of millions in profit they make each year. Regular editors can be frustrated that they wrote the content by which a distant office dishonestly collects profit while taking umbrage that our priorities for things like New Page Patrol tools are ignored by that same distant office, many of whom seem to collect exorbitant salaries. Then we get to people like you, who claim to be some sort of public relations, criticizing Andreas who speaks more for the community than you do. What secret good work is WMF, an alleged non-profit, doing that would allay our many concerns and by what right are they keeping secrets? Your words sound much more like fruitless pleas for us to ignore the man behind the curtain. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:37, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I've tried to explain my comments and perspective here in good faith, and you have used my employment at the foundation as an excuse to assume bad faith and personally attack me. This is not constructive, and I will not have this conversation if it isn't civil.

I want to be able to speak freely as a volunteer and hope other volunteers would allow me to do so. Your response makes me think I am unable to. I feel that this sort of behavior is not healthy for our community.

Of note, I critiqued the Foundation in my reply to Bilorv. We're more on the same side than not in the grand scheme of things. Ckoerner (talk) 16:39, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback call for Dutch community

I will be hosting a feedback call for the Dutch community around the WMF fundraising campaign in the Netherlands. The call will take place on the 4th of October at 3pm UTC (4pm Dutch time) and you can join via this link . I am cross-posting this announcement from the Dutch VP here in order to ensure all interested parties will see it. I am looking forward to a constructive conversation with the Dutch community. Best wishes, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 08:42, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

(Also initially posted in De Kroeg at nlwikipedia)

Thanks JBrungs for setting up that call. It's good to have these conversations early to ensure that we don't run into similar issues next year (or different countries). I would instead propose an agenda that touches on a few different elements:

• Perhaps WMF could explain in a few sentences what the process looks like how they arrive at the content of the campaign language (how do you arrive at the layout, the hook that you use etc)
• How can we ensure that the objective textual quality of the banners and related pages are up to standards (grammar, typos, consistency etc).
• How country specific is the banner language (i.e. direct translation from USA language vs locally developed)
• How can the community provide input into the subjective quality (tone, messaging).
• How do we trade off the irritation/annoyance that banners cause with the effectiveness (and thus shorter campaigns)?

I agree we should make this as constructive as possible. Effeietsanders (talk) 16:22, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @Effeietsanders,

I added the points you suggested to a draft agenda. Anyone can edit the document so please add things you would like to discuss and I will try my best to find you answers etc for our call. Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 08:41, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

For reference, the sample Desktop banner linked overleaf reads as follows (my emphases):

Aan al onze lezers in Nederland, Scroll hier niet voorbij. We komen meteen ter zake: deze vrijdag vragen we je om ons te helpen Wikipedia in stand te houden. 98% van onze lezers doneren niet; zij negeren ons verzoek gewoon. Als jij een van die bijzondere lezers bent die al heeft gedoneerd, dan danken wij je hartelijk. Als je vandaag slechts € 2 doneert, kan Wikipedia nog jaren online blijven. We vragen je vriendelijk: scroll alsjeblieft niet weg. Als Wikipedia je € 2 aan kennis heeft gegeven, neem dan even de tijd om te doneren. Laat de wereld zien dat toegang tot betrouwbare, neutrale informatie belangrijk voor je is. Dank je.

DeepL translation:

To all our readers in the Netherlands, Don't scroll past this. We'll get straight to the point: this Friday, we're asking you to help us keep Wikipedia alive. 98% of our readers don't donate; they just ignore our request. If you are one of those special readers who has already donated, we thank you very much. If you donate just €2 today, Wikipedia can stay online for years to come. We kindly ask you: please don't scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you €2 of knowledge, please take a moment to donate. Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information is important to you. Thank you.

@Effeietsanders: The first highlighted phrase, "keep Wikipedia alive" ("Wikipedia in stand te houden"), could also be translated as "maintain", "peserve" or "sustain" Wikipedia, or "keep Wikipedia going". Those are the first alternatives DeepL offers; but the default translation is "keep Wikipedia alive" (Google has "keep Wikipedia going"). What do you think people's first associations are likely to be?

Needless to say, I think it's highly problematic to imply in messages to the public that donations are necessary to keep Wikipedia online, given the WMF's history of eight-figure annual surpluses, availability of very significant reserves and the fact that it regularly far exceeds its own fundraising targets: 2020/21, 2021/22. --Andreas JN466 07:28, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Andreas, I think this falls in the 'messaging' category. I think in this specific instance, 'maintain' or 'preserve' would be the most accurate translation of that word into English.

The problems our community had, were however of a different nature. First, there were quite a few grammatical errors that are consistent with scams (objective quality). Secondly, the message in Dutch sounded to us much more accusatory than in English (tone). Those were more of immediate concern to us and are probably more language specific. I imagine the same quality control may also be lacking in different languages though.

I am not sure if we should merge this conversation with the overall messaging of Fundraising in general - but rather focus on how we can make sure that the localized campaigns are at least don't give the vibe of a scam, and have an effective tone for that cultural setting. Effeietsanders (talk) 15:37, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Effeietsanders. I can confirm that grammatical errors on foreign-language banners are a longstanding problem. I recall regular complaints of that sort from around the world; indeed, Archive 7 of this very page contains complaints from German-speaking and Portuguese-speaking editors a couple of months ago bemoaning "embarrassing grammar mistakes" as well as "aggressive text" on their banners. The very next section in Archive 7, created last month, features editors complaining about the "somwhat pushy" tone of the Norwegian banners; the section below that, also from August, features Hebrew editors complaining about wording on their banners that is "aggressive and demanding", "needy" and culturally inappropriate. These are just the most recent examples. Andreas JN466 16:41, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

@JBrungs (WMF): in Europe the change from summer to winter time is at the last Weekend of October. So 3pm UTC is 5pm Dutch time in the beginning of October and not 4pm.--Hogü-456 (talk) 12:56, 18 September 2022 (UTC)