"Wikipedia Forever" fundraiser begins

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Fundraiser launches

Fundraiser 2005 21 February 2005

Fundraiser 2006 18 December 2006

Fundraiser 2007 22 October 2007

Fundraiser 2008 10 November 2008

Last week's launch of the annual Wikimedia Fundraiser had a rocky start. Originally scheduled to begin on Monday, November 9, the first sitenotice banners were put up across the global projects on Tuesday evening (PST), only to be taken down again in the early hours of Wednesday due to technical problems. Modified versions of the controversial banners were subsequently restored on Thursday evening, but only to Wikipedia projects.

The Tuesday start had been delayed because of technical issues, including problems with the new in-house credit card processing mechanism. (All previous fundraisers have used PayPal for credit card processing.)

The campaign began with the "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER" banner displayed as a sitenotice on all projects. The banner had previously been criticized on Meta (see previous article), and after launch it immediately drew more controversy and complaints from Wikimedians, who felt that the campaign's problems included:

• The use and message of "Forever";
• The all-caps text and large size of the banner;
• The use of the Wikipedia logo on all projects' banners, and the donation page - including non-Wikipedia projects, such as Wiktionary, even though the project name was changed;
• Some slogans appeared to result in awkward, ominous or threatening phrasing

Other controversies included the campaign's other messages, and whether the community should have been further consulted. In addition, some people objected to the amount of money being paid to the public relations company Fenton Communications to work on the Foundation's messaging. The current drive marks the beginning of an 11-month, $250,000 contract with Fenton to work on improving the Foundation's public relations and public image.

There was discussion on both the English Wikipedia and English Wikinews about removing the banners due to community displeasure with them; as a result of this, at noon (UTC) on Wednesday, English Wikipedia administrator RockMFR hid the central sitenotice on the English Wikipedia by altering Wikipedia's global CSS file. Durova awarded RockMFR a barnstar for this, which was signed by over 20 editors.

However, his action was reverted 15 minutes later by Erik Möller (User:Eloquence), Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, on the basis that "fundraiser sitenotices aren't subject to community consensus".

After two hours Möller himself disabled the sitenotices across all projects. This was due to technical mistakes in the banner code, which resulted in the banner links being unclickable in Internet Explorer, and blanking the entire page when dismissed. Users of custom CSS for underline links were also affected, as the banner code was overriding their settings. Möller said, "This is unacceptable and inexcusable, and I apologize on behalf of WMF for the bad start."

By Thursday morning, several fixes and modifications had been made by the Foundation fundraising team. Thursday's relaunch, to Wikipedia projects only, used four banners as sitenotices with the uppercase text changed to sentence case:

• "Wikipedia Forever" (33%)
• "Knowledge Forever, Ad-Free Forever, Wikipedia Forever" (33%)
• "For your great, great, great, great granddaughter" (16%)
• "For your great, great, great, great grandson" (16%)

The grandson / granddaughter slogans were discontinued during the first day. According to Head of Community Giving Rand Montoya, they were removed as they did not perform as well as the others. The remaining two slogans then received equal time.

Technical fixes were implemented for various browser compatibility problems and issues with the credit card form. Additionally, the landing pages for international chapters have been improved. Issues with geolocation, used to display the correct local chapter and appropriate currency, caused a good deal of difficulty in the first few days of the campaign; as of Tuesday geolocation was working. An issue with protecting the anonymity of donors was also addressed.

After all it's given me I thought I'd give something back.

— Ms. Eanna Kiely, donor^[1]

This table shows the statistics for the first five days of the fundraiser, along with the equivalent data for the past two years. Donations to international chapters are excluded from these totals; although 50% of chapter revenue will be reinvested in the Foundation. Figures have been rounded to the nearest dollar.

A live feed of donor comments can be viewed here, and an overview of donations here.

^a November 11th data is for a partial day; banners were not visible for the entire period.

^b There are no results for November 12th as the banners were disabled for technical fixes.

^c According to Erik Möller the November 13th dollar amounts reported online are grossly incorrect due to a problem recording currency conversions with the new credit card processing form.

According to Montoya the fundraising team is working on better public reporting of donation statistics, and expect to have something up this week.

On Wednesday, Möller posted a page for alternative banners on Meta, which has drawn a number of suggestions. He also left a detailed explanation about the fundraiser and the "Wikipedia Forever" theme:

“

First, a few comments on the theme "Wikipedia Forever", and why we chose it for this year's campaign. "Wikipedia Forever" is meant to represent both a present and future commitment from the Wikimedia Foundation to preserve, protect, and support Wikipedia for the long run, and to appeal to the public to support us in doing so. Yes, it's an emotional appeal, not a literal message. It's our kick-off message, not our only message. It will be followed by other messages later in the campaign which will re-connect to the same theme. Our fundraising messages have, historically, always caused significant unhappiness among the editor community. However, we also acknowledge that the early, all-caps, "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER" banner was too in-your-face for many Wikipedians, and that even the current "Wikipedia Forever" theme, as part of a larger set of banners, still raises concerns. Please be assured that we're listening. Again, the "Wikipedia Forever" theme is only the kick-off of the campaign, not the entire campaign. We've already eliminated all-caps from all our banners, and we've pulled up some of our later-stage banners into the first phase. This represents a change in response to the feedback we've received from you. The guiding principle of our campaign is data. As we're gathering the first full reports about the success of the banners we're currently running, we'll be able to make a better decision, going forward, about which ones to continue to run. This is the primary driver of the campaign.

”

Möller also noted that at least some community-developed banners will be used, though it takes time to test new banners. He also addressed some of the criticisms of the campaign, and announced that customised banners for non-Wikipedia projects will be rolling out next week.

Early on 17 November (UTC), the banners were adjusted again and "Wikipedia Forever" was reduced to a 20% frequency. More traditional thermometer-style banners are now being shown, with the slogans "Wikipedia. Ad-free Forever" and "Wikipedia Is Powered by People Like You." A slogan from last year "Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you" is also being used. Non-English Wikipedias are featuring "Wikipedia Forever" and two thermometer banners, one about the number of articles and one about the number of users. According to Montoya, the fundraising team will constantly test the effectiveness of different banners against each other and adjust the messages as the fundraiser progresses.

There are two current pages on Meta for feedback about the fundraiser:

• Launch feedback, for feedback about technical problems with the launch
• Alternative banners, for suggesting new or modified banners.

On the English Wikipedia, there are two pages for discussion about the fundraiser:

• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia Forever
• Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Fundraising headers

Outside media coverage of the fundraiser so far includes:

Full story: In the news

• TechCrunch: Wikipedia Runs Ads Highlighting Their No-Ad Policy
• Venture Beat: Wikipedia seeks to raise $7.5M in ‘Wikipedia Forever’ campaign
• Softpedia: Help Wikipedia Raise $7.5 Million in 'Wikipedia Forever' Campaign

And if you're looking to donate, the form is at wmf:Donate.

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16 November 2009 (all comments)

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A couple of quick additional notes:

• The numbers so far still need to be treated with caution; we're optimizing the reporting infrastructure as I write this.
• This is the first fundraiser, ever where we're using geo-targeting to highlight a chapter when the prospective donor comes from a country with a participating chapter. Chapters have participated before, but they're receiving significantly more visibility than last year. Wikimedia UK is also participating for the first time. Chapter totals aren't included in the statistics, but chapters will re-invest 50% of their revenue in the Wikimedia Foundation. We'll be getting the first chapter reports soon.
• With regard to cultural awareness, we've given translators a lot of flexibility in how they want to translate/localize the messages, and chapters have played a role here as well where they exist. For example, the German Wikipedia banner says "Strengthen Wikipedia - for the future". But for next year, I definitely want us to have more lead time in developing culturally appropriate messaging.

We're working on next stage banners right now and hope to have them up soon for testing. We're also further investigating whether there are remaining issues with the new donation module, credit card processing, etc. (We may end up testing this year's form against last year's).--Eloquence* 20:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As you've probably noticed, we've phased in new banners, and "Wikipedia Forever" is only running at 20% on en.wp right now. We're running different banners on the English Wikipedia and the non-English projects, and should have solid comparison data tomorrow. We'll also build at least one banner for the non-Wikipedia projects tomorrow.--Eloquence* 01:29, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks Erik, I incorporated some of your points into the story pre-publication. — Pretzels ^Hii! 14:35, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Why are people still using Internet Explorer? Tony (talk) 15:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  Corporate users. — Pretzels ^Hii! 15:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  Why are people still using Windows and Microsoft products in general? Management stupidity, a/k/a the Dilbert Factor. We have no choice when our Pointy-Haired Bosses are reading "Zero" on the cluemeter. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • • The problem is, ReactOS is still in alpha stage. Emulation is too slow for me, and native doesn't work for my eclectic software collection. I try every new release, but alpha is alpha. As soon as I can use it for production work, M$ can kiss my hairy cesarean. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 21:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I still think it should have been "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER ^{[citation needed]}" -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 16:36, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• [3] So the banners which everyone hated and didn't think would work....didn't work. Strange. And why are we aiming for 25 million articles (Who came up with the figure and what relevance does it have to anything)??? Trebor (talk) 23:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• That was a funny add. I didn't realize it was asking for money. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I just want to say that in my experience, marketing campaigns always face the same criticisms when presented to a committee of engineers. Such committees seem unable to appreciate, let alone agree on, anything beyond literal meaning. (And geeky kitten jokes.) The fanatical insistence on proper capitalization is a case in point. "Wikipedia. Ad-free forever. Donate Now." is anemic and far inferior to the original version with capital letters, and that concession seems to have done nothing to allay the crowd. Probably nothing would be satisfactory except for a plain twelve-point Arial statement saying "Wikipedia. Ad-free for now. You can donate if you feel like it, or do it later."--Yannick (talk) 01:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree. Caps would've been appropriate for "Wikipedia. Ad-free forever. Donate Now.". After all, it's B1FF, not b1ff. Paradoctor (talk) 14:23, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• How much did the Wikimedia Foundation pay for this bit of silliness? This sort of factually dubious assertion makes me less, not more, willing to donate. If I weren't a regular, I wouldn't have upon seeing this, instead of the more tasteful appeal we had last year. Ray^Talk 16:26, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]