Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-11-26/Op-ed

Op-ed

Fundraising data should be more transparent

Timing

Apart from the occasional announcement, we don’t know for a fact when and in which country the Foundation plans to show banners asking for donations. Apparently it is a challenge to the Foundation to communicate the fundraising schedule well ahead of time. Let alone that the fundraising schedule is coordinated with the main (outreach) activities of editing communities, user groups, thematic organizations, and chapters. However, both fundraising and outreach activities make use of the same resource: the CentralNotice (the banner you see on top of each page). This lack of communication and coordination makes clashes of schedule unavoidable.

The solution seems obvious: communicate and coordinate schedules to reduce overlap as much as possible. There has been some initial alignment this year around Wiki Loves Monuments after a major clash last year in Italy, where fundraising was scheduled at the same time as the main activity of the local chapter. The Foundation did reach out this year to a number of major chapters a few months before the fundraising effort in their country. Some improvement is ongoing, but a scalable and much more timely approach is needed and would benefit both fundraising and outreach activities. Let’s do an annual inquiry among all affiliated organizations to identify optimal and problematic periods for fundraising activity in their country, and schedule together for the year in advance. With relatively little effort, we can avoid painful last-minute discussions and collisions.

Sharing country-level statistics

The WMF fundraising department has only released continent-level statistics since 2012.

While the recently published Fundraising Report for the year ending June 2016 (previous Signpost coverage) was very useful on sharing high-level trends and decisions, and explaining some of the WMF's research results, this seems a good moment to take a step back and look at how to inform and involve the community more actively.

A higher standard of transparency is required to enable volunteers to work effectively to support fundraising and execute other activities. One of the types of data that have been repeatedly requested by volunteers is the country-level statistics pertaining to donations. While the Foundation did publish statistics broken down by country until 2012, it has not since: volunteers have to be satisfied with continent-level statistics. The argument made by the Foundation is vaguely defined: “There are a few different reasons why the team may not be able to publish data from a country, including privacy and security and other legal reasons”. ^[3]

Whatever these legal reasons may be, I believe they need to be balanced against the benefits of releasing country-level data and/or statistics; this is not just a theoretical discussion for the sake of transparency.

Wider benefits

This kind of data could help volunteers to help the fundraising team in their countries. Local volunteers can combine an understanding of trends and the available data with a better understanding of local situations and changes, and be able to explain the data better. But for that local expertise to be applied, they need to understand the fundraising efforts in their own country. Country-level data could help volunteers in their other activities for the Wikimedia movement. They could use it in their media and outreach strategy, and can use it to provide context to journalists who are trying to understand how the citizens contribute to Wikipedia. This is a recurring question in interviews and by new contributors. It is plainly embarrassing for volunteers, advocating for transparent and openly licensed information flows, to say they don’t even know remotely how much their movement collects in contributions from their own country. When applying for external funding for their activities, or while advocating to governments on Wikimedia’s behalf on values we all share (here, for example, promoting improved legislation around copyright and access to information), they could use this data to demonstrate local active support and appreciation for Wikipedia/Wikimedia. With this data, they could demonstrate the extent to which readers from their country are willing to support the movement financially – and that the wide appreciation of readers goes beyond just words.

If the data were detailed enough, especially outside the main fundraising banner season, it could potentially even help affiliates to demonstrate and understand how their activities impact fundraising success, and to learn from it and focus their outreach around it.

Let's make optimal use of the expertise that our range of volunteers has to offer in our movement for fundraising optimization, and provide our volunteer base with the tools to help our mission in the best way possible! I hope the fundraising and legal departments will work together to see how we can take these improvements, implement them, and help volunteers do what they’re best at.

Notes

^ For example, from 2010 through 2012 there was an active (closed) mailing list coordinating the fundraising efforts with volunteers, and a number of chapters had an active role in fundraising within their country, choosing effective language in collaboration with local fundraising experts, hosting locally relevant payment methods, and handling questions from donors.
^ It should be noted that the Fundraising department did ask for banner suggestions.
^ Stephen LaPorte (Legal department, Wikimedia Foundation) responded in 2015 and just now & Seddon (Fundraising, Wikimedia Foundation) last month

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Spending

Today the WMF is spending 300 times as much (52596782 ÷ 177670 ≈ 296) as it was spending ten years ago.

Year	Total Support and Revenue	Total Expenses	Increase in Net Assets	Net Assets at year end
2003/2004 [1]	$80,129	$23,463	$56,666	$56,666
2004/2005 [2]	$379,088	$177,670	$211,418	$268,084
2005/2006 [3]	$1,508,039	$791,907	$736,132	$1,004,216
2006/2007 [4]	$2,734,909	$2,077,843	$654,066	$1,658,282
2007/2008 [5]	$5,032,981	$3,540,724	$3,519,886	$5,178,168
2008/2009 [6]	$8,658,006	$5,617,236	$3,053,599	$8,231,767
2009/2010 [7]	$17,979,312	$10,266,793	$6,310,964	$14,542,731
2010/2011 [8]	$24,785,092	$17,889,794	$9,649,413	$24,192,144
2011/2012 [9]	$38,479,665	$29,260,652	$10,736,914	$34,929,058
2012/2013 [10]	$48,635,408	$35,704,796	$10,260,066	$45,189,124
2013/2014 [11]	$52,465,287	$45,900,745	$8,285,897	$53,475,021
2014/2015 [12]	$75,797,223	$52,596,782	$24,345,277	$77,820,298

During this time the actual cost to run the servers ("you will probably be asked to donate the price of a rather expensive cup of coffee to keep our servers running" in the fundraising banner) has remained roughly the same. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:30, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Guy. However, I'm not entirely clear on how that connects to the piece above? Could you elaborate a bit? effeietsanders 10:25, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, pretty much everything you wrote was spot on right up to the conclusion. We really do need more transparency in all of the areas you covered. However, your conclusion ("Let's make optimal use of the expertise that our range of volunteers has to offer in our movement for fundraising optimization, and provide our volunteer base with the tools to help our mission in the best way possible!") is the equivalent of someone on a train calling for everyone to work together to make the train run smoother and go faster while ignoring the larger picture, which is that the train just entered a partly-constructed tunnel that only goes half way through a mountain at full speed. "Fundraising optimization" is a worthy goal, and you have presented some great ideas for optimizing fundraising, but our current ever-increasing spending trends are based upon the assumption of ever-increasing donations. One day the revenue is going to crash. and at that time it will be to late to dial back the overspending. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:51, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How the money is being spent (and whether those expenditures are necessary) is an interesting topic to discuss, but quite a different one. This post was about ways the interaction between the WMF Fundraising department and the community/affiliates could be improved so that the volunteers can work more effectively. That is independent from how much money has been raised, how it is being raised and how it is being spent. I don't quite agree with your oversimplification, but I think it would be distracting right now to go into detail on that. I'm glad to hear you do agree on my points with regards to the topic of my post. effeietsanders 14:52, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Holy crap, I had no idea the WMF was sitting on, if I'm reading that balance sheet right, around $67 million in investments. I've glanced at the financial reports before, but all that mind-numbing accounting jargon... How does that compare to similar nonprofits? It looks like the WMF is a mutual fund that just happens to have a side business. Sure would be nice to put some of that money towards, y'know, improving the content on the projects. How many academic database subscriptions would that buy? But, I can already hear the refrain of "We're just a tech outfit! It's up to the volunteers to create all the stuff that attracts the donors who pay our salaries!" I wonder what the WMF response would be if the volunteer community decided to use their online real estate to hold their own fundraiser for improving content. (I have a guess.) --47.138.163.230 (talk) 11:17, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are other nonprofits with large reserves (The Harvard University endowment is at $40 billion US dollars, but they have been building it up since 1636), but I can find no nonprofit other than a few Ponzi schemes that has increased spending by %29,600 (!) over ten years while doing essentially the same amount of actual work on their main reason for existing, which in our case is keeping the servers running. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:51, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK the Charity Commission, the government regulator for non-profits, used to recommend that all charities should target having reserves equal to 2 years spending (by no means all actually have this), though new guidelines published this year have dropped that. Apparently the average level for UK charities is 15 months spend. WMF has some way to go before reaching this level. Johnbod (talk) 15:31, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good op-ed! Icebob99 (talk) 17:44, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with effeiets, what ever the money is used for, we should try our best to fundraise as best as possible. And while 50+ million USD is a bit of money, I assume that much that was not done during the first years have been fixed now, like improved servers, backup etc. Part of the problem may also be that WMF is headquartered in San Francisco, possibly not the cheapest place to have an office. Maybe a major saving could be achieved by moving the WMF to Ireland? Still English-speaking, but much cheaper housing, lower vages etc. while at the same time a nice country that may easily attract talent from both the US, EU and the rest of the world. Ulflarsen (talk) 19:58, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It costs slightly less than $2.5 million USD per year to keep the servers running.[13] --Guy Macon (talk) 23:10, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The cost of running the servers will remain the same no matter where the WMF offices are located: the servers are in Florida, & will likely remain there for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, I don't see any benefit to keeping the WMF offices in San Francisco. The argument was that they needed to be located there to take advantage of the skilled pool of talent, but I haven't seen that happen: the people the WMF hired locally have tended to stay a very short time, & in that time have not offered any advantages to justify remaining in SF. Almost any other location in Europe or North America would be less expensive to house the WMF headquarters, & a number of locations/cities amongst them that offer an acceptable variety of amenities for the staff. It is past time to re-evaluate having WMF in San Francisco. -- llywrch (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

One small correction: the WMF technical infrastructure is not located in Florida; it is currently built of two main datacenters in the US, two caching POPs (one on the US west coast, one in the EU) and some networking POPs [14]. GLavagetto (WMF) (talk) 10:03, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We need to stay in the USA as our work is supported by the current laws in that country. Moving is such a pain that I imagine that is part of the inertia to relocating. I imagine the option is on the table though expecially with so many people working remotely. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Avoid Parkinson's Bicycle Shed Effect / Law of triviality. The solution to this problem is not to try to identify specific places to cut costs. The solution is to elect members of the board of directors who are committed to full transparency regarding where your donations go. As an experiment to prove that we have a transparency problem I spent over a year trying every avenue anyone suggested to try to get an answer to the question "May I see an itemized list of exactly what computer equipment and office furniture was purchased with the $2,690,659 spent in 2012 and the $2,475,158 spent in 2013?". I was stonewalled. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-03-18/Op-ed#Computer equipment and office furniture for one of my many attempts. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:47, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is more to leaving San Francisco than saving money. Having been a member of Wikipedia since almost the earliest days (having joined October 2002), I can attest to a change in the philosophy of the organization, which I suspect is due to having the headquarters in San Francisco. WMF wants to be part of Silicon Valley, & consciously or not copies many of the habits of that group: emphasis on technology, an addiction to making every action a "world-changing" achievement, & even the lack of transparency you mention, Guy. Startups are notoriously secretive, & compulsively insist on everyone involved signing non-disclosure agreements. NDAs are a fact of life in Silicon Valley.

I would hope that if the headquarters were moved to another city not so tightly caught up in the high tech startup mindset, say Denver or Chicago, maybe the WMF could recover some of the ideals we advocated in the old days; saving money is simply a tangible argument to achieve the move, & in the worst case what we would achieve. But I wouldn't be surprised if various people with far more clout than I want the Foundation to remain where it is due for the prestige, the effects of the Silicon Valley mindset be damned. -- llywrch (talk) 07:52, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To the above I would add that being "notoriously secretive" in the specific case of Wikipedia is just plain stupid. Do they imagine that there is some other online encyclopedia that will steal our best ideas, with "best ideas" being not our content or the way we run the encyclopedia -- both are freely available to all to copy -- but rather how every year we manage to spend $12,000 per employee ~~on furniture~~ on computer equipment and furniture?[15] --Guy Macon (talk) 16:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC) Edited 11:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm old enough to have learned that just because something is "just plain stupid" doesn't mean someone (singular or plural) won't do it. Even if forewarned. -- llywrch (talk) 16:42, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to interject here to point out that the WMF (in the person of Garfield Byrd, the former Chief of Administration) put to bed the "$12,000 on furniture" meme some time ago, saying in April of last year, "Of the amounts quoted most of the money was spent on servers and other equipment for the data center. The next biggest amount was for computer equipment and software for staff. Only about 9% of the amount in 2013 and about 7% of the amount in 2012 was spent on furniture and fixtures."

I don't disagree with my friend Lodewijk's op-ed or conclusions (indeed, while employed at WMF I made many of these same arguments repeatedly), but I would think we should strive for evidence based discussion, not relying on old and discounted memes. -Philippe (talk) 06:46, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's rather misleading claim. After a year and a half, I am still being stonewalled on the specific question that I have asked dozens of times on multiple pages. Are you or anyone else prepared to answer the question? If not, are you or anyone else prepared to be honest just tell me straight out that the WMF has no intention of ever answering my specific question? As a reminder, the specific unanswered question is: "Where can I go to see an itemized list of exactly what computer equipment and office furniture was purchased with the $2,690,659 spent in 2012 and the $2,475,158 spent in 2013? Verifying that those purchases were reasonable and fiscally prudent would go a long way towards giving me confidence that the rest of the money was also spent wisely. Needless to say, nobody needs to know who got what; an accounting with all personal information redacted is fine." --Guy Macon (talk) 11:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is a great article. I am glad that it is in The Signpost, because now we can all take for granted that everyone in fundraising at the Wikimedia Foundation has read this and knows about the issue. The article makes a strong case for transparency. There is a conservative request for information. So far as I know, no one has published anything to counter this request or explain why it should not be fulfilled. These ideas about sharing information from fundraising have been in circulation for at least 5 years and it is great that Effeietsanders put them into print here to raise them again to urgency. If more information is not shared, then at least now the fundraising team is aware that they are supposed to give an explanation of how they decide what to share. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:26, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You will never see anything countering this request or explaining why it should not be fulfilled. The only response from the WMF will be stonewalling (ignore it and it will go away). I proved this with my experiment asking about furniture detailed above. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Guy Macon The Wikimedia Foundation is addressing a series of concerns which are difficult or impossible. I will not defend any shortcomings, but to counterbalance the problems, I see processes which improve with time and discussion and that development makes me feel encouraged. We are in an environment with hundreds or thousands of major issues, and it is beyond any individual human's ability to browse them all. I do not expect that all urgent discussions must happen simultaneously and presently. Your judgement may be that not enough is improving, or that things are getting worse. For me, I see enough improving at a pace which pleases me that I can keep my faith in the process. To me, the WMF seems to be moving quickly as compared with other organizations of comparable size.

You have made your request for budget discussion repeatedly for a couple of years now. Perhaps when you post this again you can link to a list of instances in which you have raised the issue, that way you create supporting evidence that you have been seeking a response over time. I am sure other people know your name and this cause you keep raising. I want this discussed but I expect that many others are like me, and do not have time or capacity to make every issue the top priority for discussion. Just because more people do not drop what they are doing to rally behind an issue does not mean that they do not feel that it is important, or that they do not think about it. I like what you are doing. I wish it were easier to sort the most urgent causes among the many which are raised. The one you raise also seems important. I am not sure how it places among the top 100 issues. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:22, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the the top 100 issues. That's the Catch-22. I started all of this long ago by making a small effort to open up discussions on [A] WMF spending and [B] WMF software development. The (quite reasonable) responses I got were all about these being big, complex issues with a lot of opinions on what the solution is. I agreed with those arguments, so I carefully designed the following two very small, very specific, and rather noncontroversial suggestions:

Accounting: "May I please see an itemized list of exactly what computer equipment and office furniture was purchased with the $2,690,659 spent in 2012 and the $2,475,158 spent in 2013? Why am I unable to get anyone at the WMF to answer this question, even if the answer is "no"?" [16]
Software development: "In the HTML that Wikipedia sends to the browser, every line sent to the browser has a DOS-style carriage return and line feed (OD OA) as a line ending. If we used a Unix-style line feed (0A) that would save one byte on every single line of HTML on Wikipedia. Actually HTML works just fine with both the carriage return and the line feed removed, but let's just discuss (OD OA) vs (OA) for now. We could do this by making the line ending configurable in the preferences with the default (OD OA) and (OA) an option, then after we are sure there are no bad effects, change the default. Why am I unable to get anyone at the WMF who has the ability to make this change to discuss the merits of doing this?" [17] [18][19]

In both cases I was stonewalled, and I fully expect the result of this discussion to be the same.

So if I propose a big change, it is shot down for reasons that even I agree with, and if I propose a small change, it is stonewalled because it isn't a big change. Thus no change I propose will ever be evaluated. Catch-22. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:10, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree we need greater transparency around financials. We should be transparent by default and only hold stuff back when specific justification is present. The justification used should be provided when details are held back. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:20, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have been asked to do an editorial for the Signpost concerning my views expressed above, and I am doing research for it. Specifically, in 2005 Jimmy Wales told a TED audience the following:

"So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee … We actually hired Brion because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes."

First question: how many page views per month are we seeing ten years later (any figure from 2015 or 2016 will do)?

Second question: is there any reason to believe that bandwidth costs per page view has gone way up or way down in the last ten years? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:25, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We are seeing about 16 billion pageviews a month across all projects and all languages.[20]

Are bandwidth / data hosting costs more per pageview? I imagine yes as we now have two data centers in the US and are looking at maybe one in Asia. I would imagine our up times today are better than they were in the past.

How fast we serve pages is likely also much better but still varies globally. While Europe and North America see fast load times much of the rest of the world does not so would be good to see more money spent their.

The WMF does much more than just serve pages. I see the development of our apps and our mobile page as being exceedingly important as more than half of medical pageviews are now read on mobile.[21]

The visual editor (even though I still do not use it personally) is much loved and nearly exclusively used by the students I teach. Wikipedia zero gets about 70 million pageviews a month and reaches a demographic that would be hard to reach otherwise. The existence of this program also provides excellent leverage to convince organizations like WHO and ECGepedia to work with us. Etc :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:45, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Other work that has been key has been that of the community tech team. They have helped further developed the copypatrol tool which not only allows us to keep a better handle on copy and pasting but paid editing.

The content translation tool has been useful for developing medical content in further languaging and bringing further non Wikipedia translators into the fold. We have introduced many to Wikipedia with that tool.

I am happy to see the WMF involved in more than just servicing pages. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:57, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many people have their favorite parts of the WMF's ever-increasing spending. You like visual editor, others think it is a disaster. I am sure that someone out there will defend the twelve thousand dollars per employee per year spent on furniture or the ten thousand dollars per employee per year spent on travel. We could even find someone who defends having a 2000-person wikimania in a mountainous village with a population of 750 in northern Italy. The problem is that the sum total of your desire to spend money plus all of the other people who desire to spend money is fueling the WMF's ever-increasing spending and putting us on the road to ruin. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:15, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We are not spending money that we do not have so not sure how this is going to ruin us? From what I understand the plan is for expenditures and fundraising goals to level off at around were they are currently.

With respect to visual editor, I know of many new editors who like it. As I said I do not use it myself. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "From what I understand the plan is for expenditures and fundraising goals to level off at around were they are currently",^{[Citation Needed]}. I have been closely monitoring the many places where the WMF discusses finances, and have seen nothing even hinting at this -- but of course I may have missed something. Re "We are not spending money that we do not have so not sure how this is going to ruin us?", as a physician I am sure that you are aware that in its early stages cancer does not as a rule consume resources that the body doesn't have, and indeed that the real problem is that the cancer just keeps growing and growing, and that it is this ever-increasing growth that promises ruin for the patient, not the current effects of the small malignant growth. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:32, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Macon: Substituting a carriage return and line feed with a line feed is unlikely to have any effect on page weight. All of our pages are served with gzip compression, so common character sequences are substituted during transmission anyway. The WMF has actually done a lot of impactful work on page weight and rendering speed in the past couple years.[22][23][24][25] Kaldari (talk) 22:16, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, I see that you were already informed about the gzip compression over a year ago. Strange that you still claim no one at the WMF will discuss it with you. Kaldari (talk) 22:28, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My question was not "Why am I unable to get anyone at the WMF to discuss the merits of doing this?" It was "Why am I unable to get anyone at the WMF who has the ability to make this change to discuss the merits of doing this?" A developer working on page weight could do a quick test in less than five minutes that will answer the gzip question using the actual Wikipedia environment. Instead, I am being asked by people who have zero ability to actually make the change to duplicate Wikipedia and do my own tests, and of course if I do that I will be then be told that I have not duplicated things like the caching that a large site with multiple servers uses. Plus, due to the overhead and latency of compression and decompression, you should only gzip files above a certain size threshold (often chosen to be between 150 and 1000 bytes), so I would also have to figure out the size at which Wikipedia stops compressing, estimate how many pages are below that (redirects are tiny), and in the end I still will have utterly failed to open up a discussion with an actual developer who has at least the potential of running a real-world test of my proposal. So yes, I gave up. I see a lot of work with zero chance of success. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:10, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Macon: FYI, the person who replied to you on Phabricator is a Principal Software Engineer at the WMF. They would definitely have the ability to make the change you are asking for. However, I don't think it's likely that anyone is going to pursue this idea. If MediaWiki wasn't using gzip it would be a great idea, but as it stands it just isn't likely to have any practical effect. Kaldari (talk) 08:35, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected. If he indicated that he was a developer or offered to be helpful I missed it. You have no idea whether the existence of gzip invalidates my idea. It is just a guess on your part. Many wikipedia pages are not gzipped. We don't know how many or how much traffic they get. Some browsers don't support gzip, and not supporting gzip may be more common in the third world countries that my proposal addresses. Finally, compression is not free. If Wikipedia's gzip no longer has to compress carriage return/line feed sequences, that frees up a slot in the uses-few-bits part of the token space for another sequence, and all the other sequences move up into slots that require fewer bits. What is the end result? Very little gain or substantial gains? I don't know and have no way of finding out. A Principal Software Engineer at the WMF could run a couple of experiments in the real Wikipedia server environment in well under half a day and tell us whether there is enough space savings to make this feasible.

Please keep in mind that after the WMF stonewalled me (stonewalling: not evaluating and thus never actually accepting or rejecting a suggestion) on my proposal (Start a project -- a real project with measurable goals and a schedule -- to reduce page weight), I picked the smallest and easiest to implement suggestion that I could think of to see if they would stonewall me on that one as well. The result has been more than sufficient to cause me to abandon both suggestions and to never again make any suggestion about WMF software development. I quit, but I will never agree that I wasn't stonewalled. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Editor butts in: All, I'm pleased to see so much interest in developing ideas for a new op-ed. However, one of the reasons I initially suggested an op-ed is that Guy Macon's main point is different from that of effeietsanders, and worthy of a discussion space of its own. Possible to move this discussion somewhere else? I'd suggest creating a draft (even if it is only a rough sketch, early on) by clicking the "Create new op-ed draft" button here. And to the extent there are diverging views, I'd be happy to consider more than one piece, from different authors; that way, there's no need to work out fundamental disagreements prior to publication.

Any further comments on transparency or collaboration with other organizations? -Pete Forsyth (talk) 23:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Every time I go to Wikipedia at a library I am subjected to this fund-raising banner and I can't get rid of it. I know people will tell me to sign in, but when that banner is there, there is no place to do so. I want to sign in anyway because I don't want my edits recorded by IP address and my contibutions help me to decide what to do while I'm there.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:06, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all,

This op-ed almost relates to many of the responsibilities that fall under my role and so it was only proper that I be the one respond. With being at a partnerships and funding workshop at Wikimedia Deutschland with a number of other affiliates earlier this week, as well as the launch of our English Fundraiser on Tuesday, I have been trying to find the time so that I could properly respond.

I wanted to acknowledge the issues raised by Lodewijk regarding country-level data. I can’t give any further background or information regarding this decision, but I do genuinely recognise the frustrations with that. As someone working in community engagement, and someone who has been involved in the community for the last ten years, one of the most difficult things to do is to give an answer that you know doesn’t satisfy requests for information.

In terms of the work that my department does, trying to involve more community involvement in the fundraiser has become a major goal over the last year. You’ve already noted that for the last two years we have had an open page calling for fundraising ideas, which produced many suggestions whether in terms of banners or processes that actually got implemented. In fact my very role came about partially from that very page. It was a direct recognition that we needed to do better in terms of engaging the community in the department's activities.

This year we have been trying to collaborate more closely with local affiliates regarding translations, localization and the type of messages we use in our fundraising appeals and communications, in order to make them effective, culturally appropriate and relevant to the specific community we fundraise in. This year we worked closely with staff at the Swedish and Dutch chapters, brainstorming and editing copy for our fundraiser. We experimented with an annual email newsletter in conjunction with Wikimedia Italia and we supported Wikimedia Hungary, Italia and Poland with their annual tax campaigns to make them more effective. These are small steps but we are slowly trying to build on these relationships, treating them as the foundations for much cooperation across the movement. Reviewing translations should only be a minimum, and there is genuine aim for the community's efforts to be a lot more than that.

There are definite challenges when it comes to scheduling of campaigns. Some chapters plan their CentralNotice activities well in advance as part of their annual planning, other chapters take a more flexible approach where they go with opportunities that arise through the year and communities that are more fluid or come together for specific event are more reactive and their planning occurs much closer to events they run. Likewise we put together rough timeline for campaigns for the following financial year (July-June following year) that is normally put in place in the two months prior to the start of that financial year (May & June). The further we plan the more uncertainty contained within those plans. There are changing dependencies stemming from technical work, work with payment processors sometimes simply changing campaign priorities which can include unexpected changes in previous campaigns. The known larger campaigns we do our best to work around (WLE, WLM & CEE) along with regular local campaigns (WikiFranca). The aim is to reach out to chapters at least 4 months in advance and in some instances up to 6 months. We published our timeline for the first 8 months of the year on the CentralNotice calendar which was as far as we felt comfortable in our plans, and we are trying to firm up the plans for the remainder of this financial year and I’ve begun reaching out to affiliates where we are planning on doing online fundraising in their geography. We haven’t had a major conflict in 13 months and I hope that the “Days since last accident” number continues to grow in value.

So in short, yes, there is a lot that can be done to improve the way we work with the community but actively trying to build that stronger working relationship with our affiliates and the wider online communities. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 04:51, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Seddon (WMF): The author states "It is plainly embarrassing for volunteers, advocating for transparent and openly licensed information flows, to say they don't even know remotely how much their movement collects in contributions from their own country." To simply acknowledge that the WMF is deliberately withholding this information and you understand there's frustration is insufficient. It is foolish to ask volunteers to help WMF better exploit their countrymen with ad campaigns but to then leave those same volunteers holding the bag. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:03, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MOS BOLD

I'm glad to hear Effeietsanders's opinion, especially coming from someone outside en-wp. I am offended, however, by the use of bold in the body text. The abuse of boldface, italics, and underlines are well-known in the fundraising world as methods to snag the drive-by reader; to make them hear the pleas for help. I can't help but assume the writer thinks I am cattle based on their effort to moo and bray at me. Please do not continue to condescend. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:19, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To Chris troutman and anyone else interested in the Signpost's quality: Please do get in touch if you'd like to volunteer. We will make a more comprehensive statement about the best ways to engage in the coming weeks; but in the meantime, as always, I am committed to finding a good fit for anyone who has a sincere desire to help. (This editorial note from October 2015 is still a fairly accurate overview of how we work.) If copy editing is your thing, I'd especially suggest getting in touch with Montanabw -- though I am also happy to discuss, and our HR person Rosiestep is also a good resource. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 02:30, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Chris troutman: I'm sorry to hear this use of layout offends you. You're correct that I'm not a typical member of the English Wikipedia community. I guess the use of layout is a matter of taste: I like to use boldface in pieces like this (opinionating articles, not encyclopedic articles), to indicate clearly to the reader which key phrases are most important to me. I consider this to be especially helpful to the non-native speakers. Boldfaced text would, in my texts, typically be used to indicate importance, while italics would be used to indicate quotations and/or foreign phrases. Why do you feel that the use of such text to indicate importance would be condescending, given the aim at a wide audience? effeietsanders 15:58, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Effeietsanders: I enjoyed your piece. The content you communicated was important. Perhaps you felt you had to draw attention to certain phrases while aiming for "a wide audience". But as I mention, this abuse of font to draw in the reader is found in advertising pitches, especially for any number of non-profit groups like UNICEF or Habitat for Humanity in their letters begging for donations. I'm not the lowest common denominator and that's my objection. It would be akin to going to see a hilarious stand-up comedian only to see them put on clown shoes and a big red nose in an effort to get some members of the audience to laugh. I encourage your continued participation on en-wp, as I'd like to know that the editor frustration we feel here is not exclusive to Anglophones. Concurrently, I'm a customer for your content and cheap efforts to get my attention will only leave me unhappy. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:24, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I LOVE CHEAP EFFORTS. I would be very offended if they are not used MoRe OFTEN. Who let this coulrophobic Chris Troutman comment on here? He uses SPACES in his text. The gawdy departure from scriptio continua is really galling to many. I am extremely unhappy and would like a refund for this issue.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 01:20, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(e.c.) Chris, I agree with your objection; there's good reason that MOS discourages the speckling of bold face (it's not "font") in main text. It was fixed, and that should have been the end of it. Lodewijk has written a good, though-provoking piece, so let's concentrate on the issues he raises. Tony (talk)

Endowment

Better transparency is a good goal in both fundraising and spending, and starting this year, for the Wikipedia Endowment. Is there more information available regarding the endowment than this blog post or this Wikipedia15 article? Was there a discussion on Wikipedia or Wikimedia about which company would be managing the endowment, or do editors not have influence on this kind of decision? Community involvement might be beneficial. For example, one concern might be whether management fees are too high. The Tides website has a one-page summary of the collective action funds. The summary describes an unusually high management fee of "3-5%." Generally, management fees don't include fund fees, which might add an additional 0.2 to 3%. There are many concerns that could be ameliorated with greater transparency, such as endowment volatility, diversification, impartiality and influence, ethical investing, along with many other issues. This is likely a can of worms, so an article discussing the matter would be helpful. -kslays (talk • contribs) 02:20, 16 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That appears to be good news indeed, but of course the devil is in the details. Assume for the sake of argument that contributions crash to less than 10% of the current numbers. Further assume that the WMF keeps spending, rapidly burning through the reserve. Would the WMF then be able to withdraw funds from principle of the endowment to continue spending? Would the endowment be at risk if the WMF went bankrupt? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:25, 16 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(...Sound of crickets...) --Guy Macon (talk) 11:58, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No one is going to respond to you, man. You don't accept the answers you're given, (redacted). Why are you surprised that you get no response?--Jorm (talk) 21:45, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that Jorm has an unrelated problem with me that may be influencing his behavior. We had a previous disagreement about the quality of some software he worked on when he was with the WMF. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:56, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Need help updating image for Wikimedia financials

At User:Guy Macon/Wikipedia has Cancer the table has been updated for 2017-2018 but the image at commons:File:Wikimedia Foundation financial development multilanguage.svg only goes to 2016-2017. Could someone with SVG editing skills please look at that table and update the image? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:56, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE: I solved the problem on my page by replacing the image with a template. The other pages that use the image still need an updated version. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:01, 16 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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