There is clearly a celebrity factor involved, and this is something that many Wikipedians find unappealing.
The issue is that the majority on donations are probably coming from people who don't think about it on this level. They see a compelling ask from someone they tangentially recognize as being the progenitor (however meaningful that term can be in the context of a wiki) of Wikipedia which makes the connection that the site needs their help. This is actually something I tend to encourage on Kickstarter: creators should make videos explaining who they are and why they need support for tier project. They should sit themselves in front of the camera and give a human face to the project while explaining how they're going to spend the money they raise. The projects that fail to introduce their creator, but instead opt for a high level explanation of their idea, tend to do worse. This is anecdotally explained by the possibility that backers need to feel like their money is being directed to someone who is accountable and recognizable for spending it in a responsible fashion. Showing banner ads featuring Wikipedians who edit but are not publicly held accountable for it doesn't achieve this goal: they are volunteers and while they may generate and curate the content, they aren't the ones that will be held accountable in the sphere of public opinion for it's use. While it may be misguided for donors to believe that Jimmy is the one responsible for the proper use of their donation, it's pretty clear that it seems to be working in terms of raising money for the org. The question is really whether Wikipedia the community is willing tolerate what needs to be done by Wikipedia the organization in order to keep the lights on and the servers running. There are limits to this logic: obviously the Wikimedia Foundation should not hold puppies hostage in exchange for donations, etc. But they also shouldn't short change themselves by not running an ad that has proven itself to be effective. Whether ads like these eventually degrade the quality and brand of Wikipedia has yet to be seen. As much as they annoy me (and FYI you can turn them off), I believe they represent a reasonable tradeoff between the value of the site and it's lack of business model. Further reading: http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Is-having-Jimmy-Wales-picture-shown-across-the-top-of-every-page-helping-or-hindering-Wikipedia-raise-money http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing F On Nov 17, 2010, at 8:19 PM, Sage Ross <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Elizabeth Stark <[email protected]> wrote: >> Right, I think the personal appeal aspect of it makes sense, because people >> are much more likely to be motivated by a humanized plea than by a faceless >> organization. That said, a better way to do it would be to have personal >> appeals from Wikipedians from around the world, and rotate them, in >> different languages, etc. >> > > That's actually in the works. We tested the first personal appeal > from an editor yesterday; unfortunately, it didn't beat Jimmy, > although it was better than the less personal non-Jimmy messages we > tested early on before the fundraiser began in earnest. But hopefully > we can find some other messages that do better than Jimmy; a number of > other people's personal appeals are planned for testing soon. > > This will give some idea of why the Jimmy banner works well: > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Focus_group > > It's not because it's him in particular, as far as we can tell. > > If you have specific ideas that you think would do better, you can > propose them: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010 > > This is being executed as "the fundraiser that anyone can edit"; > unfortunately, we just haven't come very close to beating the Jimmy > banner yet. > > -Sage > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
