Re: [Wikimedia-l] COI editing by WMF staff
I haven't read this thread, but I'll explain my editing history as Wikitedium: First of all, I listed my user name as soon as I started at Wikipedia. It's still listed here on my (out of date) staff/contractor page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zackexley I did start an article about myself a long time ago. I didn't know there was a policy against it. I wasn't an active editor and knew virtually no policies. I created the article because right wing media personalities were doing hit pieces on me and the Republican party was sending out emails asking people to write letters to the editor about me featuring lots of false facts. So I saw Wikipedia as an open encyclopedia that anyone can edit where I could set the record straight. Later I learned it was against policy and FELT REALLY BAD. As for the other edits on projects I was involved with. My personal opinion is that those kinds of edits are vital to the future of Wikipedia. I want everyone to add everything they're working on to Wikipedia -- and then all their critics to come and add what they know. I'm saddened every time I go looking for something I expect to be in Wikipedia and find nothing -- and am forced to rely on the organization's own site or whatever. OK -- I think that's all you need from me. Now enjoy yourselves as you continue to grind Wikipedia to a whining halt. On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 2:39 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 17 April 2014 15:23, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote: After he was hired, Zack continued to use that account -- more responsibly, yes -- but he neither corrected the false statement on its user page, or disclose his connection to it. That is untrue; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zackexley Interesting, but not especially relevant. What path could a reader or editor of the Zack Exley article follow to learn about that connection? Disclosing on the Zack Exley user page isn't sufficient to meet basic transparency. Actually, it meets the requirements of the project. It's not perfect, but we have administrators who don't even give that much disclosure to their own alternate accounts (or that they edit without logging in), and nobody's getting the pitchforks out for them. If you don't like the edits made by the account, work on-wiki to address the issues. You know how to start an AfD for any articles you think are about non-notable subjects, you know how to un-peacock an article. If one really wants to push the COI envelope, one could say that users who are former employees of an organization shouldn't be editing articles related directly to the organization or its employees (salaried or contract), though. Indeed, one of the biggest COI issues we have on English Wikipedia is former employees trying to use our articles to bring problems to light about organizations. The disclosure was made. Incidentally, that's all that would need to be done even at the farthest reaches of the proposed terms of use amendment. Risker ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Zack ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising
Sue: I also hate the idea of premiums. We will never want to do lame premiums. But there may in the future be a cool thing to offer with donations, who knows -- so why limit ourselves by saying we will never ever do something? Zack On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: A supportive anecdote for you, Matt: Back in 2008, I got toured through the fundraising operation of one of the major American public broadcasters. It had a large fundraising team that included a group dedicated solely to tracking and shipping premiums. Its boss advised us to avoid going down the premiums road: he said once you start it's very difficult to stop, because donors grow to expect them. I remember being reminded of a study, I think by Dan Ariely, in which he found that if you offer people small material incentives for doing something, they begin to see the transaction in self-interested terms, and the incentive can end up being viewed as too small -- insulting, and not good value. Essentially IIRC small material incentives can have the effect of shifting people from an intrinsically-motivated mindset (donor) into a transactional mindset (economically-self-interested rational actor). So, I agree with you that before we instituted premiums, we'd want to think long and hard about what benefits they would bring, and what unintended consequences might result. Thanks, Sue On Aug 15, 2013 4:20 AM, Matthew Walker mwal...@wikimedia.org wrote: Technology limitations aside, there are two things we throw around in the team a lot; that we should not give the impression that a user *must* pay to use a WMF property, and that we will never ever do gift premiums. This sounds a bit like Fundraising principles or similar. Are these documented anywhere (e.g. on Meta-Wiki)? If not, I think it'd be great to start a page. :-) In the past days there's been discussion internal to the fundraising team -- it appears that the 'fundraising principles' I thought we held are not uniformly held by others. In this particular instance it seems that gift premiums are not entirely off the table. I've been told that the reason we have not done them in the past is mostly due to technical limitations. The current view is that we should keep our options open to future experimentation if the situation allows. personal hat At this I'll take off my foundation hat and state that I remain firmly opposed to gift premiums being used as a donation incitement. I hope that if we do, at some point, press forward and experiment with premiums that, before this happens, ... - We show reasonable evidence that the gain in monetary income will fully offset the new cost in managing gifts. - We either have some method to ship worldwide without subsidy; or we communicate beforehand that we will not be able to do this in some regions *and* that we understand and have a plan for the fallout that will probably cause. - We have premiums that actually mean something to the movement; e.g. you do not donate $100 and get a t-shirt. - We show reasonable evidence that if the experiment doesn't work that we will not have hurt our future donation prospects. (E.g. will people always expect premiums if we offer them once?) - That we have a solid communications plan in place to immediately offset any possible suggestion that you are 'buying' a piece of the foundation with your donation. Just my two cents. /personal hat ~Matt Walker Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising Technology Team On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 11:50 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Matthew Walker wrote: Technology limitations aside, there are two things we throw around in the team a lot; that we should not give the impression that a user *must* pay to use a WMF property, and that we will never ever do gift premiums. Hi Matt. This sounds a bit like Fundraising principles or similar. Are these documented anywhere (e.g. on Meta-Wiki)? If not, I think it'd be great to start a page. :-) MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Changes at the Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising Team
Thanks everyone - I learned and grew a lot here thanks to all of you. Now Lisa, Megan, Sara, Katie and the whole fundraising team are going to take it up to a whole new level of efficiency and brilliance. I'm excited about my next gig -- not yet announced, but not a secret -- which is going back to Thoughtworks (where I was before WMF) to build and lead a team that will make tools for grassroots/political organizing on a pro bono basis. If you ever see a group that's got a great campaign/movement/protest on their hands who need some just-in-time tools, please let me know at zackex...@gmail.com Zack On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 8:53 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com wrote: Congratulations about the new site Zack, and congratulations to Megan, Lisa, and Sara! Dan Rosenthal On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 9:38 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: I know I've been critical of Zack Exley for technical reasons over the past year, but I think very highly of him as a person. If I was recruiting colonists for an interstellar colonization mission, he would likely be in the top 100 based on his accomplishments, orientation, drive, and social skills alone. But even if he weren't, his new project is outstandingly spectacular on its own merits, and I want to urge everyone reading this in or from the U.S. to sign up and join it: http://www.fivethirtysix.org/ I predict that anyone with even a passing interest in U.S. politics who doesn't follow FiveThirtySix will first regret it, and then end up following it afterwards to prevent further such regret. Also, congratulations to Megan and Lisa! Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Changes at the Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising Team
If I was recruiting colonists for an interstellar colonization mission, he would likely be in the top 100 Thanks James - If I ever publish a book, I'm putting that quote on the back! On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 8:38 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: I know I've been critical of Zack Exley for technical reasons over the past year, but I think very highly of him as a person. If I was recruiting colonists for an interstellar colonization mission, he would likely be in the top 100 based on his accomplishments, orientation, drive, and social skills alone. But even if he weren't, his new project is outstandingly spectacular on its own merits, and I want to urge everyone reading this in or from the U.S. to sign up and join it: http://www.fivethirtysix.org/ I predict that anyone with even a passing interest in U.S. politics who doesn't follow FiveThirtySix will first regret it, and then end up following it afterwards to prevent further such regret. Also, congratulations to Megan and Lisa! Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rationale for fundraising record?
On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 1:59 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Zack Exley wrote: In past years, the campaign has dragged on for weeks with us only making $150,000 per day. We wanted to avoid that this year, and so we did everything we could to get the money in fast, so that we weren't littering the sites with banners for little return. Thank you for the very detailed reply. I'm highlighting just this paragraph to say thank you to the fundraising team again for all of its work to reduce the time the banners spend on the site. This is fantastic. :-) In previous discussions, there were questions about trade-offs and I think you mentioned that the Wikimedia community would have to make some choices about certain implementation details (e.g., stickiness of banners) after evaluating the cost of these features (annoyance to readers and editors) versus their benefit (increase in donations, decrease in fundraising banner time, etc.). I realize it's January and that the next annual fundraiser is many months away, but do you have any idea when this year you'll be having a discussion about these trade-offs and where? Any suggestions about how that might best be done? There are so few people who participate on this list that I would say this isn't a good place to measure the feelings of either WM contributions or readers. There's also the problem of people not necessarily knowing what actually annoys them or interferes with their experience the most when it's being discussed in the abstract. And surveys of course have their problems. Moreover, what are the important questions? What do some editors find objectionable from an aesthetic point of view? (Even though we are now sparing logged in users completely.) What gets in the way of readers' use of the site? Or other more nuanced questions about readers' reactions? For example, do some choices cause readers to perceive banners as ads, cause confusion or possibly reduce readership? Any thoughts? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising updates?
On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On Dec 14, 2012 3:37 PM, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: Since we took banners down for everyone, we've mostly been displaying them only 1 or 2 times to people who've never seen them. Though yesterday we pushed that up to 10 because we're hoping to reach our US$25 million goal in the next few days. Obviously it's early, but that change doesn't seem to have caused a noticeable break from the existing trend on the fundraising graph. The graph can be misleading because it counts email revenue too. Over several days that we were just showing 2 banners to new people, we were seeing a steady decline in revenue each day. We don't where that will bottom out -- whether at $50K per day or $1000 per day. The answer to that question will have a big impact on our fundraiser for next year. Have you been gathering data on how banners perform on the first, second, third, etc. time of viewing? Yes, we have some data, but it's noisy and confusing. But the overall picture is that when we turn on banners, a huge majority of donors are giving upon their first banner view. Everyday, the distribution spreads out. After a week of solid banners it was more like 50% of donations came after the first banner view -- and most of the rest coming before the 10th banner view. Presumably the same cookies that let you stop banners after a certain number of views would let you gather such data. If so, what kind of an increase were you expecting to see? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising updates?
On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 11:01 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Zack, Thanks very much for your updates: What saved us was taking text from the personal appeals and putting it into the banner itself. These banners did very well. These new message-driven banners are what made us split the campaign in two -- because we knew we were going to develop a lot of new messages and not have time to translate them well As you know I've been saying for years that the variance among the volunteer-supplied messages, originally submitted in 2009 and hundreds of which have not yet been tested (as far as I know), was large enough to suggest that some messages would certainly outperform the traditional banners and appeals. While it's refreshing to be validated, as you might imagine I feel like Cassandra much of the time for reasons that have nothing to do with the underlying mathematical reasoning involved. The last time I heard from you, you said that you intended to test the untried messaging from 2009 with multivariate analysis. However, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/We_Need_A_Breakthrough shows only three very small-N multivariate tests, the last of which was in October, and no recent testing. Do you still intend to test the untried volunteer-submitted messages with multivariate analysis? If so, when? Thank you. James - We can only do big multivariate tests for banner click rates. But banner click rates have very little to do with donations in our present context. For example, the new banners have about 30% the click rate of the old ones, but they make about 3 or 4 times as much money. To determine how well a banner message does for donations, we usually need a sample size between 500 and 5,000 donations per banner, depending on the difference in performance between the banners. That takes from 30 minutes to several hours to collect -- if we're only testing two banners at a time. Regarding the banners suggested in past years: I've explained this before, and will repeat: We tested tons of those banners. I think that we tested virtually every different (serious) theme that was suggested. They all had BOTH far lower click rates and even lower donation rates -- usually by orders of magnitude. This was also true for the new short slogans that we came up with ourselves on the fundraising team. Now we're pretty clear on why: A short slogan isn't enough to get people over all their questions about why they should support Wikipedia. More text was needed. In our marketing-slogan-obsessed culture, the idea that we'd have to present people with a long paragraph was very counterintuitive. We didn't think of it on the fundraising team and none of the volunteers who submitted suggestions thought of it either. Several marketing professionals who contacted us with advice even told us to get rid of the appeal on then landing page altogether because people don't read! As it turns out, Wikipedia users DO like to read -- and want all the facts before they donate. Where we're at today, just to emphasize my previous point, is that with the new banners, changes in messages effect donations totally independently of click rate. And we typically need an hour or two -- or five -- to detect even a 10%-%15 percent difference in message performance. That's why we're not running big multivariate tests with tons of difference banners. You'll be happy to know, though, that we are running multivariate tests when we're able. For example, if we have a tweak to the landing pages that we think is fairly independent of the banner effect, then we sometimes run a multivariate test. Or if we have a design tweak (like color) that we're confident will always effect click rate in the same direction as donations, then we can combine that with message testing. Sincerely, James Salsman -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising updates?
the the equivalent first day of the campaign last year. Therefore, we think we'll be able to keep our Spring campaign very low-impact. I hope this satisfies some of the curiosity about the campaign. Please ask questions, but please be understanding if we can't answer detailed questions while we're busy still running the campaign. Zack On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote: Indeed, a good start, that I already checked. The statistics shows only WMF data. Last year we had google docs file that the chapters shared their numbers every day also. And there is no indication to which banners running and their performance, things that I'll like to see. The fundraising team did some interesting changes this year, which will be interesting to know their performances. Itzik. 2012/12/13 Till Mletzko till.mlet...@wikimedia.de and: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012 Till Am 13.12.2012 15:12, schrieb Theo10011: On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 7:34 PM, Itzik Edri it...@infra.co.il wrote: Hi, Could we get some updates (or that I missed them?) about how the fundraising goes? WMF and Chapters will be great. Since we only focus on few countries this year, the discussions regarding it is very low, but it still very interesting to know how much we collect and how the banners works (and which one of them) http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics - is a good start. -Theo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen Till Mletzko Fundraiser - Wikimedia Fördergesellschaft Obentrautstr. 72 10963 Berlin Telefon 030 - 219 158 26 -19 www.wikimedia.de Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes digitales Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird. Unterzeichnen Sie die Online-Petition unter https://wke.wikimedia.de/wke/Main_Page! Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu der Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei! http://spenden.wikimedia.de/ Gemeinnützige Wikimedia Fördergesellschaft mbH. Eingetragen beim Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 130183 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/603/54814. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long
Unacceptable! On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 12:52 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Zack Exley wrote: We just were playing around with the hover banners to see what kind of effect they might have. They're not up now. And probably won't come back. Your comment reminds me of discussions from earlier this year with the Editor engagement experiments (E3) team about treating Wikimedia users as colleagues, not as customers.[1] The auto-expand banners were unacceptable. As I'm currently viewing en.wikipedia.org, the banners _continue_ to block portions of the page content as I scroll down the page. This is also unacceptable. Enough playing around. You're annoying readers and editors alike with these banners. MZMcBride [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Experiments ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long
OK Thomas, I'll look that up. Thanks. On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: Zack, you may want to look up sample bias... Of course you don't get many complaints from the people that responded positively to the banners... On Dec 4, 2012 5:56 PM, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: Unacceptable! Sorry Max, your tone and language gave me a flashback to my demonic 3rd grade teacher and it took a little while to recover. (I'm not joking.) On the topic of the sticky banners, I'd like to know what others think. Starting next year, or even now, we can remove the stickiness. That will just mean more days of banners. It's just a choice. To me, it's not clear which is better. Tens of thousands of donors have filled out a survey this year after donating. We've gotten hardly a handful of complaints. I would have expected a lot. Instead, we have lots of people thanking us for making them see the banners, because they were happy to learn this surprising news that we're a non-profit that runs on donations. Is it really so bad? Stickiness boosts donations by about 20-30%. That means many fewer days of banners. Next year it may mean that we just show people only one banner view all year instead of two. Or maybe 2 instead of 4 (we don't know how it will play out yet). On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 12:52 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Zack Exley wrote: We just were playing around with the hover banners to see what kind of effect they might have. They're not up now. And probably won't come back. Your comment reminds me of discussions from earlier this year with the Editor engagement experiments (E3) team about treating Wikimedia users as colleagues, not as customers.[1] The auto-expand banners were unacceptable. As I'm currently viewing en.wikipedia.org, the banners _continue_ to block portions of the page content as I scroll down the page. This is also unacceptable. Enough playing around. You're annoying readers and editors alike with these banners. MZMcBride [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Experiments ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long
On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Jon Robson jdlrob...@gmail.com wrote: From as I understand it the main problems with the sticky banners seem to be due to several bugs related to it being sticky. Sticky banners do have a habit of taking a life of their own and obscuring content. They cause me a lot of pain as a developer and are hard to get right. The auto expansion on hover is very confusing and does not meet my expectations as a user of how it should behave (to the point I came close to raising a bug assuming it was misbehaving). I also encountered a bug which stopped me from sharing content [1]. Just to repeat: The auto-expanding ones are dead. We have to work with facts though and if they perform better we should be iterating on these banners and improving them so that we still get the benefits of a shorter fundraiser and do not upset our users. Good work to everyone involved that has made this fundraiser so successful with that insight. I'd be interested to know whether a sticky banner that moves to the side of the screen out of the way of content as the user scrolls was equally effective at getting lots of donations and reducing annoyance that some people have obviously been having. I look forward to seeing more experimentation. [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42651 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long
OK, so we're going to stop the banner sticking for now -- and to compensate we're going to show newcomers two banner impressions instead of one and that should be sufficient to close out the fundraiser. (Let me know if it's not clear what I mean by that.) If it looks like we're going to fall short, however, we might have to go back to sticking this year. Next year, we'll discuss options and do some surveys of logged in and not-logged-in users and try to make a good decision about what the least painful way for all will be to raise the money. I think that we're now in a position to raise the annual budget with very little user pain starting in 2013 -- perhaps the least pain is that everyone gets 5 banners per year that are very small and non-stick. Or maybe it's that everyone gets one slightly larger, sticky banner. It's subjective, and we need to listen to a real cross section of users about it. I am grateful for all the good faith shown over the years to the fundraising team at WMF as we've experimented in different directions that have sometimes been painful to get to this point. Zack On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: The upshot is, vocal Wikimedians on mailing lists hate banners, and are quite willing to sternly lecture about their dire consequences! It's left to the Foundation, then, to choose between large numbers of donations from happy donors and unamused mailing list participants. Tough call. My own opinion closely mirrors that of Michael Snow, so I'll quote what he said: That's not to say that I necessarily agree with all of the decisions that went into the current banners as to aesthetics or content. But I also don't have the expertise or all of the data that's behind those decisions, which is why I tend to reach a similar conclusion as Ziko. I trust that the fundraising team will attempt to balance all of these considerations, that they do listen to the concerns people have, and that they will make the best choices they can in light of the information available. Keeping that in mind usually helps me as I reflect on whether my own concerns are merely matters of personal taste or something more important. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long
, which is the point Mono was making. Even if it's fair to equate fundraising banners with advertising, that only holds up as an argument for keeping the fundraiser as brief as possible. Once you accept that there will be such banners (and I believe we have, at least provisionally), it does not actually follow that the use of editorial principles from advertising is undesirable, which is essentially where this discussion started. Take, for example, the objection on account of the painfully bright banner colors. There is a well-established tradition in advertising-supported publication, one that long predates the internet, that considers it desirable to maintain a clear distinction between advertising and editorial content. Those who value this tradition tend to object strongly when advertising is designed in a way that blurs this distinction, aesthetically or otherwise. And yet, one of the concessions we keep pushing for from our fundraising is that it somehow merge into the background and not call attention to itself as being different from the rest of the site. To be honest, compared to past fundraisers, one of my reactions when I saw these banners was to think, I don't find them especially attractive, but at least I can tell them apart from Wikipedia at a glance. From this perspective, that's an improvement on designs where the layout and color scheme is actually too integrated with the site, and the banner is just an overgrown site notice that could just as easily be informing me of some downtime for scheduled maintenance, or giving me some notification on my watchlist. That's not to say that I necessarily agree with all of the decisions that went into the current banners as to aesthetics or content. But I also don't have the expertise or all of the data that's behind those decisions, which is why I tend to reach a similar conclusion as Ziko. I trust that the fundraising team will attempt to balance all of these considerations, that they do listen to the concerns people have, and that they will make the best choices they can in light of the information available. Keeping that in mind usually helps me as I reflect on whether my own concerns are merely matters of personal taste or something more important. --Michael Snow __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long
On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 2:50 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for the detailed thoughts, Zack! Did we run banners on the sister projects as well? This year, we haven't so far. It would also be great to experiment with running targeted banner messages and presentations on the sister projects, particularly Commons and Wiktionary, to see what the visitor response is like. We've certainly had some good suggested designs in the past. As you say, readers love discovering that we're a non-profit and how we run. This is one of our opportunities each year to rejoice in the work of the projects, get feedback, and hold a large-scale barnraising for the coming year's work. It's good to reduce the total amount of time people see banners on the projects, but also a very positive thing for all projects to take part. I'd love to see a barn raising for participation instead of fundraising. So little money comes from the other projects that it's actually counterproductive from a revenue perspective. If the only reason to do the fundraiser on those projects is to have a coming together of the community, then why not do it around invitations to participate instead of to donate? SJ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long
On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: On 03/12/12 20:04, Erik Moeller wrote: Activation on hover (current behavior): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Lorenzo?banner=B12_5C_120216_SuperCondensed_Hover If you ignore the banner and scroll down, then later accidentally move the cursor over the banner, the article scrolls up to the top, losing your place. That could be annoying, especially on long articles. It happens because the collapsed banner has position: fixed, whereas the expanded banner has position: absolute. Thanks. We just were playing around with the hover banners to see what kind of effect they might have. They're not up now. And probably won't come back. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraiser launch update
No, sorry, that was an oversight in my message. We will not run campaigns in those countries (FR, DE, CH) in April. On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.comwrote: On 11/26/12 8:10 AM, Zack Exley wrote: Hi all, We have some information on the fundraiser launch to share. We are still planning on launching Monday, November 26, but we're going to make a change this year in the timing of campaigns around the world. Every year, as we get closer to the launch date, we test more frequently and discover new messages and designs that make the fundraiser much more efficient (i.e. more money per day, shorter fundraiser, fewer and/or smaller banners). In the past couple weeks, we've discovered some new designs and messages that we believe will let us shorten the fundraiser by a lot -- *and* make the banners much smaller than they've typically been. But we don't have time to adapt these to all the countries and languages in the world right away. This has pushed us to do something we've known is the right thing to do for some time. We're going to run this end of year campaign only in 5 countries (US, CA, GB, AU NZ) and then spend three months meticulously localizing and translating (and testing for new purely local messages) before running the global campaign in all other counties, in which our best messages and designs developed in December will be used across the world. We will use the time over the next month to run short tests of various messages and payment options in other languages and countries in preparation for the global campaign that we'll run in April. So people in the five-country campaign will still only see a campaign once a year (in December). And people in all other countries will still only see a campaign once a year (in April). Hello Very practical question... 4 chapters are currently also fundraising (right now, at the usual time period). Does that mean that that the WMF will fundraise in these countries in April whilst chapters will also fundraise in these countries in nov-january ? (which mean they will see two campaigns ?) And does all other countries mean everywhere BUT US, CA, GB, AU, NZ, France, Switzerland and Germany ? Flo *Everyone, everywhere will only see one campaign per year* -- unless they happen to travel from, say, the US in December to India in April. We're excited about breaking the campaign up for several reasons. Over the next month, we will be able to focus on testing and finding the best messages. The new Facts banners have opened up more testing possibilites for us, and we'll learn a lot about our messages in the next month, while we can test 24 hours per day. We'll use the lessons learned from the December five-country campaign and spend the next three months applying them correctly and testing multiple versions in other languages and countries. What we've learned over the past few years is that the same messages tend to win all over the world. But that translating short, colloquial fundraising messages takes a long time and many translators to get right. And we're finding a new best message basically every day. We don't think it's good if only English readers are getting our best messages. So overall, we think we'll be able to run both the English banners and the multilingual banners better by breaking up the campaign. Our volunteer translators have already done a ton of work translating our current best messages -- and we are very thankful! We're using all of those translations now, in our testing and they will be the basis of the April campaign. We will be engaging the community of volunteers, donors and readers even more in the coming months to optimize the translations of the new messages and ramp up testing in various languages. Moreover, there are technical updates to the translation system that we'll be able to use during the April campaign that are not released yet. We are looking forward to more of our readers receiving better messages and donation experiences in countries around the world. More info to come! Instead of replying to this thread, please comment on the Fundraiser 2012 meta discussion page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2012http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2012 Zack Megan, WMF fundraising __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l __**_ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.**org Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lhttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraiser launch update
On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 2:08 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 26 November 2012 07:10, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: We're going to run this end of year campaign only in 5 countries (US, CA, GB, AU NZ) and then spend three months meticulously localizing and translating (and testing for new purely local messages) before running the global campaign in all other counties, in which our best messages and designs developed in December will be used across the world. So ... you're dividing this up by country, not by project language - even though language is the issue? Language is not the only issue. We also want to pay closer attention to local payment methods, local fraud monitoring, credit card and other payment processing rates, etc... And that stuff is all country-based. But the main reason to do it by country is that it's the best way to ensure that people only see banners once a year. Most -- or at least many -- readers use several projects regularly. So if we did it by language, a lot of people would see two months of banners at different times of the year. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraiser launch update
On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 2:09 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 26 November 2012 07:10, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: We have some information on the fundraiser launch to share. We are still planning on launching Monday, November 26, but we're going to make a change this year in the timing of campaigns around the world. BTW, a blog post detailing this stuff would be an excellent thing - people I know are fascinated by the details of how we do what we do. That is a very good idea. We're so busy right now, we might not be able to do it though. But there will be the fundraising report after the fundraiser. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraiser launch update
On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: This is an interesting idea, and makes a lot of sense. Non-English fundraising hasn't really had the attention it needs in previous years (for obvious reasons - it's more efficient to focus your attention where you can achieve the most) and this should make a big difference. I'm curious, as you do more and more testing each year and a shorter and shorter fundraiser, how much of the total are you expecting to come from testing? I was looking at the stats yesterday and, if I was reading it correctly, the recent tests have been raising about as much per day as the main 2010 fundraiser did. Yes, as we test more, more money comes in outside of the campaign period. It is still a small amount in proportion. But tests make just as much per banner view as the actual fundraiser in general. As we get closer the fundraiser we test more and more. For several months we limited ourselves to one hour per week. Then we went up to two. And since Nov 15 (last year's launch date) we figured we could get away with more. So we went to 3 or sometimes more. But usually the tests are only in one or a few countries at a time. This year we did something different and went up all over the world for 24 hours on Nov 15 as sort of a dress rehearsal. That really helped us to identify a lot of little things to fix. It also brought in two million dollars -- our biggest day ever, by far. That gave us the confidence to launch much later this year. On Nov 26, 2012 7:11 AM, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi all, We have some information on the fundraiser launch to share. We are still planning on launching Monday, November 26, but we're going to make a change this year in the timing of campaigns around the world. Every year, as we get closer to the launch date, we test more frequently and discover new messages and designs that make the fundraiser much more efficient (i.e. more money per day, shorter fundraiser, fewer and/or smaller banners). In the past couple weeks, we've discovered some new designs and messages that we believe will let us shorten the fundraiser by a lot -- *and* make the banners much smaller than they've typically been. But we don't have time to adapt these to all the countries and languages in the world right away. This has pushed us to do something we've known is the right thing to do for some time. We're going to run this end of year campaign only in 5 countries (US, CA, GB, AU NZ) and then spend three months meticulously localizing and translating (and testing for new purely local messages) before running the global campaign in all other counties, in which our best messages and designs developed in December will be used across the world. We will use the time over the next month to run short tests of various messages and payment options in other languages and countries in preparation for the global campaign that we'll run in April. So people in the five-country campaign will still only see a campaign once a year (in December). And people in all other countries will still only see a campaign once a year (in April). *Everyone, everywhere will only see one campaign per year* -- unless they happen to travel from, say, the US in December to India in April. We're excited about breaking the campaign up for several reasons. Over the next month, we will be able to focus on testing and finding the best messages. The new Facts banners have opened up more testing possibilites for us, and we'll learn a lot about our messages in the next month, while we can test 24 hours per day. We'll use the lessons learned from the December five-country campaign and spend the next three months applying them correctly and testing multiple versions in other languages and countries. What we've learned over the past few years is that the same messages tend to win all over the world. But that translating short, colloquial fundraising messages takes a long time and many translators to get right. And we're finding a new best message basically every day. We don't think it's good if only English readers are getting our best messages. So overall, we think we'll be able to run both the English banners and the multilingual banners better by breaking up the campaign. Our volunteer translators have already done a ton of work translating our current best messages -- and we are very thankful! We're using all of those translations now, in our testing and they will be the basis of the April campaign. We will be engaging the community of volunteers, donors and readers even more in the coming months to optimize the translations of the new messages and ramp up testing in various languages. Moreover, there are technical updates to the translation system that we'll be able to use during the April campaign that are not released
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraiser launch update
On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 9:36 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On Nov 26, 2012 5:15 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: This year we did something different and went up all over the world for 24 hours on Nov 15 as sort of a dress rehearsal. That really helped us to identify a lot of little things to fix. It also brought in two million dollars -- our biggest day ever, by far. That gave us the confidence to launch much later this year. If one-off days perform much better than individual days during a long campaign, have you considered exchanging a 1-2 month drive for a series of one or two day drives, spaced throughout the year? I don't really know if that would be easier on you, raise more money or be better for readers, but it's something to consider. I was thinking the same thing. My understanding is that the main reason for a concentrated fundraising drive is that repetition is an important part of convincing people to donate. If it is true that tests bring in the same as the main drive, then apparently repetition isn't important for us, so perhaps there isn't much point in have a drive. After this fundraiser we can make some recommendations about how many days we'd have to fundraiser if we spread it out and see what opinions are out there. I think some may like keeping it to one focused time per year. But I do think it would be fewer days overall if we spread it out. We don't have any evidence that fundraising builds the longer we have the banners up. That idea probably comes from several years back when we ran weak messages to warm up before breaking out with the strongest messages. But then we learned that the strong messages were even stronger when we started with them. In fact, the power of fundraising banners drops every day they're up. Then every day there are no banners their power charges back up. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation 415 506 9225 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Fundraiser launch update
Hi all, We have some information on the fundraiser launch to share. We are still planning on launching Monday, November 26, but we're going to make a change this year in the timing of campaigns around the world. Every year, as we get closer to the launch date, we test more frequently and discover new messages and designs that make the fundraiser much more efficient (i.e. more money per day, shorter fundraiser, fewer and/or smaller banners). In the past couple weeks, we've discovered some new designs and messages that we believe will let us shorten the fundraiser by a lot -- *and* make the banners much smaller than they've typically been. But we don't have time to adapt these to all the countries and languages in the world right away. This has pushed us to do something we've known is the right thing to do for some time. We're going to run this end of year campaign only in 5 countries (US, CA, GB, AU NZ) and then spend three months meticulously localizing and translating (and testing for new purely local messages) before running the global campaign in all other counties, in which our best messages and designs developed in December will be used across the world. We will use the time over the next month to run short tests of various messages and payment options in other languages and countries in preparation for the global campaign that we'll run in April. So people in the five-country campaign will still only see a campaign once a year (in December). And people in all other countries will still only see a campaign once a year (in April). *Everyone, everywhere will only see one campaign per year* -- unless they happen to travel from, say, the US in December to India in April. We're excited about breaking the campaign up for several reasons. Over the next month, we will be able to focus on testing and finding the best messages. The new Facts banners have opened up more testing possibilites for us, and we'll learn a lot about our messages in the next month, while we can test 24 hours per day. We'll use the lessons learned from the December five-country campaign and spend the next three months applying them correctly and testing multiple versions in other languages and countries. What we've learned over the past few years is that the same messages tend to win all over the world. But that translating short, colloquial fundraising messages takes a long time and many translators to get right. And we're finding a new best message basically every day. We don't think it's good if only English readers are getting our best messages. So overall, we think we'll be able to run both the English banners and the multilingual banners better by breaking up the campaign. Our volunteer translators have already done a ton of work translating our current best messages -- and we are very thankful! We're using all of those translations now, in our testing and they will be the basis of the April campaign. We will be engaging the community of volunteers, donors and readers even more in the coming months to optimize the translations of the new messages and ramp up testing in various languages. Moreover, there are technical updates to the translation system that we'll be able to use during the April campaign that are not released yet. We are looking forward to more of our readers receiving better messages and donation experiences in countries around the world. More info to come! Instead of replying to this thread, please comment on the Fundraiser 2012 meta discussion page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2012 Zack Megan, WMF fundraising ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
