I think it's a matter of common sense that we shouldn't ask for more money unless we can credibly demonstrate with stuff like success metrics and improving trends that we can spend the money we've already been given effectively.
Risker's comments made me wonder, however, about the more specific issue of how the WMF is measuring the cost/benefit of banner displays. The benefit should be fairly easy to figure out as denominated in dollars- roughly speaking, it would probably look something like the total amount raised over a defined period divided by the number of banner displays during that period. But what about those much more subtle and potentially lagging costs? I assume that the WMF is measuring stuff like session lengths and return rates. Is the WMF tracking on anything else for non-logged in users? In any case, what I would most like to see is a comparison of graphs of such metrics over the course of a full campaign. It seems like we all agree that the banners are annoying, but is there really a measurable "banner fatigue" phenomenon among our readers? For example, can we point out a distinct point of diminishing returns, beyond which the slopes of one or both graphs significantly steepens? If anyone has this data for the current or past campaigns, please forward it to me. I'll try some different visualizations that get past the dollars signs to the true cost of prolonged panhandling. Alternatively, we could pivot to a street performance model by getting the article on Thomas Jefferson to juggle fire batons and spray painting the article on Popping silver. After Jimmy finishes his extended plastic-bucket drum solo and we've warmed them up with a few mediocre jokes, we could pass around the banner for donations. It would probably only work on the tourists, tho. ,Wil >> This is $10.6 million more than the $20 million fundraising goal indicated >> in the blog post. (At any rate, that's the sum I get; I'd welcome anyone >> double-checking my math.) >> >> > There is no scenario I can come up with where this is actually a good > result. Sure, an extra $10.6 million might be nice in the bank, but it > massively exceeds budget. The fundraiser met its goal, with plenty to > spare, on December 17. And yet we put our readers and our users through > another two weeks of fundraising. Given that we were already really > pushing the goodwill of the broad Wikimedia community (that includes the > users of our products)....well, as I say, this is not a good result. > People were putting Wikipedia on Adblock because of those banners, and they > were doing it long after the goal had been reached. > > I'd say I was speechless, but actually I am working extremely hard to hold > my tongue here, awaiting an explanation for this. And yes, I think the > Wikimedia community deserves to know why this happened. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
