Tim Starling wrote: > > As for fundraising, the work is uninspiring, and I don't think we've > ever managed to get volunteers interested in it regardless of how open > we've been.
I must take exception to that because I did a lot of work last year on several aspects of fundraising, including button design, some of which (e.g. the proposed button with Jimbo's face on it) wasn't even A/B tested even after the A/B test harness had been developed. I was never told why there was no A/B test of that button. It seems like I had to ask over and over before anyone even did any A/B tests in the first place. Frankly, my efforts to help with fundraising are more inspiring than a lot of the other things I try to do to help, but inspiration is generally orthogonal to frustration. However, I know one of my responsibilities as a volunteer to keep asking until things get done. Furthermore, how do you expect effective help with fundraising when the fundraising mailing list and archives are closed? Danese Cooper wrote: > > 1. Eliminate single points of failure / bottlenecks.... I am glad that is the top priority, because there are clearly failures and bottlenecks in external code review, production of image bundle dumps, auctioning search failover links to wealthy search engine donors, steps to make Wikinews an independent, funded, and respected bona fide news organization, general bugzilla queue software maintenance, etc. About eight months ago I was told that fundraising this year will allow donors to pick an optional earmark for their funds. Is that still the plan? Donors should be allowed to optionally mark their donations for projects including (1) the review of externally submitted code, (2) the production of image bundles along with the dumps, (3) auctioning the order of appearance of several search failover gadget links to external search engines (such as users were able to use before they were rendered unusable by the usability project) to wealthy search engine donors, (4) a way to pay people who work on the bugzilla queue (e.g. through http://odesk.com or the like) without having to set up lengthy contracts, and (5) a way to pay for Wikinews journalism awards, travel expenses, reporters, fact checkers, photographers, camera and recording equipment, and proofreaders, etc. Are there any reasons not to allow donors to earmark categories? I am not saying that those are the only earmarks which should be offered, but I am certain that at least those five should be included. What are other problems which might be solved by donor earmarks? There are ten rejected GSoC projects which I feel strongly about because they were scored positively by the mentors but rejected because of the number of slots requested. Could those be funded by donor earmarks? Regards, James Salsman _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
