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Posted by: the fieryangel

The best comments off of http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/fundcore_browse

<===Excuse me? Am I missing something here?



<===Why did you give them money then???

<===When Apocalypse theories and Free source software meet....

<==Entertaining???

Posted by: Poetlister

In London, "2012 is coming" means the 2012 Olympics.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

And the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Yeah, I think that's what they refering too...but you never can tell!

More gems

<==File this one under "unfounded platitudes"....

<==Except if you're banned...

<==I guess that explains why so many admins are unhappy then?

Posted by: thekohser

Make sure you click the "filter contributions" link, and lower the threshold from $5 to $1. The $1 donors are a lot funnier. Example:



That's worth a buck, don't you think?

Greg

Posted by: the fieryangel

Here's one that's worth 20 quid :



Now, who could that be???

Posted by: the fieryangel

More gems :

<===I'd say that WP is more like the World's snooze button, myself....

Posted by: The Joy

Dec. 21, 2012 to be exact. At least we know WP won't be around after that!

Posted by: the fieryangel

<====Indeed!



<===Would you like another delicious glass of Koolaid??

<===Wikipedia + New Age = ???



<====Yes, but what about Ayn Rand??

* edited by Nathan: typo

Posted by: zscout370

This came off of the donation IRC channel, #wikimedia-donations. This is where the funds are keep on being tracked. At the time of this message, here are the unofficial stats:

Total donations: 5,375 (5.4%) -- Total USD: $139,266 -- Avg/person $25.91 -- Past 5 hours: $3,046 -- Total Anonymous: 3,375 ($88,070) -- Projected total: $2,591,000

Posted by: thekohser

This is lining up with my initial suspicions. This campaign is not going to reach their goal. And, I believe they are fooling themselves that a campaign in 2007 is going to have the same legs as the one started in late 2006 -- before Essjay, before university bans, before Wikiscanner, before Andrew Keen, etc. Annual campaigns get tedious for those who've already donated before in the past.

The fact that they've only gotten about 6,000 of the 100,000 donors yet tells me that they're way behind. Most of the eager-beaver donors will make their contribution on first sight of Jimbo's blinky eyes and wringy hands. They've already donated! That leaves everybody else, who isn't so eager, who is more suspicious, more tired of this "Wikipedia craze".

Sure, they'll drum up some big-donor support in November, when they see they're going to miss projections by 50%. But it still isn't going to cover the budget. Which means the budget will have to be cut. And maybe some heads will roll.

Greg

Posted by: zscout370

Even on the site, there isn't a target goal of donors wanted, and from my chats with some of the Foundation folks, they didn't want a money tracker like last year. I wish I could break things down by currency, but those stats are being kept by few people. Our highest donation, to my knowledge, is about 1,500 USD from an anon. who gave his comment as a security hash.

Posted by: Jaranda

Wow I never knew that some of the people who donate are so stupid.

Posted by: zscout370

Keep in mind that, with this going on for about two months, tons of things can happen. I suspect that donations from my neck of the woods (it's on Brandt's site if you really wish find out), it is going to the fire relief effort. I am also seeing people in the US prepare for holiday shopping, so I don't huge donations to the extent of thousands. This is a constant problem I saw last year, not sure about 2005, since I did not pay attention to much of the Foundation matters then.

Anyways, the latest unofficial stats from the same IRC channel mentioned earlier:

Total donations: 6,379 (6.4%) -- Total USD: $166,247 -- Avg/person $26.06 -- Past 5 hours: $4,962 -- Total Anonymous: 3,959 ($103,268) -- Projected total: $2,606,000

Posted by: Derktar

Interesting, I didn't even think about the wildfires impacting potential fund raising but I imagine it will to some degree.

Posted by: zscout370

Probably the same effect with Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunamis in Asia; donations will be slow, but can still be large from non-affected areas. I also do recall that such events like that have been put in the sitenotice to where people should send money. With both of those cases, the English Wikipedia chose the Red Cross. I know the French Wikipedia did something similar for Darfur, but I am not sure what organization they asked funds to be sent to.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Hi Zscout! glad that you're here! I'm really sorry about your problems, but maybe our moral support will make you feel better?

Anyway, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=prev&oldid=166962219

He might be stretching things a bit there...but their budget has never been larger and their operating expenses are way up over 2006 level. So, even if everybody who gave in 2006 gives more, they are not going to meet their goal...and their budget will have to be cut.

Maybe Floflo will have to pay for her own babysitter?

I think that relief for fire victims, Darfur and the like are probably a bit more important than buying baudwidth so that the Cabal can have unlimited flamewars, in the greater scheme of things....

Posted by: the fieryangel

Yet more :

<===Just ignore that man behind the Wikia curtain...

<===Never mind that atomic bomb business....

<===Somebody's been watching too much Star Trek...



<===He already has a credit card??

<===Oh, you're so kind. Here, have a glass of koolaid on us!...





(Are these people serious??? Man, how sad....)

Posted by: thekohser

I want to thank zscout370 for these invaluable updates on the Foundation's efforts to reach $4.6 million for 2008's budget. It isn't going to happen. Let's do the numbers...

They obtained 8,000 donors in the first week of a nine-week campaign. Average donation is $26. So, simply put, 8,000 donors x 9 weeks x $26 = $1.87 million. Nowhere near $4.6 million. It's even well short of the $2.6 million "projected" above. (Note, also, that the campaign has expressed that 100,000 donors is the goal, and the size of their "thermometer" matches that number. If we forecast the first-week tally through nine weeks, they're only going to hit 72,000 donors.)

Furthermore, I'd like to add in the concept of attrition. People tire of fundraising campaigns -- both longitudinally from year to year, and fatigue sets in within the campaign over each subsequent week. The "eager beavers" have already made their donations. This leaves behind the apathetic masses, bored of being asked to donate to something they regard as their "own" free creation. Let's imagine that over week-to-week, we'll see a conservative 5% attrition rate.

A 5% attrition rate will yield a grand total of $1.54 million.

A 10% attrition rate will yield a total of only $1.27 million.

How will the Foundation possibly make up the difference without completely slashing the budget?

Oh, http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ!



Anyone want to venture a guess where that dinner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mzoli's?

Another way you can get a personal phone call from Jimmy Wales is to set up a website similar to Wikipedia Review.com, and use the word "Wikipedia" in your sales pitch. That worked for me, anyway. I got a call real quickly.

Greg

Posted by: the fieryangel

I'll bet that the telephone conversation would have been worth at least a USD 25,000 donataion....at least if you had taped it and sold it to the Enquirer or something....

Anyway, the numbers just don't add up. There ain't no well in Hell that they're going to come up with over four million bucks at this rate, even with "matching grants" which have yet to be announced.

So, who gets fired first?

Posted by: Derktar

Interesting little tidbit

I wonder how many people actually read this. If people really didn't want their money going toward legal fees and trustee salaries they would request their donations only be used for hardware and bandwidth costs.

Oh and as for donor sayings, I particularly like this one...



Arrrrrggghhh

Posted by: Moulton

I'd like to see a fund set up to retain a genuinely independent Ombudsman.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Any independent dispute resolution would be a major step toward social responsibility. It would be a curb on the unquestioned dominance of the dysfunctional social networking "community" and the blow to the last vestiges of the Cult of the God-king.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

It would only go toward shoring up the fundamental delusion that Wikipedia Is Some Kinda Goobermint, instead of some kind of edited publication.

And that is the Φantasy that got them into the mess they're in.

Jonny

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Better to take your chances with a professional trained to listen than 2,000 pseudonymous adolescent amateurs playing social networking games. It would be nice if it was Magister Ludi 's Castalia all academic and monastic but it's more like Lord of Flies and some GooberMint seems like a good idea.

Posted by: Moulton

I would like to see Wikipedia craft a functional http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract for establishing a more congenial climate for achieving and maintaining consensus on the issues which divide conflicted parties. The present architecture, which operates more like a high-intensity chess game than an orderly and sober process of civil negotiation, has proven to be needlessly aggravating, contentious, and interminable. I believe the Wikipedians would benefit from a more suitable framework, along the lines of a functional social contract, including some more functional protocols for conflict management and conflict resolution.

A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract is a written document setting forth mutually agreeable terms of engagement and therefor (by definition) cannot be considered to be fiat imposed by one faction over another. A social contract represents a collection of promises that the parties have freely committed to, because they believe that it's in their mutual interest to adopt that framework. That is, a social contract is a consensus — a consensus on the terms of engagement. In the absence of mutually agreeable terms of engagement, the interpersonal dynamics of a cast of characters embroiled in conflict typically devolves into some form of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Turner.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

This is interesting. What would/might the contents of the contract be? Who would put it forward? How would it be enforced?

Posted by: Moulton

A social contract typically includes a mission statement setting forth the purpose of the organization or project. This is typically followed by a pledge to work cooperatively toward the common goals. In addition to the express goals of the project, the social contract typically includes social and interpersonal goals for establishing a congenial climate of community. These would include goals of treating each other with courtesy and respect, fostering cooperation, and peaceable resolution of conflict in accordance with express conflict resolution protocols spelled out in the social contract.

It's crafted by the leadership of the community and ratified by the members of the community who agree to subscribe to it.

The concept of enforcement does not apply to a social contract, as the philosophy is not one of rules and punishments, but of peer promises and protocols for handling breaches of expectations in a non-judicial manner.

In terms of the http://www.google.com/search?q=Kohlberg-Gilligan+Ladder+Social+Contract, social contracts operate at Stage 5 of Kohlberg's Ladder, several rungs above the Rules-and-Punishment paradigm. Social contracts thus require a level of maturity and responsibility a notch or two above the norm.

Lawrence Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Reasoning
Plus Carol Gilligan's Seventh Stage of Ethical Care

Stage 1: Punishment-avoidance and obedience — Individuals make moral decisions on the basis of what is best for themselves, without regard for the needs or feeling of others. They obey rules only if established by more powerful individuals; they disobey when they can do so without getting caught.

Stage 2: Exchange of favors — Individuals begin to recognize that others also have needs. They may attempt to satisfy the needs of others if their own needs are also met in the process. They continue to define right and wrong primarily in terms of consequences to themselves.

Stage 3: Good boy/good girl — Individuals make moral decisions on the basis of what actions will please others, especially authority figures. They are concerned about maintaining interpersonal relationships through sharing, trust, and loyalty. They now consider someone's intentions in determining innocence or guilt.

Stage 4: Law and order — Individuals look to society as a whole for guidelines concerning what is right or wrong. They perceive rules to be inflexible and believe that it is their "duty" to obey them.

Stage 5: Social Contract — Individuals recognize that rules represent an agreement among many people about appropriate behavior. They recognize that rules are flexible and can be changed if they no longer meet society's needs.

Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principle — Individuals adhere to a small number of abstract, universal principles that transcend specific, concrete rules. They answer to an inner conscience and may break rules that violate their own ethical principles.

Stage 7: Ethics of Care — An obligation of care rests on the understanding of relationships as a response to another in terms of their special needs. Focuses on the moral value of being empathetic toward those dearly beloved persons with whom we have special and valuable relationships, and the moral importance of responding to such persons as unique individuals with characteristics that require custom-crafted responses to them that we do not normally extend to others.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Don't many organizations, good, bad, otherwise, have such statements? Don't they usually have little or no impact on the behavior of these organizations? Remember just how deeply dysfunctional this community currently is, how feeble it's normal institutions, such as it Board of Trustees has become. Also is there any way that this contract can provide for meaningful participation for stakeholders that are not currently at the table at all?

Posted by: Moulton

Mission Statements are much more common than full-fledged Social Contracts. And there are plenty of organizations in which their charter documents (e.g. Constitution, By-Laws, etc) are mere window dressing. Corrupt and dysfunctional organizations are the norm, and have been since the dawn of civilization. In the Theory of Community Building, there are Communities of Interest, Communities of Practice, Communities of Commitment, and Centers of Excellence. Wikipedia might have become a world-class Center of Excellence, but it failed to become a Communty of Commitment. Instead, it has devolved into a dysfunctional Community of Malpractice.

It need not have been that way.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

BTDT, too many times already.

Wrote it all down for Larry Sanger while he still had a chance of doing a NewPedia instead of the SameOleSameOleTedia. Will try to save some of that time on my hands by going off to look up what I wrote before.

Don't know why you can't see that Your Third Coming Saviour And All Round Young Virgin Omnibusman will end up looking indiscernible from Your First Messiah and Your Second Co-Flounder before the Year is Out.

Jonny

Posted by: Moulton

There are a few examples of open source projects that adopted the framework of a social contract, adhered to it, and developed into a world-class center of excellence. The http://www.google.com/search?q=debian+linux+social+contract is one that comes to mind. http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/000860the_google_social_contract.php also has a social contract with its employees.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I thought from the title of this thread — oh, sorry, I forgot where I was for a moment there, nevermimd — that y'all were talking about a course correction for the brain-drain-train already in motion. Nope, too much MimboJimboMomentum there to keep it from going over the falls without a barrel — poor monkeys!

But if you are talking about starting from scratch, dumping that sorry site entire, well, dream on, dream on!

Jonny

Posted by: badlydrawnjeff

Wikipedia Review should totally raise $30k - enough for a retired somebody to act as an ombudsman for a year, and enough to force Jimbo to meet with a couple people from here. Only $100 from each registered member!

Posted by: Moulton

Rather than hire a negotiator, I think we would be better served by stepping up to a professional level of investigative journalism. I'd like to see an article in a prestigious magazine like Atlantic Monthly which fairly reported the issues that Wikipedia is confronting as a function of its structural problems.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

I don't understand the "force Jimbo to meet" part. Also I don't think Mr. Wales is the appropriate person to engage in any negotiations. Perhaps WMF B/T could designate a representative though.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

BTDT. Ask Greg Kohs to tell you what Marshall Poe is up to lately. A year ago you might have excused Yet Another Gee Whiz MainDream Journalist for writing what MP wrote then, but now he appears even more clueless than he did before.
No, I'm afraid the information will have to flow from places like this to places like that.

Jonny

Posted by: Moulton

There is a progression in these observations that goes from disappointment to frustration to cynicism to bitterness.

Mebbe I should leap-frog you, Jonny, and go straight to bitterness.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I prefer to think of it as Dis-Illusionment.

And, y'know, that can be A Good Thing.

Well, after you get out of the Wiki-Pokey.

Jonny

Posted by: Moulton

Then again, there's the option of writing yet another comic opera.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

That is so last year. There are sites-a-plenty that celebrate the absurdity of Wikipedia — came to act but only catharted — and leave you too weak from laughter to do anything about the threat to society. Sure, I would hate it if we couldn't keep our faculties intact, humour-wise, but I am of late less and less of a mind to believe that Wikipedia is Wikiφunny anymore.

Jonny

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I spent a good part of the last decade of the last millennium thinking a lot and writing a little about the relation between Democracy and Inquiry. I have already spent a good part of the first decade of this millennium discussing the same issue in numerous online forums. The topic is a Perennial Hot One in Pragmatic Philosophy and a major theme in the works of Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead, and Company. The list of contemporary lights who have lit on it is too numerous to exhaust, but Richard J. Bernstein, Noam Chomsky, Jürgen Habermas, and Hilary Putnam come to mind as having supplied memorable insights.

Trying to have intelligent discussions about these issues in Wikiputia — well, there is an old song about trying to roller skate in a buffalo herd that now comes to mind.

Jonny

Posted by: guy

Suppose there were an Ombudsman, and people went to him with a complaint of blocking as alleged sockpuppets. He'd ask for the CheckUser. No, he can't have it because of confidentiality rules or (WP:BEANS) because it might disclose information enabling people to sockpuppet more effectively.

Posted by: thekohser

It's Friday morning, which means we're half-way through Week 2 of the Jimbo Blinks, You Donate campaign. Remember that they hoodwinked 8,000 donors in Week 1? Remember that I suggested there would be attrition in subsequent weeks? We're half-way through Week 2, which would mean a steady donation flow should have added another 4,000 donors to the 8,000 from Week 1, or a current straight-line total of 12,000.

Instead, it looks like we haven't even hit 11,000 yet. Is there any possible way this campaign will be at 16,000 donors by Tuesday morning (the end of Week 2)? I'm saying "no way". Might even have to threaten to eat some liverwurst if they make it.

God, I'm lovin' Tuesdays now.

So, they're at about $275,000 currently. That's a far cry from $4.6 million. GOOD JOB, Wikipedia Review. I dare say that our efforts are actually having a real-world impact on the hearts and minds of people with "closed-source" wallets.

Greg

Posted by: thekohser

Anybody else see the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-10-29/News_and_notes about the fundraising?

So, they admit that the first-week capital is about 19% LESS than the previous fund-drive, and thousand-dollar-plus donations are down a full 85%, but Jimbo proudly proclaims it's "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=prev&oldid=166962219". More lies (or is it just careless, misinformed hucksterism?) from the Sole Flounder. Anyone surprised?

RED ALERT! The "Blinky Jimbo" video and thermometer-goal graphic have been replaced! I'm sure THAT will fix the problem. Muuu-wah-ha-ha-haaaaah!

Greg

Posted by: The Joy

Yes, it has been replaced by a very ugly banner too!

Posted by: thekohser

Good morning, class. Today's number is... 15,350. Remember, last week's number was 8,000 donors. If we subtract 8,000 from 15,350, we get 7,350. That means 650 fewer people donated to Wikipedia this week than they did last week. This is what we call attrition. Therefore, I am putting this two-pound block of liverwurst back in the refrigerator, since I am not obligated to eat it to fulfill my double-dog-dare of last week.

In fact, what we have just witnessed is a weekly attrition rate of 8.125%. Quite presciently, last week I offered you all projected grand totals based on either a 5% or a 10% weekly attrition rate. We are about in the middle between the two, aren't we? This would suggest a final fundraising total of about $1.43 million -- sixty-nine percent short of the $4.6 million goal to overpay Sue Gardner and Mike Godwin. However, that's the best-case scenario, if the Wikimedia Foundation can sustain an attrition rate of only 8%. I am going to predict right here and now that this attrition rate will increase over the remaining weeks, by as much as 1 or 2 percentage points per week! They're running out of "eager beavers", which leaves only non-donating visitors who are simply annoyed by the banner ad.

Of course, the predicted total depends on the average donation amount remaining near $26. We did have a http://centiare.com/Directory:Wikimedia_Foundation/Grand_Donors donate $10,000 this week, but that has the algebraic effect of boosting the average overall donation amount by about 75 cents. Perhaps the average donation is up to $27 now. Big deal.

I hope that Zscout returns with more Foundation-sourced totals from the IRC chat which I don't frequent. Those values would corroborate my estimates here, but I would say that the fundraiser is now at the $414,000 mark.

My prediction for next Tuesday morning's (9:00 AM Eastern) donor tally is: 22,040 donors, coughing up $584,000. It still sickens me, but clearly, it's a failure on the Foundation's part.

Greg

Posted by: Disillusioned Lackey

My gut reaction is, "what's with the counting of donors?".

You count amounts, not number of donations.

Unless the amounts are not impressive.

Then putting forth 70k donors, many of which donated 1 dollar, sounds impressive.

See?

They shouldnt even be mentioning number of donors. No one does that, unless they are:
1) Doing an analysis
2) Masking the amounts, and going for positive spin.

DL

Posted by: Derktar

With the recent analysis of Dragons Flight I believe he hypothesized they would miss their margin by quite a bit, Let me see if I can dig his quotes up.

Posted by: WordBomb

Possibly the best $5.00 I've ever spent.

Posted by: Piperdown

You're a class act, Judson. If I were you (lol), I would have gotten a bit nastier. Isn't WP fortunate that someone who knows (and can show!) so much dirt on them is such a nice guy?

Nevermind that WP got their Wordbomb timeline all wrong. My wayback machine checks on WP show that you weren't a employee of the Big O when you were Wordbomb, or when you started ASM. So I guess your "corporate smear campaign" eminated from that great big evil monopoly, "Business Jive dotcom".

No match for the barrells of ink flowing from the poison pens of Wall Street sychophant newspapers, several billion dollar hedge funds, Wall Street firms, and stock clearing houses and the people that work for them on wikipedia, eh?

Posted by: Piperdown

Hi Mr Lackey, could you please take that godawful screenshot of "Durova" off your avatar? It's ruining my meal. Put up one of JzG's page 3 girls or something.

I'll never forget the first time I googled Brandt after stumbling into that hornets nest on WP, and see ing the sideshow of humanity on his hivemind page. I hadn't been that nauseous and ashamed of my species's propagation since the last Piper Family reunion. Just thinking about Hivemind compels me to search JzG's W-R babes thread from the Kohser to restore my faith in the future of mankind, artificial or big and natural.

Posted by: The Joy

Some goodies:

"I can't imagine being able to do the job I do without Wikipedia." — Anon.
- I can't imagine a job that you can do with Wikipedia, Anon.

"Wikipedia is my fountain of knowledge" — Anon.
- Don't drink that knowledge! It's filthy!

"college would be impossible without wikipedia!" — katy tull
- I worry about U.S. higher education now.

"A great, reliable, constantly-updated online encyclopedia!" — Dave Britz
- Well, you got the "constantly-updated" part right. And it is "online."

"This model of information transfer will change humanity." — Anon.
- Yeah, but into what?

"Go baby go, go!" — Anon.
- Go away, you mean?

"Even my cats like it!" — Anon.
- Alright, did someone from Uncyclopedia hack the Foundation donation banner?

"I love philanthropy" — Anon.
- Me too, but what does that have to do with Wikipedia?

"For not deleting at least some articles" — Vladimir Mozhenkov
- Angry inclusionist? Well, those deletionists are [deleted by WP Deletionist Cabal].

"Probably the best thing modern world has ever achieved." — Frei Klaus
- No, no it's not. What about the Internet and its WWW? Or nuclear power? Or the Nintendo Wii?

You can see the pattern out of my random sample here: ignorance! They do not understand the crazy Community and unreliable nature that is WP.

I'm tempted though to think some people donate to WP but obviously aren't thinking of the consequences of said donation. I hope that mad Russian gets his articles undeleted though.

I could go on and on, but I think theKohser was hoping for commentary from the big donors.

I would like to add some other questions, if I may: Do corporations donate to WMF? If so, what companies have been known to do so? And, if someone can explain, why?

Posted by: Jonny Cache

I could almost see a joke forming before my mind's eye that involved the puzzle pieces : «Man» … «Off» … «Tax» … «Woe» … «Write» — but then I lost it.

Oh well, off to see the sandwoman …

Jonny

Posted by: thekohser

I don't know if this helps you or not, but there is this list of the http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors.

Once I saw that list, I closed my accounts at Fidelity and moved them to Vanguard. I'll never buy a Dell computer, either.

Greg

Posted by: the fieryangel

Uh Oh, we're getting into dangerous territory here. You see, I don't personally think that Wikiabuse was shut down because of all the dirt that we dug up about admins and incidents. I think that WMF could really care less about that.

I think it got shut down because we had started organizing wikipages using this page and had started making pages with each of these "benefactors" and their corporate giving policies and issues that they supported. Since the evil admins were being sorted by perceived bias, the next step would have been to match the corporate benefactor's issues with the number of admins who were working against their policies. This could have been deadly to any WMF funding campaign, so I think that's when the bells started going off...

Anyway, I wonder if they all know that they're funding the Cleveland Steamer article?

Posted by: thekohser

Anyone is welcome to test (re-test?) that theory on Centiare.com.

Greg

Posted by: The Joy

I thought the scraper sites that take text from WP and use it for the for-profit sites were the ones most angered by WikiAbuse?

They have the most to lose dollar-wise if WP is brought down.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Well, that was one theory, but I really think that WMF got a few phone calls by the subjects of thse pages who didn't like to see their foundations attached to this kind of site and prompted them to take out the trash....

that's just my theory, but it seems to be confirmed by what was posted after that site went down....

Posted by: Selina

that's all too easy to do for the majority. A lot of people don't seem to notice that Jimbo Wales has got rich off the back of WIKIPEDIA not Wikia, and that the foundation is ran by a for-profit company. :/

Posted by: thekohser

Week 3 out of 9 is complete. Who shall we believe? The English Wikipedia main page that proclaims 23,535 donors? Or the seemingly official summary being http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/node/22, which says 21,351 as of this morning?

Either way, I'm going to have to give Week 3 to the Foundation. They seem to have boosted donors back up over 8,000 (if you take the main page tally), and they seem to have boosted average donation amount to $29.82 (if you believe the official summary, which does exclude donations less than $1 -- probably foreign currencies, since PayPal won't let you give less than a buck).

Anyhow, it would appear that they have hoodwinked the over-score thousand donors of $636,726 worth of money that could have gone to clean water programs, interfaith education programs, famine relief, or any number of other projects that would actually save lives. Instead, that money will go to sustain the efforts of Durova, Hochman, Chapman & Co. in their unending quest to interactively service (but not publish!) a reputable encyclopedia.

If the scam artists can keep up this pace, their fund-drive is going to top $1.9 million. Still a 59% shortfall from the insanely greedy proposed budget of $4.6 million, so while Wikipedia may have won the Week 3 battle, they are still projected to lose the war.

Greg

Posted by: thekohser

Something strange happened tonight. The English Wikipedia main page count has back-pedaled down to 21,775, even though it was at 23,535 this morning. I guess they even monkey with the donors to their encyclopedia as much as they monkey with the editors of their encyclopedia.

Seriously, how do you get "off count" by nearly 2,000 donors when all you're doing is counting donors?

Maybe Week 3 wasn't a victory for them at all.

Greg

Posted by: Jonny Cache

Maybe it was just a case of Durovacounting?

Or maybe Guy Chapman http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/collectives.htm of sockdonors (darnersocks?) and was No-Bliss Oblithed by The Rule Of Argyle («Banded Are Banded») to send their donations back?

Jonny

Posted by: Derktar

The collapsed side says almost 24,000, the blown up version shows around 21,777. Which should we believe, hmm....

Posted by: Aloft

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-November/085150.html

"FYI -

we're filtering out $0.01 donations from the various statistics on the
fundraiser from now on. This means e.g. that
http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/node/22 shows much more accurate data
now, but also that the sitenotice counter has dropped significantly.

Please, if you see people asking about this in various places on the
wikis or mailing lists, explain to them what is going on.

These tiny donations are, apparently, people testing credit cards;
they don't give us anything, but they also don't cost us anything. We
already have a JavaScript to block them at the donation form; I don't
know if there's much else we can do about it.
--
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik"

Posted by: Somey

Well, at least they figured out a way to block them. Hooray! It's the Wikipedia Way!

Still, the credit-card testers will probably just "ramp up" by contributing $0.02 at a time instead, giving a whole new meaning to the term "just my two cents." And let's see, 2,000 donors at $0.02 a pop, that's $40.00... You could register a domain for almost five years with that much money.

Great...

Posted by: the fieryangel

Hmm, "credit card testers"? They really want us to believe that?

I think that it's just the Wikipedia propaganda machine pumping up the stats!

Posted by: thekohser

My theory -- a few people (and by that, I mean hundreds) may have deduced that PayPal would hit the Wikimedia Foundation with a minimum fee of 25-30 cents per transaction, so if they donated only a penny, it would actually cost the foundation a quarter. They may have done this a few dozen times, just for kicks. Imagine, spending 40 cents to make the Foundation lose $10. Sounds fun.

As I said earlier, though -- I thought that US Dollar minimum donations were set from the first week at $1, so I'm unclear how these $0.01 donors were getting through, unless it was on a foreign currency.

"Testing" their credit cards, my ass.

Greg

Posted by: thekohser

Week 4 update. I grabbed the stats at 9:00 AM Eastern, as is my Tuesday morning custom, and here are the (somewhat belated) results:

Week 1 = 8,000 donors, yielding $208,000
Week 2 = 7,350 donors, yielding $206,000
Week 3 = 6,001 donors, yielding $222,726
Week 4 = 4,189 donors, yielding $135,374

Cumulative total after 4 weeks is 25,540 donors, yielding $772,100.

Attrition is back, and in a big way. In fact, this past week's decline is monumental. I hope the Foundation Board is already dusting off their Plan B, because they're going to need it.

Even if they could sustain Week 4's numbers perpetually (which would be impossible), it would still take another 28 weeks for them to hit their original budget goal. Five more weeks remaining to accomplish 28 weeks' worth of work. Happy Holidays, WMF!

Greg

Posted by: KamrynMatika

You might be interested in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-11-19/Anthere_interview, Greg

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

And this too:



I have participated in single audits of non-profit organization as large and much larger than WMF. I can tell you that this is an unusually long time, unless she means she's just waiting to get the auditor to produce the document. If they are actually sampling for all that time it is just weird. Maybe they could not verify by sampling and have resorted to examining every transaction? I have never seen happen.

Also it is a bad time to be without a Treasurer. Worse Oleta is local person who probably got the job by answering an ad. She is unlikely to follow them to high cost of living San Francisco. One might assume she is not going to take any professional risks for the benefit of WMF. The audit might actually produce interesting results.

Posted by: thekohser

Oh how even the faithful http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034711.html!

One solution? Watch out for the http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034713.html WikiDonations Nerd Brigade!

Er, http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034729.html, http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034759.html.

Well, at least http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiki_pennies.png the 2007 Wikimedia fundraiser is breaking all previous records!

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034712.html to Danny Wool:

Greg

Posted by: Disillusioned Lackey

yes, they cost you nothing, but the people's who's cards were stolen? What about that?

This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, their first response to such an event was not "guess what - this was happening, so we reported it to the Feds".

It is to use this as good news to show that the small donations added up to a lot.

Of course, the funds weren't real.

In fact, they were fraudsters using our site to check card viaibility.

But it didn't cost us anything.

Posted by: anthony

See http://www.nabble.com/Report-board-meeting-in-Florida-6-7-of-october-t4606216.html:



October 11, 2007. Sounds to me like their books weren't in order before the audit began.



As they don't plan on paying the Treasurer anything, and considering all the problems I'm sure they're having, I imagine it'll take a long before they find someone dumb enough to accept the position.

My prediction is that they'll either accept someone who doesn't meet the qualifications they described, or else they'll change their mind and decide to pay someone for the position.

Posted by: thekohser

Week 5 update. I grabbed the stats at 9:00 AM Eastern, as is my Tuesday morning custom, and here are the results:

Week 1 = 8,000 donors, yielding $208,000
Week 2 = 7,350 donors, yielding $206,000
Week 3 = 6,001 donors, yielding $222,726
Week 4 = 4,189 donors, yielding $135,374
Week 5 = 4,360 donors, yielding $142,250

Cumulative total after 5 weeks is 29,900 donors, yielding $914,350.

Were it not for some generous sheep feeling the spirit of Thanksgiving on Thursday and Friday, I believe we would have seen the attrition continue to depress donors. I severely doubt that the Foundation will capture the attention of more than 4,000 donors in a week again. Especially if the media gets cracking on the "sooper seekrit" mailing list fiasco.

I hope the Foundation can get by on $1.45 million, because even with the ghostly corporate donations that have to come forward at some point, that's what I'm predicting we'll see at the end of Week 9. Only 68% short of the optimistic budget figure. Good thing they're moving to San Francisco! I hear the cost of living is really manageable there.

Greg

Posted by: thekohser

Week 6 update. I grabbed the stats at 9:15 AM Eastern, as is my Tuesday morning custom, and here are the results:

Week 1 = 8,000 donors, yielding $208,000
Week 2 = 7,350 donors, yielding $206,000
Week 3 = 6,001 donors, yielding $222,726
Week 4 = 4,189 donors, yielding $135,374
Week 5 = 4,360 donors, yielding $142,250
Week 6 = 3,280 donors, yielding $107,925

Cumulative total after 6 weeks is 33,180 donors, yielding $1,022,275.

Those are some pretty weak numbers, folks. The weakest week yet. I notice on Facebook, Jimbo himself is actually begging recruiting his Facebook friends to donate to the "cause". His stats show that he's personally recruited about $650 in Facebook donations so far. Wow. Stop the presses. The man is a fundraising dynamo.

Now that The Register has reported on the secret mailing lists (which are also now mentioned in Wikipedia's article about Wikia), donations can only continue to shrink.

The donors are dwindling to less than 400 per day recently, so this coming week should be interesting. Will we see less than 2,600 donors, when Week 1 launched with 8,000? Did someone here on this board talk about the problem of "attrition" back in the beginning? Is that same someone banned from talking about Wikipedia's problems on Wikipedia?

Makes perfect sense, doesn't it, folks?

Greg

Posted by: anthony

From Sue Gardner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-12-03/Gardner_interview

Posted by: thekohser

Anonymous donors of large sums of money to a supposedly upstanding organization are kind of fishy. Yet, those who proudly name themselves are going to be on my (and others') boycott list, so I can see the point of an anonymous donation.

Still, they're going to be far, far short of $4.6 million.

Greg

Posted by: JohnA

So in the days after Durova-gate, the fundraising drive finally collapsed. WP is now hemorraging money.

Seems like a good time for Google or someone else to pick up the pieces...for pennies.

Posted by: Moulton

I wouldn't mind if Google acquired Wikipedia. I have more faith in the leadership talents of Larry Page and Sergey Brin than in Jimmy Wales.

Plus Google has a Social Contract with its own paid staff. If Google acquired Wikipedia, I would anticipate a comparable Social Contract with Wikipedians (who might even get paid for producing professionally crafted articles).

Posted by: thekohser

Week 7 update -- only a fortnight remains on the "official" fund-drive season. I grabbed the stats around 9:30 AM Eastern, as is my Tuesday morning custom, and here are the results:

Week 1 = 8,000 donors, yielding $208,000
Week 2 = 7,350 donors, yielding $206,000
Week 3 = 6,001 donors, yielding $222,726
Week 4 = 4,189 donors, yielding $135,374
Week 5 = 4,360 donors, yielding $142,250
Week 6 = 3,280 donors, yielding $107,925
Week 7 = 2,675 donors, yielding $103,575

Cumulative total after 7 weeks is 35,855 donors, yielding $1,125,850.

Last week, I wondered aloud if we would see less than 2,600 donors this week. Pretty damn close! Imagine if The Register's stories about secret mailing lists and cabal-assisted bias in the encyclopedia had come out in Week 1 or 2, rather than Week 6 and 7!

Five of the last eight days saw donor counts below 400. I wonder if we'll see a day this week that fails to hit even 300 donors.

Sue Gardner sure has her work cut out for her. Can't wait to see who the mythical, mystical "major" corporate donors will be when they're announced.

Anybody else notice how they didn't get any "matching pledge" donors this year? I wonder why that is.

Greg

Posted by: anthony

Yes, but that's the budget for the entire year, even if you believe that it hasn't been padded.

I'm still of the opinion that Sue, at least, never expected to raise $4.6 million in just this one fundraiser. That number was just an unrealistic goal thrown out there so the Wikipediots could whinge on the mailing lists about how everyone needed to work harder.

Just $1 million is way too much. Did you see, Sue just hired a personal assistant for herself. And somehow Jimbo is able to travel from California to Florida to Germany to South Africa to England to Japan to India to Australia to Washington D.C. and all the other places he's been going. I'm not sure if it's Wikia or the the WMF or someone else, but someone's gotta be paying for all that.

Posted by: The Joy

A lot of their reasons for people to donate are so lame. For X amount of dollars, you can send a student to Wikimania. WHHHAAAAATTTT? I don't want my money wasted on some lazy teen going to see Jimbo live in... concert? And what about these Wikipedia Academies? That won't stop the slaughter in Darfur.

There's a charity called http://www.wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf in which you can donate money to buy a goat for a poor African family. The goat acts as a seed for a family's economic needs. Many have been saved by this charity. If you're going to donate money to WP thinking it is saving or helping people's lives, don't. Donate to a charity like World Vision or the International Red Cross. If you're donating to WP to fight over whether the Soviet Union was ever an Axis Power and take up the whole doggone WWII article talk page to push you're crazed theory, then as you will.

Posted by: Disillusioned Lackey

Donating to wikipedia academies means teaching people to work for free. Send them to school, buy them a computer. But teach them to edit? Are you nuts?


I don't begrudge them their budget. 4.5 mil is still quite small for what Wikipedia is. It should be 15-20 million, if it were to be managed properly. What goads me is the displacement of crucial personnel such as Godwin and Gardiner. It is ok to be remotely located as a startup. But at this point, to build capacity, they need to be colocated. That's the rub (and why the 1 mil isn't justified). She should have to move to be paid that much sahree. Godwin too. (ok - maybe Godwin can sit in DC and lobby Congress - which is why they really hired him - but Gardiner has no place up in Canada). No way.
Perfectly normal. A PA is the 21st century alternative to a secretary, when we all do our own typing and planning.

Well, he's the boss (not according to the IRS, but anyways.......).

That kind of travel is normal, and if he didn't do it, .....

.......... hey, waitaminute. Gardiner should be doing it. I give up. I know nothing.

Flying Jimbo around the planet X times isn't the problem. The problem is allowing him management leverage as is done. He needs to be fully "emeritized" and disempowered. Then he can fly round and cheerlead and fundraise and take Wikia's interests on as a side point, and it would really, really be fine.

As it stands, he's ruining Wikipedia, as he's using it as a dog and pony show-piece. That's the bummer.

Posted by: thekohser

Week 8 update -- we thought that we were in the home stretch, with one week of fundraising to go. But, alas, the Wikipediots changed the rules on us, and they extended the drive into January. Imagine that!

We're flexible, too. I can keep posting the weekly results here -- and demonstrate the attrition that I seem to understand, but the Foundation does not seem to understand. This past week, we saw (surprise) record-low donor numbers and dollars:

Week 1 = 8,000 donors, yielding $208,000
Week 2 = 7,350 donors, yielding $206,000
Week 3 = 6,001 donors, yielding $222,726
Week 4 = 4,189 donors, yielding $135,374
Week 5 = 4,360 donors, yielding $142,250
Week 6 = 3,280 donors, yielding $107,925
Week 7 = 2,675 donors, yielding $103,575
Week 8 = 2,315 donors, yielding $ 85,285

Cumulative total after 7 weeks is 38,170 donors, yielding $1,211,135.

Last week, I wondered if we would see a day in the upcoming week that failed to hit even 300 donors. Guess what? We saw TWO such days!

Now, Sue Gardner has hired a foreign worker to be her "Deputy Director" -- a post that wasn't advertised, and apparently wasn't offered to any Americans, or minorities, or people with disabilities. That should put at ease the mythical, mystical "major" corporate donors that Sue has promised us.

I can't wait to see the forthcoming Associated Press article about all of the recent Foundation Fiascosâ„¢ because that will surely inspire a lot more donors to donate.

Greg

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Good point, Greg.

Posted by: thekohser

Don't credit me. Credit Kelly Martin and her http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2007/12/other-shoe-drops.html.

Also, be sure to see the insightful comment in her blog that points out:



Hey, at least he recused himself. Jimbo wouldn't even understand the need to do so!

Greg

Posted by: thekohser

Week 9 update. I missed my usual Tuesday morning summary, thanks to our Savior's birth, but I can back-fill the data.

This past week, we saw a blip up on Christmas Eve, with more donors (316 for the day) feeling a bit more generous ($42 average contribution that day), but despite that day of wonder, the trend still very much reflects a decrease in growth:

Week 1 = 8,000 donors, yielding $208,000
Week 2 = 7,350 donors, yielding $206,000
Week 3 = 6,001 donors, yielding $222,726
Week 4 = 4,189 donors, yielding $135,374
Week 5 = 4,360 donors, yielding $142,250
Week 6 = 3,280 donors, yielding $107,925
Week 7 = 2,675 donors, yielding $103,575
Week 8 = 2,315 donors, yielding $ 85,285
Week 9 = 1,955 donors, yielding $ 81,290

Cumulative total after 9 weeks is 40,125 donors, yielding $1,292,425.

Five out of the seven most recent days were under 300 donors.

Carolyn Doran's story has now reached hundreds of thousands of eyeballs that previously had no idea the Wikimedia Foundation was managed so sloppily. Sue Gardner's promised "big" corporate donations have still not hit the presses. Maybe the checks were torn up or reduced, in light of the "we didn't background check our COO" scandal?

Greg

Posted by: thekohser

Let's compare how the Wikimedia Foundation is doing versus U.S.-based public radio campaigns.

What if the WMF could cajole even half that ratio (5%) of its users to contribute even half the average current donation ($15)? They say that Wikipedia sites garner about 50,000,000 unique visitors per month. If 5% of them donated an average of $15, that would equal an annual fund of $37,500,000. Yet, the WMF is showing donations of only $1,300,000.

Apparently, public radio is at least 28 times more successful than the WMF at getting money for distributing "free knowledge" to its consumer base.

Greg

Posted by: Derktar

Hmm, that's pretty interesting, I had no idea public radio could pull in so much in listener donations. Well I think the Foundation knows the logical thing to do now!

Posted by: Moulton

As a compendium of popular culture, Terry Gross does it a whole lot better than Wikipedia.

Posted by: thekohser

Week 10 update. Remember, folks, we're in "overtime" now, since this fund-drive was originally intended to end last week. Once the Foundation saw how little money they were actually making, they extended it for another few weeks.

This past week, we saw a very noticeable jump in donations, likely driven by a number of people re-gifting cash presents they received for the holidays, and those wishing to make an end-of-year tax-deductible donation to something -- anything -- that can serve as a legitimate write-off. The average donation also jumped considerably this past week.

Week 1 = 8,000 donors, yielding $208,000
Week 2 = 7,350 donors, yielding $206,000
Week 3 = 6,001 donors, yielding $222,726
Week 4 = 4,189 donors, yielding $135,374
Week 5 = 4,360 donors, yielding $142,250
Week 6 = 3,280 donors, yielding $107,925
Week 7 = 2,675 donors, yielding $103,575
Week 8 = 2,315 donors, yielding $ 85,285
Week 9 = 1,955 donors, yielding $ 81,290
Week 10 = 2,260 donors, yielding $127,895

Cumulative total after 10 weeks is 42,385 donors, yielding $1,420,320.

What may be the most important thing to point out is what is showing up on today's (January 1) Wikipedia:

One could look at this as a glass half-full or a glass half-empty. Nice that they have such a generous matching donor. Too bad it comes on a day where they might not even get $50,000 from other donors. If they had planned ahead and arranged this offer back in early November when the fund-drive was young and pre-tainted by Durova and Doran, Inc., they would have pocketed the full $50K. Today, not so certain. Another "half-empty" way of looking at this is that the donor asked to remain anonymous. Why? Didn't want the ticker-tape parade of praise from the blogosphere; or, more likely, worried that now may not be the best available time to be associated with the world's most irresponsible encyclopedia? One last "half-empty" note would be that $50,000 or even $100,000 doesn't go a long way toward making up a budget shortfall of three million dollars, which is going to send FloFlo running to the advertisers in short time.

Greg

Posted by: Amarkov

It's kinda funny. Even with the random extention of the fundraiser, they'll be lucky to get halfway to their goal...

Posted by: The Joy

Is this thing still going on? I've gotten so used to that banner at the top, I no longer read it.

Seriously, I'm not being sarcastic!

Posted by: Amarkov

So the fundraiser finally ended. They managed about 45,000 people donating out of the 100,000 they wanted, and I'm sure they didn't make nearly enough money.

Posted by: Derktar

I wonder how long they'll keep this nice little message on the top of every page:

Posted by: thekohser

Regarding the failed fund-drive (no better than last year), they better get used to http://www.foundrymusic.com/media/displaymedia.cfm/id/9764/page/show_video_number_9764.html in San Francisco.

Posted by: Amarkov

You're having fun with that sound.