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Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

wikimediafoundation.org

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Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#61

Post by hug »

currymj wrote: post #51

What is the appeal of getting them to cut costs down to nothing? It seems weird to me that people resent a budget of $70 million/year for the most useful website in existence. What would you rather the money be spent on?

The problem, in all this, is not getting Wikipedia's expenses down to nothing. I use Wikipedia all the time, and I love it. It's an incredibly useful site and should be funded well enough to keep running indefinitely, and even have room for improvement.

On the other hand, if I choose to donate money to Wikmedia, 80% of it goes to other places, like their "content" sites, which consists of this bunch of mediocrity:

Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and Wikidata.

I don't give a shit about any of these projects, the only one I really don't want to go away is Wikipedia, and the rest could die and I wouldn't even blink, except as those projects also support Wikipedia. Increase Wikipedia's expenses if you must! Double it! Triple it! Just don't pretend that the foundation is struggling to support the thing that most people donating actually care about.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#62

Post by scrollaway »

hug wrote: post #61
currymj wrote: post #51

What is the appeal of getting them to cut costs down to nothing? It seems weird to me that people resent a budget of $70 million/year for the most useful website in existence. What would you rather the money be spent on?

The problem, in all this, is not getting Wikipedia 's expenses down to nothing. I use Wikipedia all the time, and I love it. It's an incredibly useful site and should be funded well enough to keep running indefinitely, and even have room for improvement. On the other hand, if I choose to donate money to Wikmedia, 80% of it goes to other places, like their "content" sites, which consists of this bunch of mediocrity: W…

Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons are both heavily used within Wikipedia, and Wiktionary is a very useful resource. It's kinda like saying "I don't want the money I donate to Mozilla to end up funding shitty projects like Gecko and Servo! I want it to end up in Firefox!"

There are offshoots in those, yes, but that doesn't make it a huge waste. Remember wikipedia was a very, very long shot for a very long time. To fund successes, you have to fund a lot of potential failures.

In other words, if you trust what the wikimedia foundation is doing, then you should donate to them and trust what they do with it (but feel free to challenge it and voice your opinion as a donor). And if you don't trust what they're doing, then you shouldn't be donating to them in the first place IMO, regardless of their ownership of Wikipedia.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#63

Post by mprev »

est31 wrote: post #40
c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

You know how much money Google is wasting? Their main source is still ads from their websites. They could lay off all of their staff that's not working on the search or ad parts and put that money into dividends instead. But instead they are using lot of money that belongs to the stakeholders on this giant project of finding a new thing that's similarly profitable as search. I definitely agree that WMF has definitely…

When I visit Google search there isn’t a banner begging me for money that will be piped into Google Wave, Buzz, or some other unrelated venture.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#64

Post by 51lver »

spac wrote: post #38

Contrarily to the negative sentiment expressed so far in the comments, I find branding an important question: If a foundation does good work, you’d want the foundation to receive more money to do more good work. For example, Wikipedia would benefit from many more tech investments, for example in the excellent wiki data and wikimedia research initiatives; or think of wiki vandalism and fake news. It’s well known in th…

I would much prefer them to stay small, tight, and focused.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#65

Post by d33 »

By the way, I feel like I should underline that I consider the technology behind Wikimedia a nice idea, but terrible execution. Apart from it being completely not standardized and having only one implementation, just compare it to Stack Overflow: both have the goal of gathering valuable knowledge and one manages to use gamification to build a healthy and transparent community, while the other has the least intuitive system possible, based on "voting" by editing Wikipedia pages only to end up being reminded that this is not a democracy. I feel that if the process was easier to grasp, people would edit more and we would have even more access to knowledge. Also, not integrating with Wikias sounds like a lost opportunity as well. I know that they vary by scope, but this would better solve the problem of deletionism vs inclusionism than what we have right now - criteria of "notability" in order to... reduce noise? Reduce maintenance cost? Neither is convincing to me.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#66

Post by [deleted] »

omouse wrote: post #19
c0l0 wrote: post #9

The thing that depresses me the most about Wiki[mp]edia is that the US$ 100 that I donated to them a few years ago (presumably,) predominantly went into creating material like this. Given how incredibly well-funded Wikimedia is, their yearly extort^Wdonation-drive with 50%+ viewport-sized banners plastered all over Wikipedia, claiming that the encyclopedia you're viewing is in dire need of your money to barely sustai…

They're only well-funded for now. That funding can go away if enough people, such as yourself, complain about this. They need to sustain themselves, just like any other organization. If they are a net negative in the world, I would withhold donations. For producing material like this? It's still a net positive and therefore still worthy of donating to.

[deleted]

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#67

Post by atdt »

I spent over four years as an engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation, which trained me to expect the double-take most people do when they hear the name for the first time. They either think they misheard you, or worse: they think you represent a knock-off entity that is trading on a misleading brand similarity, and they squint at you with suspicion. It's as if you told them you work at "AmaZone". So you can immediately forget about any bragging rights. The conversation has barely started and you are already at a trust deficit.

It's almost worse when the other party has heard of Wikimedia, because then your (by-now rehearsed) introduction comes across as wooden and weirdly defensive.

And if you think all that is bad... the annual conference for the Wikimedia community is called Wikimania. Try explaining that to passport control.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#68

Post by 51lver »

omouse wrote: post #58
nerdponx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the need to do things that aren't the specific thing you want them to do (i.e. run Wikipedia). But I don't see the need for this. What is actually bad about people not recognizing your brand correctly? They sure as shit recognize the product. If someone can provide an actual reason why this should help the foundation carry out its work, I can be convinced to be in favor of it. If they are a net negative…

What is actually bad about people not recognizing your brand correctly Yeah I'm sure Cuke and Papsi would have no problem with that as their coca-cola soft drink products are instantly recognizable as soon as you drink them.

You are comparing a force for good in the world to pushing sugar water. Sugar water OBVIOUSLY depends heavily on branding and advertising. Things that are more substantive can and should stand on their own merits.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#69

Post by sago »

hug wrote: post #61
currymj wrote: post #51

What is the appeal of getting them to cut costs down to nothing? It seems weird to me that people resent a budget of $70 million/year for the most useful website in existence. What would you rather the money be spent on?

The problem, in all this, is not getting Wikipedia 's expenses down to nothing. I use Wikipedia all the time, and I love it. It's an incredibly useful site and should be funded well enough to keep running indefinitely, and even have room for improvement. On the other hand, if I choose to donate money to Wikmedia, 80% of it goes to other places, like their "content" sites, which consists of this bunch of mediocrity: W…

What a thoroughly unpleasant attitude.

> which consists of this bunch of mediocrity: Wiktionary

I use Wiktionary very regularly, and find it incredibly useful.

Presumably you don't use all of Wikipedia either, what makes you 'give a shit' about the other 99.9+% of content?

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