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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

#101

Post by scoutt »

uranusjr wrote: post #92
atdt wrote: post #67

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…

I have a friend working at Canonical, and whenever he introduces himself he always includes a brief mention that Canonical makes Ubuntu. I felt it’s very strange (and certainly felt it a little offensive when I first knew him), but came to understand it after a while. It is not common for people to make connection between Canonical and Ubuntu (even IT people!). He needs to establish himself, otherwise many people won…

I wonder if someone working at Alphabet Inc. suffers the same anonymity.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#102

Post by hug »

gowld wrote: post #91
hug wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find my attitude unpleasant: What I find unpleasant is a large organisation deliberately deceiving users into thinking that the resource they consider valuable is underfunded, when really they are spending those donations on side shows that these people don't even know exist, let alone want to use. WMF are like the Internet charity version of Susan G Komen. With regards to the usefulness of Wikipedia versus W…

When you spend money on a Google product, half of the money goes to buy hovercars for the founder. Does that make it bad spend? Komen does nothing of value except give people expensive happy feelings. It's not in the same league.

My secret superpower is that I don’t pay for any Google services.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#103

Post by sigi45 »

2ion wrote: post #42
sigi45 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikisomething gave me so much information. The price i'm paying with my few donations i made over the years, are donations i don't bother to check what they are doing with it. Why? I'm not part of it. I'm just here, reading stuff on wikipedia. I don't know what they wanna try out. I don't know who or why so many people are part of it. I haven't written a single article. I fixed stuff but thats it. Perhaps they need i…

Your trust is misplaced. Wikipedia editors (unpaid) generate their income from other things than money, be it a sense of accomplishment, altruism or agenda setting. Most articles on everything except science is tainted by bias. Wikipedia is no replacement for the classic lexicon in terms of redactional quality.

Soooo first of: I have not said that Wikipedia editors get money. But i'm assuming that my donation goes into something which motivates people to take part.

Easier editing for example. Or education about how to edit.

I don't have any lexika in my house. Everyone i know which has some form of it, its old.

I also don't think that a redactional lexicon is much better than the wikipedia. Why should it be? Bias perhaps but gathering facts is hardly a bias thing.

Wikipedia is free, i can freely distribute it, i can clone it, i can edit it. This is the most comprehensive datacollection with public access i know.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#104

Post by sigi45 »

Geimfari wrote: post #34
sigi45 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikisomething gave me so much information. The price i'm paying with my few donations i made over the years, are donations i don't bother to check what they are doing with it. Why? I'm not part of it. I'm just here, reading stuff on wikipedia. I don't know what they wanna try out. I don't know who or why so many people are part of it. I haven't written a single article. I fixed stuff but thats it. Perhaps they need i…

But you aren't paying for the editors and only a fraction of the donation goes to covering server costs. The Wikipedia project does not need your money and the foundation has enough money to survive indefinitely if they'd cut costs.

I know and my argument is that your argument, doesn't matter to me. I also wrote why it doesn't.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#105

Post by vanderZwan »

roenxi wrote: post #82
vanderZwan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was a struggle to keep wikipedia's lights on, I'd consider donating myself Isn't that kind of problematic too though? The idea that donations may only go to organizations that would struggle otherwise? (I know I'm inferring something you didn't explicitly say, but I do think that is a fairly common sentiment as well)

The situation becomes a bit clearer after drawing a distinction between a broad mission ("feed the starving") and a specific mission ("maintain wikipedia"). I'm ok with donations to a specific mission or a group with a very clear this-is-what-we-need-to-fund style goal and budget, and obviously if they are achieving their mission then they don't need more donations. I'm not normally comfortable with the broad-mission…

Well, alright. But can replace the word "organisations" and "charity" with "corporations" and "company" and explain why this logic of scandals and corruption waiting to happen no longer holds? Because I sure can't.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#106

Post by vanderZwan »

scoutt wrote: post #101
uranusjr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend working at Canonical, and whenever he introduces himself he always includes a brief mention that Canonical makes Ubuntu. I felt it’s very strange (and certainly felt it a little offensive when I first knew him), but came to understand it after a while. It is not common for people to make connection between Canonical and Ubuntu (even IT people!). He needs to establish himself, otherwise many people won…

I wonder if someone working at Alphabet Inc. suffers the same anonymity.

Arguably that disconnect is intentional (not for the employees, but for the companies under the Alphabet umbrella themselves)

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#107

Post by majewsky »

scoutt wrote: post #101
uranusjr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend working at Canonical, and whenever he introduces himself he always includes a brief mention that Canonical makes Ubuntu. I felt it’s very strange (and certainly felt it a little offensive when I first knew him), but came to understand it after a while. It is not common for people to make connection between Canonical and Ubuntu (even IT people!). He needs to establish himself, otherwise many people won…

I wonder if someone working at Alphabet Inc. suffers the same anonymity.

Alphabet is only a holding. I wouldn't expect many people to work for Alphabet directly.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#108

Post by ThePadawan »

profalseidol wrote: post #95
atdt wrote: post #67

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…

Personally, I see this "MediaWiki" logo on this wiki full of ads: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Path_of_Exile_Wiki Then somehow, my brain connects this to Wikimedia and thinks it's for-profit?

> this wiki full of ad

Wow, you weren't kidding. This is genuinely the first non-pornographic website in years that has ads which are so aggressive that they make it past my uBlock Origin.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#109

Post by roenxi »

vanderZwan wrote: post #105
roenxi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation becomes a bit clearer after drawing a distinction between a broad mission ("feed the starving") and a specific mission ("maintain wikipedia"). I'm ok with donations to a specific mission or a group with a very clear this-is-what-we-need-to-fund style goal and budget, and obviously if they are achieving their mission then they don't need more donations. I'm not normally comfortable with the broad-mission…

Well, alright. But can replace the word "organisations" and "charity" with "corporations" and "company" and explain why this logic of scandals and corruption waiting to happen no longer holds? Because I sure can't.

I also wouldn't advise donating money to corporations and companies. Corporations _are_ routinely plagued by financial scandals and corruption, but that is a problem for the owners, not the public. The harmed party is the shareholders, and to a substantial degree it is up to them to protect themselves.

A big difference that you might be looking for is that nobody is keen to give money to a company. People have (surprisingly effective) methods to find the cheapest producer. If the government is behaving appropriately this effect generally squeezes profit margins until they are uniform and thin. In theory. Practice is often close enough to theory to keep the system humming along.

Re: Leading with Wikipedia: A brand proposal for 2030

#110

Post by andrewshadura »

uranusjr wrote: post #92
atdt wrote: post #67

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…

I have a friend working at Canonical, and whenever he introduces himself he always includes a brief mention that Canonical makes Ubuntu. I felt it’s very strange (and certainly felt it a little offensive when I first knew him), but came to understand it after a while. It is not common for people to make connection between Canonical and Ubuntu (even IT people!). He needs to establish himself, otherwise many people won…

‘Yes, I work for Collabora. No, I'm not a LibreOffice expert. Oh, we do pretty much everything with Linux but LibreOffice, they're a separate company actually.’
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