In other languages: Español

2007-01-05

 

Anno Domini MMVII Week I Number LVI

Technical news
Fundraising

The fundraiser has been active for two and a half weeks, and the counter is now around 850 000 US$. That is 644 232.227 Euro, 433 850.551 British pound,   101.184 million Japanese yen, and 6.637 million Chinese yuan. Although this is an absolute success compared to earlier fundraisers, the immense popularity of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and the poor revenue from other sources mean that even more is still needed.

The amount donated has been boosted by matching donations by an anonymous donor and Virgin Unite (a corporate charity branch). The Virgin Unite matching donation was controversial because a Virgin Unite logo was temporarily placed at the top of every page on all wikis. Some users in the community regarded the logo as the first step to allowing advertisement on Foundation projects.

A long and ongoing discussion was started about this on the Foundation mailing list. Some Wikimedians were very critical about the board's decision to make the arrangement with Virgin, but there was also strong support for the decision. Many people argued that something needs to be done to get enough money, and that matching donation is a good way to do it so that the Foundation's primary mission can continue.

Despite the opposition, the instruction to add the Virgin Unite logo to the site notices was generally carried out. The Dutch language Wikipedia was the most controversial of the top ten Wikipedias, where there was an edit war about the site notice involving several sysops; eventually the logo stayed up. On the Italian language Wikipedia, a sysop removed the notice because of disagreement, but there was no edit war. The Norwegian Wikipedia has been very active in editing there site notice but somehow the never came at the idea to include the Virgin matching notice on there wikipedia. All the other top ten Wikipedias used the Virgin logo without conflict.

At least one other matching donation action will follow some time in the near future, but will not include a logo. The name of sponsor is still not released; however, users who had a problem with the Virgin Unite notice will probably not be amused by this one either.
Request for help
Community
If your project does not have such an initiative make sure that Bulgaria and Romania are now EU member states, Slovenia is using the Euro, and that the Secretary General of the United nations is Ban Ki-moon.
Media
Stats
Other news
Was ist das?

GCF: the great chinese firewall
NP:  No Problem
NOP: Not Our Problem
SUL: Single User Login
BTW: By The Way (*not* near the road)
AFAIK: As Far As I Know

Quote

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."-- Jimmy Wales, July 2004

"As for what it doesn't say:
It does not say, "Imagine an advertising-free world."
It does not say "where every single person who speaks a English or a  
European language ..."
It does not say "share freely unless the unfree content is better."
It does not say "free knowledge and links to where to find out  more/buy it."
It does not say "That's what we did.""
-- Dannyisme

"It doesnt say "let's thank our sponsers with more ads" either" -- Teun Spaans

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/13350/focus=13350

Number of subscribers: 573 , Unique Visitors website this week: 334, Editor(s): Walter, Xyrael
Corrector(s): Gary Kirk, Pathoschild , Thanks to: Romihaitza, Daveydweeb, Annabel

# posted by Walter @ 23:50
Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours? Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License

Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. Publisher: meta:user:Walter.