[Wikipedia-l] Re: Please change the embarrassing donations message

Wed Oct 8 03:04:47 UTC 2003

Erik Moeller wrote:
> James-
> 
>>Wiki's phenomenal growth requires constant upgrading of technology to give
>>you the best service possible. Giving that service requires funding. You now
>>can donate money to help your wikipedia remain the fastest growing
>>encyclopædia on the internet. For more information, see [[Wikipedia
>>donations]].
> 
> 
> I don't particularly care either way, but I will point out that I think  
> that direct, honest, personal messages -- "We have a server problem, she's  
> not gonna take much more, Cap'n!" -- are part of Wikipedia's charm. A  
> polished PR message that glosses over our well known performance and  
> reliability problems creates distance between the different layers of  
> Wikipedia, and that kind of distance may actually make people less likely  
> to donate. I consider it a problematic approach to apply classical PR  
> strategies to online communities, because the social interaction creates  
> completely new requirements of communication.
> 
> As a matter of fact, I believe the best course of action would be to make  
> the message editable at least by sysops, which is something that should be  
> possible soon with all MediaWiki texts if I understood Tim Starling  
> correctly.

Yes, all messages accessible with wfMsg() will be editable. I'm not sure 
how soon it will be -- the entire development branch needs to be tested 
extensively, including profiling runs with memcached enabled.

The only messages which are not effectively editable are database error 
messages and a few similar things, where infinite recursion would result 
if database access was attempted.

Regarding the donations header: does JT have a specific proposal which 
will fit on one line?

-- Tim Starling