[Foundation-l] Blink tag jokes are now obsolete.

Thu Jan 12 09:14:21 UTC 2012

Erik,

I would like to intervene here since I often read that WMDE ran an
agressive campaign this year (and that being one of the major reason for
its success).

In my opinion that is not true.

Duration of the campaign: we started Nov. 14th and ended Jan. 5th. I
think every other chapter and even WMF in certain countries had similar
campaign lenghts. WMF even started one week earlier for logged-ins in
the US (if I recall correctly). Even if we were one day later than
others, I don´t think this deserves the label "agressive".

Urgent appeal and Jimmy: Yes, we did have Jimmy up for quite a long
time. But not as long as last year and I would guess that other chapters
did rely on Jimmy almost as much as we did (please correct WMUK, WMFR,
WMCH). But we also ran Brandon, Ryan, Susan, the German donor Katrin,
Pavel and different text banners. But we did not put up the urgent
appeal. As you can see with Test 20
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Local_testing/DE#Test_20:_Jimmy-Banner-Test:_5.E2.82.AC_vs._urgent_vs._thermometer),
the 5 Euro Banner outperformed the urgent appeal. We ran Test 18
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Local_testing/DE#Test_18:_Jimmy.27s_urgent_appeal)
only to see if the urgent appeal does better. The link you are refering
to is a test campaign on Jan. 3rd, during which we ran all appeals we
had for one day. After that we put up the thank you banner.

Wikimedia CEO: Yes, we titled Pavel as Wikimedia CEO in the thank you
banner - since that would be the translation of his position at
Wikimedia Deutschland. As you can see on the refering landingpage his
position was written out as CEO, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. We had to
shorten his function on the banner in order to have a short message. I
don´t think that this deserves the label "agressive" either. You can
call it misleading at some point (but as we all know: most people do not
know what Wikimedia is) but since we wrote out the function in the
appeal, it is not a false information in order to receive more donations.

We did not run an agressive campaign, we had a very effective one. One
of the major reasons for our success was that we tested a lot and
changed banners according to the results immediately.

Or are there any other indications why the WMDE campaign deserves the
term agressive?

Till

Btw. there were no complaints from the Germany community afaik.

Am 10.01.2012 07:06, schrieb Erik Moeller:
> On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 4:36 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> It got worse. They changed it to "Wikimedia Executive Director"
> 
> At the risk of reviving this thread, I find it worth noting that the
> German chapter apparently used very similar banners this year to these
> banners you criticized last year:
> 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=WMDE_Fundraiser_End_anon
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=WMDE_Test_Jan03_JimmyJacketUrgent
> 
> This is not a criticism of WM-DE: We used that language last year, and
> I felt much of the criticism of it was unreasonable, especially yours.
> I find it interesting, though, in the context of the discussion that's
> happening on Meta right now regarding funds dissemination. It is also
> worth noting that we didn't use either choice of words this year in
> the WMF campaign in response to the concerns from last year.
> 
> From the standpoint of creating a balanced, community-friendly
> campaign that's respectful and responsive, decentralizing
> decision-making about the shape of the campaign to the geographic
> level is IMO likely to do the opposite: It will create more pressure
> (because it's a more competitive environment) between fundraising
> entities to maximize revenue and push the limits, while reducing
> visibility of (and associated accountability for) specific choices
> like the above among the wider Wikimedia community.
> 
> Erik

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Till Mletzko
Fundraiser
-------------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
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10777 Berlin

Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
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