Collaboration for the 2023 English fundraising banner campaign is kicking off now, right from the start of the fiscal year.
This page is for en.wiki volunteers to learn about fundraising and share ideas for how we can improve the 2023 English fundraising campaign together. On this page you'll find information to increase transparency and understanding of the fundraising program, background on improvements around community collaborations that have been made since the last campaign, new spaces for collaboration, and messaging examples to invite volunteers to share ideas for how we can improve the next campaign together.
The majority of funding for the Wikimedia Foundation comes from individual donors all around the world. These donations allow us to provide the world-class technology infrastructure that supports 20 billion monthly views to Wikipedia and its sister projects, protect free knowledge globally through legal and advocacy efforts, and support the incredible volunteer editors that have built 61 million articles across more than 300 languages. This year, the Foundation is focusing heavily on improvements to our products and technology, particularly the needs of experienced editors. You can learn more about priorities for the Wikimedia Foundation in detail in the FY 2023-2024 annual plan.
To fund these efforts, the fundraising team will run its annual Q2 English fundraising campaign (for non-logged in users) in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Funds raised from these countries account for more than 50 percent of all funds per year and this is an important moment to invite readers to support Wikimedia's mission. To prepare for the campaign, the fundraising team will continue the yearly practice of running limited "pre-tests" between July and November, to ensure optimal systems and banners, in collaboration with volunteers.
As a brief recap, in December 2022, the English Wikipedia community ran a Request for Comment that underscored the importance of the Foundation's fundraising team working closely with the movement on banner messaging. The team kicked off a collaboration process that resulted in the campaign featuring more than 400 banners that came from the co-creation process with volunteers. The revenue performance of the banners declined significantly last year and resulted in a longer campaign with readers seeing more banners than previous years. The fundraising team learned a lot through the collaboration process and is eager this year to build on this work with volunteers to develop content that will successfully invite donors to support our mission. We aim to reach fundraising targets in ways that minimize the number of banners shown to limit disruption and resonate with readers and volunteers. You can read more background on last year's campaign, in the background section.
Collaborating on messaging with volunteer stakeholders is key to the fundraising team. We will use the co-created banner message that ran in December 2022 to kick off the pre-tests and work together with volunteers on new ideas for this year's campaign.
As 2022 came to a close, a Request for Comment (RfC) on English Wikipedia proposed changes to the messaging of year-end fundraising banners. The Wikimedia Foundation accepted the guidance provided by the close of the RfC, and established a co-creation page to seek volunteer input on banner messaging from community members. Throughout the fundraising campaign, the team posted regular updates to the page.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the banner co-creation process in 2022. In the January campaign recap, we shared more information on how we ran a different kind of campaign with new banner messages that were created together with Wikimedia volunteers.
The English campaign raised significantly less than the previous year. Overall, we saw a $10 million decline in banner fundraising year over year despite showing more banners to our readers. There were tradeoffs to running lower-performing messages in 2022. Over the years, the team has worked to limit the disruption to the reading experience by making the campaigns more efficient, reducing the number of days the banner campaign ran and limiting the number of banners readers see. In December 2022, we ran a longer campaign and showed 49% more banner impressions than the previous year. Despite these changes, we still raised 30% less than the previous year. While we made gains through our work together, the donation rate was still significantly less than the previous year.
Thanks to constructive conversations and commitment from community stakeholders, we made considerable gains in banner performance throughout the 2022 English campaign, following the initial low banner performance at the start of the campaign. Here are some highlights from co-created banners:
A new 2022 founder appeal direct from Jimmy Wales
The theme of reciprocity
More clarity around the role of the Foundation and the importance of donating
Time-sensitivity to highlight the importance of this fundraising moment
Adjustments to the design and usability of close options in our mobile banners
450+ banners tested
A closer relationship with our volunteers who are interested in fundraising messaging
The team is committed to building on the progress made throughout December to improve this year's campaign together. We're excited to kick off the collaboration much earlier, in our typical Q1 pre-testing period, so that we have time to test and optimize, along with volunteers, before the end of year push.
Background on Foundation planning and transparency in 2023
Background on Foundation planning and transparency in 2023
We recognize that there were concerns about matters outside of fundraising banners expressed in the 2022 RfC and elsewhere. Here are a few brief highlights to share on our wider approach to planning and transparency in 2023. To learn about priorities for the Wikimedia Foundation in detail, please see the FY 2023–2024 annual plan.
Sharing more detailed information about how funds are spent.
This year, the Foundation's annual plan offers detailed budget breakdowns, including across our four goals for this year, of which our technical infrastructure is the largest (48.7%). We also shared more information about how specifically the Wikimedia Foundation supports the Wikimedia projects this year, including:
23% of our budget ($39.7 million, about 26% of staff) to evolve and maintain features and functionality of the projects, such as developing new software, adapting the sites to new form functions, site security, and maintaining our servers and tech stack
26% of our budget ($46.4 million, about 30% of staff) to build analytics and machine learning services that support contributors, create and deliver analytics, and enable data driven decision making through our APIs and metadata systems.
20% of our budget ($35.1 million, about 12% of staff) to supporting affiliates and volunteer communities around the world
9% of our budget ($16.6 million, about 10% of staff) on legal and public advocacy, such as fighting censorship, defending trademarks, defending threats to free knowledge, safeguarding Wikimedia's reputation, and ensuring legal compliance
$17.9 million of our budget split between fundraising, human resources, financial, and legal support (12% of our budget combined and about 13% of staff.)
Slowing of Foundation growth.
The Foundation's annual plan budget is flattening compared to prior years. As discussed in the annual plan, we have made reductions in both non-personnel and personnel expenses to achieve this.
Engaging more closely with existing editors, and prioritizing their needs in our plan for this year.
On the 14th of April, Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann released her listening tour letter after her first nine months in her new role. It recognized the need for more attention to longstanding challenges like technical debt, the importance of improving the Foundation's relationship with English Wikipedia, and overall, having a clearer vision for how to responsibly use donor-funded resources to support Wikipedia and the sister projects. The annual plan for fiscal year 2023-2024 follows through on a number of these things, where work has already begun. Specifically within the Technology and Product goals, you will see a focus on working closely with editors and editors with extended rights (admins, stewards, patrollers, and moderators of all kinds, also known as functionaries) to improve their experiences. The Foundation will also work on providing decision makers from across the Wikimedia Movement access to reliable, relevant, and timely data, models, insights, and tools that can help them assess the impact (both realized and potential) of their work and the work of their communities, enabling them to make better strategic decisions. Finally, exploring strategies for expanding beyond our existing audiences of consumers and contributors, in an effort to truly reach everyone in the world.
Sharing more information about financial and operational management.
This year, we've taken the extra step of publishing salary data for our CEO Maryana Iskander and Chief of Product & Technology Selena Deckelmann in our annual plan, to supplement the executive salary data released each year in our form 990.
Since the English campaign in late 2022, the fundraising team and local volunteers have made a lot of improvements in the collaboration process for campaigns so far in 2023 in Sweden, Japan, the Czech Republic, Mexico and Brazil.
A few highlights of approaches we've tried since January to improve the fundraising collaboration process:
Partnered with 4 affiliates (affiliates were involved in the creation of the community collaboration pages, gave input on banner and email messaging, and attended community calls)
Direct individual engagement with local volunteers
A few key takeaways from the campaigns so far in 2023:
The timing of early collaboration ahead of the campaign is critical to ensuring a strong campaign launch.
Continued partnership with local affiliates is valuable to ensure quality localization and open up engagement spaces with volunteers.
Minimal messaging concerns raised from most banner campaigns.
Minimal interest/attendance in fundraising dedicated meetings, joining existing spaces is valuable to increase participation.
Messaging ideas from Mexico's community conversation were implemented in banners.
Japan campaign had 5 participants who collaborated on an improved translation of Jimmy's new December message.
Local payment methods were discussed on the Swedish collaboration page.
Czech Republic volunteers asked questions to understand the campaign (It was the first time we ran a fundraising campaign in the Czech Republic).
To increase information sharing and collaboration opportunities for the next campaign, the team is eager to engage in multiple spaces. Here are a few initial ideas. We welcome more input on channels for collaboration!
On wiki: Right here on this en.wiki collaboration page, fundraising Meta page, English Wikipedia Miscellaneous Village Pump. The team will share campaign insights, plans, and updates on this collaboration page. Updates will include message ideas for input, summaries on banner testing, changes to messaging over time, and space for new ideas and questions from volunteers. While we won't be able to test every single message idea shared here, we will build from the process last year to continue to try ideas shared in this collaboration space as well as other new spaces we're setting up this year.
In person: Members of the fundraising team will attend Wikimania, WikiConference North America, and other movement events for in person conversations and collaboration.
Live conversations: Virtual conversation spaces for fundraising staff and volunteers to collaborate on fundraising. Is there an existing meeting you'd like us to attend? Please let us know! To start, we've scheduled two virtual calls:
10th of August at 1pm UTC – to attend please email Julia (jbrungs at wikimedia dot org),
7th of September at 4:30pm UTC – to attend please email Julia (jbrungs at wikimedia dot org).
Direct individual engagement: If you're interested in connecting directly, please email Julia Brungs at jbrungs at wikimedia dot org.
Many ideas shared by volunteers on the English campaign co-creation page last year were incorporated into banners, such as messages around the theme of reciprocity, clarity on the role of the Foundation, and a new appeal from Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales. We're eager to build from that process to work together to find ways to improve the banners this year. Throughout the first quarter of the fiscal year (July-September), the team runs limited pre-campaign tests ahead of the fundraising campaign. Similar to last year, it won't be feasible to test every message idea shared on this page as there may be more iterations than space in the "pre-test" period, but we will continue to try ideas shared in this collaboration space as well as other new spaces we're setting up this year.
As is regular practice for the fundraising team, the first tests of the new fiscal year in July will be technical systems and payments tests. For these tests, we'll use the same banner message that was co-created in December. No new language will be introduced in the first tests.
Starting in August, we'll kick off messaging testing. We welcome your ideas! There were many messages tested in December and we'd like to revisit some of these to try different combinations of the variety of themes explored last year to reach our fundraising targets in ways that limit the disruption of campaigns and resonate with our community of volunteers and readers.
Co-created banner message from 2022 (with light edits to remove the "year-end" message):
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Wednesday, June 14, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and 12 other free knowledge projects, it meant that we could preserve our core values: neutral, high quality information, not outrage and clickbait. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
There are also many powerful lines that emerged from the co-creation page in December, and we hope to iterate and repeat some of these messages. Here is a sample and we'd love your input into what you like or would want improved.
We ask for much less than many other nonprofits: just $3, or whatever is available to you. The reason we ask for these small donations is because Wikipedia and its sister sites are owned and built by everyone. There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts for our nonprofit. We're proud of the work we do.
Wikipedia is different. No advertising, no subscription fees, no paywalls. Those don't belong here. Instead, the Wikimedia Foundation relies on readers to support the technology that makes Wikipedia and our other projects possible.
Now is the time we ask: If you donate just $3, or whatever seems right, we could expand the reach of free knowledge and keep improving the technology behind Wikipedia. There have never been ads or subscription fees on Wikipedia. It welcomes everyone, like a library or a public park.
We don't run ads and we don't sell your data, because you're a community to us, not a commodity. Instead, our nonprofit relies on readers for support. Wikipedia is part of the infrastructure of the world today, like a library or a public park where we can all go to learn.
Give only what you can comfortably give: what matters is your support, not the size of your gift. Together, let's support this special space on the internet, with no advertising, no subscription fees, and no paywalls. Wikipedia welcomes everyone. And that's priceless.
One donation may seem small, but when millions of readers each give, we can do great things.
Latest comment: 1 year ago52 comments20 people in discussion
Please share your ideas here! These can be iterations on the message above, new sentences, inspiring words, themes, or new concepts to try. We'd love to use this space to plan out the first message tests of the year together. Thank you for any ideas you'd like to share!
Thank you for this suggestion, it is certainly a topic of great interest within WMF, the Wikimedia Movement and across the web. Thanks too, @Nosebagbear, for your reflections. We’ve tried similar themes in the past and it feels like an area to continue to explore together.
Here is a message idea we’ll workshop further and want to share here for early reactions. Feedback welcome; @Folly Mox and @Nosebagbear, what do you think?
As a non-profit, we are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming more rare online/harder to come by online/harder to recognize online.
I like this idea, and have a suggestion that's a little different in tone:
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation, grifters, and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together, for no other reason than that they want to help create a free repository of quality information. That's something we all need, like a library or a public park. Please consider donating $2 to support our work today. —Ganesha811 (talk) 17:12, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I like this because it challenges the popular conception that Wikipedia "moderators" are paid, hired or "vetted" by some authority. Not a criticism of your wording but I like using the phrase "Wikipedia is written by its readers". — Bilorv (talk) 09:01, 22 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
User:SPatton (WMF), this is a genuine question: is this draft idea related to the disinformation / generative AI theme? No big deal if it's a segue into a different topic – I'm not expecting my suggestion to be workshopped immediately – but it seems non sequitur. Folly Mox (talk) 17:25, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I was thinking more in the sphere of AI is spooky and unknowable. AI learns a lot of its information from Wikipedia, so a better Wikipedia means smarter, safer, and more accurate AI. Worse AI sends police to the wrong address and they shoot your dog. But, like, with good words and not over the top paranoid. Folly Mox (talk) 17:37, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi @Folly Mox, yes! My response was related but obviously the language I suggested was less direct. We appreciate the nudges to talk about Wikipedia’s powerful role in the large language model space, and just want to make sure we accurately portray Wikimedia Foundation’s work on it.
Thanks for your suggestions too @Ganesha811, I love a lot of your imagery and tone. We will line up some of these ideas for testing in August. I’ll follow up next week with a sample of AI / misinformation messages for y’all to look at. SPatton (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 28 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
User:SPuri-WMF Thank you Ganesha. Lots of great ideas here, I like the opening line a lot. Also agree with @Bilrov that it is great to highlight that the content is written by everyone/Wikipedia readers. We will line up some of these ideas for testing in the coming weeks and will follow up with some updates here. 20:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for starting the conversation early! I like almost all of the team's suggestions above and appreciate your willingness to take on board the community's feedback, even though we raised less money last year than most years. One quibble: I would cut the word "humbly" wherever it appears; self-aware humility, ironically, has the opposite effect. —Ganesha811 (talk) 01:04, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi @Ganesha811, thank you very much for the input and encouraging words. Would it surprise you to learn that we tested that concept of ‘humbly’ once again, head to head, in December, and found that including it was a statistically significant ~ 11% increase in donations?
That’s an outsized impact for a single adverb, but every so often, we hit upon a particular ‘power word’ that resonates with readers. Interestingly, when that happens, it sometimes gets picked up in the language donors reflect back at us; such as this comment sent in from a donor:
I noticed it, I read it and what caught my attention is the word “humbly”. To know that your organization is just trying to provide a free service accessible to all and to ask humbly is what made me want to give. I’m not being beaten down to donate, I was just asked politely, respectfully and humbly.
But I’m not just here to post old test results, we’re here to chart a course together. I will queue up a fresh test of humbly / no humbly in early August, and bring the results back to this page. We’ll also gather more donor feedback on this wording and share that back here to inform the discussion.
Is there other wording you’d be interested in exploring here as we’re brainstorming new messaging tests? E.g. I’m honored to ask you, or I have the pleasure to ask you …
I find that very interesting; clearly, not everyone finds it offputting! Thanks for sharing the data, and for running a fresh test. One word that you could try is "grateful"; We are so grateful that people choose to support this work... Or, if an adjective is simpler to slot in directly, "sincerely". As I said, this is a quibble, not a dealbreaker, so if you end up deciding that "humbly" should stay, it wouldn't be a cause for alarm. —Ganesha811 (talk) 17:06, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I've always advocated for communicating the feeling of gratitude in corporate messaging, instead of pride / humility / honour. Even if it doesn't mesh well with the point of the message ("grateful to ask for your donations again this year"), gratitude is a universally positive energy that doesn't place the parties on an uneven level. Folly Mox (talk) 17:29, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I appreciate there was some movement by the WMF last year in response to volunteer outrage. I oppose banners because I don't approve of how WMF funds are being spent. But, if banners are to exist, then they should be sparingly shown, unobtrusive, factually accurate and avoid crisis messaging about running out of money, regardless of what effects this has on revenue. My primary concern is making sure Thomas does not donate what he cannot afford. Wikipedia does have an existential crisis, but one of volunteer labour, not money. This crisis is mostly unacknowledged, while our fundraising model is known to most readers. I've proposed it before, but this is what I would like a banner to look like:
Wikipedia is facing a crisis: a crisis of volunteer shortage. A typical reader views [x] articles and spends [y] hours per year on Wikipedia. Consider giving just one hour of your time signing up with an account and clicking on [link e.g. user homepage for SuggestedEdits tasks] to help us fix the errors in our articles and give back to the website that wants to make the sum of all human knowledge freely accessible. You can also give financial donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and other educational websites, by clicking [here]. Read our [donation FAQ] for more.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that we should try to recruit more volunteers, it should be noted that the Foundation has previously tried recruiting editors via banners, starting way back in 2010. Now that we have a better newcomer task suggestions system and mentorship systems for newcomers, I'd be curious if they worked any better. Part of the issue that people often sign up to edit because they're interested in a particular subject, rather than generically interested in editing, and these kind of banners and tasks aren't very good for that. Anyway it's worth a try. Steven Walling • talk05:32, 20 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for your ideas about how fundraising could be an opportunity to encourage more people to edit. Over the past year, the fundraising and Product teams have been experimenting with ways to do just that. After readers make a donation, they land on our “Thank You” page, which thanks them for their donations. The team ran an experiment in the fundraising campaigns in Latin America, India, and South Africa where we added a call-to-action on the “Thank You” page to create an account and start editing. Here’s an example of the invitation to edit on the donor thank you page. Since the initial experiments in LATAM, India, and South Africa, we have rolled out this invitation to edit on the thank you page out to donors in those countries, as well as France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands and Sweden! You can read more about the experiments here. Increasing editors impacts the existing volunteer community so we’re excited to have this conversation together here. The invitation to edit has not yet been rolled out to the English campaign, but the team is certainly interested in exploring that idea. We’d love to hear from volunteers on the idea of experimenting with including this CTA to the thank you page, potentially in a few brief “pre-tests” as a starting point to learn about the impact of inviting donors to edit. What do you think?
Absolutely, I'm in favour of encouraging donors to volunteer in this way. Please roll out the new donation thank-you page when you can. However, I don't think volunteering is an add-on, secondary to the goal of getting readers to donate, and just one step above filling out a survey on donor demographics. I think it's (like finances) critical to the continued existence of Wikimedia and (unlike finances) far below the level it needs to be at. — Bilorv (talk) 16:54, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
That is, alas, very clearly only half true. Both are needed - and the use of banners (and reader and community tolerance thereof) is a limited resource. The tests should try both, but this can be a case where being okay at both is worse than good at one. We know we can raise money through banners - acquiring volunteers who stay for more than 1-2 edits through banners is less confirmed. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:35, 24 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
That's as may be, but consider that recruiting new editors is also fundraising, in a very real sense. If I tried to calculate the value of the time that I have spent on Wikipedia, I suspect it would run easily into the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth, if not more, depending on the exact calculation method. That's far more than I would have ever directly donated to it. We need volunteers much more than we need cash. Money doesn't do NPP or AFC or check for copyright violations or do any of those things we actually need involved volunteers to do. SeraphimbladeTalk to me23:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi all, I just wanted to chime into this interesting discussion with the factoid that we have already worked in a small mention of editing to a banner from last year’s campaign:
There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts.
But I’d be curious to explore this theme further. Here’s some sample language we’ve developed, what do y’all think?
Wikipedia relies on volunteers: If Wikipedia and its sister sites are useful to you, support us with a donation or support us with an edit.
From the beginning, Wikipedia has been a volunteer effort. The articles you read are written by volunteers, and the non-profit that supports our projects relies on voluntary donations. Every edit counts, every donation counts.
It will always be challenging to position two calls to action in a single appeal; but we know that most readers don’t actually end up making a donation, and it would be gratifying to get more from our banners and drive actions we need for our projects to thrive.
The lines above are generally pretty good, doing a better job at indicating avoidance of funding bias rather than that more money would somehow improve the content quality directly. I don't oppose the fundamental nature of there being fundraising banners, but looking at the other aspects noted above, I'd concur with Ganesha's point. Unless increased donations not merely could but are more likely than not to improve on disinformation/LLMs, I wouldn't include any mention of them. While a day or two of editor-focused testing might give some interesting data, I wouldn't support it being looped into the actual campaign beyond the level we've seen in the past. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:17, 18 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi @SPatton (WMF) and MeganHernandez (WMF): -- More experiments like this would be fantastic. To be comparable, they should link directly to an edit funnel (account creation --> tutorial?) which deserves A/B testing for % that complete the funnel / make an account / make a first edit, like our donation funnels. We could also use a way to flag new accounts that come in via this route, so that standard mod tools can tag them appropriately (to distinguish them from other sources of new accounts which may have other cohort dynamics / may be more likely to be brigades or coordinated spam). And the sorts of editors responding here in support of such banners (myself included) may be glad to sort recentchanges by such a flag and give extra attention to those editors, to see what we can learn. – SJ +14:07, 28 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hello @Sj, thank you for your enthusiasm about the idea! I’m fully in support of closely examining the edit funnel and impact of a Thank you page experiment. We looked at the edit funnel last year, when the Growth team helped with this Thank you page experiment, and the Growth team has already committed to helping with similar analysis this year if the community is interested in testing this on English Wikipedia.
Approximately 7% of donors in these markets showed interest in editing immediately after donating, based on the estimated click-through rate from the Thank you page.
Great to see the nubmers. On the 7%: "Try editing" is a screen down, and the button to click further down still. I'd also be surprised if "try it, it's easy!" is a better hook than "jump in, it's fun", "we're always looking for new contributors", "we're created by editors like you", or just an assortment of potential topics "help write or share photos about astronomy, botany, history [search for a topic]". would love to see tuning experiments. A message that everyone sees in a banner would also avoid the dropoff of requiring people to have a credit card and donate money first.
The landing page achieved a 45.1% account creation rate, which is a promising result compared to other channels.
Perhaps that's an avoidable dropoff. what happens if you immediatly show people a "suggested edits" carousel and invite them to edit? (with a link to a mentor, collapsed into a single "ask for help" line, right on that screen) Have them make an edit or two before prompting for account creation. [many ways to gloss this, with a pseudo account or not, but MW is designed to work with no access-control at all!]
4.6% of the accounts created right after donating started editing within 24 hours of their creation.
I'd think the metric would be "made an edit within 2 minutes", and working on a variation on the first-edit funnel that gets close to 100%. I'm thinking "voting on POTY" level of ease and immediate gratification. – SJ +23:23, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The percentage of people who funneled from donation to editing was lower than we originally hoped, but I think it’s understandable that people who create accounts after donating are less motivated to edit compared to people who create accounts organically. Do you agree, or are you concerned by any metrics in this funnel?
Although we didn’t conduct an A/B test for this specific experiment, the Growth team releases most of our features as part of A/B tests to properly measure the impact. I'll explore the possibility of conducting an A/B test if the community is interested in testing this on English Wikipedia. Additionally, I'll investigate the feasibility of flagging these accounts for patrollers and advanced editors while being mindful of privacy concerns.
Besides A/B testing and flagging accounts, are there other improvements you would like to suggest for this experiment? I’ve started a discussion on the associated experiment page: Encouraging donors to edit (Thank you page experiment) If you are interested in this experiment, please join the discussion.
As a reminder, the Foundation does experiment with ways of recruiting new volunteers to the movement throughout the year, the donor Thank you page is just one potential way to bring in new editors. You can learn more about current work onboarding new volunteers on the Growth team page, or subscribe to our newsletter. Thanks! - KStoller-WMF (talk) 22:45, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Appreciate all of this, thakn you KStoller. I'll comment on the New-experience page you linked. I thought we were brainstorming a banner campaign that would be separate from any thank-you page campaigns, but both are important and would surely have overlaps. (Very different average audience taking the first step, however). The nice thing about a family of topical banners is that we can develop messaging w/ relevant wikiprojects, reach out to people who care about the topic, and now have a well-targeted set of open tasks, and community waiting to engage w/ those interested. Photographers, foodies, local historians, gardeners -- every hobbyist group -- likely has a couple of related wikiprojects and, while a generic "come and edit!" might feel like a slight lift only if they have time, an invitation to indulge a hobby and meet fellow enthusiasts would be on the other side of the pendulum: a draw even when they have other things competing for interest. I don't know if we've tried to measure how much a given banner campaign burnishes our overall reputation + association with ways people can give back to their communities of practice, rather than drawing down on the site-wide reputation, but this would ideally become a strong source of the former. – SJ +23:28, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the feedback, SJ! This thread should remain banner focused, so I'll follow up more about the thank you page ideas here: Talk:Growth/Newcomer_experience_projects
Despite over 50 million banner impressions, the banner only led to 492 "constructive activations" (a constructive activation is defined a new account editing within 24 hours of registration and that edit not being reverted within 48 hours). We A/B tested a few changes to the banner language to improve click-through rate, with limited impact. Ultimately we concluded that the Growth team should utilize our time testing other methods for new editor recruitment and continue our efforts to ensure we engage and retain new editors.
That being said, I think you are spot-on about readers being more motivated to edit if we connect them to a topic or project that interests them. We haven’t explored this idea as it relates to recruitment and banners, but the Newcomer homepage provides suggested edits that are targeted based on the account holder’s interests.
Two potential messages for banners encouraging Wikipedia readers to edit. Appreciate these details! That feels a bit clinical for a welcoming invite or call to arms. I agree, looking at the banners you mention, that might not be an effective way of recruiting. ;) The banner had 50+ words and no image, wasn't the sort of pretty banner that makes people glad to see it at the top of a page (minor + offsetting the minor nuisance of banner and lost vertical space), and didn't have a motivating call to action. Of the images in that presentation, the top of the landing page (L) w/ a button to click might make a more compelling banner message than the block of text (R).
However even in that example, you found modest A/B tests that showed 50%-80% improvements. So I expect there are a couple magnitudes of improvement possible with compounding iterations, and another magnitude from simplifying "click->make account->land on homepage->try to edit" to "click->try to edit". I hope we can make it possible for communities to effectively run these sorts of A/B tests on small-cohort banners for readers. A fixed team's time is limited, but community groups have separate time constraints, and drive to generate enthusiastic messages that resonate with fellow enthusiasts. Warmly – SJ +00:36, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
User:Edward-Woodrow please, that's not constructive. Whatever your feelings on salaries / pensions / etc., the Foundation is here in good faith trying to meet us halfway. Let's not sabotage the working relationship with comments like this. Folly Mox (talk) 17:11, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
The WMF does not need eight or nine digit figures to maintain Wikipedia and its sister projects. The vast majority of these funds are not essential or even particularly beneficial for Wikipedia or its readers. If readers part with their money because they're led to believe that it's going to support Wikipedia when it's not, then that's not a fundraiser. That's a scam. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:55, 25 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Edward-Woodrow, Thebiguglyalien: It's worth noting that the Foundation has just announced the second round of grantees for the m:Knowledge Equity Fund. That's about $1 million flowing to organisations outside the Wikimedia universe, without broad community oversight. One might add the tens of millions funneled to the Wikimedia Endowment at the Tides Foundation, which is quite opaque and has never yet published audited statements detailing the Endowment's revenue and expenses. AndreasJN46615:56, 4 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
This is not a suggestion for a message, but a comment on the fundraising results. It appears that online donations to the Foundation are down. (I searched for data providing just how much income the Foundation receives from these appeals, vs. soliciting for large donations, but failed. All I have to go by is the comment above that these donations are down by $10 million or 30% from the previous year.) However, it's not clear whether these donations are down because of the change in the language of the banners, the economy, or some other cause such as an organized campaign against Wikipedia or the Foundation. Nevertheless, if the donations are down because these banners are using language more in line with our suggestions -- which might be the case if this cooperation continues for this year -- then speaking for myself I can live with that. Better that these banners reflect our values & get less money, than misrepresent them in order to get more.And please remember, we who are contributing to Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource, & all of the projects -- creating the content people come to these websites to use, thus creating the funding the Foundation depends on -- we are not paid. In some cases, we actually have to pay out of our own pockets for the material needed to create that content, so it could be said that we are paying to contribute. (And yes, I know there are people paid to make edits. This is not encouraged by the community; in many cases these paid edits create more problems for us, so they are a negative.) -- llywrch (talk) 19:00, 25 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Extended content
Major Changes Needed Wikipedia has a serious reputation problem with a massive segment of the population. Many of the current affairs and public figure pages use highly biased secondary sources, which, in turn, leads to highly biased Wikipedia pages. Because of the almost universal bias in the secondary sources and academic fields, this bias has propagated through to create an equivalent bias on Wikipedia. At this point I can hear many of you shouting “no,” or “that’s not true,” at your screens right now, but you need to remember - perception is reality. I know from personal experience how frustrating it is to try to improve a Wikipedia entry only to get brigaded by established editors who mass-revert any changes to make sure that no one person reverts more than three times, enabling them to circumvent the rule on edit warring. The result being that a massive segment of the population feels that Wikipedia is horrible at best, and complete trash at worst. This ties into the fundraising issue because if any of you think that someone from that 50% of the population is going to contribute to Wikipedia as long as this continues, you’re fooling yourselves. The point being that Wikipedia needs to take a step back and review every aspect of how it develops its content, its source requirements, and find a way for Wikipedia to deliver accurate and completely factual information without ANY interpretation of the the information at all. It might make the material more “dry”, however it would then leave it up to the reader to decide how they want to interpret the information without spoon-feeding an ideology to them. Steven Britton (talk) 23:56, 25 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Scbritton: I am highly sceptical that any source amending process would manage to, say, halve the % of the population that thinks our current affairs/public figure articles are biased. Accusations of our varying biases are frequently made with reference to fully known statements without any of that pesky interpretation.
But beyond that suspicion, "Wikipedia" doesn't review its policies - the editors that make it up do. So if you think our sourcing rules are inherently flawed, we can't just will them into being - you need to start a discussion over at VPI to find improvements that don't cause more issues than they solve.
More relevantly, this isn't really the place - the WMF has no control over non-legal content policy so the only bit that could be relevant to them would be the area of "should we target our fundraising banners to those inclined to trust us, and if so, how?". To some degree I guess we do that already - those who think we are liars all, probably don't think we've given them $3 worth of value. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:26, 26 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Sadly, based on what've you've said here, it sounds to me like Wikipedia is, and will remain afflicted with Groupthink for the foreseeable future. Note that this isn't an attack against you personally; I'm just stating that I highly doubt any discussion I begin will be met with anything other than hostility at this point. Steven Britton (talk) 02:31, 27 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Pcoombe (WMF), your preamble for this discussion said "Starting in August, we'll kick off messaging testing. " But it appears that tonight, July 28th, you have got this fundraising exercise underway? I just had a Wikipedia query (unlogged-in, using en.m.wikipedia on Android) displaced by the full page Appeal overwrite. AllyD (talk) 19:56, 28 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi @AllyD, in the paragraph right above the one you quote, we mention that we’ll start “technical and payments tests” in July. That’s what we’re running this weekend: a “low-level” traffic test of our payment forms, showing to 5% of English Wikipedia readers.
We haven’t done any messaging testing as promised; we will start that next week with some of the suggestions that have been posted here.
I had interpreted the technical and payments tests to be technical infrastructure testing, possibly involving some volunteer users; a productionised broadcast appeal to 5% of the site users over a weekend is something which I would regard as a live fundraiser, and will certainly be perceived as such by all these site users. AllyD (talk) 06:04, 29 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@AllyD I've had several of those too over the past week on my Kindle, and if you look at the daily fundraising data here:
they may have brought in significant amounts of money, too – several days in the second half of July registered more than half a million dollars each.
Note however that per m:Fundraising the French email campaigns started on July 19th, and the Indian email campaign started on July 18th. So some of these July takings will be due to those (the WMF could probably tell us the split).
For reference, the Indian sample emails provided on Meta look like this:
Emails 1-3 seem fine, email 4 is a bit odd unless we (or actually Jimmy, but I assume he's going with what Advancement thinks!) genuinely didn't/don't think the target wouldn't be met. Most of email 4 is actually really good, and even that bit is hardly the end of the world. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:04, 3 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi @AllyD and @Andreas, I’m happy to provide some more details on the banners that you saw. For starters, I’ll clarify that these short tests (which we internally call “pre-tests,” though I understand that’s jargony) are a normal course of action for us. Every year, we run tests of different lengths and durations in the lead up to the end of year English Wikipedia campaign.
We are particularly excited this year to devote many of these pre-tests to workshopping and adopting suggestions that come from this collaboration page. Generally these tests are useful for a couple reasons:
We do technical work throughout the year to add support for new payment methods, and run short tests to get data at scale before deploying for the end of year campaign.
Some optimizations need more methodical, slower development over the course of many tests, such as the growing support for recurring donations we highlighted in last year’s Fundraising Report.
@SPatton (WMF): Thanks. But just out of interest, how much money did you take with these English Wikipedia pre-tests last month, and for how many days/hours did they run? Any ballpark figure appreciated. I mean, if it's something like $10,000, then nobody here will lose a word over it – and it would be in your interest to say so. But if it's $500,000+, then that's substantial and almost equivalent to a full English Wikipedia fundraising day in December. Regards, AndreasJN46615:47, 4 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The number of donations and total revenue we earn from any given testing window varies widely based on length of testing, % of traffic limiting, and what we are testing. Some tests generate only a few thousand dollars in revenue, whereas there are others where that figure is in the hundreds of thousands. All revenue collected in pre-tests contributes to our annual goal for that region, and is reported in our annual Fundraising Report. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 19:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The current 2023 banners are way too large and intrusive. It falsely gives the impression that somehow Wikipedia is at risk of being bought up due to lack of funding, and when people look deeper they find out that Wikipedia is sitting on over $100M, and has funding secured for years to come -- which means people are going to be turned off donating indefinitely. At a time where the wealth gap has widened considerably quickly in recent years, and large corporations have been reporting record profits, (especially tech companies like Amazon), for Wikipedia to pull this sort of stunt runs the risk of a major backfire. Smarten up and remove the "Wikipedia is not for sale" line! Thoric (talk) 21:45, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, it's pure scaremongering. Whatever the donation levels, Wikipedia is not for sale because, if the WMF were unethical enough to sell the trademarks and domains we naively trusted them with, all the editors would leave, rendering it virtually worthless. Certes (talk) 15:41, 15 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The WMF has a legal and moral duty to be honest with potential donors. I am particularly disappointed by this news. Of course, equality is a good thing and those are all worthy causes. However, any donor finding out that their contributions, begged on the implication that our servers were about to stop spinning, overflowed into unrelated organisations would feel shocked, misled and unlikely to donate again. Certes (talk) 15:34, 15 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes; I was quite disappointed with that report. The WMF should be honest where its money is actually going, otherwise it's deceptive. I dislike the WMF for other reasons (see my first userbox and my comment above), and I guess I'll just have to add this to the list. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]19:30, 15 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The implied approach here has managers setting fundraising targets, and then fundraisers wracking their brains trying to work out what magic words will get to their targets. I'm concerned that the WMF still isn't thinking about this right. The background section, above, has messages about "lower-performing banners" which suggests that they still aren't coming at this problem in a principle-first way.
What I mean by "a principle-first way" is, let's devise an ad campaign that's at once (a) scrupulously open and honest and (b) minimally disruptive to the reader's experience.
This means asking the WMF to redesign its spending to fit within the budget we can raise by doing things right.
I think it's important not to mislead prospective donors into thinking they are donating to Wikipedia. It's the Wikimedia Foundation that receives the funds and decides how to spend them.
Let's consider empowering donors to decide how their funding is spent. Let's run a separate ad campaign for each funding area! Donors could choose whether to donate towards technology and maintenance or whether they'd rather donate to the WMF's various campaigns and crusades in favour of global free knowledge.
If those campaigns and crusades are really worthwhile, then we should have fundraising messages about them. If they aren't, then we should cut them. They absolutely should not be funded by donations that we've asked for to keep Wikipedia free.
Latest comment: 1 year ago43 comments12 people in discussion
Hi all. As promised, here are some variants we’ve worked up based off the suggestions on this page to talk about disinformation and the role of Wikipedia in ensuring accurate information; as well as the ‘perfectly imperfect, human nature’ of our work.
I’d like to start by testing these as replacements for the ‘middle part’ of our banner, keeping the opening lines and final call to action intact, and then work the language up based off results.
Feedback on all these banners -- get rid of the "Wikipedia is not for sale". It falsely implies that Wikipedia will need to be sold if donation goals are not met -- when a small amount of research shows nothing could be further from the truth -- which means this is a lie, and it will cause potential and existing donors to feel mislead, and may lead to a backlash. Please reconsider this banner. Thoric (talk) 21:51, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Personally, I've never considered that interpretation of "Wikipedia is not for sale", though I agree it would be concerning if readers are viewing it that way. The line originated last year on Twitter when someone suggested Elon Musk should buy Wikipedia to fix its "bias". Jimbo replied "Not for sale", which got an enormous amount of public engagement. It was then suggested for a fundraising banner by Jimbo on-wiki and modified on last year's collaboration page, as seen here. —Ganesha811 (talk) 00:10, 9 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I also don't read "Wikipedia is not for sale" as implying Wikipedia will be for sale if donation goals aren't met. Seems a bit of a stretch tbh. Folly Mox (talk) 10:21, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I genuinely have no idea what sorts of words get people to donate money, and I hope last year's brouhaha hasn't ended the engagement of the people who used to be contracted in a professional capacity to maximise banner income. I doubt anyone who shows up here will have had any experience in that field. Folly Mox (talk) 10:15, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Tried to come up with copyedit feedback on these and found myself feeling too close to the subject, as a Wikipedia editor. Here's my most honest advice to yall reading at the Foundation:You know meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Draft/Product & Technology/OKRs#Bucket 1: Wiki Experiences? Key result 2. Complete improvements to four workflows that improve the experience of editors with extended rights...? I don't remember if this has been dialled back to one workflow or whatever but it's August. If you're able to get that conversation going and a roadmap laid out that caters to a need of the en.wp community before you start running fundraising banners, you're likely to see a lot less pushback irrespective of the banner content, and independent of how much you engage the community in workshopping the banner content.I wasn't part of the conversation last year, but I know it cost a lot of money. I've perceived greater Foundation engagement this year than in the past, and the editor who has shown up on this page wishing yall were unpaid and outta work is a few standard deviations from the mean, but demonstrating actual tangible added value to the en.wp community above the normal server and software maintenance etc. is likely to be a good return on investment. Just my dumb opinion. Folly Mox (talk) 11:11, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I note that banners have already been rolled out for unregistered viewing. Here's what I saw (red=problem per previous comments by various editors, green=suggested addition):
Wikipedia is not for sale. A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales is it though?
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Wednesday, August 16, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different.– It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a non-profit organization, there’s no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground. By donating to the Wikimedia Foundation, you can help give them more money to throw around in off-topic grants or give "golden parachute" pensions.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Although the text about grants and parachutes seems unlikely to make the final cut, the point about donating to the Wikimedia Foundation is important. I don't see that anywhere in the proposed banners. Although it's not explicitly stated, donors might naively expect that clicking the "Donate" link in the sidebar headed "Wikipedia" would donate to Wikipedia. We should clarify that the money goes directly to the WMF, which spends most of its income in other areas. Certes (talk) 10:42, 17 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Wait which ex-WMF staff are collecting pensions paid for with Foundation funds? Is that even a real financial thing with US non-profits? Folly Mox (talk) 01:35, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together, for no other reason than that they want to help create a free repository of quality information. That's something we all need, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a non-profit organization, there’s no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Feedback on Banner 1 What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?
Most of these comments also apply to the other three banners below. "$3 is all I ask" is fine as a sentence but feels redundant after the prior sentences. I would cut "create a free repository of quality information" - the sentence is stronger without it (I note with amusement that I was the one who wrote the sentence originally!). The next sentence could then be modified to read "Wikipedia is something we all share, like...." Finally, I would split out "It really matters." into its own sentence, which strengthens it. —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one is trying to buy Wikipedia. This is a scare tactic used to threaten readers with an imaginary change of management. This is the sort of dishonesty I expect in advertising but I deplore it. Chris Troutman (talk)03:02, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
As with much advertising, the statements are factual but misleading. It is true that Wikipedia is not for sale and that there’s no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia. It is true that Wikipedia has given many of us far more than $3 worth of value this year. The careful wording suggests that, unless that $3 appears, a bankrupt WMF will have to auction off Wikipedia to become a buyer's personal playground. That conclusion, of course, is completely false. Certes (talk) 20:16, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Edward-Woodrow: Thanks for letting me know but there's no way I could put my name to a statement that reads in part: "We want to support the WMF..."; I have no intention of supporting the WMF. I want to see it abolished. Chris Troutman (talk)20:24, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I want to support the WMF. I can't support it in its current form, but I think it's realistic to hope that it will change into something that I can support That seems more achievable than abolishing it and starting again, if only because the WMF owns our trademarks and domains and turkeys rarely vote for Christmas. Certes (talk) 21:06, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
perfect.. I also happen to believe the use of I is wrong!
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.
I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites because at its heart, Wikipedia belongs to you. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia, turn it into their personal playground, and cut you out. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Feedback on Banner 2 What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?
I don't think anyone wants this personal playground. Jimbo is a non-entity here, so he can mind his own damn business. Wikipedia belongs to the editors, not the readers. Chris Troutman (talk)03:04, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned a source of neutral, high quality information. In the age of AI, this vision matters more than ever. As the internet floods with machine generated content, Wikipedia becomes even more valuable for people looking for information they can trust.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Feedback on Banner 3 What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?
I would tweak the final sentence of the first paragraph; "Though the internet today is being flooded with machine-generated content, Wikipedia has always been written by people - people like you. Volunteers, who want to help others find information they can trust." —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:08, 4 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
We have always had a healthy volume of constructive bots and partly-automated edits, and now also have content generated by large language models that has been curated by editors. I wouldn't demonize those things in the message, just focus on the value of "neutral, densely cited, contextualized information". I don't personally like emphasis on "high quality" information "you can trust" because this is a reference that anyone can edit, where anyone can check the references + history themselves. Cf:
Warning: Please be aware that any information you may find on Wikipedia may be idiotic, misleading, offensive, extraterrestrial, dangerous, or illegal. Wikipedia is not uniformly peer reviewed; while readers may correct errors or remove erroneous suggestions they are not obligated to do so. If you need specific advice (medical, legal, psychosexual, financial, arcane, &c.) please seek a licensed, bonded, and knowledgable professional. YOUR INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION OF ANYTHING FOUND IN WIKIPEDIA IS STRONGLY ADVISED.
Thanks, Sj, seconded. We should encourage readers to question the information, check references, and so on. We should promote digital literacy and active reading rather than encouraging people to run on autopilot when they visit the site.
This is another example of Wikimedia and the community seemingly living in different mental universes. Volunteers, from new-page and recent-changes patrollers onwards, generally do not blindly trust what others have written on Wikipedia.
Active (anonymous) volunteer participation by Wikimedia executives and staffers (in topic areas entirely unrelated to Wikimedia) might be helpful here. AndreasJN46609:49, 24 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
That is obviously untrue, and singularly counterproductive on a friendly and constructive page. If you aren't interested in improving banners in good faith, please don't comment here. – SJ +11:17, 24 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
All of these banner messages need copy editing for missing hyphens, MOS:DASH, comma splices, and MOS:SPELL09. Ping me if you would like help. I have edited them in the past and had my edits rejected, so I am a bit reluctant to spend more time than this. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:06, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the response. I have suggested changes to help these messages conform with the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. That should make them look more professional, feel less jarring to readers, and, ideally, perform better. I encourage staff to incorporate other people's comments from this section, using a consistent style based on the MOS. Here you go (copied from above and below; use a diff tool to see my suggested changes):
Copy-edited banners
Banner 1
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this one-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we would hit our goal in a couple of hours. Three dollars is all I ask.
It is hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different: not perfect, but also not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It is written by everyone, together, because we want to help create a free repository of high-quality information. That is something we all need, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a nonprofit organization, there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Banner 2
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
[same as Banner 1]
I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, because at its heart, Wikipedia belongs to you. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia, turn it into their personal playground, and cut you out. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to high-quality information – something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Banner 3
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
[same as Banner 1]
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned a source of neutral, high-quality information. In the age of artificial intelligence, this vision matters more than ever. As the internet is flooded with machine-generated content, Wikipedia becomes even more valuable to people looking for information they can trust.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Banner 4
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
[same as Banner 1]
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned it as a home for high-quality, neutral information. I didn't realize that it would become a cornerstone of online education for readers around the world. Our nonprofit status helps us focus on providing that high-quality information for everyone – without any risk that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now – it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Friday, August 4, I humbly ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 back. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours. $3 is all I ask.
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned it as a home for high quality, neutral information. I didn't realize it would become a cornerstone of online education with readers around the world. Our nonprofit status helps us focus on providing high quality information for everyone without any risk that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please donate now, it really matters. Thank you for your generosity!
Feedback on Banner 4 What do you like and do you have any alternative versions we could test? What would you change and how?
Off-topic.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@Chris troutman, there are more productive places and times to hate on the WMF. This is a page with a specific collaborative function and these comments are just disruptive. Take it elsewhere. —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Ganesha811: I disagree. Lesser editors have decided to influence WMF to take in fewer ill-gotten gains rather than watch WMF rob the readers blind. Not me; I'm calling for the end of all fundraising and the abolition of the WMF. I see no reason to accept the dominant narrative. In the interest of fairness to donors, I prefer disrupting this sham. Chris Troutman (talk)02:32, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I don't like the passage Our nonprofit status helps us focus on providing high quality information for everyone .... It is apt to reinforce the faulty but widespread impression that the Wikimedia Foundation provides the information. It doesn't do this any more than YouTube provides video content. Wikimedia provides a platform (along with other services like the Wikipedia Library) that enables volunteer users to provide information. So I'd like us to find a way to make sure the volunteers are not airbrushed out of this presentation, leaving the WMF to claim credit for the content for itself. --AndreasJN46617:39, 14 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Here is how we could change this: Our nonprofit status helps us focus on providing a platform for sharing high quality information without any risk ...AndreasJN46616:44, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Just duplicating my message from below Edward's letter, as it was indicating speaking on behalf of an audience I don't believe it had the demonstrated support for:
This is not a "we the undersigned" message. This message gives a "many" without demonstrating any proof that it indeed represents the consensus of the community on the statements within. I dispute almost every statement within it. I oppose the hyperbole given by using Certes' phrasing here, I oppose that the amended fundraising banners are misleading users, I oppose that expenditure on projects other than English Wikipedia using a non-hypothecated sum of money is flawed or the golden parachutes are fundamentally flawed, I oppose that I feel "ashamed" of the WMF despite my myriad disagreements over the past 5 years and I firmly oppose the concept that we topple down the rabbit holes implied by both tone and content within this message. The only true community open letter complaint since 2018 I'm aware of is the meta:COLOR which came after a year of attempted resolution and clearly demonstrated community concerns (to the tune of a global consensus) and zero effective action to remediate the concerns. And it still evidenced every statement and didn't indicate support beyond what it could prove.Nosebagbear (talk) 15:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
User:Nosebagbearthought that Emails 1-3 seem fine, email 4 is a bit odd. I agree in part, and disagree in part and would be interested in further opinions.
So, first the good news: the Indian Emails 1 and 2 are indeed very good. There is one sentence in email 3 I would like to see scrapped:
This might be my last chance to request this year, so I want to make sure this third email reaches everyone who might donate. Right now, we're at a critical stage of our fundraiser in India. Nothing the WMF does is "critically dependent" on Indian donations.
Now, email 4 (sent to everyone who hasn't donated after the first three emails, I presume) is completely inappropriate in my opinion and should not be used in future campaigns anywhere (it will already have run in India). I find the following passages objectionable:
Truth be told, I didn’t think I’d be sending this email. But we haven’t reached our fundraising goal, and there are only a few days left in this fundraiser to make a donation.
As time is running out to support us in this fundraiser ... Something like "We are coming to the end of this fundraiser" is fine; "time running out" is not.
Your past support has helped ensure that, even in times of recession, Wikipedia’s future isn’t in jeopardy. But there is so much that must be done to make knowledge free for everyone, and you help us achieve it. Thanks to donors like you, The Wikimedia Foundation keeps Wikipedia operational, ... This is uncomfortably close to "keeping Wikipedia online" – and a little disappointing. --AndreasJN46614:11, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Everything I know about Indian English I learned from people asking questions at the Teahouse, which might explain why I'm so confused these emails don't open with Respected Sir/Madam.I guess my primary concern is that, after an email titled "Our final email", containing text like "time is running out", "if you've been waiting for "later", this is your moment", and "this might be my last chance to request"— is then followed by a further email. If I had read that third email and then received a fourth one, I'd expect myself to feel badgered and lied to, and on balance more likely to tap "unsubscribe" than "donate", even if I had previously been considering donating. Folly Mox (talk) 02:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Agreed on these objections. Seems like the fourth email should be scrapped moving forward. Its whole tone is inappropriately desperate. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:43, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for this discussion on our India email series. I want to clarify that donors did not receive all 4 emails. Anyone who received email 3 did not receive email 4. I realize that was important context that was missing when the email examples were shared. Most donors received email 1-3. As many of you know, we test different messages so we did send email 4 to a small audience in place of another email.
Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi everyone,
I’m excited to follow up here with some interesting test results! Thanks to @Ganesha811, @Folly Mox, @Bilorv, @Nosebagbear and others for inspiring and workshopping these. We’ve already made some changes from your ideas to the “control” banners (the template from which all tests are derived), which I’ve indicated below. And we have an opportunity to adopt 2 different treatments, could interested people please choose a direction?
Ganesha811 made this suggestion early on this page, and I pointed to that particular word as a known ‘power-up;’ adding it back to one of our banners in December was an 11% increase in donations.
We tested removing humbly a couple of times in the last weeks and didn’t see a significant difference in donation rates or amount raised. We have made the change to remove the word humbly from the next banners. So, what changed to reduce the impact of that concept? When I look back at the control copy in that December test, I see it happened early in the campaign. There have been several other changes and powerful wording added to the message since the December test, which likely make up for the impact that humbly had in the initial test.
In my opinion (as the guy who wrote it!), the power of humble is that it makes you think about the real people behind the message. Our current control achieves that by having a cohesive, personal tone in a message attributed to an actual human. So the little power-up is rendered less impactful.
Removed $3 is all I ask from the end of Paragraph 1
This suggestion came earlier on the page and we ran a test to confirm that we could remove the last one without seeing a significant impact. For this test, we were keeping a close eye on both donation rate as well as average gift, both of which often move if an anchor test produces a significant result. Overall there was not a significant difference in either donation rate or average gift. We’re happy to make this change and want to do more testing of the other anchor messages in that paragraph.
Promising results from suggested tests
We tested Banner 1 and Banner 2 above, incorporating some of the edits; thanks much for that engagement. And it is neat to see them both perform competitively with control. That’s really not something to take for granted.
Each of those tests changed the middle paragraph of our control banner. I’ll include that section of control, banner 1 and banner 2 here for easy reference:
Control
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and 12 other free knowledge projects, it meant that we could preserve our core values: neutral, high quality information, not outrage and clickbait. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
Banner 1
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. And because Wikipedia and its sister sites are supported by a non-profit organization, there’s no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
Banner 2
I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites because at its heart, Wikipedia belongs to you. Being a nonprofit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia, turn it into their personal playground, and cut you out. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.
And finally, here’s an idea for a new “hybrid” banner from the two messages above that I plan to test.
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.
Let us know: which one would you prefer to see as the new control message that we’ll carry forward? And if you have other versions you'd want to try, please post them right here.
Latest comment: 1 year ago9 comments8 people in discussion
Hi all, new testing update and a batch of messages!
I really appreciate everyone who has put their time into working on messaging together.
As we talked about in our first update, the Fundraising team has heard several new ideas on banner messaging from community members and has been using these to improve test messages ahead of the English banner campaign. We've got a neat test highlight to share, and we've worked on some new messaging priorities you'll see in the 'Up next' section of this post.
This page has been open since July and has led to really productive discussions, interesting tests, and new messages in the banners. Thank you to everyone who has contributed.
We started off in July with technical systems tests before testing messaging from volunteers on this page. We are getting closer to the main campaign period in Q2 (Oct-Dec 2023) and will dedicate the upcoming testing spots in the next month to prepare messaging together. This is the best window we have for methodical workshopping of banner language before we get into high volume campaign management. Time is moving quickly. We encourage you to speak up and participate now if you have ideas on these topics, or want to explore other angles. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Testing highlight
Banner 1, Banner 4 and Hybrid: The banners shared in the previous updates were all revised based on the discussion and copyediting on this page. These banners were tested and performed about the same. We moved forward with @Ganesha811's draft and iterated based on other suggestions on this page. Thank you for launching this round of improvements!
Current full banner message
Wikipedia is not for sale.
A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Thursday, September 21, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours.
It's hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different. It's not perfect, but it's not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It's written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park. We are passionate about our model because we want everyone to have equal access to quality information - something that is becoming harder and harder to find online.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please give back. There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts. Thank you.
Up next
We're preparing a new batch of copy variants for testing, including messages based on the discussion on this page about Wikipedia's role in AI and the “Wikipedia is not for sale” headline that Jimmy wrote for last year's campaign. These were also ideas that Wikimania attendees shared with Julia and Sheetal a few weeks back when they held a banner messaging workshop at the conference.
Take a look at this next batch and please share your input or new versions to try.
AI and Wikipedia
When I set up the Wikimedia Foundation as a nonprofit to host Wikipedia and its sister sites, I envisioned a source of neutral, quality information for all. In the age of AI, this vision matters more than ever. Wikipedia's verifiable, contextualized information is a valuable knowledge resource for these groundbreaking technologies. Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how these systems will utilize it tomorrow.
New headlines
Wikipedia is for everyone
Wikipedia is different
This request is time sensitive
If Wikipedia is useful to you, please read
Wikipedia isn't perfect
We still have work to do
More lines to test incorporating into the full banner message example above, by theme:
Theme: Personal value and use
I ask you to reflect on the number of articles you've read on Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 to the Wikimedia Foundation.
I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past month. Whether it's 10 or 1,000, please consider the value you got from it, and whether you're able to give $3 to the Wikimedia Foundation.
We rely on readers like you to decide that $3 is a small price to pay for the value you receive from this abundant source of constantly updated information.
We're sorry to interrupt you again this Monday, for what may not be the first time recently.
Theme: Non-profit & donations
Wikipedia is the only top-ten website to be hosted and supported by a nonprofit organization.
Your donations support the technology that makes Wikipedia possible.
Our engineering staff work on the technology behind Wikipedia.
While Wikipedia is written by volunteers, maintaining, hosting, and improving software has a cost.
Independence matters, and donations from readers are the best way to ensure that.
Wikipedia serves millions of people, but our Foundation runs on a fraction of what other top sites spend.
Supporting software has a cost - and we do it for a fraction of what for profit tech companies spend.
It belongs to you, the readers, editors, and donors. You're the reason Wikipedia exists. The fate of Wikipedia rests in your hands, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
Theme: Time-framing and traffic-framing in pre-tests
Time will soon run out to help us in today's short fundraiser.
Our weekend fundraiser won't last long.
You only had a 5% chance of seeing this message.
Theme: No ads
No advertising, no subscription fees, no paywalls. Those don't belong here. Wikipedia is a place to learn, free from bias or agenda.
We don't run ads and we never have.
We've never run ads before and we don't intend to start.
We have never run ads. Instead we ask readers for support.
We serve our readers, not investors or a billionaire owner.
Please post your message ideas right here.
These proposed texts contain regressions. Please sort out the use of hyphens where dashes should be used, the use of curly quotes where straight quotes should be used, the continued unpleasant use of "1-minute", and the jargony use of "quality" as an adjective. My suggested copy edits are in a section above. You requested them. I volunteered my time to work on them. They were mostly ignored. That makes me feel a way that I prefer not to feel. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia's verifiable, contextualized information is a valuable knowledge resource for these groundbreaking technologies. This sentence is a bit on the buzzwordy side and could probably benefit from simplification. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:36, 22 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
While Wikipedia is written by volunteers, maintaining, hosting, and improving software has a cost. I had to read this twice to understand it. It seemed like Wikipedia was written by volunteers "maintaining, hosting, and improving software" until I hit another verb that didn't parse.It belongs to you, the readers, editors, and donors. Similar here. Maybe I'm dumb about lists, but this seems like it's talking about four separate groups, beginning with "me": someone who is not a reader, editor, or donor.Supporting software has a cost - and we do it for a fraction... Hyphen is incorrect here: should be an mdash open on the right (cost— and). Also, per Jonesey95 above, whoever is actually typing these should turn off curly quotes and use the ASCII straight quotes in all cases. Just look at reflect on the number of articles you’ve read on Wikipedia in the past year, the value you got from it, and whether you're able. There are different shapes of apostrophe in you’ve and you're. It looks not proofread.You only had a 5% chance of seeing this message. Whether or not this is true, it's not clear to me why or how it could matter, and low key reminds me of the old days when I was always somehow a website's ten thousandth visitor, eligible to receive a prize if I would just click through. The prize, of course, was malware. Folly Mox (talk) 17:10, 22 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
This sentence is odd: Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how these systems will utilize it tomorrow.
Just from a plain English point of view, the words support how don't really fit together. You could say Your contributions determine how ... but what exactly are we talking about here? My impression was that LLMs simply ingest Wikipedia, without the WMF having to do anything in particular to enable them to do so.
This request is time sensitive This reintroduces the sort of urgency that was criticised in last year's RfC.
Time will soon run out to help us in today’s short fundraiser. It seems we are pivoting from calling the "tests" short fundraisers. This is probably more accurate, but speaking of time running out again makes it sound a bit too urgent for my liking: the whole point is that the Thomases should not feel they have to donate to keep Wikipedia alive. Regards, AndreasJN46616:08, 23 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks everyone for your feedback on our language suggestions and style choices. Our mistake on the copyedits. We pulled this list of ideas from a variety of sources and should have caught the mix of apostrophes. We’ve fixed them. I can also confirm we used the suggested copy edits in the banner from the August test update but the changes did not get copied in this most recent update.
We’ll make the changes based on your feedback here and the Wikipedia MoS on grammatical questions like apostrophes and em dashes. Given that the message is an appeal from Jimmy and not a Wikipedia article, the wording and tone in banners is more conversational and personal than the guidance from the MoS. Additionally, numbers have a prominent role in the messaging, referencing specific donation amounts or facts and figures. Thanks for the input on the readability of a few sentences. We’ll review and smooth out the wording for these longer sentences.
With regards to the 5% seeing this message line, a little context is needed here. We used this line on a low level pre-test where we made banners visible to only 5% of Wikipedia readers. I hope that clarifies this a bit.
The time sensitivity in messaging was discussed on the 2022 collaboration page, where we collaborated on messaging that highlights the importance around the moment of giving – not urgency about the state of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages are aimed at letting people know the timeliness of the appeals that appear at limited times of the year. Referencing time sensitivity is a common fundraising practice for many nonprofits. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Is a schedule published somewhere, where each of the days on which 5% of readers have been shown banners can be reviewed? Judging both from my partner's comments when seeking miscellaneous info from Wikipedia lookups and from comments I see elsewhere, it seems frequent. AllyD (talk) 13:13, 7 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi, thanks for your questions and feedback. We have been running pre-tests since the start of the new fiscal year in July in preparation for the main campaign. We started the collaboration process early this year to build in message creation with volunteers from the start of our typical pre-campaign testing period.
We typically run 1-2 brief high level tests each week. In the last two years, we have also started testing running banners showing to 5% of readers for a few days. These tests allow us to test ideas from this page, run systems and technical tests with new payment options, improve the experience of readers and donors, and offer more readers an opportunity to donate.
Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion
This comes too late to really be incorporated in this year's banners, but the suggestion was given to me by a reader who was surprised that we aren't leveraging the value of our content, and I think it is worthwhile.
The reader suggests incorporating images hosted on Commons of physical features, monuments, buildings, etc that no longer exist; the reason for their absence could be war, natural disaster, or human activities. Examples could be some monuments/buildings in Ukraine that are now destroyed, images from Turkey and other Asian countries that have recently experienced earthquakes, areas destroyed by forest fires, etc. The banner line would be "Your donation supports the longterm hosting of images of and articles about things before they were damaged or destroyed. It also supports the volunteers who take these images and write these articles. " (or words to this effect).
I think this has the potential to be effective; the reader is a longtime donor to Wikipedia, but did mention that he just clicks the donate flag when he sees it, but doesn't find any of the messages particularly compelling. He felt that something highlighting something that readers actually can and do use might be more likely to bring in new donors. Risker (talk) 02:57, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi @Risker, thank you very much for this interesting feedback and my apologies for the slow response! It’s helpful to hear feedback like this. We always want to strike a balance between ‘topical’ fundraising content that speaks to the real world impact of knowledge and history, both its preservation and loss. We have to contextualize that against the thousands of reasons a universe of readers will have for arriving at Wikipedia in any given moment where they may see one of our time-limited fundraising campaigns.
Which is to say: our fundraising banner messaging will usually need to appeal to a broad base of readers around a common theme of utility, but once we have identified potential donors, it is very likely we can go further with storytelling around our work and movement in other channels such as email, mail or social media.
Additionally, there are other avenues of involvement in the movement that might be more directly applicable for readers who want to do more: e.g. participating in an editing event or one of the banner-supported campaigns like Wiki Loves Monuments.
We’re talking actively with internal stakeholders around ways we can do more to support these themes and goals, so this reader’s suggestions are well met. - SPatton (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
We are currently doing pre-test to test our technical infrastructure and messaging. During this time readers will see banners. The banner campaign will start on the 28th of November. JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 12:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hi everyone, I wanted to send a brief note following some really rich conversations at WikiConference North America last weekend. While looking over the new fundraising report and brainstorming ideas for the campaign, there was a lot of enthusiasm for the invitation to edit on the thank you page that readers reach after they make a donation. There has also been a lot of interest on this collaboration page to spread the word with readers to try out editing. The team has experimented with this invitation to edit in other fundraising campaigns over the year and is excited to try it out in the English campaign coming up. We’ll plan a few brief tests in the next week and welcome any input or advice as we try to increase awareness and people getting started editing. Sheetal and I also gathered a lot of great messaging ideas and themes at the conference and shared them with the team once we got home. The team is workshopping those ideas to prepare some new messages to share back here. Thanks a lot to everyone who brought creative ideas, in person and on this page, for how we can make the fundraising campaign more impactful this year! MeganHernandez (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments4 people in discussion
Hi all, it is officially Campaign Launch Eve. I'm just coming back from celebrating the U.S. Thanksgiving with my family, so I will lead by expressing deep gratitude for everyone who took the time to prepare the campaign together. There has been a lot of creativity and attention to detail on this page as well as good discussions in person at Wikimania, WikiCon NA, and elsewhere. Thank you for all the engagement and constructive input.
The Foundation is pleased to have published our latest fundraising report, covering the financial year 2022/23. We produce this fundraising report every year to share what we learn from engaging with millions of donors around the world. As far as we know, the Wikimedia Foundation is the only major charity to share this type of fundraising information transparently with the public. The report highlights advancements to the fundraising program in the last year, learnings from the new community collaboration process, updates on the Endowment, and information on how the Foundation continues to diversify streams of revenue to ensure our strategy remains resilient, particularly as we adapt to changing trends in the world around us and take a longer view toward the future.
In the last couple of months, The fundraising team has been working on banner improvements to prepare for the start of the campaign this week. As discussed above, we call these 'pre-tests' because they run for just a short span of hours, and/or at a low % of available traffic.
We've used this pre-test window to add more support for editor account creation for donors, improve the user experience of our banners, and try a range of content. Here are some key outcomes:
As MeganHernandez (WMF) mentioned in her last update, we're excited to invite donors to our end of year campaign to also learn more about editing. We've been working with other teams at the Foundation to support this as an option.
Throughout the end of year campaign, we'll be including a learn to edit call to action on our Thank You page and will report back here with info on signups and impact.
We've been testing the fundraising technical infrastructure and working to expand payment methods to offer a convenient and smooth donor experience. The Foundation now offers Venmo as a payment option in the U.S. and has made other improvements to user experience, including bigger close buttons and touch friendly forms.
To clearly distinguish between Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, we incorporated WMF logos at the bottom of banners.
Many suggestions on this page have proven effective and will continue to feed the iterative process in December. In particular, we saw strong performance from these lines:
Ganesha811's 'written by everyone, together:' It is hard to know what to trust online these days. Disinformation and scammers are everywhere. Wikipedia is different: not perfect, but also not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It is written by everyone, together, because they want to help create a free repository of high-quality information.
The AI content suggested by Folly Mox and revised through helpful discussion on this page: In the age of AI, this vision matters more than ever. Wikipedia's verifiable, contextualized information is a vital resource for these emerging technologies. Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how these systems will utilize it tomorrow.
New headline: Since last December, we've been using “Wikipedia is not for sale” as the banner headline, an idea that came from Jimbo last December. It's an idea that still resonates with readers and donors, and an area of recent testing. Changing a prominent line often takes numerous attempts to see what resonates with readers. After a few rounds of testing, we've found “Wikipedia is still not on the market” as a way to freshen up the headline and also improve the donation rate.
“Time-framing” subheading: A key topic from last December's collaboration discussions was how to reduce the reader disruption from banners by creating a sense of urgency around the moment of giving – not urgency about the state of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. We've continued testing in this area and found an improvement by mentioning the date in the banner subheading (e.g. November 27: an important update from Jimmy Wales).
The campaign pre-testing period has been important to find convenient and effective ways to ask readers to give that connects with readers and volunteers. We'll continue testing once the campaign starts to find improvements to streamline the giving process, limit disruption, and encourage more people to donate.
Wikipedia is still not on the market. November 27: An important update from Jimmy Wales
Please don't scroll past this 1-minute read. This Monday, November 27, I ask you to reflect on the number of times you visited Wikipedia in the past year and whether you're able to give $3 to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you can, please join the 2% of readers who give. If everyone reading this right now gave just $3, we'd hit our goal in a couple of hours.
It is hard to know what to trust online these days. Wikipedia is different: not perfect, but also not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. It is written by everyone, together, because they want to help create a free repository of high-quality information.
If Wikipedia has given you $3 worth of knowledge this year, please give back. There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts.
Wikimedia Foundation | Proud host of Wikipedia and its sister sites
And here's a new batch of message ideas, many based on discussions here and offline. We look forward to input on these messages and new ideas you may have below!
Whether you are a donor, a reader, or a contributor to the content, you are part of something miraculous: an example of our shared humanity—knowledge built by and for the world.
Wikipedia is not perfect, but also not here to make a profit or to push a particular perspective. No advertising, no subscription fees, no paywalls. Those don't belong here. Wikipedia is a place to learn, free from bias or agenda.
Being operated by a nonprofit preserves our core values: neutral, high-quality information, not outrage and clickbait. There's no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.
It is written by everyone, together. Wikipedia is something we all share, like a library or a public park.
This fundraiser is temporary. Our mission to share knowledge is not.
Our nonprofit relies on reader donations to expand the reach of free knowledge and keep improving the technology behind Wikipedia.
Please share your ideas here! These can be iterations on the message above, new sentences, inspiring words, themes, or new concepts to try. Thank you, everyone.
The only good "time frame" message is the first one. The other two are terribly awkward. The last "headline" message should say "Wikipedia is the world's encyclopedia". We are most definitely not a library in any sense. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia is a "library" in Wikimedia's weird romanticization of knowledge which creates the often obnoxious floaty diction that somehow, at the same time, says little about the nature of knowledge. I suppose it can be considered a library as a place of learning. But, still, I consider it a step back from previous banners which merely compared Wikipedia to a library. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 05:58, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for the discussion. “Wikipedia is the world's library” is a new idea we were considering but have never used before. Your feedback on this idea makes sense and we will stick with the general comparison to libraries. Thanks also for the input on the time framing ideas. We'll share some more new messages in the coming days. Sheetal Puri (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. If you need a more eloquent reasoning besides "definitely not a library", let me know. For starters, Wikipedia does not lend books of any kind (the book-creation feature was even decommissioned, I believe), lend or provide access to other kinds of full-length media, provide access to detailed reference materials, host story reading time for children, provide unhoused people a place to get warm, host in-person meetings, or sell used books, among other things. In fact, at WP:NOT, you find a long list of things that Wikipedia is not, but that libraries often provide access to. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:13, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Hi everyone, the campaign started last week and it’s been a busy few days of testing. We have some early news to share on the invitation to edit that donors see once they complete their donation. In the first week of the campaign, we had more than 1,400 accounts created with 11% of the new accounts making an un-reverted edit within 24 hours of creating an account. We’re still early in the campaign and will continue monitoring and reporting back, but we wanted to share some early news with you all. Thank you for all the enthusiasm and interest in making the call to edit part of the fundraiser this year!
There have been some interesting banner messaging learnings in the last week, for example framing the campaign as our “end-of-year fundraiser” seems to be resonating with readers. Interestingly talking about Giving Tuesday, a popular day to give to charities in several countries does not seem to resonate.
We tested this new idea inspired from Folly Mox's suggestion to talk about the role of Wikipedia in training AI.
"In the age of AI, Wikipedia matters more than ever. Verifiable, contextualized information is a vital resource for emerging technologies. Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how revolutionary new systems will utilize it tomorrow."
We also tested some ideas around the line from Jonesey95 "Wikipedia is the world's encyclopedia". We continue to work with these ideas this week.
Here are a few new banner message ideas for input and discussion:
Adding a link to encourage folks to sign up to edit in the banners.
“There are no small contributions: every edit counts, every donation counts.”
Testing some successful copy from our email program. The copy was inspired by conversations we have with donors in focus groups.
“People ask: Why not run ads to make revenue? Or make everyone pay to read? The truth is that while these things might be the norm online, Wikipedia is different. We refuse to compromise its neutrality or your access to information. We’re proud to have left that money on the table. Instead, we ask for voluntary support once in a while.”
Referencing campaign timing has shown to be effective messaging. Here are a few new iterations on the campaign timing theme:
“For the first time recently.” (Included in the first banner only)
“We’ve asked you a few times recently.” (Included in subsequent banners)
Paragraph 2 of the banners is where we include more content on the unique role of Wikipedia in the world and we have some ideas to rework this, including playing off content suggestions that came earlier this year. Here is a new version of this paragraph.
"We all benefit from Wikipedia. Please, help uphold free, people-powered knowledge by supporting us today. Hundreds of millions of people rely on Wikipedia each day, but maintaining it and expanding access to free information has a cost. Your donations make a real difference."
A powerful line from previous years we would like to retest.
"It's a little awkward to ask, but this Friday we need your help."
Thank you for the update, and for all of the team's hard work! I'm glad to hear (in the prior update) that my suggestion appears to be useful. Good luck with the fundraiser - I hope we can hit the target quickly and end it asap! In that way it's a lot like a radio pledge drive. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
The team has been busy this week testing some of the ideas I shared above. “Wikipedia can’t be sold” emerged this past week as a really strong headline, as has the addition of “We’ve asked you a few times recently” in the content.
We are also looking for ways to increase the number of folks signing up for recurring donations and tested some new content around this.
The paragraph below is currently live in our banners and helps to explain Wikipedia’s unique role in the age of AI. We were happy to see this content working well as we know AI is top of mind for many readers and editors (the article on Chat GPT was the most read this year on English Wikipedia).
In the age of AI, access to impartial, verifiable facts is crucial. Wikipedia matters more than ever as a reliable source for emerging technologies – and you. Your contributions support how you and other readers use Wikipedia now, and how revolutionary new systems will utilize it tomorrow.
We would love to test some other ideas on the theme of AI. If you have any suggestions for this paragraph, or are feeling creative and want to write a new edit to this paragraph, feel free to share here.
We will run a short thank you banner campaign in January to thank readers and to increase transparency as to how their gifts are used and the work of the Foundation. We hope to use this space to share some of this content, as well as test some actions someone can take to continue supporting Wikipedia, for example signing up to make an edit.
We are almost at the end of our campaign and are feeling so grateful for all the collaboration so far in this space and beyond. We look forward to wrapping up the campaign and sharing results and learnings in the new year.
Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
at the kick off of your donation run. Then when you re-send your requests there should be updates to the amount attained in regards to that goal:
this year we need to raise $100,000.00. If everyone donated ... etc.
Heck, maybe even a little unobtrusive banner indicating hitting a milestone would be cool to keep us in the know.
But definitely later when you are sending out the requests again, remind and update us:
We are reaching out again asking you to consider donating once more or for the first time. Our current donations total $25,000.00 of a $ 100,000 goal. If everyone could donate ... etc
I have donated several times this year, but I can't find your goal amount anywhere nor how much has been received. I would like to know so I can gage my next donation on that information. Especially at the end of the year ... It should be given to us, so we don't have to research for it. Research takes time which takes away from the research I do for my work.
Hi, thank you so much for your support and for your suggestion to improve the campaign, which ended on December 31. We tried some messages using a goal thermometer throughout the campaign, but it is a great idea to try again near the end of year, as many donors decide to give in the last few days of the year. We’ll note this idea to try next December.
And as far as an “unobtrusive banner” indicating our overall progress towards the goal: we are right there with you! We’ll be working on some small “Thank You” banners this month to make sure our valuable readers, contributors and donors see their incredible impact.
Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Dear all,
The WMF annual banner fundraising campaign for non logged in users in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US ended yesterday.
We would like to thank all of you whether you collaborated with us on the community collaboration page, or answered questions from readers on the Helpdesk, the Teahouse, or the VRT. Thank you all for your engagement during the Foundation’s biggest banner fundraising campaign of the year and for all your contributions to the projects. Thank you to all the donors who made the campaign a success and support free knowledge.
You can find the fundraising team across on meta if you have any questions or comments.
Latest comment: 10 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi everyone,
I want to give you an update on how the English banner campaign throughout the last quarter went, give you an overview of what we all achieved together, and what we are planning next.
First of all, thank you to all of you who engaged, helped form messaging, made new suggestions, let us know your thoughts on concepts, and generally were there to create this campaign together. From the start of the fiscal year and leading up to the campaign, there was a shared effort to prepare the fundraiser together through collaboration which helped to shape this important moment to ask readers for their support.
We introduced language around the role of Wikipedia in relation to AI to our banners
We worked around the concept of time sensitivity to encourage readers to donate now rather than later.
We increased clarity that the messages come from WMF by adding our organizational logo to all banners.
We made it easier for readers to stop seeing banners for example increasing the duration for which a reader could dismiss banners for.
We made improvements to our payment methods and options, including tests to simplify the Venmo checkout flow, and a major milestone of releasing in-app Apple Pay transactions with the Wikipedia Apps team.
Donors also saw an invitation to start editing on the Thank You page, after they donated. This led to 4,398 new account creations, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours (a constructive edit means the edit wasn’t subsequently reverted within 48 hours).
We will, as always, provide the fundraising report after we end the fiscal year. Today we’d like to share that the English banner campaign reached the revenue target and our progress towards the annual goal is looking good. Right now the team is wrapping up the campaign by thanking readers and donors for their support, and sharing more information about Wikimedia to deepen understanding and relationships. We are currently at around 75% to our annual goal and still have campaigns in both Q3 and Q4 coming up that will help us reach the goal by the end of the financial year.
In order to create a strong experience for readers and donors, we focus on providing a convenient and secure experience that’s localized for donors around the world. We are exploring ways to do that even more efficiently through machine learning tools to provide a more personalized experience, minimize reader disruption, improve analytics, and develop long term relationships with our donors.
And finally, we would love to hear from you what worked well in this year’s community collaboration process and what we can do better next year. Please leave your thoughts and suggestions below so we can improve our collaboration together.
Thank you again to everyone who collaborated with us this year.
