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[Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising

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yaoziyuan at gmail

Aug 6, 2013, 9:01 AM

Post #1 of 11 (51 views)
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[Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising

Dear All,

Besides asking for direct donations, there is another way that can
potentially help Wikipedia's fundraising:

Instead of asking for money but offering nothing in return, Wikipedia can
ask supporters to buy a monthly or annual issue of "Offline Wikipedia DVD".
The DVD contains software and data that let the user browse Wikipedia
offline, which can be good for times when Internet access is limited or
unavailable (e.g. on travel). Of course the price will be higher than the
actual DVD creation and shipping costs, so as to support Wikipedia's
operation.

This idea has some foundations in consumer psychology theories. For
example, street artists don't just ask for money; they perform to give
supporters something in return.

Regards,
Ziyuan Yao
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church.of.emacs.ml at googlemail

Aug 6, 2013, 9:28 AM

Post #2 of 11 (49 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

On 08/06/2013 06:01 PM, Ziyuan Yao wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Besides asking for direct donations, there is another way that can
> potentially help Wikipedia's fundraising:

There was also the idea of having beside the free App an (nearly
identical) App-with-donation that is not free but costs a few bucks. The
revenue from the App then goes to Wikimedia as a donation.

Alternatively, there is In-app billing, for example with
https://github.com/dschuermann/android-donations-lib

This would allow adding a "Donate" button inside the App.

There are numerous ways of making donations possible... not just web
banners!

Cheers,
Tobias

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yaoziyuan at gmail

Aug 6, 2013, 9:40 AM

Post #3 of 11 (49 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

The key point in my original idea is that you make buyers believe that
they're not just giving money away, but also getting some "solid value" in
return. A Wikipedia DVD is a kind of "solid value".

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 12:28 AM, Tobias
<church.of.emacs.ml [at] googlemail>wrote:

> On 08/06/2013 06:01 PM, Ziyuan Yao wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> Besides asking for direct donations, there is another way that can
>> potentially help Wikipedia's fundraising:
>>
>
> There was also the idea of having beside the free App an (nearly
> identical) App-with-donation that is not free but costs a few bucks. The
> revenue from the App then goes to Wikimedia as a donation.
>
> Alternatively, there is In-app billing, for example with
> https://github.com/**dschuermann/android-donations-**lib<https://github.com/dschuermann/android-donations-lib>
>
> This would allow adding a "Donate" button inside the App.
>
> There are numerous ways of making donations possible... not just web
> banners!
>
> Cheers,
> Tobias
>
>
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kwwilliams at kwwilliams

Aug 6, 2013, 9:52 AM

Post #4 of 11 (49 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

Op 2013/08/06 9:40, Ziyuan Yao schreef:
> The key point in my original idea is that you make buyers believe that
> they're not just giving money away, but also getting some "solid value" in
> return. A Wikipedia DVD is a kind of "solid value".
More like a complete set of Wikipedia Blu-Rays. I forget the actual byte
count of Wikipedia these days, but it's well over anything you would
want to try to store on DVDs.

KWW

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nemowiki at gmail

Aug 6, 2013, 10:44 AM

Post #5 of 11 (43 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

We did it in the past, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/DVD

Kevin Wayne Williams, 06/08/2013 18:52:
> Op 2013/08/06 9:40, Ziyuan Yao schreef:
>> The key point in my original idea is that you make buyers believe that
>> they're not just giving money away, but also getting some "solid
>> value" in
>> return. A Wikipedia DVD is a kind of "solid value".
> More like a complete set of Wikipedia Blu-Rays. I forget the actual byte
> count of Wikipedia these days, but it's well over anything you would
> want to try to store on DVDs.

Not really, a DVD-DL is usually (i.e. for all languages but en) enough
thanks to openZIM's compression techniques; few years ago we didn't even
need that, a normal DVD was enough.
As someone who spent countless hours working on the 2nd edition of the
DVD in Italy around 2009 (which was never born), I'd of course like to
see this done again, but there are a few problems from an economical POV.
1) "You are mad!" Publishing a DVD and hosting an open website are two
entirely different matters. WMIT could earn a 10 years lawsuit for every
single wrong sentence on Wikipedia; this must be handled by professional
publishers.
2) "Not worth it". DVDs are extremely cheap nowadays (printing a few
thousands, a packaged DVD-DL could cost around 0.10 € last time I
checked), but for the same reason they don't sell a high prices and they
don't make an interesting enough income to enter into negotiations with
publishers and distributors. The areas with poor internet that would
benefit from it tend also to have worse distribution.
3) Of course, trademarks. You probably want to stick the Wikipedia logo,
and possibly other Wikimedia projects logos (there's space enough in a
disc for all of them), on your DVD. It was hard enough to negotiate
everything with the WMF a few years back even for an established
chapter; it gets more restrictive month by month, so it would surely be
a nightmare nowadays. It's probably not worth the few cents more (see
previous point), I'd probably end up not using the Wikipedia logo at all
but only my chapter's.

Nemo

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mwalker at wikimedia

Aug 6, 2013, 10:46 AM

Post #6 of 11 (43 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

Ziyuan,

Thanks for the idea! :)

Technology limitations aside, there are two things we throw around in the
team a lot; that we should not give the impression that a user *must* pay
to use a WMF property, and that we will never ever do gift premiums.

From my perspective buying a DVD set sounds scarily close to having to pay
for the content and even if it doesn't fall under that category that it
would fall under the shadow of gift premiums.

In addition what use would giving a donor a DVD set serve? They clearly
already have access to the site -- with the caveat that some countries have
restricted use restrictions from the local government. If instead we are
talking about donating them for the purposes of expanding our reach into
countries where we presently have limited participation; it seems the
current strategy is to convince local mobile carriers to support Wikimedia
Zero.

Taking into account technology -- I am unsure that spending the money to
develop the infrastructure would be offset by the amount of interest we
would have. Think also that although the shop will ship something for 15
USD, that's actually a subsidized rate for most international destinations.
My guess is that we would be looking at more than 50$ a set, just for
production and shipping, before getting anywhere near breaking even.

~Matt Walker
Wikimedia Foundation
Fundraising Technology Team

On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Kevin Wayne Williams <
kwwilliams [at] kwwilliams> wrote:

> Op 2013/08/06 9:40, Ziyuan Yao schreef:
>
> The key point in my original idea is that you make buyers believe that
>> they're not just giving money away, but also getting some "solid value" in
>> return. A Wikipedia DVD is a kind of "solid value".
>>
> More like a complete set of Wikipedia Blu-Rays. I forget the actual byte
> count of Wikipedia these days, but it's well over anything you would want
> to try to store on DVDs.
>
> KWW
>
>
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>
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richard at farmbrough

Aug 6, 2013, 11:03 AM

Post #7 of 11 (43 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

enwiki-20130708-pages-articles.xml.bz2
<http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20130708/enwiki-20130708-pages-articles.xml.bz2>
9.3 GB - a double sided single layer DVD (9.4gb). The images would be
more challenging.

On 06/08/2013 17:52, Kevin Wayne Williams wrote:
> More like a complete set of Wikipedia Blu-Rays. I forget the actual
> byte count of Wikipedia these days, but it's well over anything you
> would want to try to store on DVDs.
>
> KWW

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dgerard at gmail

Aug 6, 2013, 11:30 AM

Post #8 of 11 (43 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

On 6 August 2013 18:46, Matthew Walker <mwalker [at] wikimedia> wrote:

> In addition what use would giving a donor a DVD set serve? They clearly
> already have access to the site -- with the caveat that some countries have
> restricted use restrictions from the local government. If instead we are
> talking about donating them for the purposes of expanding our reach into
> countries where we presently have limited participation; it seems the
> current strategy is to convince local mobile carriers to support Wikimedia
> Zero.

While it isn't so applicable to funding, I will note that the
Wikipedia Selection for Schools DVD - which is actually edited and
reviewed - is much loved by teachers. So there are people who want
this stuff.

- d.

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z at mzmcbride

Aug 6, 2013, 11:50 AM

Post #9 of 11 (43 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

Matthew Walker wrote:
>Technology limitations aside, there are two things we throw around in the
>team a lot; that we should not give the impression that a user *must* pay
>to use a WMF property, and that we will never ever do gift premiums.

Hi Matt.

This sounds a bit like "Fundraising principles" or similar. Are these
documented anywhere (e.g. on Meta-Wiki)? If not, I think it'd be great to
start a page. :-)

MZMcBride

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jane023 at gmail

Aug 7, 2013, 12:32 AM

Post #10 of 11 (33 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

Actually, an offline version of WIkipedia, though useful in remote
locations and for secure-internet areas like schools (or prisons), is
probably not as desirable as copies of specific content, such as a
Wikipedia dump of the Paleontology portal or something like that. For
people who wish to create informative apps (such as museum curators)
using Wikipedia content, it might be interesting to be able to order a
chunk of static data, such as everything we have on Monet (in all
languages:
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Improve-an-artist

If a template exists for specific dump-creation, it might be useful to
have this be a paid service, where the product is not necessarily one
dump on a dvd, but a hyperlink to a specific dump that can be updated
periodically (once a year maybe?).

2013/8/6, MZMcBride <z [at] mzmcbride>:
> Matthew Walker wrote:
>>Technology limitations aside, there are two things we throw around in the
>>team a lot; that we should not give the impression that a user *must* pay
>>to use a WMF property, and that we will never ever do gift premiums.
>
> Hi Matt.
>
> This sounds a bit like "Fundraising principles" or similar. Are these
> documented anywhere (e.g. on Meta-Wiki)? If not, I think it'd be great to
> start a page. :-)
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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svavar at kjarrval

Aug 8, 2013, 2:47 AM

Post #11 of 11 (32 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An idea that may improve Wikipedia's fundraising [In reply to]

On 07/08/13 07:32, Jane Darnell wrote:
>
> If a template exists for specific dump-creation, it might be useful to
> have this be a paid service, where the product is not necessarily one
> dump on a dvd, but a hyperlink to a specific dump that can be updated
> periodically (once a year maybe?).
Doesn't have to be a dump per se. There could be a client program which
could retrieve a list generated by the server or the user could produce
an existing list. The program would use it to download the articles via
the API (or maybe get it from an official dump) and generate offline
versions.

- Svavar Kjarrval

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