2008

1. Community

   Fundraiser: Jimmy’s Appeal

   There is just no doubt in my mind that Jimmy’s Appeal letter has been the cause of our wonderful, incredible fundraising bump over the last 7 days.  None of us here predicted  such a wonderful response…but when you think about it, it really makes sense. A few blog posts back, we proved that people do read our site notices…our messages matter.  So is it so hard to imagine these... Read more

2. Community

   A great day for our fundraiser

   Today marked the single most active fundraising day since the beginning of our campaign, and maybe in the history of fundraising at Wikimedia. People have come out in great numbers, and with a great total: Over $283K USD was raised in one day, from 8,186 donations!  That’s up from 800 contributions yesterday – or an 892% increase in the number of donations  (see the green spike): Why... Read more

3. Community

   Wikimedia to Produce Online Video Tutorials

   Video tutorials are often more beginner-friendly than text based online help pages. Wikimedia is therefore producing a number of videos demonstrating the basics of Wikipedia editing and increasing the public understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia. On 19 November 2008 the shooting of the very first Wikipedia video tutorials took place. They will deal with two very basic questions: * How do I edit... Read more

4. Advisory Board

   Neeru Khosla to Become Wikipedia Advisor

   Today we’re very pleased to announce that Neeru Khosla will be joining the Wikimedia Advisory Board. Neeru is co-founder of CK-12, a non-profit based in Palo Alto, California which is pioneering the concept of “open source textbooks.” The Advisory Board provides help and advice to the Wikimedia Foundation on a range of topics and issues, predominantly in the education, technology... Read more

5. Business

   Mobile Asia Congress, The Kul Way

   No, it’s not democracy on wheels… Mobile Asia Congress, or MAC, is the top annual fiesta for the GSM Association in (you guessed it) Asia. GSMA is a global trade group representing more than 750 mobile operators across 218 countries and territories-more than 86% of the world’s mobile phone connections. I was honored to be invited to speak at a panel at MAC last month in Macau, Ch... Read more

6. Wikipedia

   UPDATE: Wikimedia statement regarding censorship in the UK

   This afternoon the Wikimedia Foundation announced that the Internet Watch Foundation has taken Wikipedia off of the United Kingdom internet ‘blacklist.’  We’re very pleased with this development, and happy that editing and viewing in the United Kingdom is returning to normal. We’d like to thank the thousands of Wikipedia supporters who have spoken out about this situation ... Read more

7. Community

   Site Notices: People Actually Read Them?

   Do people read site notices? Yes.  Absolutely.  Our users respond to different messages… and we continue to test what messages resonate and drive donations.   Reflect back to my previous post and you’ll see that site notices with the thermometer had much higher click through rates than those without. We decided that we wanted to test the impact of the meters over a few days (genera... Read more

8. Wikipedia

   Improved usability in our future

   Earlier today we announced a wonderful grant from the Stanton Foundation – $890K that will help us fund a team of developers and a project manager to examine and ultimately improve usability for the wiki editing interface for Wikipedia and all of Wikimedia’s projects.  Further – the improvements are going to be available to anyone running the MediaWiki software, which means all ... Read more

9. Community

   Wikimedia’s fundraiser – which banners click?

   Admittedly, this is a year of growth and testing for the Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising team. We have 4 new members and the Annual Fundraiser is a new experience for all of us. In fact, I’m not sure how many fundraising projects have had this kind of reach (250+ million unique viewers in November).  This provides us with an amazing opportunity to test different pitches through our site no... Read more

10. Community

    2008 Fundraiser update

    Today, we are 11 days into the 2008 Annual Giving Campaign…it’s been quite an exciting experience. You’ve probably seen the site notices up on just about every Wiki-project page and almost every language. Our volunteers and tech team have worked overtime to get everything working. We’ve had an amazing response from the community (This page still stuns me and I spend far too... Read more