Every year #Wikipedia hosts banners urging people to #donate to the #Wikimedia Foundation. Every year it is wonderful to see the response of so many people, a response that allows us to run one of the biggest and one of the most efficient websites in the world.
The focus of the fundraiser is very much on the collaboration with the chapters. This has proven itself as very effective. Fund raising in countries that do not have a chapter is therefore sadly something of a side show.
The Hindu mentions that India raised $193,000 for the WMF. This is serious money and, it is serious money coming from the "global south". It shows us what Hans Rosling has been making clear to us for so long: there is no such thing as one homogeneous global south. There are prosperous people everywhere and they are not that dissimilar to people elsewhere.
For a global organisation like the WMF, the Hindu shows that doing well in the fundraiser is something people take notice of and take pride in. When the cost of the traffic to the countries of the global south is paid by their own people, it shows ownership and involvement in their projects, their Wikipedias, their Wiktionaries, Wikibooks and Wikisources.
The localisation of the fundraiser software at translatewiki.net is a process that is largely independent. It has been recently completed for languages like Swahili as well. For me this is a sign that they want to own their projects as much as we do.
Thanks,
GerardM
4 comments:
You can see the entire donations per country here https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tdr42GK_QfdjmijxzyjNnZw&authkey=CKb59_wD#gid=0 Please note that this doesn't include amount collected by the local chapter.
"The Economic Times" also reported this story
http://m.economictimes.com/PDAET/articleshow/7731981.cms
The print version is more like this with image and graphics
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETBG/2011/03/18&PageLabel=6&EntityId=Ar00602&ViewMode=HTML
I like the notion and I think the Indian gives priorities what they are getting on wikis projects. It's impressive convincing step which African Wikipedians has to adapt. My effort mostly on translating the interfaces on translatewiki. Hope we are going to do the same. Congrats Mr. GerardM.
People generally contribute money for causes they believe in but not necessarily part of.
Another interesting thing that I came across, while I was doing my background work for this story and talking to prolific editors and Wikipedians, I found out that less than 5 % of them actually donated money to Wikipedia ever. Of course they contribute their valuable time and knowledge to this beautiful project. For different people, it is different way of contributing.
Those who are donating money to Wikipedia are mostly readers, who possibly believe this project is useful for them and mankind. They also donate their money to this project because it is "owned by the public" and not by a company. How many of you would want to donate money to Google search however good it is and indispensable in every day life ?
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