User talk:Rand Montoya

I decided to do it anyway, because it gives you some nice links. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 18:20, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Global wrapper / Sitenotice

Rand, for the upcoming survey of donors, I feel it is essential to also randomly survey those without a donation history. The best way to contact these folks efficiently and economically would be through a banner prompt at the top of every Wikimedia project page, on a sampled basis (1 out of every 100 page views, for example). My understanding is that this feature is controlled by either the "Global wrapper" or the "Sitenotice" function. Do you have buy-in from the management and the Mediawiki developers to line up a survey invitation in the interstitial queue feed? I'm imagining something like: "You have been randomly selected as a Wiki(project) visitor to participate in a brief survey that will help us better serve your needs. Please take 5 minutes to share your opinions." -- Thekohser 16:07, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Understood. We will be hitting both our past donors and random users (some of which may be donors) via methods TBD. I do have the option to use the site notice as needed. Rand Montoya 19:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Donation buttons

I'm hurt that there was a decision to not even try all of the fundraising button designs submitted. What if the floating Jimbo face raises significantly more money? If Jimbo nixed it, I would understand (publicity rights) but still, isn't it worth testing just to find out? 99.60.0.185 03:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Mr. Wales hasn't nixed anything. Ah, but I wish that we could test every button in a perfect world. Nothing quite as fancy as that for us, sadly. Rand Montoya 16:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate the public presentation of the donation button design process and rollout. I wonder whether similar tests of different skin modifications can be used to test the impact of changing specific part sof a skin (say, better encouraging new visitors to edit). -- sj | translate | 05:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Sj! I am optimistic that this process will work well. Our tech team has had to integrate much new code and process to track the donation buttons and results. In theory, it could be applied elsewhere and since the usability team is involved, they have the option to improve and replicate any testing successes that we have. Rand Montoya 18:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Very cool :-) -- sj | translate | 08:40, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA FOREVER!

Have you seen the mounting criticism at Talk:Fundraising 2009/Website Design? harej 21:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

• Of course. I read it all...and that feedback is leading to some changes. Rand Montoya 00:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Responsible?

So, you are mainly responsible for the banner that now appears above each page in each Wikipedia project? I'm very sorry, but I have to say I find this banner appalling. It is too big and it should not use capitals. Maybe this is culture-related: capitals imply "shouting", and in some cultures this is really childish or impolite.

I think you are very well aware that there is a lot of protest. Shouldn't the launch of the banner be shifted for one or two weeks, until a solution is found where more people agree on? At least, do something now - for example, remove the logo (now it is two times on top of each wikipedia page) and make the text normal font. I really hope some action is taken soon!! 132.229.117.120 09:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes and no, I am in charge of the fundraiser...the messages you see are a result of work with Fenton and Public Relations team and their work with Board, volunteers, and the community.

The banner is the same size as last year and I don't expect it to change. Thankfully, you can easily use the hide button to make it even smaller. As far as the technical glitches, we are working on those now. Rand Montoya 19:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your response. I saw that you have the intention to display the slogan "Ad-Free Forever". I think that's untolerable. There are some Wikipedians who think that we can do a lot of good things with the millions that can be obtained with ads - for example, invest it in education in Third World countries. I'm one of those Wikipedians.

Ethically, there is no way back when the first donation is received upon this slogan. I think it is unacceptable that concerning the debate about ads, an irreversible choice would be usurped over all Wikipedia communities.

So, please leave the slogan "Ad-Free Forever" away, before it cannot be undone anymore. 132.229.117.120 17:06, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I see the ads have been replaced as you said, despite continued objections. I am finding it difficult to understand how you can feel it is a good idea to ignore the widespread outrage against and ridicule of these particular messages. It is not an exaggeration to say the community has repeatedly expressed nearly unanimous disapproval of the messages (as far as I can tell, only the ALL CAPS criticism have you taken to heart, along with the rejection of two particularly inappropriate messages). This is the sort of insensitivity and obstinacy I would expect from an out-of-touch, impersonal corporation, not a community-oriented nonprofit owning one of the top ten websites by traffic. This does not make sense to me. I do not think you and the other staff you consult with are acting in bad faith. But I still wonder, why are you choosing to ignore such overwhelmingly unanimous, well-reasoned criticism? Surely you realize this is not merely the same annual community uproar. -kotra 01:29, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Another update can be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2009/Alternative_banners, bottom. Rand Montoya 01:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. I have read it now and I appreciate Erik's efforts to pacify the editing community. However, I still feel you folks have gone about this all wrong. You have a bountiful resource of diverse, intelligent people (many of us trained and experienced in marketing!) at your disposal, and, for the most part, you have only extended token acknowledgement of our views at best. I understand the suggested banners have been few and appropriate ones even fewer, but surely, if our opinions were less ignored from the start, we would be more willing to assist. But complaint without action is meaningless, so I will make an effort to come up with a couple banners, as Erik is still asking for them. -kotra 00:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Standard method of donation not working in Norway and Sweden

Hi, I am Ulf Larsen, I have contributed to Wikipedia for over 5 years and just wanted to notice someone that can fix it that the standard method of contributing in Norway and Sweden do not work.

If you select the standard, in norwegian/swedish currency, you get this message:

Din transaksjon har blitt avvist.Kontakt kredittkortselskapet ditt for mer informasjon

Translated it says:

Your transaction has been declined. Contact your credicard company for more information.

So for anyone not persistent, they will just give up. Norway is a rich country, so is Sweden and I believe the Foundation could receive some funds if this is fixed. Ulflarsen 23:09, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

[Also on Fundraising 2009/Launch Feedback#Standard method of donation not working in Norway and Sweden, might want to keep the conversation there. -- Casey]

Working on it. Thanks for the note, Ulflarsen. Rand Montoya 17:32, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Status of Fundraising Survey

Rand, could you please comment on the repeated concerns I have for the implementation of the 2009 2010 Fundraising Survey? -- Thekohser 15:42, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

If the project is dead, could you just let us know that it is dead? -- Thekohser 14:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Automating Wikimania sponsorships

Hi Rand! Can you and the money tech team please have a look at the suggestion at Talk:Wikimania 2011#Checks -- and online sponsorships? for raising sponsorship for Wikimania and its scholarships? Can we adapt the existing donation system to allow Wikimania-specific donations? If so, can we further adapt it for Wikimania sponsors to express a full set of ranked-choice location preferences? 99.56.138.51 17:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

File upload without licence

Hi. Could you add the license to the files that you have uploaded to meta. Thanks.Crochet.david 07:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

You have 2 files without licence. Crochet.david 19:08, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Fundraising 2010

Hi there! Thanks for volunteering to sit on the Fundraising committee. The work of the committee will be really valuable to making this year's annual giving campaign really effective. I've posted an overview to Fundraising 2010, and would love your thoughts on the talk page. I'm also going to try to set up an IRC meeting soon, and hope you'll join for that. Keep an eye Fundraising 2010/Committee for a couple of proposed times! Thanks again... Philippe (WMF) 18:19, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Meeting

Hi all,

I'd like to have a meeting on IRC this week to discuss the 2010-2011 annual appeal/fundraiser. This will be an "anyone is welcome" type meeting, open to the broad community. During this, Zack Exley and I will take you through our inital thoughts about the fundraiser and its organization, and ask you to join us in a discussion about the (massive) role of volunteers and chapters in this year's fundraiser.

Because of the vagaries of time zones, scheduling live meetings is hard. So, we'll have a couple of potential times, and we'll log and post the meeting for anyone who wasn't able to make it.

The meetings will be held Thursday, 12 August at 23:00 UTC (16:00 PDT) and Friday, 13 August at 16:30 UTC (09:30 PDT) in the #wikimedia-fundraising channel on the freenode network on IRC (irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-fundraising). You can access this using freenode's webclient, which is available at http://webchat.freenode.net/ or by using your favorite IRC client.

Hope to see you there! Philippe (WMF) 19:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)