Apparently the Wikimedia Foundation is concerned about their perception as an organization; apparently, people don't see them as "credible". To this end, they're launching a "Credibility Campaign". Here's the tactics they plan to use to improve their credibility:

• Creative/studio design for on-line marketing of fundraising on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation donation module (donate.wikimedia.org)
• Direct to user engagement (300mm users+ per month through fundraiser)
• Direct to donor outreach (130K+ mailing list)
• Video production
• Engagement of high-profile endorsers
• Social-media involvement
• High quality web/on-line marketing design
• Proactive media relations
• Mainstream media appearances (high viewership opportunities)
• Participation in high-profile events
• Interviews with volunteers, users, and stakeholders
• Strategic research

Quick quiz: does anybody see what obvious steps are missing here?

Improving their actual credibility?

They're under the control of the Marketing Types now... they're bringing in high-priced professionals to redo all their promotional stuff, while leaving the sites with actual content up to the unpaid amateurs as always. To marketroids, real content doesn't matter anyway; it's just the flashy presentation.

lol; that's funny.

surely! this will solve all the problems!

Credibility is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

I guess that's what the Foundation is going to try. Since real credibility is a lost cause, Marketing Credibility will just have to do.

Do they realize that the more attention they call to Wikipedia, especially the English one, the more they will hurt their own cause? No, what I am saying, it's the Wikimedia Foundation...

Perusing the PDF, their "credibility" is already endangered...



Nobody show the PDF to Larry Sanger.

Oddly, when I heard him last weekend on "On The Media", he was introduced as co-founder.

I just don't understand why this is such a big deal for him, but it makes me have a hard time sticking with the whole "AGF" approach to WMF management.

Looks like the WMF staff doesn't read enough Dilbert, especially the cartoons that lampoon marketing personnel, or they would have recognized that their plans might be a little misguided. The WMF staff employs "professional" business staff, right? When they developed their problem statement about their credibility issue, you mean to tell me that their answer to the "why" question was just, "We don't market ourselves effectively?" They forgot to consider whether the problem might be because their product/service has issues?

Honestly, I don't think they even know what their "product/service" is.

Who are the stakeholders?

Hopefully Buffy and her crew of slayers.

Jimbo and his cronies, obviously.

Well, whomever wrote their mission statement appears to have defined what their service is, which is to, basically, "provide the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects." Wikiprojects are defined as "educational content under a free license disseminated effectively and globally."

So as part of answering the "why" question of their credibility problem, they should have engaged in a discussion as to whether they were effectively performing this mission. If their answer was, "yes" then looking at better marketing might be the next step.

If this really was their answer, however, I would probably take issue with it. They appear to do a good job maintaining and backing-up the servers. I think, however, the "organizational framework" part is obviously missing some performance. Why, for example, doesn't the English Wikipedia have a chapter organization to guide its development and maintenance, i.e. provide some governance? Why hasn't the WMF insisted on one being established? Do they care? Perhaps this is the kind of thing that might affect their credibility more than a lack of high-visibility marketing.

Of course, a deeper question would be, are the wikiprojects really perceived as providing effective educational content globally? That's another question they should probably discuss amongst themselves. Wikipedia's reputation among web-users, in my experience, is very mixed. A mixed reputation I would think might have an effect on one's credibility.

Mods, I tried to talk about this back on May 14th, on a tip from Tarantino, lest anyone mistake Kelly Martin for the news breaker on this one. Sorry, Kelly.

Writing an encyclopedia? Paying some copyeditors?

• Engagement of high-profile endorsers

God, yes, don't cult followers just love "status by association" and chasing VIPs?

Are they going to be throwing money at this!?!

I better register a domain ... I reckon cartoon making is going to become much more fun.

Could we suggest a list of such high-profile endorsers?

Nothing to be sorry about. I looked for a thread on this, figuring there'd be one, and just didn't go back far enough. It's not like I need to have so many "first posters" in order to get my adminship.


Stephen Colbert? Jon Stewart? Both of them currently make fun of Wikipedia on a regular basis.

I think they are using the popular, yet deeply flawed, strategy that, if one shouts long enough and loud enough that something has a certain quality (in this case, that wikipedia and so on are credible), then they acquire that quality (in other words, that they become credible). It involves a belief in a variety of (forced) self-fulfilling prophecy. It is closely related to the tactic that involves the triumph of presentation over content. Both are deeply fallacious, and the failure of anyone there to realise this shows again just how much groupthink has infected the fabric of it all.

I would hire Paris Hilton. "Wikipedia...that's hot!"

No - No - read the steps again
the objective is to raise money
not to "throw" money
(let alone improve quality)

See, that's part of their problem. They define their product as "infrastructure". It's hard to get charitable contributions to a project to build an infrastructure; that's not very interesting, and doesn't tug at the public heartstrings.

Take, for example, the United Way. The United Way is a charitable conduit: they collect donations and pass them on to their member organizations, and in addition provide various infrastructure services for those member organizations (such as group health care, which is a really big deal). Does the United Way advertise to the public by talking about the quality of their infrastructure? No. They advertise to the public by giving examples of the great and wonderful work being done by their member charities, work which the United Way does not itself do, but which it does facilitate.

Now take Wikimedia. It's "member organizations" are the various projects. The only one that the general public knows about is Wikipedia, and the stench from that cesspit is getting harder and harder to mask. Some of the other projects, mainly Commons and Wikisource, provide some relief here, but not enough to overcome the public relations nightmare that is Wikipedia. Then add to that the fact that your chief spokesperson has all the downsides and none of the upsides of Richard Branson, and has an irritating tendency to look creepy in photographs.

For the purpose of public perception, it doesn't matter how well they perform their self-defined mission. What matters is how well the public perceives them as performing what the public thinks is their mission. And there's no way they can separate the public perception of their mission from the general perception of Wikipedia, because the public is going to, no matter how hard they try, perceive that Wikipedia is a core part of Wikimedia's mission.

I think you have too much of an "insider" perspective here (shared by many on both WP and WR, whether pro- or anti-WP, where they think their own perceptions of WP's image match what the general public is coming to feel about it). From what I can see of how WP is regarded in the "outside world", people find some mild humor to the concept and the inevitable squabbles and dramas about it (as seen in the running gags used by Stewart and Colbert, as well as various comic strips), but still find the site useful nevertheless. They don't tend to side with the radical anti-WP camp, even when they're aware of some of the silliness that goes on in WP's name.

It's one thing to find Wikipedia useful, quite another to decide to donate to it. In general, people have to have a pretty strongly favorable view of a thing before they give it money. "I guess it's somewhat useful" generally isn't enough, and won't pave over serious controversies.

Of course, Wikimedia does benefit from controversy. The current brouhaha over the NPG images is bound to yield some significant donations from people with ideological axes to grind. I have to wonder how much of Wikipedia's donor pool is from entities who are using Wikipedia to further their own ideological goals, or who see evidence that Wikipedia supports their own preferred point of view and donate therefore. In other words, they're supporting Wikipedia as a platform for issue advocacy, instead of out of altruism.

People that I talk to about Wikipedia usually say the same thing, that they find it generally useful, but they're somewhat wary over it's reliability. I get the impression that most general users are reserving final judgment on it, which probably isn't good for generating donations. The United Way is a good example of how it should be done. That's why the Foundation needs to concentrate on fixing Wikipedia first, and then once the buzz about it improves across the Internet, the Foundation employees can parade around like rock stars saying, "Wikipedia? Yes, that's ours. Want to be part of it?"

I think that's about right.

Just about all I use it for now are television show reviews, especially if I want to catch up on some missed geekie soap opera. Obviously, the geekie soaps, like scifi stuff get much more indepth attention than any serious.

But is not really what all those donations are all meant to be for, is!?!

Increasingly, as the reasonable and informed do give up and walk away, it must surely develop into a tool of propaganda but of what and for whom? Is it headless propaganda ... many headed propaganda ... what is the 'spirit of the wikipedia' that is sweeping across and into the world's intellectual discourse. What will it become, a rite of passage during one's social and intellectual development that ultimately has to gives up to grown up?

Nah, it still needs very badly reformed. BTW, when will they know when they have "All the World's Knowledge" ... when they have filled up "All the World's Hard Drives"? Should people encourage them ... I mean, what about limiting the infrastructure so as to limit all the waste and garbage? Why is more better? Its like Microsoft bloating their OS with more patches and more vulnerabilities and putting on a new layer of gloss.

I am always amazed at the amount of garbage you see in a flood or after a high tide. Whilst not being an "anti-", I am left feeling that things will be much better when it dies down and they tidy up after themselves. Except they wont. The rest of us will.

All the garbage that has been poured, or been reinforced, into kids' and adults' minds.

As for VIP endorsement ...

At least at this point in time, they're not having a particularly hard time finding people to donate. Last year's fundraiser went surprisingly well and day-to-day donations are steady (though likely small relative to the total number of visitors, you hopefully see my point). I don't see Wikimedia disappearing until the money starts to dry up. And I don't see the money drying up any time soon, for better or worse.

That Wikipedia users are both poor and stupid?

Well, friend, without doing a damn thing, the foundation appears to be taking
in several hundred dollars per day. People are "throwing" money at it, and
getting what in return? Massive amounts of useless fanlove info about
Tolkein and science-fiction movies? Plus BLP defamation and porn?

In order to improve credibility, you actually have to have had credibility in the first place. When was WMF ever credible?

Besides which, how can credibility ever be won when you don't actually produce the content? Or take any responsibility for the accuracy of the content?

So much wishful thinking and so little time.

who said that there is a recession?

I am sorry ... did someone mention there is porn on the Wikipedia? Oh, where ... "I am finding thees imgs vry useful thenk you."

Just another little muse on the Celebrity endorsement of the Wikipedia ... from Nabokov.