A Personal Appeal from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales to Read This Blog Post

If you’ve checked out Wikipedia lately, you’ll notice that there’s a large, dramatic picture of a man named Jimmy Wales at the top of each page.  This guy is the founder of Wikipedia, and he wants you to give the Wikimedia Foundation some money to keep the lights on at Wikipedia.

So why does this squinty, temple-veined, bearded man want your money?  Wikipedia is completely free, with no advertisements or sponsorships.  Wikipedia needs donations to keep running, and since almost a third of the Internet-connected world uses Wikipedia every month, it needs a decent amount of cash to stay free.

Aside from what is, in my opinion, a very genuine and valid call to action for donations, Jimmy Wales really offered himself up for the internet’s endless humor with this latest marketing move.  But you know what’s crazy?  Wikipedia has seen 15 times as many donations with the Jimmy Wales “personal appeal” message compared to their next most effective fundraiser!

Wikipedia provides data from their fundraising campaigns publicly, and David McCandless of informationisbeautiful.com created this fantastic infographic to show the difference in effectiveness.

And in case you were wondering, Wikipedia’s least successful fundraising campaign in the last year was their “Thanks for the brain massage.” campaign which resulted in only 19 donations.

Wikipedia’s Fundraising Committee puts a lot of thought into each campaign, and they’ve documented the details of their many campaigns on their What we’ve learned so far page. They’ve conducted focus groups, surveys, and have continued to improve their results by making data driven conclusions (very cool for us data nerds).

But of course, the best part about Wikipedia’s newest fundraising campaign is what the internet has done with it.  You can add Jimmy Wales’ terrifying visage to any website with the Jimmy Wales Google Chrome extension (with some great pictures at TechCrunch).  Dustin already did the honors of christening Techerator with Mr. Wales.

And finally, I’ll leave you with what I found floating around Twitter:

(Image courtesy @yesthatkarim)

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/joeyellis/status/6115383324971008″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/joshu/status/5102914938863616″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/anildash/statuses/6752207391166464″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/doncruse/statuses/6896878268448768″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/r3volve/statuses/6841561325244416″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/joshmillard/status/6575276808994816″]

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Evan Wondrasek

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19 responses to “A Personal Appeal from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales to Read This Blog Post”

  1. Gregory Kohs Avatar
    Gregory Kohs

    Evan, careful here… You’ve been duped by a number of myths. Jimmy Wales isn’t “the founder” of Wikipedia. He installed some wiki software at the request of Larry Sanger, who also named it “Wikipedia”, and who also issued the first public call for participation in the project. If truth is your guidepost, then even calling Jimmy Wales the “co-founder” of Wikipedia is a stretch.

    As for that awful histogram that shows Jimbo’s ad “winning” against the other ads — again, look at the facts. Jimbo’s was the only ad to feature an image overlaying text. Of course a pretty picture is going to draw more eyeballs and clicks than plain text! Also, they don’t seem to bother mentioning that Jimbo’s ad ran 2x more often than any of the other ads, to get to that ridiculously disproportionate level. It still would have won, but I guess the Wikipedia minions didn’t feel like their Great Leader would be honored enough just to “win” — his statistics had to be fudged to look like he “crushed” the competition.

    Never mind how nobody in the media seems to have enough of a brain to ask why the Wikimedia Foundation only spends 41 cents of every received dollar on program services, earning it only one star (out of four!) from Charity Navigator on the measure of “organizational efficiency”.

    1. Weeblefish Avatar
      Weeblefish

      Agreed: they should test the Jimbo ad against, say, a stock photo of a large-breasted model smiling winsomely at the reader. Given Wales’ career as a porn baron, the Jimbo fan club shouldn’t have a problem with it.

    2. Smith Andy Avatar
      Smith Andy

      I like Wales

  2. Jackgoldman1 Avatar
    Jackgoldman1

    Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, and Twitter are all evil. They are the FAWGY Tweeters seeking global domination. Wikipedia is a faith based propaganda rag to promote liberal bias, liberal racism (liberal quotas are good quotas), and liberal bigotry (there homosexual article is some thirty pages. There heterosexual article is five pages?) What the frick? I worry about our future as a species forsaking Encyclopedia Britannica for the tragically biased Wikipedia.

    1. jhern Avatar
      jhern

      Its called not being lazy and getting your information from a book buddy. Try it sometime. Wikipedia is only to get a basic understanding of a topic.

      And idk why your are calling Youtube evil when you are obviously watching plenty of conspiracy theory videos on it. 

      1. KodyFrazier Avatar
        KodyFrazier

        By their own admission, Wikipedia is not intended to be used as a primary source, but rather as a supplemental or base from which to expand. You’re exactly right when you say it’s there to give you a basic understanding of a topic. The best thing you can do is read through Wikipedia articles and then visit their supporting links and sources to get the more academically sound information. 

  3. Jayson Elliot Avatar
    Jayson Elliot

    They’re conducting focus groups and surveys, and the most successful campaign so far has only raised $47,000?

    I work in UX and market research, and a typical focus group study costs between $25,000 and $50,000 to conduct.

    Someone’s not doing it right.

    1. Gregory Kohs Avatar
      Gregory Kohs

      In defense of the Wikimedia Foundation (I cringe when I say that, really I do), the $47,000 amount was annotated as “per day”. If I could trade a $25,000 set of focus groups for a $47,000-per-day revenue stream, I would do it.

  4. RANTWICK Avatar
    RANTWICK

    Hey man, thanks for this post. I was thinking of doing something about this on my blog and found you… regardless of people’s suspicions, the fact remains that Wikipedia remains one of very few places that you won’t see any ads or attempts to social network you to death.

    It worked on me… I made a modest donation. Seems only fair when I use the thing almost every day.

    1. David Avatar
      David

      Hear hear.  I did too, but only after reading the “personal appeal” from one of the researchers.  (She was cute)

  5. Puterea ochilor albastri in strangerile de donatii | Fishington Post

    […] E vorba de campania anuala a ONG-ului Wikimedia de strangere de donatii. Iar in caz ca va intrebati ce succes pot avea astfel de mesaje rupte parca din online-dating, aflati ca au avut un click-through-rate de 2,87% (luna trecuta) si au strans aproape 50.000 $ din peste 1.500 de donatii. Prin comparatie, maximele anterioare contabilizasera sub 3.000 $ si sub 150 de donatori. Analiza completa poate fi studiata AICI. Si putin amuzament AICI. […]

  6. tina Avatar
    tina

    It’d be interesting to see how Jimmy Wales compares to the lady Lilaroja =)

  7. No Avatar
    No

    http://images1.memegenerator.net/ImageMacro/5562040/A-Personal-Appeal-from-Wikipedia-Founder-Jimmy-Wales-AGAIN.jpg

  8. Ivan Avatar
    Ivan

    Wikipedia does not need your money. But it surely wants it.

  9. Dev Avatar
    Dev

    I WAS ABOUT TO DONATE. THEN I FOUND THAT EVEN THE SECURITY CODE WAS NOT ENCRYPTED. I WAS WONDERING WHETHER IT IS GENUINE. I AM SCARED OF THE POSSIBILITY THAT SOMEONE MIGHT GET ALL MY NUMBER AND SECURITY CODE! CAN SOMEONE PL TELL!

    1. Gregory Kohs Avatar
      Gregory Kohs

      I wouldn’t put it past an underpaid code developer at a Wikimedia Chapter organization to phish for credit card numbers through the donation applet.  Yet another reason NOT to donate to the Wikimedia fundraising scam.

  10. Ashscott_2010 Avatar
    Ashscott_2010

    Who ever owns Wikipedia, just “switch the lights off” and all those billions of geniuses out there will have to go to a book to find the answer as detailed. That will be a traversity and many will donate (think the fear of books is the founding reason but you can google that) lol!

  11. Joz Avatar
    Joz

    Soon he’ll achieve higher face recognition rate than Chairman Mao among the Chinese people when he was alive.  North Korea’s Kim would want to learn from him…
    Pathetic.

  12. Katie Engelhart: Why Jimmy Wales Allows "Vulva" on Wikipedia Rhonn Mitchell Rhonn Laighton Mitchell

    […] a small and compact man, who sports a few more wrinkles than he does in Wikipedia’s “Personal Appeal” ads — looked a little disoriented. Sitting down beside the event’s moderator, […]

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