Dear all,
I would like to address the recent feedback and concerns raised regarding the fundraising email that was sent to donors in Japan last week.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge that the subject line “もう、たくさんです” has not been well received by many of you here on this forum. Although the email campaign is now over, we have already started working on a different subject line for the next campaign.
The team aims to maintain a positive relationship with our donors and part of this is respecting their time, which is why we send fewer emails per year than many other non-profit organizations. We also want to ensure that emails effectively raise money for our movement, which is why we test email subject lines in many countries to find the most engaging content with minimal disruption to donors and readers.
The team works with two professional Japanese translators to ensure the quality and accuracy of our content. However, we always welcome feedback and insights from our community members, and we appreciate your input in helping improve the quality of fundraising messages.
With regards to feedback on the banner content, especially the phrase ‘Wikipedia is not for sale’, we are now testing alternatives including some that were suggested by volunteers. The idea of this message originated from a message that Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, wrote for the December English banner campaign and was translated for the Japan campaign. We hear the feedback on the translation of that message not resonating with some of you. Thank you to those who provided valuable input on alternative messages that the team is trying out in banners. You might still see the old phrase around for a bit due to our testing mechanisms. If you would like to suggest phrases to be used in banners, please add them as a reply and I will pass them on to the team.
Once again, thank you for your ideas and for all you do to contribute to the project. Please do not hesitate to reply to this message or contact me directly at jbrungs at wikimedia dot org if you have further input. I am also happy to host a post-campaign community call (we hosted a pre-campaign one in February), let me know if there is an interest in this.
Best,
Julia