Topic: Wikipedia's yearly donation campaign; Time to accept Bitcoins? - page 3. (Read 16657 times)

Have you seen Wikipedia's new header?



I find it odd on two counts. First, it came out after our initial request to embed a Bitcoin donation option. (maybe not so odd) Second, they wouldn't have put this up if they didn't feel they needed it. I'm guessing their normal donation rate is a tad off to date.

Good job wcoenen!!  That's a huge step in the right direction!

I wish there was a button I could click now to help, I guess we wait and email other organizations.

That's what I'm talking about! What an interesting idea! Post it on their forum, thus initiating a dialog about Bitcoin. Now take a page from what we've just learned and apply it to other organizations that have a forum set up. Rinse and repeat!

~Bruno~

bitinstant.com comes to mind, i haven't personally used their service but remember seeing them offer methods to do BTC>Paypal, it is not free obviously.

I sent a message to Flattr, one of the most used blog tipping services, to start accepting bitcoin, and I got this reply:


If we had a service that took bitcoin and instantly converted it to paypal, we could get the really big companies onboard.  It would be counter-productive because it is giving money to paypal, but it would help the community take notice to bitcoin.  Maybe make a service where the bitcoin is converted into USD or other physical currency and snail-mailed?  I dunno, but Eclipse Mining Consortium has a cool auto-payout feature to Paypal and it would be cool if someone had a similar site that could pay out just as easily.  

I would agree, if, we were actually hassling anyone. I sent one email to 2 different Wiki addresses that basicly said, 'Hey, I'd like to donate to you. Do you take bitcoins?' And our bitcoin100 list is designed to be very unannoying by sending one letter, to only one charity so far, in order to represent a group of people versus everyone just spamming them.

It is no more annoying than someone who would have mailed any charity on earth over the last 10 years that asked, "Hey, I'd like to donate. Will you accept paypal?"

p.s. Is harceling French?


cheers

yeah but some small pushes can do any wrong. A small chick does the same when trying to hatch from it's egg 

Wikimedia chapters? This remind me something... but i don't remember what... oh well anyway, FOR THE EMPEROR 

You guys should certainly stop doing that.  Harceling people about bitcoin
gives the worst possible image of the community.

Bitcoin doesn't need such methods to succeed.

Not to be a smart ass, but keep trying. I would suggest next sending a modified version of the letter that Derek with Bitcoin100 sent to St. Jude.

I've been trying to get Amnesty International to accept bitcoin. They have chapters in nearly every country. Considering they deal with issues in tyrannical societies, I would think bitcoin a good fit. Any suggestions?

They misspelled "through".
Still donated 1BTC anyway.

I love the fact that Wikipedia is making us scheme to donate to them.

There are lots of non-profits that have a chapters model something like this.  The first that pops into my mind is the ACLU.  Though... I'm not an expert on that. Certainly it would be a useful tactic to use elsewhere.

Perhaps this will turn out like when you were a kid and there was that new toy in town, but nobody wanted it until the moment one of your friends got one, at which point everyone had to have it. That's how I hope it turns out, anyway.

Nice work.

The decisions of the chapters are up to the chapters.  They may each have their own personnel issues (e.g. lack of an available trusted party to handle the digital donations), interpretations of local laws, hunger for funding, etc.

The list of chapters is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters.

It's worth noting that not all chapters are equal.  Some are large and active, some are new, inexperienced, and some are mostly idle.   Some are not actively soliciting donations because they don't have the organizational maturity to handle them (and just get grants from Wikimedia to run projects that cost money), etc.

Off the top of my head: Some of the larger and more active chapters are Germany, Netherlands, France, Israel, Australia, Italy, UK, and Argentina.

My gut impression is that Germany won't care much (they are by far the largest chapter, and have a lot of income already) and that UK will blow you off with bitcoin-is-bad+wacko-law-interpretations.  Best bet is contacting a chapter near you or ones associated with languages that you speak.   Since chapters have a regional (and often language specific) focus, people closer to the chapter are in a better position to interact with and evaluate them.

Wikimedia (washington) DC is a new, smaller chapter that was just recently formed. It has a lot of cultural overlap with the NY chapter so it might be receptive too.

I feel kinda silly for not suggesting trying to get the chapters to take bitcoin before... in general its a pretty good fit: as smaller organizations the chapters can be a little more agile... and if one or another is infected with the bitcoin-is-bad meme there are others to try.  The ones who will accept it get the benefit.  And it will build up a base of experience with accepting bitcoin donations within the Wikimedia family.

It seems all of them share the same email for addressing issues/suggestions with donating. That is [email protected]

Thank you kindly, gmaxwell, for clearing that up for me. I simply thought that it looked weird and needed a trusted opinion.

On that note, this is great news. At first, we had Jimmy saying no. Then the other idea of organizing the editors was shut down with a valid reason. Now we have Wikimedia NYC accepting Bitcoin on its own accord. And how many other chapters are there? And what's the likelihood of having all of them accept Bitcoin as a donation option? And who's in charge of trying to make sure that this comes to pass? And what are we waiting for?

~Bruno~