Proposal:Voluntary subscription
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- Achieve continued growth in readership
- Focus on quality content
- Increase Participation
- Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
- Encourage Innovation
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Summary
Set up a system for accepting voluntary subscriptions.
Proposal
Wikimedia should set up a system enabling regular payments, for example, by standing order, on a monthly or annual basis. This should be absolutely voluntary, and any begging exhortations should be low-key. Subscription would accrue neither preference nor identification, and self-identification should be thought of as lacking taste.
Motivation
Regular predictable income is better than irregular unpredictable income.
Subscription would probably help to spread the costs more widely, and more thinly, which would have the benefit of involving more people, spreading the stakeholding and embedding the project in society more deeply. 1M subscriptions of $5 or $12 per year would go a long way towards providing the continuing funding the project needs.
I dislike the fundraisers and page head banners that come round with monotonous regularity. I dislike being tapped, and tend not to respond positively. On the other hand, I would be quite happy to set up a standing order for a small annual or monthly subscription. I would not expect any benefit, and indeed think that it should be made clear that no preferential benefit to subscribers could ever be considered - even though not getting fundraiser banners would be nice.
Key Questions
Is the idea acceptable to the project's philosophy?
Would people respond to the idea of regular subscription better that to fundraisers?
Potential Costs
Adding another kind of pesterware.
Administration.
Some sort of change in public perception of the project, and of the project's perception of itself; either of which might be good, bad or neutral.
References
Community Discussion
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