User talk:Pcoombe (WMF)

Welcome to Meta!

Hello Pcoombe (WMF), and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- 23:29, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your help with testing the UK fundraiser. Victuallers 15:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

2 queries

Please see;

• Talk:Fundraising_2011#Paypal_donation_link_error
• Talk:Fundraising_2011#Talk:Fundraising

Cheers, Chzz 21:06, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Chzz, will look into these. Pcoombe (WMF) 21:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Dark patterns

The other day, I noticed an interesting discussion, talking about the fact that the Oxfam 'Donate' box *defaults* to 'monthly' / regular donations rather than single ones - e.g. [1]. It's possibly debatable, but worth thinking about. The page where I read about it is: [2]. Chzz 21:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I discovered the darkpatterns wiki the other day too, but haven't had chance to properly explore it yet.

That's a nice idea, but in practice kind of tricky because at the moment we can only do recurring donations via PayPal. Which a) isn't most people's preferred method and b) doesn't have as good support for international currencies. We might still test it at some point though, perhaps just in the US at first. I know that Wikimedia UK are going this route, providing monthly donations as the default option, but they are able to support Direct Debits which are very popular in the UK. Pcoombe (WMF) 21:40, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm English/in England, and almost everything is DD. I didn't know that it was less common in the USA. But yes - it's something to consider. I imagine some people would find it annoying to default to that, but OTOH I imagine it'd bring in a lot more ongoing donations.

I actually find the current link to "Monthly_donations/en" to be confusing - because after clicking it, there's no indication on that page that it is 'monthly' or anything, except that the final link is "Make a monthly donation". What I mean is... it's odd that it still just says "Make your donation now" so it seemed to me like clicking had just repeated the same page. Chzz 23:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Yep, we're working on overhauling that page as it has a number of issues, but it's currently on hold whilst we launch the rest of the fundraiser. Pcoombe (WMF) 01:22, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Good.

I also suggest some link to "Ask questions/comments about the fund-raising". I've noted several users today who have either wanted to report a problem making a dontation, or just wanted to contact WMF and ask something - but it's confusing for them to find how to do that. There's only the FAQ, and users can get frustrated trying to follow links to find out how to get in touch; I really think it needs a better help-function. One typical example comment is here - but it's not just that; it's the same thing when users have troubles making the payment, or whatever. Chzz 07:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

We've added our support email address problemsdonating@wikimedia.org to all the pages (this is probably better than a wiki page as many donors won't be familiar with editing, plus we already had the message translated). Hope this helps. Pcoombe (WMF) 15:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

There is still no email, or any other 'help' link, on the page that I am seeing - [3] - possibly it is different for UK. (Also, the donation doesn't seem to work; I get "There has been an error connecting to the Direct Debit page, please try again, or contact customer services on support@smartdebit.co.uk". Chzz 04:03, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed different for the UK, we've asked the Chapter about putting a contact email on their first page as well. I didn't have any problems donating, perhaps try again now? If it still doesn't work you can contact richard.symondswikimedia.org.uk. Pcoombe (WMF) 09:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you (I'm sure you're busy) but, five days on, the UK page still has no means of asking questions [4] - and users are indeed trying to ask all kinds of things, but struggling to know how. Chzz 08:56, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Email address updates

Hi Peter,

I saw that you were changing the donate email address, is this a global change, and do you need help with making the changes on WMF Wiki too?

The Helpful One 19:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I've got all of them but if you spot any that still need changing that would really be living up to your name :) Peter Coombe (WMF) 20:18, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Heh, having 2 legitimate accounts can't be easy! So just to confirm, you'd like donations@wikimedia.org changed to donate@wikimedia.org on all the templates on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki, such as I have done in this edit? The Helpful One 20:25, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, it's okay. I'll do those templates because I have AWB set up ready. But if you spot donations@wikimedia.org anywhere else please do update it. It isn't crucial, both email addresses work, we just want it to be consistent. Peter Coombe (WMF) 20:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Fundraising 2011/Improvement

Hi, thank you for your work on Fundraising 2011. Now that I noticed you made the page of improvement requests into a redirect to talk:Fundraising 2011([5]), can you tell me where you replaced/archived requests from info-ja, which we input as respond of inquiry what kinds of requests we'd got during the campaign, so that we at otrs volunteering team may trace them? Thanks, --Aphaia (talk) 00:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the help

Hi Peter. Thanks for the help (pun intended). Just read about your Fellowship to help improve the help system on Wikipedia. Just wanted to say this is a great idea and a serious undertaking. I have to thank you for taking on such a monumental task and I'm looking forward to your improvements. Thanks and all the best to you. 64.40.54.80 14:52, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Comment on the help questionnaire

Hi Peter,

I assume you are the one who set up the questionnaire on Wikipedia’s help pages: https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8uFecCwmOU6h7es. (If not, please correct me.)

The idea is good, but I got stuck on the third question, "And how satisfied were you with the help you found on these topics?", as there was no way to answer "Don’t remember/Don’t want to answer". I’ve used several of the help sections mentioned but some of them I haven’t looked at for a very long time and I simply cannot remember to what degree I was satisfied with them. I tried to just skip the ones I couldn’t answer in a good way but the page would not let me move on without answering all questions.

Making a good questionnaire, with the right combination of questions and answer options, is a tricky thing, much trickier than it seems. One of the difficulties is to give the users a set of answer options that actually covers all their varied answers. Very often, adding a "Don’t know / Cannot answer / Prefer not to answer" option helps covering that last part that you might have missed. Is that something that could be added to the survey (even if that would probably mean you had to analyze the two questionnaire versions separately)?

Best regards, Eliashedberg (talk) 06:15, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. If you can't remember, it's fine to just select "neutral". I don't really want to change the survey at this stage since quite a few people have already completed it. the wub "?!" 15:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Category cleanup

Stuff like this warms my heart. Thanks for taking the time to keep things organized! -Pete F (talk) 20:47, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

p.s. I see you tried in vain to bring in Cat-a-lot. I usually use HotCat for stuff like this, but for bigger projects have found AWB to be a great tool. It would be great to compare notes on the easiest ways to go about it some time. -Pete F (talk) 20:49, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks fellow Pete! Sorting out the fundraising pages has been on my to-do list for a while. I have actually been using AWB for them, after all my attempts at Cat-a-lot failed. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Cool. I did a lot of categorization work here about a year ago, mainly on Wikimania-related pages but also on organizing things by geography and by year. If you ever want somebody to talk through a categorization question with, let me know -- I know I came across things where two minds would probably have been better than one! -Pete F (talk) 21:13, 29 January 2013 (UTC)