Bitcoin Forum

Most of us will agree that having the Wikimedia foundation (known for operating Wikipedia) accept Bitcoin donations could be a very important milestone in Bitcoin's adoption. They are famous for having refused for a long time with obscure reasons, but I believe they are warming up to the idea, and that it's high time we take concrete action about it.

In a recent discussion on Quora, Jimmy Wales has stated a few reasons to reject Bitcoin donations, and surprisingly they were all quite tangible. By this point it is already assumed that the donations will be immediately converted to USD via a provider such as BitPay, to help with accounting and make it easier to use the funds. The main objections were:

1. The amount that would be donated via Bitcoin is too small to be worth the trouble.

This objection is the easiest to refute; all we need is to demonstrate the quantitative aspects of our willingness to donate, and this is what this post is mostly about.

2. Adding more donation options is known to create "choice paralysis" and decrease the total amount donated. They have a process of A/B testing for measuring the effect of adding new options; this testing will increase the cost of even considering to add this option.

To this Jimmy suggested that they could add information about Bitcoin donations in a separate page not linked to from the main donations page. I find this to be a very acceptable compromise; we'll be able to donate, and we'll be able to tell people Wikipedia accepts Bitcoin donations.

3. Accepting bitcoins can be perceived as making a value judgement about Bitcoin, which they are hesitant to do.

I believe this can be alleviated with proper framing, and that making this available only from an orphan page will further reduce the perceived impact.


We have moved beyond the stage that we randomly bug them about taking bitcoins and hoping they'll eventually say yes. We need to have a serious discussion, and to do that we need to demonstrate that our intentions are serious.

And I believe a community pledge is a key component of this. These are funds raised with the sole purpose of donating to Wikimedia; they will be collected by the community of people who want to donate bitcoins to Wikipedia, for the benefit of both Bitcoin and Wikipedia.

Funds raised as part of the pledge can be used only to:
1. Donate to Wikimedia after they officially agree to accept Bitcoin donations.
2. Fund Wikimedia's research about the merits of including a Bitcoin donation option.
They will not be returned to donators if the drive fails, donated to Wikimedia without a move to officially accept Bitcoin, or donated to any other purpose. They will simply sit and grow until we succeed.

The funds needed are substantial, more than should be trusted with any single individual. I initially thought to hold them in a multisig address by a few trusted treasurers, but these are still hard to work with and error-prone. I suggest the next best thing: Interested, trusted members will post a Bitcoin address in their control, in which they will hold funds collected for the pledge; every donator will choose in whose address he is most comfortable storing the funds.

To reduce management overhead, only several highly trusted members should collect funds; I will update the OP with the addresses of treasurers I find suitable. Note that my standards are very high.

I offer my own collection address, 19HHHDya8PNqdVpiCdZYuwKyuWFoU1TC9A, and to get things started I'm donating 5 BTC. I request that someone will quote this address to reduce risk of tampering.


The plan going forward is simple:

1. We keep the pledge going until a substantial amount of funds is raised. (I'm hoping for 1000 BTC but we'll work with what we can have.)

2. Backed by the promise of donating the collected pledge, I contact the head of Wikimedia's fundraising team with a detailed argument for their acceptance of Bitcoin.

3. We discuss the relevant issues, coordinating with other relevant parties as needed (such as BitPay or another payment processor), and get a sense of what it would take for them to agree to move forward.

4. We resolve any issues raised (with the possible inclusion of having to raise more funds, or donating some funds in advance to fund their research).

5. We succeed in convincing the Wikimedia foundation to accept Bitcoin donations, donate all collected funds, continue to donate more funds via their published address/button, and live happily ever after.


tl;dr: If you want Wikipedia to accept Bitcoin donations and to donate to Wikipedia, please send bitcoins to one of the following. Remember, every little bit helps.

Wikipedia pledge collection addresses:

Meni Rosenfeld (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=5776): 19HHHDya8PNqdVpiCdZYuwKyuWFoU1TC9A

(reserved)

Witnessed. Great idea(s). If Wikipedia does start to accept Bitcoin donations, it'll be an amazing boost.

Excellent initiative!! Let's do this!

This is a great idea. People around me don't trust and often look sceptically at Bitcoin. They won't once the most used community encyclopedia adopts it.

Wait, I have to send money to the address to pledge?

I love this idea(s), a large sum of bitcoins would definitely help getting past the biggest objection of the amount of money donated in bitcoins is small. (which admittedly is a problem until bitcoin gets bigger.)

The only problem is the current address, I'd prefer that there be some trusted escrow address or something along those lines.

We should get John K.

Yes. The pledge needs to be credible. We're not going to say "We have X BTC pledged" and in the moment of truth start chasing people and hoping they'll come through.

What do you mean by "a trusted escrow address"? We could do a multisig thing after all, but barring that actual people will have to hold the funds. I want more people to share the load but I'm as good as anyone else, my reputation is rock solid.

By all means.

What about that http://blog.bitpay.com/2012/11/donate-to-wikipedia-with-bitcoin.html ?

From their site:

Wikimedia isn't getting jack from me until they accept Bitcoin.

Funny coincidence.  I actually emailed them yesterday with a list of reasons why accepting Bitcoin via BitPay would be an easy and free way to accept Bitcoins without actually touching them.  I got this response today:


Seeing as BitPay would set them up for free with their API, and they would still essentially be accepting USD via BitPay (which I clearly explained), this response made no sense to me beyond her not reading/understanding what I was explaining.  For those thinking BitPay charges 0.99%/transaction, they actually wave this for charities.

Anyway, I fully support this idea and will donate some BTC via John K. if he comes on board!

This offer is not officially supported by Wikimedia. There's a huge difference.

Posted to reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1k0hhm/getting_wikipedia_to_accept_bitcoin_plan_of_action/)

I support this idea but I've already sent my yearly payment to wikipedia. To be honest I would still use my credit card even if bitcoin was a payment option since I still find bitcoins difficult to obtain and like keeping them when I have them.

Alternatively, don't donate anything to Wikipedia as they clearly just don't need the money that much. There are other good things you can do with your money!

Donation sent.

Also... i donate every December... so instead of giving them money directly, this year, i will donate to 19HHHDya8PNqdVpiCdZYuwKyuWFoU1TC9A and let them know about it via email.

If 100/1.000/10.000 of us do the same... i guess they will start scratching their heads.

I sympathize with the passive-aggressive stance, but it's factually false and not really helpful. They obviously do need the money. They need our help to overcome the reservations they have about accepting Bitcoin for it. Let's offer it.

But yes, there are of course many other causes worthy of donation.

Stupid idea, waste of money.

People who spend their time to post wiki pages, make edits etc never get any money.

Wikimedia is already earning good enough money via donations for their operating cost.

I am generally very supportive of this.


Can you ask them to qualify how much exactly makes it "worth the trouble"? Once you have a specific target amount, and escrow, I will willingly donate $50 to this cause.

The Wikimedia foundation is a nonprofit, they're not "earning" money.

Whether they're putting the donated money to good use can be assessed from their financial reports.

I asked Jimmy in an informal context and he directed me to the fundraising team which makes the official decisions. I want to have something behind us before I make the first formal inquiry.

I don't think they should be bothered before we have at least $10K worth (100 BTC at current rates), preferably much more. Do you need them to quote a number? If so, why?

In the arrangement I suggested every treasurer acts as an "escrow". No qualifications are required other than being trustworthy. Do you mean there are some specific people you wish will be treasurers?

I think we're gonna have to start raising a significant amount before they actually consider this thread something worth looking into. If you come up to them saying "how much would you want" you're less likely to get a response than "we raised $50000, how much more do you want?".

But whoever you pick to hold the funds as escrow should promise you that the money will not be used for anything other than reaching wikimedia, whenever that may be. So go for it.

Eh, you don't need to trust one person with all the BTC in escrow, you can spread it across multiple treasurers. I would do that, but you probably don't count me as trustworthy ;)

Perhaps, but I still don't think this justifies less stringent management. Besides, you can always open with "I know we can easily get $50000, how much more do you want?"


I believe that projects like this need measurable attainable goals. Currently it's (appologies for paraphrasing) "If we raise lots of money I'm sure wikipedia will accept bitcoins". I'd like it to be "If we raise $100000 wikipedia will agree to accept bitcoin donations for at least 2 years". The key difference is that with the first there's a very real danger that I'm essentially throwing my money into a black hole, which is no good for anyone. The second one alows anyone to judge if the project was run fairly and achieved its goals.

Essentially I'd like to "kickstarterify" the project.

You are welcome to offer whoever you want to act as escrow. The point being that there are addresses dedicated to wikimedia donations. And having the funds there and ready for wikimedia to just say "yes".


That's great, it would be nice to have a figure, but it doesn't seem that wikimedia is even considering this. So until then, we should raise what we can to prove our intentions.

That would be a lie, I don't know it without more supporting evidence. And even if we can and we know it, they have no reason to believe our optimism.

Your money is thrown into a black hole only in one of the following scenarios:

1. Wikimedia will never accept Bitcoin donations.
2. Wikimedia's decision to accept Bitcoin donations will not be influenced by the amount raised, and you have no interest at all in donating to Wikipedia, just in getting them to accept Bitcoin.

I personally don't think either is likely.


It's very simple to demonstrate the project was run fairly; the requirements are:
1. No funds are spent for a purpose other than those stated
2. When Wikimedia accepts Bitcoin donations, the funds are donated to them.


Will it help if we rephrase it as two separate goals?
1. Get enough funds to credibly approach Wikimedia (tentative target: 200 BTC)
2. Get enough funds to convince Wikimedia (target: Unknown)

You may not yet have enough information to optimally contribute to the 2nd goal, but you can contribute to the 1st, also important, goal.

I agree it's easy to judge if it succeeds. But what if they never want our coins? Or if wikimedia only accept a one-off donation? Was it not enough funds? Unasailable technical hurdles? Bad will from wikimedia? Laziness on your part? etc... I just want to close off some of those doors.

Just to be clear - I don't doubt your dedication or integrity for a moment. However this is the internet and so extreme caution is always best.


Sure - if you get some acknowledgement from wikimedia that they will agree to serious / technical talks if we can pledge 200BTC that's fine. If it's just a vague "I think this is enough" then I'll remain sceptical.

One final point. Charity donation is more maleable that you are giving it credit for. Of course money talks, but it doesn't have to literally be cash undeneath someone's nose to have value. Being a respected representative of a wealthy community *is* tangible value to charaties - and they know this! Don't be afraid to talk yourself up!

I'll emphasize that this project isn't about just me. I believe I'm qualified to make the contact and am happy to do so, but if I don't push this forward anyone else is free to pick up the slack. The rules for the pledge are fairly clear; and as a treasurer myself I am committed to properly use the funds I hold, however this proceeds. If we all forget about this thing and at some future time someone will want to take another shot, the funds will still be waiting.

It's turtles all the way down. Quoting a number that will persuade them to have a serious talk is itself serious talk. We need to bootstrap this somehow. And whatever we do, some uncertainties are bound to remain.

I'll keep that in mind.


Yes, that's the point. Collected funds will not be given to them unless they accept Bitcoin or need the funds to work towards it.

I believe Meni to be at least as trustworthy as any other bitcointalk member.

• He's been here since March of 2011.
• He's operated Bitcoil (https://bitcoil.co.il/) since 2011.
• I can personally verify that he was physically present at the San Jose conference.
• More info about him, positive and otherwise, can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121314.0

I seriously doubt that even his detractors believe he would run off with bitcoins meant for Wikimedia.

Fully agree. Congratulations to Meni on getting this new initiative off and running.
Wikipedia is number 6 in the top websites by traffic and it would be a major milestone for bitcoin to be seen there (apart from as an encyclopedia entry!)

Now khan academy are, maybe they will consider?

Wikipedia to accept bitcoin donation would have given a push to bitcoin's legitimacy ... in 2012 !!!

Since then, bitcoin has been talked about in almost every news and TV show on this planet.

Have you considered donating to initiatives that helping grow the Bitcoin ecosystem instead ?

Great iniciative, just gave my 0.5 tip to 19HHHDya8PNqdVpiCdZYuwKyuWFoU1TC9A i hope it works.

It's been talked about all right, but what is being said? Usually it's ranging from neutral to negative.

Few people can value Bitcoin on its own merit; most need the approval of others. Having a site of Wikipedia's caliber accept Bitcoin would greatly improve the perception.

Why does it need to be instead? There are many initiatives that help grow the Bitcoin ecosystem, this is one of them.


Are you volunteering?

I can't use the coins for any purpose, I have to secure them and I have to pay out of pocket if anything happens to them. What is there to enjoy?

We would need a large community effort to get this done. Just $10,000 is not going to cut it. Wikipedia acceptance of Bitcoin would lead to a nice little price spike, so we could consider it an investment perhaps.

Agreed. This needs to go to a reputable escrow.

Wikimedia Chair

On December 15th, 2006, I became part of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation as an appointed member. .... Issues I have been involved with more than the normal amount are:
Fundraising


"If you feel that there are important things to be achieved in the coming year which I should support you are invited to post these on my Talk page."

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jan-Bart


http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees

This response was written more than 2 years ago. They've since repeated it on occasion due to momentum, but it's not set in stone and renewed negotiations can shed light on the real reservations. As I clarified in the OP, recent informal discussions on the issue didn't bring up any qualms about "artificial currencies", just some practical issues.

The plan is to have the bitcoins converted to USD before being delivered (via some payment processor). But yes, the plan is to have enough money pledged to make it worth their while.

They will need to officially acknowledge that they're accepting donations via Bitcoin. However, it does not need to be prominently displayed.

The publicity is important. Whether it's "more" important than the donation itself is for anyone to judge for himself. You can donate to this drive in addition to other causes.


I agree.

I don't want this to turn into a discussion about my reputability; it's off-topic and I have a vanity thread for that, which you're free to comment on.

I'll just say that in 2.5 years of working on Bitcoin (2 of which full-time), with both voluntary contributions and various business ventures, I have not once lied or reneged on any commitment (including some upwards of $20K). This has to count for something.

Being called an "escrow" doesn't make one magically more trustworthy. It all boils down to what one has to gain by defecting, and what he has to lose. In fact, being an active escrow already sitting on some customer funds just adds to the "has to gain" side of the equation.

But yes, I do wish more treasurers to be on board.


Advice needs to be more concrete to be useful.

There's definitely more work that can be done for promoting this drive, I'll do what I can but I do need help.

It wouldn't be the first time. Though admittedly these amounts are usually raised only with some promise of profit.

Even if "this" attempt fizzles, any collected funds will still be available for any future attempt, or for when Wikimedia accepts bitcoins without any attempt.

If you believe in donating bitcoins to Wikipedia and/or getting Wikipedia to accept Bitcoin donations, there's very little risk in donating, even if you're bearish about this particular attempt.

And again, "if". I'll personally try to make this a success, and I welcome genuine help.

This again. I already said I will not use the collected coins for personal purposes (and neither should any other treasurer). You can either believe that or not.

Y'all seriously need to read the full OP before posting. Like, seriously.

Finding more treasurers would probably calm most of these nay-sayers. A whole bunch of reputable folks collecting, where each can be picked to act as "escrow", should calm people from thinking free coins are being collected or that they'll be free when wikimedia says "no" before eventually (someday) saying "yes".

We're up to 7.5 BTC, which is $780 at current rates.

How 'bout not giving your BTCs to a free information-providing service that doesn't want bitcoins, and giving them to a free information-providing service that does like bitcoins, like Khan Academy?  Just my 2 cents...  (and I am not affiliated with KA)
Honestly, I don't believe we are still in a stage were we need to beg people to accept our money...

The outgoing Wikimedia chairman is my partner for the last decade, and I have a long personal involvement in Wikimedia.  In light of my experience, I have to say that I'm amused by this thread.

Soliciting funds on behalf of Wikimedia from random forum members in order to hold a fundrasing "ransom" is not likely to help convince senior wikimedia executive staff (http://intelligentdesigns.net/blog/?p=108) (Or some of its well known and outspoken (http://newstechnica.com/2011/06/18/bitcoin-to-revolutionise-the-economy/) community members) who steadfastly believe Bitcoin is inherently a scam and Bitcoin users are a mixture of rubes and scammers.

(And, as an aside, as a matter of current policy— Wikimedia doesn't generally take funds with strings attached, and has never— to the best of my knowledge— accepted donations which required promoting the donor on the site's pages (beyond the pages that list donors, of course), even ones much larger than the Bitcoin community is likely to offer. Wikimedia also does not generally accept (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Gift_policy) gifts in kind. I can only imagine that a promotion-encumbered "donation" offer would only improve the credibility of people arguing that Bitcoin is a pump-and-dump scam.)

If we were to make a real effort at getting Wikimedia accepting Bitcoin, we'd do better to broker a conversation between kindred parties at say the FSF or EFF (Or the internet archive, which partially pays their staff in Bitcoin) that already accept Bitcoin with the appropriate people at Wikimedia, along with offers of advice from Bitcoin experienced people.

But even if successful, I'm unsure of what value this effort would have for the Bitcoin community.  Wikimedia receiving coins to immediately turn them into USD doesn't contribute to the Bitcoin economy beyond perhaps helping out some payment processor or exchange.  Better to just do it yourself— perhaps even retain the potential of taking a logistically simple tax write-off on the donation. :) ... Or save your donations for places which will pay their staff in Bitcoin, which helps bring more people into the Bitcoin economy, like the Internet Archive (http://blog.archive.org/2013/04/03/how-the-internet-archive-is-having-great-time-with-bitcoin/) or to projects (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=262066.0) which our community is more likely to understand the value of than the general public.

It also may be worth mentioning that the NYC wikimedia chapter accepts bitcoin (http://nyc.wikimedia.org/wiki/Donate) (and presumably some of the other regional chapters would if asked).

Came here to say this.

Instead of bugging organizations that are unwilling to finally accept bitcoin, we should show them what they are missing out on. Not by tangling bitcoin in front of them, but by funding similar projects.

Same is true for stores etc.

Nagging e-mails will probably not get us very far. Businesses/organizations losing clients/funders to competitors will.

I appreciate your optimism but we're still in a stage where most of my wealth is in BTC form, I'm actively looking for opportunities to use Bitcoin, and hardly finding anything. We need more organizations to accept bitcoins as payment or donations, and I believe Wikipedia is an important strategic target.

More power to KA and I sent them a small donation. But they're simply a completely different caliber than Wikipedia. Personally I use Wikipedia multiple times daily but don't recall ever using KA, and I expect most people are similar in this regard.


This is one blog post from over two years ago. Possibly some staffers still hold similar misconceptions, but part of the process will be to flesh out and iron out these reservations.


You've answered your own question. Bitpay's offer is in no way sanctioned by Wikimedia. People want to donate in a way that is officially supported. And I've explained in the OP some of their reasons for refusing acknowledgement of Bitcoin as a donation method.

Bitpay is large and reputable, and Wikimedia has made no effort whatsoever to find out who Bitpay is or to enter a formal agreement with them, because they had no reason to. The pledged funds are meant to incentivize them to do the necessary work - finding out who the players are, enter formal agreements, monitor received funds etc.

It will be possible to mention Wikipedia as an organization accepting Bitcoin donations, which can boost confidence in the currency and encourage more people to use it. And yes, it should also have a positive impact on its exchange rate.

Their money? Until we donate it it's not their money. And it's perfectly acceptable to specify the terms under which we are willing to donate.

That wasn't just some link I googled up cold.  You appear to be ignoring that I am telling you that your actions are politically inadvisable, and that they are at risk of playing into the reservations you supposedly hope to address.

That's fine. If you don't believe bitcoin to gain a status of a reserve currency one day, then this may be relevant. Otherwise, I'm sure these funds will eventually reach Wikimedia. The EFF once refused. And then time did it's thing.

Donations are an act of one entity supporting another entity, in this case, for ideological reasons. If Wikimedia's ideologies do not align with mine, I don't want them to have the funds. I've told Wikimedia fundraisers repeatedly that I wish to donate, but I'm not willing to do so with blood-stained monopoly money. This pledge is simply a statement that the day they'll accept bitcoin donations, then they have these funds ready and waiting. It's okay, they can take all the time they need to realize this.

I wouldn't call it that.

The "promotion" would only be in an orphan page. No other active action on their part is required.

This can be resolved in discussion.

"Offers of advice from Bitcoin experienced people" is something I'm sure they've already received tons of. Most likely referrals to FSF, EFF and IA as well. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

But if you read the OP you know the plan is not to tell them "We'll donate X BTC if you accept Bitcoin, kthxbye". The goal is to start a discussion which may indeed involve all these bodies. But if all they have to show for this discussion is that the entire Bitcoin community donates just 7.5 BTC, it's not going to happen. I want to prove to ourselves and to them that we are actually willing to donate.

That's a whole other discussion but I believe it is very good that organizations accept bitcoins with immediate conversion to USD, since that's the first step. Afterwards they start noticing some of the suppliers accept Bitcoin so they save costs by keeping some of the proceeds as BTC and using them directly; and so on. The average path that each BTC goes through before being settled against USD grows, and with it the economic benefit.

That's very interesting, will need to look into that.

What do you mean?

You have repeatedly edited your post. I'm not ignoring anything, I responded to the parts you had written at the time. I've now added more replies; and you can reply to those, that's how discussion works...

An alternative interpretation of a bunch of stored up conditional-coins is that you are attempting to buy some easy publicity fodder to pump up your Bitcoin, and you want to use Wikimedia's name to lend credibility to your effort.

Wikimedia has a lot of past experience with this, they'd enter into some limited agreement with some startup or another to work on some minor thing or that and then all of a sudden there is some flood of paid-press "WIKIPEDIA PARTNERS WITH ANSWERS.COM" (and in the subtext, written between the lines: buy buy buy answers.com stock! they've monetized wikipedia!) ... even when it's only some minor thing, or some trial effort, mentioned on some lost orphan page.

I'm not saying thats what anyone here is trying to accomplish (uh, well, okay its actually not entirely clear to me that the ask here is entirely orthogonal with that kind of outcome—  I can promise that _someone_ is going to run some "OMG BITCOIN WORLD DOMINATION, EVEN WIKIPEDIA ACCEPTS" story on the basis of anything done here) but past outcomes have seriously soured people to certain kinds of relationships (enough that as a result Wikimedia generally no longer does partnerships with commercial entities),  and plenty of companies stumble in wanting to make a "donation" when really what they're trying to do is buy their name in lights on a top 10 website.

A lot of people have ideologies, and think they can buy their way into making them Wikimedia's ideology too.  Wikimedia has the luxury of being able to be offended by these offers.  Success here would instead be finding out how your ideology and Wikimedia's are actually complementary and overlap, not in creating a bounty that might be perceived as selling out to benefit some private interest unrelated to Wikimedia's ideology.

Careful communication is required to avoid stepping on Wikimedia specific and Bitcoin specific rakes in this kind of discussion.

This is what I'm talking about in my last message.

This is exactly the kind of relationship which Wikimedia is likely to perceive as seedy and unaligned with its values, and it's a position that plays squarely into any argument made that Bitcoin is a pump-and-dump scam.  Wikimedia has the luxury to turn down selfish "donations" like this, or anything that looks even remotely like them, and it does.

This approach will not be successful. And, in fact, I believe the existence of this thread with points like this might undermine any differently motivated (e.g. people with unrealized Bitcoin gains who already want to donate and believe they would be better off donating it than converting it to USD paying taxes on it) efforts, which I think is sad. If something happens here it will be in spite of people who hope for some publicity and a rise in Bitcoin value, not because of them.

For the record:

1. I do care about the potential positive impact of this move on Bitcoin's adoption, as well as exchange rate.
2. I do not intend to pursue, nor do I condone, any paid press about this matter.
3. I do not condone any press that states or insinuates incorrect or misleading notions.
4. Press about this issue would be welcome, though is secondary to being able to refer to the matter in conversation.
5. I cannot speak for anyone else.


Human interaction as well as motivation is complex; you can cynically spin anything into a self-serving manipulation, but that doesn't make the world stop. To quote from Scott Aaronson's "On Self-Delusion and Bounded Rationality" (http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/selfdelusion.html):

Yet guys still ask girls on dates. Wikimedia could view this as a callous publicity stunt if they're so inclined, but this doesn't mean we can't talk with them. I agree completely that careful communication is key, and so is honesty.

Would you prefer lying about my/our motivation?

Also, it's unfair for either you or them to pick one point I've acknowledged and say "AHA! Got you! All you want is to profit from BTC rate appreciation and get rich quick!"

Specifically, BTC appreciation is just part of the story - it benefits the entire world that Bitcoin is more widely used, and this will help.

I don't see Wikimedia having accepted Bitcoin donations for the sake of the self-proclaimed purely altruistic so far.

I should remind you that the people who make these decisions are humans too, I doubt they're acting in pure altruism either...

No,  I'd prefer the case be genuinely made by those who had already found ideological common ground and earnestly weren't seeking a selfish result here.
It's fair for me, because it's exactly what I expect people to say. It's fair for them because its actual evidence supporting an earnest, if not entirely correct (/representative), belief. But... really? fair?  I wasn't aware that there was some particular formal structure for convincing people.

In any case, the whole approach of collecting up funds and handing them over conditionally was making the same statement implicitly to anyone whos perception was sensitized to read it that way. I was trying to caution you against that kind of position before you actually said it outright.
Yes, people's motivations are complicated. For example, one non-altruistic motivation sometimes at play is the feeling the need to be consistent with their past outspoken positions. It's usually easier to find locations for common ground when you're not saying things that play right into the wrong side of people's past battles...

I've seen Wikimedia turn away million dollar scale donations with strings which would have been easier to swallow than "do something that promotes Bitcoin's value" and that was at times when a million dollars was a lot more to Wikimedia than it is now,  if your strategy is it to exploit non-pure-altruism in the form of desire to bring in more funds, I do not predict success. Wikimedia's challenges are more in the domain of managing growth, not in bringing funds. With some additional effort but without Bitcoin Wikimedia could already bring in more funding than they could safely and sustainably apply to their mission at this time.

If instead people seek out ideological commonality— can a world with politically motivated mastercard blockades reliably share in the sum of human knowledge, when sometimes that knowledge is unpopular with people in power? (take care: Wikileaks is also a sore spot for some at Wikimedia)— or points of convenience for some donors I believe success is more likely.  Or even that bitcoin is a geeky toy and so geeks like both Bitcoin and Wikipedia.  These paths are also less incompatible with some positions that some people have previously adopted, bitcoin could still be a worthless scam but also still be easier for some donors to deal with or supportive of a vision of a world where people can speak more freely because they control their own finances.

That was not remotely the point of that comment. What I was saying is that it is not reasonable for them to take a moral high ground about our motivations.

Personally I think trying to analyze why people do things and holding them to some impossible standard of selflessness is futile. More productive is to care aout how they do them. My motivation may not be that of Wikimedia's idealized donor, but I'm doing this in the most transparent, respectful and moderate way possible.

Wikimedia accepting Bitcoin donations is mutually beneficial. Why is that a bad thing?

All of this has already been tried.

Why does it need to be instead? We can do all of this, and demonstrate that Bitcoin donations can be meaningful.


To quote Jimmy Wales (not the decision maker on fundraising, in an informal context):

What if we can take away the most important downside, by demonstrating the amount people are willing to donate via Bitcoin to Wikipedia?

(Though honestly, people's willingness to donate bitcoins to Wikipedia turns out to be much lower than I anticipated...)

I am quite underwhelmed by the community's willingness to donate bitcoins to Wikimedia which may be partially, but not wholly, explained by the reservations expressed in this thread. Even if this experiment turns out to be a failure, I do not regret pledging. I trust that Meni will continue to hold the funds until Wikimedia will accept bitcoin donations - which I am confident they will one day, maybe when my donation is worth many times more than it is now.

I still see no reason why anyone wishing to donate bitcoins to Wikimedia wouldn't do so through this pledge. Even if no pressure is made on Wikimedia (which is also fine by me, it just seems like a shame) - the only downside of this pledge is that the funds may sit for a while before Wikimedia accepts them.

I am willing to donate bitcoin to wikipedia. And I will not donate anything until they accept.

I am not willing to donate bitcoin to some 'get wikipedia to accept bitcoin fund', however - especially since it's managed by someone I do not know.

Sorry, nothing personal. But it might explain the low # of bitcoins donated - many might share my sentiment in one way or another.

There's a little problem with that theory...

Let's take a look at ways to donate to Wikipedia...

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en

Amazon
PayPal
Moneybookers
Stock donations through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

First, I don't see how they can claim that these are not commercial entities. All of these businesses exist for one reason, and one reason only. To make money.
Second, I don't see how accepting payments through these services is qualifies as an Wikipedia ENDORSEMENT of these services.

Bitcoin is no different in my opinion.


Who the hell cares?

I can do that right now! OMG BITCOIN WORLD DOMINATION! EVEN WIKIPEDIA ACCEPTS! JUST BUY AMAZON CODES WITH BTC THEN DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA WITH AMAZON!

That being said, I fully endorse Wikipedia's right not to accept a currency they don't want, regardless of their reasoning behind it and I suspect eventually they will accept it anyway, because money talks and bullshit walks. We don't need to be begging people to take the currency.

If they accept it, great.
If not, move on.

If you got a good product people will come around eventually, you don't need to advertise. Ever see advertising for pot? I didn't think so.

I have already given some to Khan Academy; I rather give some to some other charities that I use frequently but have not yet supported.


Personally all I want is them to do is accept bitcoin, they don't have to promote it or anything. Just a bitcoin button on a donate page.

So I went ahead and donated 0.13 to 19HHHDya8PNqdVpiCdZYuwKyuWFoU1TC9A , not much for now but i'll donate more if this takes off. Since it would go to wikipedia when they finally do accept it is cool by me.

Great initiative. I just donated something.

I still don't understand the reasoning. You already said you'd donate if they accepted Bitcoin - donating to the pledge is merely putting your money where your mouth is.

Allow me to introduce myself, after which I will no longer be a stranger :)

Seriously though, if that's the issue, name someone you'd trust and I'll ask him to join as a treasurer.

I trust me, can I be a treasurer?

 :P

I'm sorry guys, but I can't see this ending well for the bitcoin community publicity-wise.  Think about it: they will view this as holding a large donation hostage until they "meet our demands" of accepting the donation in our currency. 

We can't force them to accept bitcoin.  Just accept that they have a different opinion about bitcoin than we do, and the future will show who's opinion ends up being the most correct. 

Holding a large donation over their heads on the condition that they accept bitcoin is just a bad idea. 

I recommend you convert the coins to USD and send the USD no matter what, by a set date, say 1 month from now.  And instead of saying "we'll give you $x if you accept bitcoin!" we can say "look at how much bitcoin has raised for you so far!  if you just accepted it yourself, you could have so many more donations from people who are uncomfortable donating via a pass-through!"

You can still set a goal of 10k BTC if you want.  But give the donation no matter what.  YES, let's raise awareness about the campaign while it's going on.  YES, let's try and use it as a motivator for them to accept bitcoin in the future.  But let's NOT hold a donation hostage.  That situation almost never ends well.  Can you think of an instance where this has worked historically?

We can't force them to do anything. We can ask.

Opinions aren't set in stone. I don't know if anyone has ever had a serious discussion with them about why they should accept Bitcoin. Users randomly emailing them is not discussion. Erik Voorhees posting an aggressive response on his blog, designed to bring them to their knees, is not discussion.

I cannot do that with already sent funds, since that would be a breach of contract.

And I am not inclined to start a new pledge with revised terms, since I believe in the terms set in the OP.

We already have a pass-through. I do not see that it helped.

I asked Bitpay back in the day if they're making an effort to inform Wikimedia how much donations passed through them, but got no response.

No, but I can't think of an instance when it failed, either.

For me this is like what we did with DOSBox (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4711), times 1000. Perhaps it is naive to compare things of such different scales, but I explained my thought process in the OP, and I find it reasonable.

Interesting.  What will you do with the funds if the goal is never reached?

They will stay right where they are (unless I have to move them in their entirety to another address for security purposes).

The "goal" is that Wikimedia will accept Bitcoin donations. I don't find it plausible it will never happen, regardless of reaching any pledge targets.

So if Wikimedia never accepts bitcoin donations (or does so in the very distant future), the funds fall away into relative obscurity.  Once everyone has forgotten about them, you're free to do with them as you wish. 

It's intriguing that you're taking this route rather than say automatically refunding donators if a year has passed with no progress towards Wikimedia accepting bitcoin donations.  All you have to do is track who donates what and ask for a refund address. 

It takes just one person to point to this thread to prove I have stolen funds. Do you really think there is any chance everyone will just forget about this - ever?

That's a logistics nightmare and discourages small donations.

Also, it is better to be in it for the long haul, collecting more funds over time, than to quit and start over if the first time it doesn't succeed.

Surely there's some clever way to use nLockTime to make a contract that will accomplish this automatically?

Creating nLockTime transactions isn't exactly a widely available feature.

If only there was some way to easily automate this type of thing.  Like a way to I dunno, tell a computer what to do?  Maybe some type of "code" that the computer could understand.  And we could have a base for storing all the data, a "database" if you will.  I bet millions of people all over the world could use such things to turn "logistics nightmares" into solved problems. 

Heck, maybe someday someone could even create a currency of sorts using these tools and solve the "logistics nightmare" of tracking hundreds of transactions per day.

We can dream.

Setting up such a website and securing it properly is at least a day's work if I were to do it, or several hours by someone more proficient in such matters (volunteers? Anyone?). Not that much in the grand scheme of things, but definitely time that could have been used for better purposes.

The result would be a system that is more troublesome for donators (instead of choosing a treasurer and sending to a simple public address, they'd need to fill a form on an external website and send to a unique address) and much harder to audit - instead of a single address per treasurer, which can be viewed for total amount collected and activity, funds are scattered among addresses. And the chance of loss or theft of funds would be higher.

KISS.

Honestly, you're right about that.  I forget sometimes that not everyone is a programmer like me.  If I had more time on my hands right now I'd volunteer to make a site like this, because it could be really useful in a lot of ways.  But just like you, I don't have the time, and so it's really not my place to criticize you in this regard.  So, I apologize for being a bit of a jerk about it.

I still think that holding a donation "ransom" is a bad idea, but I respect that you're trying to organize an effort to get Wikipedia to change their ways instead of just emailing them and giving up like everyone else.  I definitely hope that you achieve your goal! 

???

The private key is not going to be given to Wikimedia. (I mean, when this ends they can have it if they want, but why would they want it?)

I will simply send the funds collected in the address to Wikipedia. Ideally they'll list a static public donation address and the blockchain will record that funds were sent to that address. Otherwise I'll request some confirmation from them that I sent the funds.

Of course once this happens any future funds should be donated to Wikimedia directly rather than through any of our treasurers.

They said many things. We want to convince them to change their mind...

Did you read the OP?

LOL

This definitely should be via an address controlled by JohnK, not by Meni. No offence Meni, but JohnK is very well known on here, and very trustworthy, and I sure as heck wouldn't trust someone who was planning to hold my coins in a wallet address he / she controlled for an indeterminate amount of time.

Put yourself in someone else's shoes - how could you ever be shown to be a scammer if there is no committed time for you to donate (given that wikimedia has no current plans to accept bitcoin)?

I'm very well known on here, and very trustworthy.

All due respect to John K but

1. Why do you think it is a good policy to trust a single person with everything? There are many people here with solid reputations, if you always go to the same person and he's sitting on 1000's of BTC, how sure are you his reputation is worth more than that?

2. Why would he even agree? In his usual escrow deals, he holds funds for a limited amount of time and takes a fee for it. Here he would hold funds for an indefinite period of time and get nothing for it - and it would be another liability in addition to all his others. I'm enthusiastic about starting the dialogue with Wikimedia and believe in the role of a pledge in this, so I'm willing to do it, despite all the risks and stress. Would he?

Anyway, after discussion with some people here I understand that the importance of the pledge is not as big as I originally thought, which is why I didn't push this further. But seeing that people are still hung up on this, I've contacted John to see if he's interested.

Why not? That's the most effective approach, so that's my plan.

If either
1. Wikipedia doesn't accept donations and I move the coins (to anything other than an agreed-upon new collection address)
2. Wikipedia accepts donations and I don't donate them.
For #1, it wouldn't be a very good scam if I'm holding coins and can never do anything with them. And I'm hoping it won't take long until they accept it.

Not by any means an outright endorsement, but I just wanted to counteract some of the skeptical tone of my previous post - I hadn't spent the time to read up, just saw a thread saying "give me your money" (with no proof of credibility) and a bunch of punters saying "ok". To save other doubters from doing their own basic research:
He has done some good stuff https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121314.20
It looks like he has done this before and succeeded https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4711.20
But keep in mind he has his doubters (like just about everyone else) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113369.0

So I think he has good intentions, but I also think it's a terrible idea to send money somewhere without a clear explanation of what will happen in various contingency situations (wikimedia outright refuses to accept, wikimedia takes forever to accept, wikimedia offers to accept "privately" without publishing a bitcoin address on their site.... and other situations you might think of). Just my 2 cents.

That's good advice, which is why I spend time writing lengthy OPs and engaging in discussion with commenters. As has been explained already,

We wait until they no longer refuse.

We continue waiting. Of course, this makes this unattractive to someone who believes it's likely it will take many years.

There needs to be an official, public indication that they're accepting Bitcoin donations (or a private statement that they'd like to use funds to research this possibility). This needn't necessarily be in the form of publishing a Bitcoin address, e.g. if they want to use a payment processor.

Think of situations and I'll clarify what will be done.

Why not sending the bitcoins directly on twitter via Pikapay (https://www.pikapay.com/)?

https://twitter.com/Wikimedia

Or even better, directly to Jimmy Wales!

https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales

http://s17.postimg.org/mm156twhb/z_Shut_Up_and_Take_my_Bitcoin_600px.jpg

 :D

I'm not sure they're allowed to accept donations this way. And AFAIK this (unlike Bitpay's proxy) doesn't automate conversion to USD, which they need.

Also, we want them to officially accept Bitcoin donations.

Agree.
I think I'm gonna send a few bitcoins to Jimmy Wales that way though. Just to make him try and hopefully make him change his mind about bitcoin  :P

Why is Wikipedia accepting bitcoin so important? This detail needs to be quantified and qualified. Is there not any other lower hanging fruit than Wikipedia?

It seems out of your list that item 3 is the real reason for their concern: "Accepting bitcoins can be perceived as making a value judgement about Bitcoin, which they are hesitant to do."

Item 1: Apparently, we need to quantify how much "trouble" it is to accept money. I am serious. This not just an issue at Wikipedia but will be an issue for any charity/organization. Quantifying the "worth", well, what is the worth of Wikipedia? That is a "value judgement" about Wikipedia and is best left to each individual, but I can say, Wikipedia's worth is probably much greater than the amount of donations they receive. Don't get me wrong, I think a community pledge has its merits.

Item 2: "Choice paralysis"... a study should be conducted to quantify this claim; possibly a similar study has already been conducted and has been published somewhere. But on the surface, it seems that Wikipedia does not worry too much about this as they already except payments through moneybookers.com (Skrill). In other words, this argument is a smoke screen. As a community, we should incur the cost of this study (i.e., testing), not Wikipedia. And this study should be unbiased and published appropriately.

Item 3: Being switzerland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_(international_relations)) is just good policy... You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink it. And you may never really know the real reason why. It may be that buying Linden dollars on Second Life with real money makes some people's stomachs churn.

It may be more valuable to target lower hanging fruit and use the resources on conducting studies to prove our point.

As for Wikipedia, I proposed a different approach here... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=307694.msg3311080#msg3311080) which is basically to use the fundamentals of Wikipedia (i.e., to document history) against itself approach. We can not put Wikipedia in the history of bitcoin right now, but we can put them in as the quintessential charity that does not accept bitcoin.

Thoughts?

So they have concerns about BTC, but none about paid admins?
Yeah, sounds just like the usual Wikiganda.

To me it just seems right that Wikipedia should accept Bitcoin. We love Wikipedia and we love Bitcoin and they will work well together. "I'm tired of wanting Wikipedia to accept Bitcoin, I want Wikipedia to accept Bitcoin."

Everyone knows Wikipedia and new people hearing about Bitcoin will have a much more accurate perception about it if they know that it accepts Bitcoin donations.

It's a high-hanging fruit, sure, but it's well worth the effort.

I don't know how to quantify any of this, though.

The trouble is very organization-dependent. Sending an email to Bitpay asking to be hooked up with a direct deposit donation address is easy. But the various legal, accounting and ethical qualms depend very much on the scale and structure of the organization.

We can use the number of people familiar with an organization as a metric for judging the worth of getting it on board; I think the worth will be superlinear in that metric.

By Jimmy's word, which I believe, they have made such studies, and they do A/B testing for each new method they add. I don't know if they're willing to share the results of these studies. I agree this seems odd given that they accept some esoteric donation methods, but they say these has been tested to increase total proceeds.

I agree completely that we should offer to sponsor research on including Bitcoin donations, but the current pledged amount isn't sufficient for that.

Importantly, having a separate, orphan Bitcoin donation page will cause them less trouble in this aspect, and is satisfactory.

An ambitious goal will be to explain Bitcoin to them to the point that they're willing to make such a value judgement. A more conservative goal is to convince them that accepting Bitcoin donations would not be such a statement.

For reasons stated above I believe Wikipedia is a good target. Other goals can also be pursued of course, but I don't think the lessons learned from this are very transferable.

I don't see how going meta can help, and it can also be perceived as WP:POINT. Our method should not be to antagonize the decision makers at Wikimedia.

As for picking fruit... Wikipedia is no Rosa Parks; it lacks both the Power of Strong Ties & the Power of Weak Ties in my opinion.

To learn more about this concept of Strong Ties & Weak Ties, which was outlined in The Power of Habit by I found this video: http://youtu.be/u8B6_e8SnRs

just found this post. last week after wikipedia asking me for a donation via pop up, i sent them an email similar to what meni is proposing, so far no response:(

Hi Meni! What´s gonna happen with the money donated? If it is not going to reach Wikipedia it should reach our pockets back..

Did you read the OP?

It's going to be donated to Wikipedia. Eventually. Until then the rules clearly state the funds will not be returned to donators.

FYI, Mastercoin (http://mastercoin.org/)'s Bounties feature will include a decenrtalized version of this thread.
Thanks Meni for the inspiration!

https://trello.com/c/KcZ6FfSu/26-spec-for-bounties

Everyone, if you want to learn more, please start with the FAQ (http://wiki.mastercoin.org/index.php/FAQ).

Bumping because I want to donate to Wikipedia.

FWIW, I haven't forgotten about this. My plan is still to contact them when I'm available. If others wish to contact them as well there's no problem; I do however feel that we're at a point where directly approaching them is less needed.

Donated. Maybe we just need to wait for Bitcoin to be worth over $10,000.

You just don't reject a $100,000 donation from a fan community, do you? :-)

I currently have a monthly subscription with Wikipedia and I'd much rather donate once a year in Bitcoin.

Why Your Alt-Coin Is No Good Here ....
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/why-your-alt-coin-is-no-good-here/

Jimmy Wales on Twitter
https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/statuses/441632741352681472

TipperCoin
http://www.tippercoin.com/#/profile/jimmy_wales?direct=true&r=17L

Interesting...

Maybe 8btc waiting at 19HHHDya8PNqdVpiCdZYuwKyuWFoU1TC9A soften them a bit : )

Joke aside: it is about freaking time for anyone to start "Playing with BTC"!

Wales considering Bitcoin for WikiMedia
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/201fa6/hello_from_jimmy_wales_of_wikipedia/

That's very cool. The thread's subject pledge is too small to bother them with its existence, but I hope we'll be very soon able to donate it to them.

(I never did get around to starting the dialogue with them as originally planned... And of course, by now Bitcoin is popular enough that I'm not really needed for this).

Why not send to JW right now? He said he is forwarding to WM. 

I think this is the way to go. --- no?

I too agree that this is a good opportunity. As he is trying bitcoin out, this could show him just how much support is out there.

Tempting, but Wikimedia needs to officially accept Bitcoin donations. Despite Jimmy's position in Wikimedia, in this offer he is acting as a private individual agreeing to donate sent funds to Wikimedia, not much unlike Bitpay's old drive.

Wikipedia has now announced that they are accepting Bitcoin. Stay tuned.

(PS these are amazing news).

woot  woot  8)

So I've tested out the system. They're using Coinbase for processing which has these implications:

1. There is no public Bitcoin address associated with Wikipedia.
2. The amount donated is denominated in USD (thus I cannot specify the exact amount of the pledge).
3. There isn't that much by way of confirmation of the donation - all I get is a Coinbase receipt like https://coinbase.com/orders/c2e107a91057283dcebf7708255650c3/receipt.

Per the rules of the titular pledge, I am now to forward the 8.0728757 pledged bitcoins to Wikipedia. But given the above it's not clear to me how to do that in a way that proves that I have.

I welcome suggestions for the best way to do it.

(PS I believe there was little to no effect of this pledge on their decision, but the money is going to a good cause anyway).

Linking to the receipt provided by Coinbase and the transaction on Blockchain.info would be adequate in my opinion. This would verify that the bitcoins were sent when they were worth the amount in USD as stated on the Coinbase receipt. While this may not specifically prove that the bitcoins came from you, it would be unlikely that you waited to send the 8.0728757 BTC until someone else happened to send that exact amount and were able to access their online receipt.

Disclosure: I don't recall sending a donation to this so I have no stake in the outcome.

Apparently there's an additional email they're sending when the "donation is fully processed", I guess we'll be wiser tomorrow.

Sounds good but the challenge remains that it's difficult to define a donation amount in USD that will lead to the desired BTC amount. However, getting someone else's receipt does sound difficult, so I guess even with a small mismatch it's still a strong indication.

I see there are no objections so I'll go ahead now.

Receipt: https://coinbase.com/orders/57da4b59c0b6250f4496a88d8f4b5024/receipt
Transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/d0aac50742521ecf418038d2d09323ebeb955384f3397011429f1d1af10e12b9

Thank you to everyone who has donated!

Well done Meni.

Yes, good job... I can't believe it took them this long to start taking it. I guess since they are using coinbase, they will be able to identify the donator, probably for legal reasons..unless there is a way to open up a coinbase account anonymously.

Very nice! Stand up act!

Good on ya Meni.  Wish it was a little more on the forefront, but they do take it nonetheless.  Good times!

Congrat on this one!

There is no need to open a Coinbase account. They do ask however for personal details when donating, which in theory I guess could be spoofed.

Awesome, well done :)

Good news. Here's a recent email communication:

I welcome suggestions for a name to credit other than "The Bitcoin Community".

Also, apparently some of the entries in the Benefactors page have links, which link would be appropriate?

a link to https://bitcoin.org would seem appropriate, and useful to anyone who follows it up.

This is getting so interesting now!

So, I donated the extra $270 (https://coinbase.com/orders/02d27aabe3d35df16d08456c7cc02040/receipt) (0.46359 BTC), and now the Bitcoin community is proudly listed (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors) as a leading donor.

I will say it again, good man and stand up action!

Cool, "The Bitcoin Community" is listed as leading donor. Thanks for the find, Meni

https://i.imgur.com/9odHAd3.png (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors)

Good thing but i d rather donate to wikileaks

In case you haven't followed up on the latest developments in this thread, I'll recap the story - after the $4730 donation they offered to list me as a sustaining donor, and I asked to rename as The Bitcoin Community, and donated an extra $270 to go up to the leading donor tier.

well, thank you!

Yeah Meni, props out to you.

This idea will be helpful for many people planning to accept Bitcoin donations

Thanks