Last modified: 2011-12-15 19:45:21 UTC
I try to answer questions at [[meta:Foundation wiki feedback]]. A frequent question is how to donate if credit card or PayPal is not an option. So I tried to replicate the end user's experience with that use case in mind. On the "Donate" page, after some careful reading I found a very small link that says "For more information or other ways to give, click here." Upon clicking that page, I land on a page where the biggest text is "Select your continent." If I were to pause and explore this page carefully, I would find options like direct bank transfer and check mailing address; however, even with my familiarity with the Wikimedia fundraiser and with wiki pages, it took me several visits to realize that. The natural thing to do is to select a continent, and then a country; but this leads you back to the original page you came from. I don't know exactly the best answer, but I think something needs to be fixed here.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Template:2011FR/Donate-waystogive has a pretty awful layout. It should be rewritten with a clearer intro and easier to spot table of contents. The continent selector also looks like shit. You should talk to someone about cleaning it up (or do it yourself and let the fundraising team know). This doesn't seem like a bug, though.
adding Charles who would probably be the one from the PC team to work on helping to fix this if he can (he should also feel free to send it someone else's way)
The current solution is not ideal but it is better then what we had before. Some people are getting Geo-located by their IPs to the wrong country. So the "other ways to give" gives them a way to get to the right country. I'll mention the confusion today and get back to this thread.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention! We've let the folks who maintain those pages (like Cbarr above) about the issue identified here. As I understand it, in the short term they're planning pulling up the table of contents to make the page easier for searching and they will be reviewing the design/layout. But since this is not really a bug, I'm closing this as 'invalid'. The most appropriate place to carry on this conversation or bring up other similar issues would be to discuss it on the 2011 Fundraising talk page on meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2011
