Talk:Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

There is a poll running regarding the protection of this page.

Real content

I'm sorry, but where has the rest of the content gone that was on this page, and why has the "protect this page" discussion just vanished? Unless I have missed something, and to avoid any conflict of interests on my part, could the discussion be put back here? Tompagenet 19:11, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you check the History logs it is evident that User:Baoutrust has been wiping out Talk pages left and right. This is borderline vandalism, but I'm not thoroughly convinced that it was mal-intended. In related news I have added the QuakeAID article to Votes for Deletion due to legitimacy concerns and other concerns. —RaD Man (talk) 19:15, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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Why can't you say what really happened RaD Man? You know perfectly well, that I tried to transfer the content of the original page, from where it was to Talk:QuakeAID Rant on your suggestion which you published to Talk:QuakeAID. You also know that I tried in vain to correct it, and then posted a message to an administrator asking for help. You're not convinced?

--BAOU 06:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I dug up the old discussions. Looks quite ugly, maybe some parts could be archived. --kooo 19:30, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

You may want to visit Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/QuakeAID. —RaD Man (talk) 19:37, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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Protect this article

Considering that much of this information is collected now, and can now be gone through, should this article be protected to ensure no-one comes along, adds a scam URL and then someone unwittingly "donates" to a scam. I believe that the special nature of this page means it should be protected. Once the article was protected all addresses could still be checked and if any of them needed to be removed people could post on this page. Let's not let anyone take advantage of this human tragedy. Tompagenet 15:37, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree; the last known good version of this article should be protected immediately and the notice should be removed. If additional organizations are identified, they can be added by an admin. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 15:53, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

IMHO protecting the page is unnecessary and premature. much of this information is collected now - this is not true: As of the time i'm writing this (Boud 18:14, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)) there are no links to charity organisations in, e.g., South Africa, Madagscar or Tanzania - and this is not a complete list. Boud 18:14, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Protecting the page needn't interfere with further expansion. The page would gain a degree of legitimacy if only admins could edit it. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 02:35, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Isn't it already something of a scam that most of the aid is channelled through agencies in rich countries, reinforcing the notion that we are so kind and generous to help them, but that they are too helpless to organise themselves locally? The fact is that in the regions affected, there are intelligent, well-intentioned local people, who are organised, who have telephones and some access to the internet, they have some ability to communicate in English. (Personally, i have a fair degree of trust in the Association for India's Development in India and KSKBA in Aceh - the centre of the earthquake, though of course this is only relevant for people who hold some trust factor in my personal judgments, so my judgment on their reliability here is essentially irrelevant for the wikipedia article; however, my judgment on their geographical location seems fairly NPOV IMHO.). For people who have never been to any of the affected countries, it's hard to assign a high trust factor to organisations you've never heard of. Boud 18:14, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't call this a scam — a scam deliberately takes advantage of people through deceit and lack of accountability. The local governments are of course vital to the relief effort, but they simply don't have the vast resources of the rest of the world. At the moment, they need all the help they can get. They will be totally occupied with logistics for weeks — there are five million people they have to rescue somehow. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 02:35, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

However, anyone who wants to help concretely could do a bit of googling, reading mailing list archives (many people in poor countries use mailing lists and don't - yet - know how to prepare good web sites), maybe send some personal emails to get some personal feedback on (at least) the ability of the organisation to communicate and test whether it seems credible, or ask wikipedists on the (language).wikipedia.org - and you can find organisations locally in those affected countries. i've made some contributions (based on more knowledge than just internet), but i certainly can't do it alone. Sure, it's nice of us to help them, but why not listen to how they are already organising and how they want to be helped?

Back to the question of protecting the article, IMHO, nobody with money to donate is going to casually read off a bank account number of an organisation s/he hadn't heard of before, just because it's on the wikipedia page, without thinking a little - and there is a big fat warning in red at the top. Rather than protecting the page, it would be best to use the normal wiki culture: comments on this talk page, filling out of the article devoted to the suspect organisation. Supporters and opponents of the organisation will necessarily cooperate to develop an NPOV article on that organisation, and on the Talk page there'll be more detailed discussion of how to NPOV stuff. And there are plenty of alert people to update the main article itself based on the discussions in the talk page and the article pages on those organisations. Boud 18:14, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would hope so, but how long will it take to verify the information? Will the Wikipedia community be too late? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 02:35, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Each country's national media seems to be developing their own list of vetted charities, so I've added more links of those at the end of the article and changed the title to be more descriptive. I share the same concerns (see above) with scam artists modifying URLs and listing dubious groups. 1 Jan 2005

I have to say we should either protect this article fast, and then make sure we are damned sure about what's on the page, or remove the article. The wiki concept is an amazing one, but there are some things where it is not perfect - a list of charities to donate money to for one of the worst natural disasters that people will see is probably an example of this. Please people - think very carefully about this. Tompagenet 13:37, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION

This page looks like a feeding trough for scam artists.

I caution anyone who wishes to donate help for the victims. Verify the integrity of any of the links found here; otherwise you may very well be contributing to the mob.

The Oxfam links in particular looked suspicious but I vetted each of them (as of an hour ago; someone may have changed them since then) by visiting the regional Oxfam site (oxfam.ca, oxfam.org.au, etc.) and clicking the donation links to verify the donation URL's. I haven't vetted any others. I put a warning in the Sri Lanka section, from Mary Ann Mohanraj's online journal about South Asian religious charities who may be funding violent activities. Maybe that should be moved near the front of the page. In fact there's enough listings now that it may be appropriate to protect the page at this point and start vetting the existing entries systematically. If someone wants to add a new entry, they can put it on the talk page and a sysop can add it after others here have vetted it. Phr 10:12, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Make sure that you know where the organization is located; the actual street address. Then use a telephone directory — google has one — to verify that there is an appropriately listed phone at that address.

Use the tools at SamSpade.org, or other tools, to investigate the ownership and address of the owner of the domain to which these links point and the server that hosts that domain.

If you find that the addresses of the organization, the owner of the domain name, and the hosting server mention more than one country, be warned; this is a likely scam.

Do not assume that passing the tests mentioned above is a guarantee of honesty; try other tests of your own invention, or stick to well-known aid organizations. Even then, watch out for sites and organizations with names mimicking those of well-known organizations.

Too Old 20:52, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

• • • Additional Note from Recently Returned Aid Worker -- I am a doctor recently returned from one month in tsunami-affected Aceh Province of Indonesia. My recommendation is to hold off on ANY financial or other donations at the moment: every aid agency I know has already received more money than they know what to do with. I know of no instance where any reputable aid agency is currently hampered by lack of cash. A great deal of money is going to be wasted, put into private pockets, or eventually re-routed to other purposes. It will be months to years before the aid agencies have spent the money they have already received -- and that is if they spend it wisely, which is by no means certain. My advice would be to hold off on any contribution, continue to follow news coverage of the situation and after six months or a year attempt to get information on where the money is being best spent. You MIGHT then decide to send more. --JS in DC

Donations

From what I can make out, not many of the other language Wikipedias have links for donations, so I've just propagated this message across the other articles' Talk pages.

The following text box, duly translated, might be appropriate for inclusion in this article:

For a partial list of worldwide charitable organisations accepting donations to assist the victims, see en:Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

Fingers crossed that I identified the various Talk pages correctly... And apologies in advance to any non-English editors who come here looking for the idiot who defaced their Wikipedia by putting a foreign-language text box in the wrong place. Sluj 21:32, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Clarity is all we need here, professionalism is secondary.

1. This is a special temporary page, not a permanent encyclopedia page; professionalism comes later.
2. This is dealing with money, we want the warning message to be as explicit and visible as possible, to avoid monetary tragedy.

Therefore, the new page layout is not as suitable as the old one; but thank Andrevan for the idea. --Godric 21:25, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Namespace

Perhaps this should be moved to the Wikipedia namespace..? Or even Meta... ✏ OvenFresh☺ 21:30, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Definitely not Meta:, Meta is for Cross-Project issue.

Definitely not Wikipedia: too. It's like the System namespace. Similar to the privilege on the Operating System (OS) level.

This page, is only on the "Document Level", not even on the "Application Level" (Special: namespace)

Therefore, this page is in the right place all fine.

Its being special & temporary is only due to the Human Conscience reacting to the Tsunami Disaster, which has nothing to do with Wikipedia's namespace. --Godric 22:04, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Contradictory, the Sri Lanka warning msg.

I put a disclaimer there saying that "Wikipedia and its contributors do not endorse" what Phr posted there. But then it's contradictory that the statement by Phr is still there. One cannot reject a statement while allowing it being posted, right? It must be either removed or allowed, rejected or endorsed.

Personally I would have removed it once more, due to the non-NPOV-ness I so far concluded. But it's up to everyone I guess. Any comment?

I'd consult with Countering Systemic Bias and Wikipedia:NPOV people too, I guess. --Godric 23:37, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

We might need a Toolbox for donation site background check.

Even though Wikipedia and its contributors do not endorse or vouch any of the site listed below, we can still provide the links to the tools for doing background checking, right? From what I've heard on this talk page, User:Too Old and another user did some background checks. Would you guys please kindly post us some links of those web services? Thanks in advance! --Godric 00:00, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

The huge red warning...

...is amateurish and reeks of personal websites done in FrontPage or somesuch. If people don't read the warning if it's bold and in a box, they deserve to have their money donated to scammers. Andre (talk) 03:50, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to introduce a solution. The community can vote on that. If it's substantially better for reasonable cause, it'll certainly be adopted. --Godric 08:24, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

I totally disagree, Andre. This is my personal opinion as a newbie, but Wikipedia is developing the credibility that major encyclopedias like World Book and Britannica have. Children come to this site to do research for their school projects. In this light, we should take the responsible step and tell those that merely browse this site (who may not know at first glance that this site is freely editable) that all of these agencies have not been verified. Brownman40 23:14, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I see now your complaint seems to be more about the font color. I think it should be bold-faced and/or of a different color because some people may just browse through this site. No one deserves to be scammed. Brownman40 23:18, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well I had taken off the red and added bold, but it was promptly reverted. Thus my comment here. Andre (talk) 01:43, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

IMO, amateurishness is completely outweiged by the need to give warning. (And red is pretty common for warnings in WP anyway; we really should have a markup for it!) However, maybe you think that bold warns better than red? Fine -- let's use both! I just did. -- Toby Bartels 03:08, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

(Hey, we do have a markup for it!, albeit only for whole paragraphs. I've used it in Brian's suggestion below, and I'll add it to the page itself too.) -- Toby Bartels 18:37, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

What's wrong with that warning? It's short. It explains why caution is so necessary - anyone can edit this. It introduces the possibility of errors as well as scams. Brianjd 07:04, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

(I have no particular opinion on how long the warning should be.) -- Toby Bartels 18:37, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

Because no objections seems to have been expressed for more than two weeks, I'll change it. Brianjd 09:58, 2005 Jan 27 (UTC)

Which charities should we donate to?

Certain charities in some countries
<!-- anyone care to name one? or should we delete this whole paragraph on the grounds of gross nonspecificity? --> have standing arrangements with corporations or governments whereby those institutions match the public's donations, either wholly or partially. Donating to such charitable organizations leads to an increase in the overall relief funds raised.

That's very interesting. I thought donating to ANY charitable organization that is helping with the earthquake and tsunami relief "leads to an increase in the overall relief funds raised". Brianjd 08:25, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

Choosing to make a donation at all, versus not making a donation, will increase the fund raised, yes. But the point of this sentence is that choosing a matched charity for your particular donation, versus an unmatched charity, will increase the funds raised yet further. -- Toby Bartels 18:37, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

True, but that content states that some origization may match personal contribution so the if i contrubute 5 dollars, the organization will contribute annother 5 dollars. This is the sort of things governments and large corporations tend to due rather than donate their money directly in a lump sum. The phrase used is not quite accurrate, but I assume everybody uinderstands.

There's nothing wrong with stating the agreements some organizations have with corporations or governments, but if the effect is so obvious, we have that silly sentence there? Brianjd 07:20, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

Temporary?

This is a special temporary page established to assist those seeking to contribute to the relief and humanitarian effort in the nations along the Indian Ocean.

Doesn't this send the message that help is only needed at the moment and not in the future?

Brianjd 08:26, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

Once this link is removed from the Main Page, no one is going to come to Wikipedia and search for "Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake." Several months down the road, it will not be visited at all anymore.

--Emplynx 00:13, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the first sentence. However, that's not the only way of reaching this page. Brianjd 03:51, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

I don't think the donation page should be in Wikipedia nor in any other encyclopedia because its opens to door to POVs e.g. one can make a case for Wikipedia having special HIV/AIDS and cancer pages as well. Just my two cents.

--FLafaire 03:30, Jan 3 2005

We pick out major stories and put them on the Template:In the news; we pick out major disasters and have donations pages. How is one acceptable and the other not? Brianjd 03:51, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

I see your point; its a good one. But what I was trying to get at was the risk of inconsistency. For example, a page solely devoted to donations for cystic fibrosis would probably be deleted on the grounds that its unencyclopedic whereas a similar unencyclopedic page for donations regarding the Indian Ocean earthquake would go unchecked.

--FLafaire 19:42, Jan 5 2005

Then we should do something to make sure a page solely devoted to donations for cystic fibrosis doesn't get deleted. Brianjd 06:56, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

I basically agree. This page is temporarily awkward, since we're all in a rush now. But in the long term, there's no reason that this page can't last forever, as a record of what charities were raising funds for that tsunami way back in 2004. The web links and phone numbers probably wouldn't last in such a permanent page (these are temporary, since they'll eventually be out of date), but the lists themselves should be fine. -- Toby Bartels 18:37, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry Its late...havent even skimed content except title (Its so late and I just Tsunami releaf link on C_list and Ive wanted to do some benifet shows)...but my brother has helped set up a direct link releaf effort in Sri Lanka to go directly to help take whats left of famlies shoping for food, medicine, housing, and whats left some saving for the kids who have been hit the hardest. He and his girlfriend are/ were traveling in Sri Laka at the time. The know of some travelers who are going back to were they were to help the families that lived there. If your interested you can check out ssbd.blogspot.com to see more about how you can help this way. This is my brothers blog for his travels around the world this year and is turning into a reunion spot for old friends, familiy, and strangers coming together sence 9.0 as he calls it. You can read his personal acount. He he is now saftly in Sri Pada with his girlfriend and is traveling soon. To those that wanted to help them they said that they are fine and need nothing, if you wanted to help them help the people that helped them. As I said a group of the travelers that they fled with have gone back to help those they can get what they need they most the quickest, i.e. Food, Medicine, Shelter, and any remaining donations would go towards savings for the kids future...many now w/o parents. If you go to ssbd.blogspot.com which stands for same thing but different you can post annonomously with out regerstering. All the best. Sorry if I totally interupted the discusion. Now Im going to bed. senserly, teli Cardaci bck_wild@yahoo.com

See #Move the contact details!. Brianjd 10:12, 2005 Jan 27 (UTC)

QuakeAID

COMMENT: PLEASE MOVE THIS DISCUSSION TO Talk:QuakeAID. THANK YOU.

Discussion moved. BanyanTree 23:59, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

in the news

This page has been mentioned in a Times of India article. Thanks to all the people contributing to and maintaining it. BanyanTree 23:54, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

TRO moved from main page

This was taken from the bottom of the article page. BanyanTree 04:47, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There are three major NGO's operating in the Northeast Sri Lanka. These are Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) formed in 1985, The Economic Consultancy House(TECH) formed in 1993 and the Centre for Women's Development and Rehabilitation(CWDR) formed in 1992. All three are registered as NGO's, both under the Voluntary Social Services Organisation Act provincially and a similar Act nationally. TECH is also registered under the Companies Act.

TRO concentrates its activities on rehabilitation, resettlement and reconstruction, CWDR on welfare of women and children and TECH on development. All are involved in humanitarian activities, village development, people empowerment, welfare of women and children, the underprivileged and disadvantaged, children and adult education, gender equity, pre-schools and health and environment.

TRO has a Socio-Economic Development Bank with six branches for savings and micro-credit for self-employment, small business and agricultural ventures.

TRO is a registered Charitable Organization in the USA. Tax ID: 52-19-43868. It works alongside of UNCEF and is a recognized Charitable Organization in Sri Lanka. www.troonline.org

In Sri Lanka this money will just circulate among the politicians. Most of affected region in that country falls under the control of the Tamil Tigers. The government will give many stories but the truth can only found out by people who go into the Tamil Heartlands

There are three major NGO's operating in the Tamil Heartlands. These are Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) formed in 1985, The Economic Consultancy House(TECH) formed in 1993 and the Centre for Women's Development and Rehabilitation(CWDR) formed in 1992. All three are registered as NGO's, both under the Voluntary Social Services Organisation Act provincially and a similar Act nationally. TECH is also registered under the Companies Act.

 

TRO concentrates its activities on rehabilitation, resettlement and reconstruction, CWDR on welfare of women and children and TECH on development. All are involved in humanitarian activities, village development, people empowerment, welfare of women and children, the underprivileged and disadvantaged, children and adult education, gender equity, pre-schools and health and environment.

 

TRO has a Socio-Economic Development Bank with six branches for savings and micro-credit for self-employment, small business and agricultural ventures.

 

TRO is a registered Charitable Organization in the USA. Tax ID: 52-19-43868. It works alongside of UNCEF and is a recognized Charitable Organization in Sri Lanka. http://www.trousa.org/ http://www.troonline.org/en

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See also - http://www.baou.com/newswire/main.php?action=recent&rid=1979. Pcb21| Pete 10:01, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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Relevant website? http://stopfundinghate.org Andries 10:54, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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I am suspicious of this Ananda Marga relief fund, not so much because i suspect them of fraud but many NRMs/cults have shown in the past that the public distrust against them was justified. Sometimes members find corpses in the coffin. (I have to admit that I am biased because I had a very bad experience in a guru based Hindu cult). Andries 10:54, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Easynews.com

I would like to add information on easynews.com's gig donating program, but I don't want to be accused of spamming, so I'm running it by here first. Easynews is a usenet service provider which offers 20 gigabytes of traffic for $10.00. They have recently switched their billing system to allow "rollover gigs", where unused gigs are carried over to the next month. By doing so, many people who do not reach their limit have accumulated a large amount of gigs.

They are allowing members to exchange 1 gig for a $0.50 donation to the Red Cross [1]. They are reputable and have a long history of philanthropy [2] most notably as a sourceforge mirror and offering credit for running a distributed computing client designed to evaluate potential cancer medications [3].

Any thoughts?

Darrien 14:08, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)

Would have been a good idea, but from [4]

Easynews users have donated 100000.54 gigs for a total of $50000.27 to be donated to the Red Cross.

$50,000 of the total amount raised has been sent to the Red Cross International Response Fund as of Jan 3rd, 6:00pm PST.

We have reached our goal of 100,000 donated gigs! No more donations will be accepted. However, you can still help with the relief efforts here.

-- AlexR 16:50, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia gets money from Amazon?

Or why do you have the Amazon donation pages for foreign countries here? If Germans donate to German Red Cross via Amazon, the money has to be transferred from Germany to USA and back to Germany again. The bank wins almost all! 80.133.77.62 16:27, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Amazon is waiving its processing fees and eating the credit card processing fees on all donations. The only possible loss is indeed in foreign exchange costs. But that's certainly not "almost all" of the donation. --Lukobe 18:17, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Comments by 24.90.239.162 moved from the main article

Sri Lanka has suffered tremendously due to the tsunami. Nevertheless the ongoing political struggle has taken more lives. It is also facing a lot of problems with distribution of foreign aid. I hope somehow we can bring permanent peace in Sri Lanka swiftly. The religious hardliners and communists are the greatest threat to peace. All the aid agencies are rushing to Sri Lanka now. In reality they are going to take time to find comfort zones for them to operate under. Sri Lanka is war ravaged place. They have their own aid agencies who have done immaculate work within the given.

What is this single PayPal link in the India section?

The paypal link is http://srirangan.net/donate.php, and its root page is http://srirangan.net, could someone who have indian local knowledge verify if this paypal link is authentic?

I'm gonna remove it from the listing for safety now, please the original author of this link explains what it is. How come the Indian PM official homepage doesn't have a paypal link, but you do. How do you prove that you are indeed an authentic representative from the PM Office? Regards, --Godric 21:41, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

I generally think that any linked page that asks for direct bank or PayPal transfers should not be on the page. Apparently there's an scam email going around supposedly from a fisherman in Aceh who has lost all his house who is asking for donations to be transfered to a bank account in Cyprus. (Apparently some people don't question why a poor fisherman has a Cypriot account.) :) There's probably some small legit organizations using these methods because they are quick and easy, but I don't know how you could verify it. BanyanTree 21:53, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

At least some local indians could tell us whether or not the PM Office does indeed offer auxiliary paypal channel (while not listing it on the Official PM homepage), but I doubt it very much. We should remove it in case that the people who donated to the poor Aceh fisherman donate again. --Godric 22:13, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Giving responsibly; avoiding hate groups

What I would like is to encourage people give across countries, communities and, most importantly, faiths. My proposal is to find charities that strongly identify with a community you would not normally interact with—or worse. We need to see and show the humanity and the good in each other.

However, I can't say enough that please don't give with your eyes closed. My preference would be for organizations and channels that, even if they have a strong sectarian or ideological character on the back-end, that do not have ideological strings at, as they say here in The States, the business end of things. In fact, organizations that have an ideological, communal, or even governmental background but who give with truly no strings deserve praise and support. I say this from being a volunteer for one of the efforts after the earthquake in Gujarat a few years ago and then later finding out that a lot of that money went only to communal organizations that were picky in who they gave aid to, and otherwise left a bad taste in the mouth. ('Nuff said; this is not a time to go into details on that.) But then, no one said being good was easy. Let's do the hard work it takes to really make a difference.

One place worth looking at in this regard is Stop Funding Hate.

--IFaqeer

Please think and read whole story' It's not wise to put accuser organization that have communist ideology and some of them are indirectly associated with naxals. Since QFaqueer is very keen in putting the link. Its good people should know the response of the accusation as well. Many people belive stopfunding campaign was satrted out of jealousy of some communist oraganzation who couldn't get corporate donations to propogate their communist sperad in India.

So read it yourself Let India Develop ,response of stop funding malacious campaign . --user:69.142.204.70

We absolutely need to have both sides to the argument up there, so people can make their own decisions.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 20:47, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

MF

Some Canadian organizations are marked with "MF". The article explains why they are marked but not why they are marked with "MF". Brianjd 07:07, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

You mean that the article doesn't say why the mark is "MF" instead of (say) "XZ" or "FooBar"? Well, it's because "MF" stands for "matching funds"; nothing very special!. -- Toby Bartels 18:37, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

UNITY FOUNDATION TRUST

Said article was added to the list shortly before it was created as an article. Might be worth looking into. At a very minimum the case needs to be corrected. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 06:58, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

External links

Found this at the bottom of the page (Externals Links), perhaps that should be included in the list of charities. The following has been commented out in the meantime :

--*[http://www.sfponline.org/index.html Click here to donate to ]Tsunami Relief Drive:<P> The Franciscan Brothers orphanage in the Village of Kurukalmadam, Sri Lanka.<P> The orphanage, run by the Franciscan Brothers, was not destroyed. Sixty-three orphans were saved and survived on the roof for 4 days with no provisions or water. The entire village was destroyed. The water has receded and left devastation. Three thousand refugees are living on the friary’s 10 acre compound. The refugees are orphaned children, the elderly, the sick, and pregnant women. Supplies are running out. There is a terrible fear of cholera from contaminated drinking water.<P> Click above to donate

- Mailer Diablo 19:20, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Move the contact details!

I propose that we move the contact details to individual articles on the charities. This has several advantages:

• It will be easier to create other donations pages for other causes, see #Temporary?.
• The contact details can be updated easier this way, reducing the amount of outdated information on Wikipedia.
• The contact details can be more thorough.
• It will be harder to create scams, as people are likely to be very cautious if a "charity" doesn't have a good article. I hope this hasn't actually been happening - as far as I know, no scams have appeared here.
• It will make the page a lot smaller. Brianjd 10:10, 2005 Jan 27 (UTC)

Protecting this page

This is, IMO, a very important issue, and we should set up a poll to establish consensus (if it hasn't already been done). It must be resolved clearly.

Assuming a poll hasn't already been done, it should be set up at Wikipedia:Protecting Indian Ocean earthquake aid or Talk:Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/Protecting this page. →Iñgōlemo← ^talk donate 07:04, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)

This page should be protected

Admins could you please protect this page so that donations to this very needy cause can be made in total security. 83.70.238.103 17:51, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a poll running on this; see the top of this page. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 03:03, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

Celebrity Auction to Benefit Tsunami Relief www.somthingcanbedone.com

This was at the top of this page, so I made it into its own section. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 03:03, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

vfd discussion

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake 07:49, 9 May 2005 (UTC)