dear thomas,

thank you for responding. however, have you read the jakob nielson article that you site? i assume you have.

am i mistaken in understanding that it clearly states that the 90-9-1 ratio of participation inequality is "inevitable" but the downsides are "significant" for several reasons.

one downside particularly stands out - the 90% who lurk and contribute only occasionally are more indicative of the general population. AND there is a reason we don’t participate.

the article also gives some great suggestions on improving participation. i am disappointed to hear that you are satisfied with such low participation ratios.

that being said omidyar.net is a great and giving site. it is my opinion that it has fulfilled its promise of transparency. i attempted to direct members to the link which lists what omidyar has founded and funded as you describe “through staff decisions and the use of workspaces”.

and thank you for providing the second link, it is great and it clearly defines omidyars investments in the community and the world.

may i suggest that you type the word “transparency” in the “start new search” section at the top of this page? i believe you might be alarmed at the number of confused and disgruntled members sighting “transparency” or a lack of involvement by omidyar as their reason for discontent.

perhaps the dev team could make an incremental but significant change by having the links you posted here clearly and easily accessible under the pseudonym of a tab at the top of each page like “portfolio”. It would go a long way to appease the uninformed.

on a personal note, i am posting and sending via (PM) an open question to the entire omidyar.net team. my apologies for repeating myself, but i have not yet gotten a response.

why is omidyar.net’s focus so clearly on “developing countries” and not also the huge and tragic issues plaguing the u.s? i believe in self-empowerment, but i also firmly believe in charity. good old fashioned “do for others what they cannot do for themselves” charity. after all, it is hard to teach a starving man how to fish. if you can, feed him until he learns to fish, however long the learning curve.

my previous suggestion – to break off a chunk of ebay and use the exact same distribution methods to connect americans with resources to americans in need is a sound suggestion. to quote jakob nielson “let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch.”

yours truly,

dafna