6 ms·

Speaking of wikipedia, I'd be perfectly content if the "urgent appeal" banner were replaced with an ad.

by klochner 16y ago

bajsejohannes 16y ago
I find it particularly bad that the banner is there even after you donate.
- sjs 16y ago
  On top of that, a few weeks after donating I got an "urgent" request from Jimmy Wales looking for a recurring monthly donation.
beoba 16y ago
one potential issue there: what happens when the advertiser doesn't like what they see on the article about them? even if such 'influence' is disallowed, just the possibility of it occurring would hurt the site
- moe 16y ago
  I don't think anything would happen. They should just get one big sponsor per year to cover their costs and be done with it. Why not have a McDonalds or Pepsi banner somewhere in the corner? Bargain branding for them, free wikipedia for us. And to limit the influence they could make it a rule to switch sponsor once a year. Why not auction the ad-spot and donate the overflow to charity?
  - dantheman 16y ago
    or just keep the extra as an endowment and eventually just run off that
- mseebach 16y ago
  If an advertiser is dissatisfied, he withdraws his ads and is replaced. If noone wants to advertise on controversial topics, wikipedia has more than enough uncontroversial content to pay the bills. They might even just disable ads on controversial pages, which would go a long way towards avoiding even percieved conflicts of interest.
- tyree732 16y ago
  What happens when Google says they won't donate to Wikipedia unless the Google article represents them more favorably?
rl1987 16y ago
Same here, I could take care of it with AdBlock...
juanefren 16y ago
I had to put the following with chrome scripts. $("#siteNotice").hide();
jdp23 16y ago
The urgent appeal banner is an ad.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  It is, but it's not bad in the way that an outside advertisement is bad: there's no conflict of interest.
ghshephard 16y ago
They got my donation, but for some reason I can't keep the ad from coming back, and, I'm now getting email asking for a monthly donation. I just wish there was some way I could pay money to turn off the Massive Banner Ad off for a year. I'm happy to pay around $100-$150/year for WIkipedia, but the user experience is starting to degrade when a signicant chunk of my screen is a Massive "Urgent Appeal" banner.
- stevvooe 16y ago
  I'll write you some JavaScript to get rid of it for small one time fee of $100.
- Zev 16y ago
  If you have a custom CSS sheet, you can add the following to it to remove the banner: div#siteNotice { display: none !important; }
lambda 16y ago
That would be horrible. Replacing it with an ad would mean that they are now beholden to the advertiser, as opposed to being beholden to their donors. Right now Wikipedia depends on their editors to provide content, and donors to provide money. If instead they relied on advertisers to provide money, they would lose an awful lot of credibility. Also, why would you prefer an ad to the donation banner? Ads tend to promote excessive consumption or try and manipulate your baser desires to get you to part with your money. They tend to be animated, or play sounds, or dance all over your content. They provide vectors for malicious code to be injected into your site. Instead, we have the founder of a highly useful collaborative educational resource (or sometimes some editors of same) asking for donations to support that without being beholden to corporate interests. Where's the problem?
- storborg 16y ago
  Why would they lose credibility? It seems like an ad could be much more profitable than the donation banner, because ads can be targeted, even with zero behavioral history. For example, if I'm visiting a page on the new Tron movie, show me ads for the Daft Punk album! Odds are I might buy it. Also, all of the things you said about ads could be said about in-house donation banners. * Manipulate your baser desires to get you to part with your money * Tend to be animated... etc * Could provide vectors for malicious...
  - lambda 16y ago
    They would lose credibility because there would be a conflict of interest. Advertisers would be able to manipulate Wikipedia by threatening to remove ads unless they received favorable coverage, or negative coverage were removed. Yes, I'm sure that ads could be more profitable than a donation banner. This is why most websites have ads instead of donation banners. However, Wikipedia is not a for-profit enterprise. It is an educational non-profit. If it were a for-profit enterprise, people would trust it much less, not as many people would contribute to it since they'd wonder why they were donating time and effort to a for-profit enterprise, etc. And none of those things you list are true of a donation banner. Donating to an educational non-profit is not a "baser desire." I have never seen an animated banner asking for donations on Wikipedia, nor anywhere else that I can think of off the top of my head. And donation banners are coming straight from Wikipedia, not a third party; if they wanted to send malicious code, they could do so directly. The point is that ad networks are notorious vectors to allow malicious code to be injected by third parties into other people's sites.

Speaking of wikipedia, I'd be perfectly content if the "urgent appeal" banner were replaced with an ad.

bajsejohannes 16y ago

I find it particularly bad that the banner is there even after you donate.

sjs 16y ago
On top of that, a few weeks after donating I got an "urgent" request from Jimmy Wales looking for a recurring monthly donation.

beoba 16y ago

one potential issue there: what happens when the advertiser doesn't like what they see on the article about them? even if such 'influence' is disallowed, just the possibility of it occurring would hurt the site

moe 16y ago
I don't think anything would happen. They should just get one big sponsor per year to cover their costs and be done with it. Why not have a McDonalds or Pepsi banner somewhere in the corner? Bargain branding for them, free wikipedia for us. And to limit the influence they could make it a rule to switch sponsor once a year. Why not auction the ad-spot and donate the overflow to charity?
- dantheman 16y ago
  or just keep the extra as an endowment and eventually just run off that
mseebach 16y ago
If an advertiser is dissatisfied, he withdraws his ads and is replaced. If noone wants to advertise on controversial topics, wikipedia has more than enough uncontroversial content to pay the bills. They might even just disable ads on controversial pages, which would go a long way towards avoiding even percieved conflicts of interest.
tyree732 16y ago
What happens when Google says they won't donate to Wikipedia unless the Google article represents them more favorably?

rl1987 16y ago

Same here, I could take care of it with AdBlock...

juanefren 16y ago

I had to put the following with chrome scripts. $("#siteNotice").hide();

jdp23 16y ago

The urgent appeal banner is an ad.

steveklabnik 16y ago
It is, but it's not bad in the way that an outside advertisement is bad: there's no conflict of interest.

ghshephard 16y ago

They got my donation, but for some reason I can't keep the ad from coming back, and, I'm now getting email asking for a monthly donation. I just wish there was some way I could pay money to turn off the Massive Banner Ad off for a year. I'm happy to pay around $100-$150/year for WIkipedia, but the user experience is starting to degrade when a signicant chunk of my screen is a Massive "Urgent Appeal" banner.

stevvooe 16y ago
I'll write you some JavaScript to get rid of it for small one time fee of $100.
Zev 16y ago
If you have a custom CSS sheet, you can add the following to it to remove the banner: div#siteNotice { display: none !important; }

lambda 16y ago

That would be horrible. Replacing it with an ad would mean that they are now beholden to the advertiser, as opposed to being beholden to their donors. Right now Wikipedia depends on their editors to provide content, and donors to provide money. If instead they relied on advertisers to provide money, they would lose an awful lot of credibility. Also, why would you prefer an ad to the donation banner? Ads tend to promote excessive consumption or try and manipulate your baser desires to get you to part with your money. They tend to be animated, or play sounds, or dance all over your content. They provide vectors for malicious code to be injected into your site. Instead, we have the founder of a highly useful collaborative educational resource (or sometimes some editors of same) asking for donations to support that without being beholden to corporate interests. Where's the problem?

storborg 16y ago
Why would they lose credibility? It seems like an ad could be much more profitable than the donation banner, because ads can be targeted, even with zero behavioral history. For example, if I'm visiting a page on the new Tron movie, show me ads for the Daft Punk album! Odds are I might buy it. Also, all of the things you said about ads could be said about in-house donation banners. * Manipulate your baser desires to get you to part with your money * Tend to be animated... etc * Could provide vectors for malicious...
- lambda 16y ago
  They would lose credibility because there would be a conflict of interest. Advertisers would be able to manipulate Wikipedia by threatening to remove ads unless they received favorable coverage, or negative coverage were removed. Yes, I'm sure that ads could be more profitable than a donation banner. This is why most websites have ads instead of donation banners. However, Wikipedia is not a for-profit enterprise. It is an educational non-profit. If it were a for-profit enterprise, people would trust it much less, not as many people would contribute to it since they'd wonder why they were donating time and effort to a for-profit enterprise, etc. And none of those things you list are true of a donation banner. Donating to an educational non-profit is not a "baser desire." I have never seen an animated banner asking for donations on Wikipedia, nor anywhere else that I can think of off the top of my head. And donation banners are coming straight from Wikipedia, not a third party; if they wanted to send malicious code, they could do so directly. The point is that ad networks are notorious vectors to allow malicious code to be injected by third parties into other people's sites.