On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:18 PM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com> wrote: After the first few minutes it turns into a long drawn out infomercial supporting US "campaign finance reform".

You might want to look at this link from ACSI<http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&a… Customer Satisfaction Index) which introduced indexing of social sites this year: "Satisfaction is measured with four social media websites—Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, and YouTube—plus an aggregate measure of smaller sites... Given the popularity of the four measured social media sites, each boasting hundreds of millions of users worldwide, the first round of ACSI scores offered some surprises. *At the top is Wikipedia*—the massive, multilingual, user-produced encyclopedia run by the Wikimedia Foundation. With an ACSI score of 77, Wikipedia is *more satisfying* than most of the ACSI-measured news and information websites. Like Google, *Wikipedia’s user interface has remained very consistent over the years, and its nonprofit standing means that it has not been impacted by commercialization and marketing unlike many other social media sites*... *[C]ontroversies over privacy issues*, frequent changes to user interfaces, *and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other websites and similar to poor-performing industries* like airlines and subscription TV service..." In other words, it seems a major survey picks out non-commercialization and a strong approach to privacy as a key factor to pleasing users, and increasing commercialization as a reason why other social sites may become less popular. FT2 On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Arlen Beiler &lt;arlenbee(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I don't think I could stand it if we picked up advertising. I hate the way

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Ziko van Dijk &lt;zvandijk(a)googlemail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: They also create confusion. Not long ago I lent my computer to a 15 year-old family friend who did not have Internet access at home and who wanted to search online for a Summer job. Watching him, it was clear that he couldn't tell the difference between the ads and the real job listings. He followed many links to scam websites. Our 400 million users include a lot of people like him who are new to the web. Another note on ads: We do actually run ads once a year -- for ourself. If "leaving money on the table" was something the Wikimedia movement cared about, we could run donation requests all year long. My guess is we'd make at least close to what Google ads would pay. Thankfully, not too many people are worried how much money the table gets to keep. Zack

Whilst I don't support or advocate for Wikimedia projects including advertising, I would like to ask a hypothetical question. Would people's opinions towards ads would be different if google's ads were to be incorporated ONLY on the Search page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search in the whitespace on the right. This is by far the most popular individual page http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/ and ads there would be able to be served in a way that is both relevant to the end-user (based on the term being searched for) and yet without having to "sell out" our article pages. On the other hand it would mean we could no longer say "we have zero ads" and it would create a lot of angry Wikimedians (possibly me included) making the "slippery slope" argument. Like I said, I'm not actually supporting this position, but would like to know if people thought that this would theoretically be a way to gain revenue without losing reputation/independence. -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata

On 6 Nov 2010, at 17:43, Thomas Dalton wrote: Precisely. Having adverts on the search page could have a serious impact on neutral point of view, even if indirectly. Another point of view/consideration: if an article doesn't yet exist on a specific organisation/person, then being able to find its website by the Wikipedia search engine might encourage the creation of an article on that organisation - so people could effectively pay for creating new Wikipedia articles on their organisations. Ideally, WP:NOTE wouldn't let that happen though, so that might even be a good thing. ;-) Mike

Liam Wyatt wrote: Careful there. A lot of people (and scripts) go through "Special:Search" because it follows links much better. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=mw:MediaWiki works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mw:MediaWiki doesn't work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=wikia:un:UN:N works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikia:un:UN:N doesn't work As far as I'm aware, this is the only reliable way currently (and for the past few years) to resolve interwiki prefixes in an automated and accurate way. I can't say for sure, but I have a strong feeling that this is the reason that "Special:Search" gets so many hits. "Special:Search" also likely gets a hit when the "go" button (or just the return key now) is used. All of these people wouldn't be seeing the page either. So your primary audience would be people searching on Wikipedia for a topic that doesn't currently have an article or a redirect. Given that a another sizable percentage of views comes from search engine results, the pool of actual views you're talking about becomes even smaller. The evidence is bolstered by another redirect page ("Special:Random") having so many hits according to the data you linked to. It's not even possible to view that page in any meaningful sense. Put some ads there and I doubt you'd hear many complaints, but you'd be getting millions of "views" each month. ;-) Calling "Special:Search" the most popular page (or basing fundraising theories on it) is dangerous and often misleading work. MZMcBride

On 6 Nov 2010, at 20:54, MZMcBride wrote: Erm... how many people actually know what an interwiki is? I doubt it's a significant number. Combine that with how many people would think about of that particular usage of Special:Search, and I suspect that you're talking very small numbers. Certainly, I've never thought of that in ~ 5 years of using Wikipedia. This strikes me as much more relevant and more likely to generate a significant number of hits. I don't understand why this is a problem - if Wikipedia doesn't have a page on what they're searching for, then wouldn't they be more likely to click a sponsored link to somewhere else that does? Special:Random is just plain fun, though, especially when you're getting started with reading Wikipedia. It has a huge amount of popular appeal. As a result, I'm not sure that it's quite comparable to the search function, which is obviously much more orientated at finding a specific page/description... I'm not convinced of this assertion yet. Mike

Michael Peel wrote: John already covered this, but quite a few tools have a need to parse links reliably in an article. One of the most reliable methods (though incredibly hackish) for handling links like this is to pass them through "Special:Search". For example (using curl): $ curl -Is "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=wikia:un:UN:N" | grep Location Location: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/c:un:UN:N $ curl -Is "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=mw:MediaWiki" | grep Location Location: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki While I can agree that a lot of _people_ likely aren't typing these links like "wikia:un:UN:N" in to the search form, I can see a lot of scripts using this method to parse a page full of links, hackish as it is. Developers have a tendency to use what works, regardless of whether it's hackish. And there's a tendency to let old code rot, so even if an alternative to this system becomes available in the API, many tools will likely continue to use the "Special:Search" hack. I'm saying that this is a problem in the sense that the numbers that are being used to make projections are faulty. Advertisers care about people viewing their ads, so people try to take measurements of views (particularly views by humans). In this case, however, it's incredibly likely that the measurements being put forth are horribly skewed. This affects both the projections you can make and the overall conversation about ads and ad revenue that can take place. Err, I think you might have missed the point here. The comparison is a page in the Special namespace that isn't viewed much, even though the stats say it's viewed millions of times a day. Take a look at the link Liam provided (<http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/>). It says that in 2009, "Special:Random" received (on average?) 2,385,287 hits per day. The point I was making is that this is completely misleading, as every hit to "Special:Random" redirects to an article. _Anything_ you place on "Special:Random" would never be seen (it's just outputting a 302), even if it's allegedly getting over 2.3 million views per day. (As an aside, the curl trick referenced above also works with "Special:Random".) A unknown (but likely very sizable) number of hits to "Special:Search" are in the same category: they're not actually viewing "Special:Search", they're just using it to resolve a link or resolve their search box input. That's where the "be careful" warning came from. Well, you should be. MZMcBride

I would never suggest we turn selection of advertising over to Google or anyone else. If we do we'll get the same irrelevant crap that is so annoying on Wikia. And very little revenue. I'm suggesting us selling ads, monitoring their content and placement, and laughing all the way to the bank. Not sniveling around begging Google for crumbs and letting some bureaucrat ruin our site and its attraction. For example, we could place our ads on a separate page, reachable only by clicking on a tab at the top "advertisements". Fred

Well, assuming people are going to engage in tit torture, surely they would need reliable equipment: screws, nails, sanitizers (for the screws, pins, needles), electrical shockers, etc. Lot of money to be made right there... Maybe we could get an ad from Flip for video cameras... Then there is videos, and ads for online performances, amateur and professional. I'll bet we could sell about 5k in ads every year on tit torture alone. Although, deleting it would probably make more sense. Fred

No, no, no. We sell ads on a page marked "advertisements" at the top of each article. The ads are tailored to the article and the advertiser bids for the space and pays weekly, monthly, or annually and pays up front. No clicking through to it. Fred

On 7 November 2010 15:50, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; wrote: The click-through rate would be tiny and therefore so would the revenue.

On 7 November 2010 16:05, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: They won't be people that want ads, though. They'll be people that want ad revenue for us. If they click, they'll be clicking to get us revenue and not actually buying, which advertisers stopped falling for years ago.

On 7 November 2010 16:21, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: This has nothing to do with good or bad faith. If people are only opting in because they want ads, then there are going to be a very small number of people opting in. Why have ads on Wikipedia pages when you can just google for things you want to buy? If payment *were* by click, then people would abuse it, which is why payment wouldn't be by click and we wouldn't get much money. That was the point I was trying to make. Can you give an example of a site with opt-in advertising that actually gets significant revenue from it (for the number of page views they get)?

One reason more why not to depend on ad providers, like Google is: "The popular wiki TV Tropes, a site dedicated to the discussion of various tropes, clichés and other common devices in fiction has suddenly decided to put various of its pages behind a 'possibly family-unsafe' content warning, apparently due to pressure by Google withdrawing its ads. What puzzles me most is the content that is put behind this warning. TV Tropes features no explicit sexual content, and no explicit violence. It does of course discuss these things, as is its remit, but without actual explicit depictions. In fact, something as relatively innocuous as children being raised by two females, whatever the reason are put behind the content warning, even if the page itself doesn't take a stand on the issue, merely satisfying itself by describing the occurence of this in fiction." [1] So, if WMF ever go with ads, it should be its own provider. [1] http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/11/07/2348259/TV-Tropes-Self-Censoring-Und…

On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 22:17, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Ah, I see that now :)

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Let me amend that. I don't think that the percentage of people who want ads would be lower in an opt-in scenario. Obviously *some* people who don't want ads would sign up for ads. But presumably *most* people who do want ads would also sign up for ads. So the proportion of people who want ads would go up, in my estimation quite dramatically. Of course, this is somewhat dependent on how good the ads are, including both how relevant they are and how well the scammers are screened out. On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Claiming that people are going to scam the system by signing up for (and clicking on) ads for the sole purpose of transferring money from the advertisers to Wikipedia is a huge assumption of bad faith. I don't know about that. It depends in large part on how good the ads are (see above). It can save a step. Also, maybe Wikipedia's ads could be better screened than Google's ads. Right, but your "we wouldn't get much money" "point" was just speculation, and I was speculating differently. I can't think of any site that has opt-in advertising, so no. In any case, as I clarified a few emails above, I never meant to suggest that Wikipedia should have opt-in advertising (*). Clearly more money would be made if the advertising were not opt-in. And clearly any advertising would cause a huge rift in the community. (*) I was simply trying to say that I doubt Google would allow Google ads on unscreened Wikipedia articles unless the advertiser specifically asked for it

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Thomas Dalton &lt;thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: In some cases. Not all though. Another huge advantage would be that the ads would sometimes be much better targeted, as there would be clarification and disambiguation which doesn't occur in a typical Google search. How is it "neutral" to remove obvious scams? I don't know. I guess mostly because opt-in advertising is pretty much guaranteed to make less money than non-opt-in advertising. Although, who knows, maybe it's just because no one major has ever tried it. No, sorry, it doesn't. What it suggests is that opt-in advertising is pretty much guaranteed to make less money than non-opt-in advertising. That wasn't the disagreement.

Yes, that's how Google works, like a machine gun spraying all over the place, missing 1,000 times for every one time it hits. Google, however is a straw man for the purpose of this conversation. Totally unacceptable, except on an ad page linked to articles about them and their services. Fred