[Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

[John Vandenberg]

On 11/7/10, Michael Peel <email at mikepeel.net> wrote:
>
> On 6 Nov 2010, at 20:54, MZMcBride wrote:
>
>> Liam Wyatt wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>
> 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.

If Special:Search is being used in automation (and it is; it is a page
generator in pywikipediabot), a few people can really bugger up the
stats and any assumptions based on them.

--
John Vandenberg