Have a look
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump#Opt-in_Google-ads.3F
it would seem we have concensus?
Jack / [[User:Sam Spade]]
_______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!
I think trying opt-in Google Ads (and perhaps having a little campaign among site regulars to encourage turning them on) would be a fun experiment . We could have a little link on the donations page that takes people from there to the appropriate section of their preferences, for people considering donating but not willing to go through the hassle of paypal etc (which is probably 10x the number who visit the donations page and actually donate).
To answer a few lingering Google-ad Q's -- if Google thinks it's being gamed by clickthroughs from your site, it can shut off your account. It also retains the ability to freeze your Google-ad account balance if it thinks you or your site visitors have been gaming it, iirc. So, um, don't do it. ^ ^ On the other hand, non-automated clicking on ad links, for fun, is ok; you don't have to intend to buy a product when you follow a link (it's their job to convince you anyway).
+sj+
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump#Opt-in_Google-ads.3F
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:04:05 -0400, Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
To answer a few lingering Google-ad Q's -- if Google thinks it's being gamed by clickthroughs from your site, it can shut off your account. It also retains the ability to freeze your Google-ad account balance if it thinks you or your site visitors have been gaming it, iirc.
Indeed it does.
Has anyone contacted Google to see what they think of opt-in adverts? I think they might break the AdServe terms of service, in that Google might see opt-in as encouraging people to click on the ads to make money for Wikipedia, not because people are interested in the ads.
However, Wikipedia is quite a high-traffic website, which would probably give it a reasonable level of clout in any negotiations with Google.
Just a couple of important notes...
phil hunt wrote:
Has anyone contacted Google to see what they think of opt-in adverts?
I would like to discourage people from contacting Google directly on our behalf. I have an existing and substantial (to me!) business relationship with Google and good contacts within their ad syndication group. It will baffle them if random people call them up asking questions about us.
However, Wikipedia is quite a high-traffic website, which would probably give it a reasonable level of clout in any negotiations with Google.
Sure. Even with Bomis, we don't just sign up for their general public program, we have a (long and detailed) contract. There's no reason to assume that their general AdSense terms of service would have much to do with us.
At the same time, I think it is important to recognize that "opt-in" is likely to be frowned upon for exactly the reason that you mentioned -- the audience of people opting in would be too likely to click just to generate revenue, as opposed to clicking out of genuine interest. That's useless for the advertisers.
I also am not really comfortable with opt-in. Compared to opt-out, I think it would generate very close to zero revenue. Probably less than 5% of the revenue potential of opt-out. The reason is that the vast majority of our pageviews are from people who just happen in. These people are not opposed to advertising, but at the same time, they will not care enough to bother to read a link about how to enable ads.
So with opt-in, we get almost all of the "negative press" issues as we get with opt-out, but we also don't get the kind of money that would enable us to do really astounding things consistent with our charitable mission.
Let me state again that I am currently opposed to any advertising on Wikipedia. I have only been talking about this because I think it is important for us to continue to make the "no advertising" decision while being fully cognizant of what it is that we are turning down.
It's much easier for us to say no when we imagine that the revenue would be $1,000 a month. It would obviously be much easier for the community to say no, if the revenue was to go to a for-profit company. (Hooray! The make-Jimbo-rich fund! Not.)
But I think that the issue really only gets interesting when we start talking about really vast sums of money that would be spent with extreme efficiency to further our charitable aims.
--Jimbo
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:17:30 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Just a couple of important notes...
phil hunt wrote:
Has anyone contacted Google to see what they think of opt-in adverts?
I would like to discourage people from contacting Google directly on our behalf.
Sure -- I wasn't implying random people should. If anyone sohuld approach Google it'd have to be someone "official", such as you.
I have an existing and substantial (to me!) business relationship with Google and good contacts within their ad syndication group. It will baffle them if random people call them up asking questions about us.
I expect so.
However, Wikipedia is quite a high-traffic website, which would probably give it a reasonable level of clout in any negotiations with Google.
Sure. Even with Bomis, we don't just sign up for their general public program, we have a (long and detailed) contract. There's no reason to assume that their general AdSense terms of service would have much to do with us.
At the same time, I think it is important to recognize that "opt-in" is likely to be frowned upon for exactly the reason that you mentioned -- the audience of people opting in would be too likely to click just to generate revenue, as opposed to clicking out of genuine interest. That's useless for the advertisers.
Indeed so. However, I could imagine some adverts being useful and relevant to me. After all, I'm likely to be visiting Wikipedia pages I'm interested in, and Google adverts are likely to be well-targeted (the ones on my personal website seem to be), so it's very likely I would see some adverts that were of interest to me.
I also am not really comfortable with opt-in. Compared to opt-out, I think it would generate very close to zero revenue. Probably less than 5% of the revenue potential of opt-out. The reason is that the vast majority of our pageviews are from people who just happen in. These people are not opposed to advertising, but at the same time, they will not care enough to bother to read a link about how to enable ads.
So with opt-in, we get almost all of the "negative press" issues as we get with opt-out, but we also don't get the kind of money that would enable us to do really astounding things consistent with our charitable mission.
If there is opt-out, then people who don't like to see adverts can't really complain about them. Especially if opting out is easy: if it was cookie based rather than forcing people to log in to stop seeing adverts, then people would be able to set preferences for the site once, and never see another ad. (On a tangent, it'd be nice if style sheets were cookie-based, since I prefer the traditional style of WP to the more modern one.)
Let me state again that I am currently opposed to any advertising on Wikipedia. I have only been talking about this because I think it is important for us to continue to make the "no advertising" decision while being fully cognizant of what it is that we are turning down.
What about the argument the other way round, where people think Wikipedia is a worthwhile project, and they would donate money to it, but they see WP turning down substancial amonuts of revenue from advertising, and they ask themselves "if WP won't help themselves, why should I help them?"
I've no idea if this represents a significant number of people, but it might do.
It's much easier for us to say no when we imagine that the revenue would be $1,000 a month. It would obviously be much easier for the community to say no, if the revenue was to go to a for-profit company. (Hooray! The make-Jimbo-rich fund! Not.)
I think most people here trust your honest intentions.
But I think that the issue really only gets interesting when we start talking about really vast sums of money that would be spent with extreme efficiency to further our charitable aims.
Yes, it does.
Jack Lynch schrieb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump#Opt-in_Google-ads.3F
it would seem we have concensus?
The ability to tell journalists "Wikipedia is completly free of advertising" is worth more than a few cents from Google ads, IMHO. With ads, even if opt-in, we are much less of a bird of paradise in the web's top 1000. And there might also be a negative psychological effect on the donors.
If we once *really* need the money we should use opt-out, but I hope this will never happen.
Kurt
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 03:10:26 +0200, Kurt Jansson jansson@gmx.net wrote:
Jack Lynch schrieb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump#Opt-in_Google-ads.3F
it would seem we have concensus?
The ability to tell journalists "Wikipedia is completly free of advertising" is worth more than a few cents from Google ads, IMHO. With ads, even if opt-in, we are much less of a bird of paradise in the web's top 1000. And there might also be a negative psychological effect on the donors.
I also agree with that
If we once *really* need the money we should use opt-out, but I hope this will never happen.
Opt-out is even worse.
If people want to support Wikipedia by looking at ads, I would propose a Wikimedia-sponsored mirror with ads, while the main Wikipedia is left pristine. Don't know how effective this would be though.
Dori schrieb:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 03:10:26 +0200, Kurt Jansson jansson@gmx.net wrote:
If we once *really* need the money we should use opt-out, but I hope this will never happen.
Opt-out is even worse.
Of course. But only then the amount of money is worth to talk about. But I see this only as the last option in a worst case scenario, if everything else (like persuading the board of the German Verein to rob the Deutsche Bank) fails.
If people want to support Wikipedia by looking at ads, I would propose a Wikimedia-sponsored mirror with ads, while the main Wikipedia is left pristine. Don't know how effective this would be though.
It only works if we try to compete with all the entries of the main site at Google, which isn't very cool. If we hide it from search engines the income would be much less (but a bit more than with opt-in ads). But ads are still uncool.
Kurt
Kurt Jansson wrote:
If we once *really* need the money we should use opt-out, but I hope this will never happen.
I am of the opinion that we will never "need" the money. I think the challenge to the community is going to be from a different direction: how much good could we do to further our goals as a charitable institution, and does that good outweigh our distaste for advertising.
As a thought experiment, consider a day 2 years in the future when Wikipedia is serving 1 billion pageviews per month, and we are continuing to easily fund the site's growth through donations, grants, etc.
A conservative estimate (in my experience, which is valid I think) of how much revenue we could generate with Google Adwords or similar, i.e. no banners, no flashing lights, no popups, would be around $1 per thousand. So a billion pageviews a month generates at least $1 million per month. Even with the ability for people who hate ads to opt-out with a single click, the revenue would be substantial.
For $12 million a year, how many millions of CDs could we make available to charities building media centers in the slums of New Delhi? If we work wisely with for-profit or non-profit organizations in developing countries, we can subsidize their production to leverage their ability to profitably and sustainably make our work widely available everywhere.
My dream is to create a comprehensive free encyclopedia to be distributed at extremely low cost to them to every single person on the planet. Is our distaste for ads so high that we are willing to deny the people who don't even have access to clean drinking water a copy of a work that could help empower them to change their lives?
To sum up, I don't think we will ever "need" the money to keep doing what we are doing. But I think the day may come when we have to make a very tough decision about what kind of good we could do with the money.
I have my own opinion about what we should do when that day comes, which you might or might not be able to glean from the above, but for now I remain firmly opposed to advertising on Wikipedia, for all the reasons that many people have already mentioned: credibility, good taste, the feeling that we are doing something extra-ordinary, etc.
--Jimbo
p.s. Lest any trolls wants to make up some claims about this, let me be perfectly clear. If the day ever comes when we decide that we can do so much good with advertising money that we should not turn it down, that decision is not going to come top-down from me, but from the community as a whole.
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
A conservative estimate (in my experience, which is valid I think) of how much revenue we could generate with Google Adwords or similar, i.e. no banners, no flashing lights, no popups, would be around $1 per thousand. So a billion pageviews a month generates at least $1 million per month. Even with the ability for people who hate ads to opt-out with a single click, the revenue would be substantial.
That, or if 120,000 people donate $100 per year.
I suggest the latter would be easier to achieve.
By the way, has anyone done any car/window stickers for wikipedia? Donate $10, get a sticker. Put it on your car or bathroom window, give it to a friend, whatever.
in the same vein, would it be possible to have publishing on demand? The way I see it is this: I want to make a booklet with anything in the airline/airplane category. Can I pay $12.95 and have a TeX formatted PDF report mailed to my house with the 60-90+articles related to that? (I just know the technical know-how to do that is to be found here. But it could be outsourced)
I think that would be cool and would allow for a greated dissemination of the Wikipedia brand. And perhaps the National Georgraphic-type ads could go in that. After reading a re-reading, I could leave it in a strategic place for passerbys to see/pickup.
Just putting the idea out there.
===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan@yahoo.com chris.mahan@gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/
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On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:18:39 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com wrote:
By the way, has anyone done any car/window stickers for wikipedia? Donate $10, get a sticker. Put it on your car or bathroom window, give it to a friend, whatever.
Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?
I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:08:12 +0100, phil hunt zen19725@zen.co.uk wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:18:39 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com wrote:
By the way, has anyone done any car/window stickers for wikipedia? Donate $10, get a sticker. Put it on your car or bathroom window, give it to a friend, whatever.
Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?
I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.
Linked from the fundraising page: http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia
phil hunt wrote:
Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?
I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.
We already have this: http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia
It brings in very very close to nothing. I believe Erik told me when I was in Berlin that we are getting close to the threshold for them to cut us our first check of $100. Something like that anyway, I'm sure he'll clarify if this is materially wrong.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
It brings in very very close to nothing. I believe Erik told me when I was in Berlin that we are getting close to the threshold for them to cut us our first check of $100. Something like that anyway, I'm sure he'll clarify if this is materially wrong.
From the Cafepress interface:
- - - -
Since your most recent check (which was mailed on July 15, 2004 for $140.26 and covered all sales through May 2004), you've earned $225.44 through your account.
Of that amount, $100.20 has already cleared the mandatory 30 day return period, and will appear in your next check (unless you spend it as CafeCash!).
The other $125.24 comes from sales in the past 30 days, and remains in a "pending state" until the items can no longer be returned. Once the 30-day return period has elapsed, the commission is no longer pending, and therefore becomes available to you, either through a check or as CafeCash.
- - -
So sales appear to be increasing, thanks in large part to the shop being prominently featured on the fundraising page. Of course the fact that quite a few people now have Wikipedia wall clocks, Wikipedia bags, Wikipedia mugs, Wikipedia caps and Wikipedia shirts is cool on its own.
Regards,
Erik
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:20:02 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Or mugs, mouse mats, tee shirts, or other merchandising?
I'd buy a Wikipedia mug.
We already have this: http://www.cafeshops.com/wikipedia
It brings in very very close to nothing. I believe Erik told me when I was in Berlin that we are getting close to the threshold for them to cut us our first check of $100. Something like that anyway, I'm sure he'll clarify if this is materially wrong.
--Jimbo
We already have it but not many know about it.
Hemanshu
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Kurt Jansson wrote: I am of the opinion that we will never "need" the money. I think the challenge to the community is going to be from a different direction: how much good could we do to further our goals as a charitable institution, and does that good outweigh our distaste for advertising.
I think we can do all we want to do through donations and grants. If we are going to have any kind of advertising ever, then, IMO, it should be limited to a newsletter/WikiReader (ala National Geographic) sent to our millions of subscriber-donors. An additional idea would be to have a separate website where we post vetted article/book versions alongside Google ads (all the editing would still be at the ad-free Wikipedia and other wiki projects).
As a thought experiment, consider a day 2 years in the future when Wikipedia is serving 1 billion pageviews per month, and we are continuing to easily fund the site's growth through donations, grants, etc.
I certainly hope it will only be 1 billion page views a month, since my projection of 'business as usual' (meaning 90% traffic growth compounded quarterly) has us at more than 135 billion hits per month by the end of 2006.
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/upload/0/07/Hardware_costs_-_year.pdf
A conservative estimate (in my experience, which is valid I think) of how much revenue we could generate with Google Adwords or similar, i.e. no banners, no flashing lights, no popups, would be around $1 per thousand. So a billion pageviews a month generates at least $1 million per month. Even with the ability for people who hate ads to opt-out with a single click, the revenue would be substantial.
And so could the risks to our community and all we have built. But if and when we are presented with the choice between closing shop and having Google ads, then and *only* then should we seriously consider it. All my opinion, of course. There are many millions of dollars available in grants that we not even looked at yet.
My dream is to create a comprehensive free encyclopedia to be distributed at extremely low cost to them to every single person on the planet.
I share this dream and I do believe we can achieve it in a reasonable timeframe without taking shortcuts through bad parts of town (which is how I view advertising on the wikis).
Is our distaste for ads so high that we are willing to deny the people who don't even have access to clean drinking water a copy of a work that could help empower them to change their lives?
I personally don't have a distaste for ads - they just annoy me a bit. But I do have a distaste for the thought of forks such as with Enciclopedia Libre. This is especially dangerous now that chapters are being set-up that could fund a successful fork.
To sum up, I don't think we will ever "need" the money to keep doing what we are doing. But I think the day may come when we have to make a very tough decision about what kind of good we could do with the money.
It may indeed. Let's try to exhaust all other funding options first. If we find that doesn't work, or if the amount of money is only good enough to keep the website up and little else, then we can seriously consider ads on Wikipedia and the other project wikis. But we *must* demonstrate to the community that there simply is no other way and that we tried, and failed, to do everything ad-free.
I have my own opinion about what we should do when that day comes, which you might or might not be able to glean from the above, but for now I remain firmly opposed to advertising on Wikipedia, for all the reasons that many people have already mentioned: credibility, good taste, the feeling that we are doing something extra-ordinary, etc.
Exactly my position as well.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
I personally don't have a distaste for ads - they just annoy me a bit. But I do have a distaste for the thought of forks such as with Enciclopedia Libre. This is especially dangerous now that chapters are being set-up that could fund a successful fork.
If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we should give them our blessing. We should also give them a conditional license to use the Wikipedia name, access to private SQL dumps and full technical support. And once they have their hardware set up, we can set the relevant DNS entries to point to them. We can help them with backups and redundancy with a slave database server in Florida replicating all writes. In order to allow software upgrades, maintenance tasks and future features such as shared logins, it would be nice if all the developers with shell access to the Florida servers also had shell access to the foreign servers.
Forking is a bad thing because it implies duplicate effort from editors. But I see no reason to fear distribution. The French chapter is prohibited by law from sending most of their money to Florida, so in the future it might be best for them to contribute hardware.
-- Tim Starling
The only fork reason i see at the moment is because of philosophical reasons, en. is no longer free with fair-use all over Image:
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:41:55 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
I personally don't have a distaste for ads - they just annoy me a bit. But I do have a distaste for the thought of forks such as with Enciclopedia Libre. This is especially dangerous now that chapters are being set-up that could fund a successful fork.
If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we should give them our blessing. We should also give them a conditional license to use the Wikipedia name, access to private SQL dumps and full technical support. And once they have their hardware set up, we can set the relevant DNS entries to point to them. We can help them with backups and redundancy with a slave database server in Florida replicating all writes. In order to allow software upgrades, maintenance tasks and future features such as shared logins, it would be nice if all the developers with shell access to the Florida servers also had shell access to the foreign servers.
Forking is a bad thing because it implies duplicate effort from editors. But I see no reason to fear distribution. The French chapter is prohibited by law from sending most of their money to Florida, so in the future it might be best for them to contribute hardware.
-- Tim Starling
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Tim Starling wrote:
If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we should give them our blessing.
I would oppose this idea very strongly. One of the most important things for the future of the project is, indeed, to avoid forks. But encouraging the division of ownership of the servers would absolutely be a solid path to internal division and forking.
I remain opposed to advertising on the wikiepedia, period. I can't really emphasize that enough.
--Jimbo
On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 08:41:55PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we should give them our blessing.
I'd prefer read-only mirrors which redirect the edits to the main server. I don't know the situation at fr: but at de: we use wikipedia.de not de.wikipedia.org in press news, so it would be easy to take some good portion of the traffic off the Florida-servers.
ciao, tom
I can just say one thing I saw myself, and which was mentionned by several french people.
When I have several windows open at the same moment, say three
*one open on en *one open on fr *one open on www.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main Page
The first page to load in en. Several seconds later, it is fr. And much later wikimedia.
I cant avoid seeing that en pages are often served much quicker than fr pages. I know not why. I am sure it is not on purpose. But it is a fact.
Thomas R. Koll wrote:
On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 08:41:55PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we should give them our blessing.
I'd prefer read-only mirrors which redirect the edits to the main server. I don't know the situation at fr: but at de: we use wikipedia.de not de.wikipedia.org in press news, so it would be easy to take some good portion of the traffic off the Florida-servers.
ciao, tom
Jimbo, I just read what you wrote about cultural bias, deny, confirm or infirm. Yes, that might be cultural biais. Who knows ? Possibly. But I was not only talking of the main page, just of regular pages. Yes, I was always logged in. I really had this feeling a couple of weeks ago, when it was so slow. I remember several times, around 7pm (in France), giving up the fr wikipedia, to go to meta or en, because access was quicker. I also had many "no db access" and when I asked people on irc, it seems they had less than I. This is not the case now. Now, I see rather that the new little wikimedia.org takes huge time to load.
Thomas R. Koll wrote:
On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 08:41:55PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
If a Wikimedia chapter wants to buy servers for their language wiki to avoid slow, poor-quality service or site-wide advertising, then we should give them our blessing.
I'd prefer read-only mirrors which redirect the edits to the main server. I don't know the situation at fr: but at de: we use wikipedia.de not de.wikipedia.org in press news, so it would be easy to take some good portion of the traffic off the Florida-servers.
ciao, tom
Anthere wrote:
Jimbo, I just read what you wrote about cultural bias, deny, confirm or infirm. Yes, that might be cultural biais. Who knows ?
Actually I said "confirmation bias". I wasn't even thinking of "cultural bias".
Confirmation bias is, according to wikipedia, "a type of cognitive bias towards confirmation of the hypothesis under study."
Anyhow, it is my goal that we make sure that there is absolutely no difference in load times -- to the extent it is technically feasible -- between the different languages. I was shocked to hear that people have a feeling that fr loads slower than en, and I really want us to do a lot of tests to make sure that is not true.
And if it is, we need to address it.
--Jimbo