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.
"Special:Search" also likely gets a hit when the "go" button (or just the return key now) is used.
This strikes me as much more relevant and more likely to generate a significant number of hits.
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.
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?
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. ;-)
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...
Calling "Special:Search" the most popular page (or basing fundraising theories on it) is dangerous and often misleading work.
I'm not convinced of this assertion yet.
Mike