Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>No way!! Many people, me included, contribute to wikipedia
>because of a spirit of freedom/communist zeal/whatever that
>would largely evaporate if wikipedia started serving ads. Even
>a symbolic thing like the change from wikipedia.com to
>wikipedia.org was a big motivation for me. Anyway didn't Jimbo
>promise us long back that there would *never* be ads on
>wikipedia? :)
IIRC he said that there were no /plans/ for ads in the forseeable future. I
think that that is the best we can all hope for. But donations alone may not
be able to always pay the bills. In that case I wouldn't mind having
something smart like Google AdSense serve ads to anons. In that scenario an
added benefit would be to give anons another reason to log-in: no more ads!
I think that would work out OK, because the freedom/communistic feelings you
talk about (and I share) are far more prevalent in contributors than they are
in readers. In fact readers expect to see some form of advertising on content
websites like Wikipedia (some have expressed unease over the /absence/ of
advertising, thinking that Wikipedia would one day disappear due to a lack of
income). So if needed I think we can have advertisements if it is done right
and it isn't distracting (ala smart Google text ads). Oh and banner ads,
skyscrappers and especially pop-ups should be avoided like the plague.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Is there anyone who is knowledgeable about "donation by clicking" scheme?
A user goes to a page with many ads, and the ad revenue for the site will
become a donation to help wikipedia/ wikimedia.
I am talking about sites like this:
http://www.thehungersite.comhttp://www.veggiedirectory.com/
The benefit of it is that it could be done outside the wikipedia.org domain,
and could be done by people other than Jimbo. I have little idea how much
fund it can raise (probably not much, perhaps 1 to $10 a day), and I have
very little idea if there is any handy way to set one up.
Well, just an idea.
cheers,
Tomos
_________________________________________________________________
>From the hottest toys to tips on keeping fit this winter, youll find a
range of helpful holiday info here.
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Three points:
o Unesco
o TakingItGlobal
o Google AdSense
I was thinking the other day that the goals of
Wikipedia are in line with those of Unesco and I was
wondering if we could somehow try to become officially
connected with Unesco to gain a better reputation. We
might also be able to get significant financial grants
from them in this way.
Also, I think it would good if we could put the
Wikipedia project and the Wikimedia foundation in the
TakingItGlobal database which is a database for
activists, so that we can connect. TIG works as an
umbrella organization for other non-profits.
I know people are going to yell at me, but I think
Google AdSense would produce an incredible amount of
money for the project. We could show them to
anonymous users and people who log in could turn them
off if they wanted. Well anyway, it's just a
suggestion, don't bite my head off.
So, what do you think?
Chuck
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> > Also, I think it would good if we could put the
> Wikipedia project
> > and the Wikimedia foundation in the TakingItGlobal
> database which is
> > a database for activists, so that we can connect.
> TIG works as an
> > umbrella organization for other non-profits.
>
> I've just looked at their site, and I have no
> particular objection to
> our being listed there. Actually, it looks like I
> can do it right
> now, so I will.
Well, one good idea out of three ain't bad. If anyone
is interested, they can view the page at
http://www.takingitglobal.org/opps/orgdir.html?vieworg=4652
If you have an account there, make sure you say
you're affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Best wishes,
Chuck
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Brion Vibber wrote:
> but the day there are advertisements on the main Wikipedia site
> we'll lose a lot of people, including me.
I know also people who will stop donating...
Wikipedia can stay free (of advertisement). I am sure of that.
Fantasy :-)
> This scheme could be implemented more cleanly by using a
> cookie rather than a separate domain. A person visiting the
> donate page could find a link to set a cookie that says
> 'ads=true'. After that, they would see ads until they turned
> them off. Alternatively, this could be an option in user
> preferences.
Easiest yet: serve all the obnoxious ads you want, just serve them all from another subdomain; eg, inyoface.wikipedia.com. Doing so would encourage the adoption of filtering proxies or browsers that implement easy image- and flash- blocking.
(This suggestion is close-smilied for the humor-impaired.)
--
the Epopt
Just FYI for Mac OS X users: Safari has a bug (also present in some old
versions of Mozilla / Netscape 6.x) which makes it possible for
third-party sites to steal domain cookies.
Hypothetically, this could allow a site you visit (even accidentally,
or as an inline image) to steal your temporary session cookies and your
stored password (if you selected "remember my password") from
Wikipedia. A stolen password cookie could be used to login to the wiki
with your user name; hijacking a session cookie may be possible as
well.
I've tightened up the cookie settings on all other Wikipedias so that
if you clear any old cookies you might have from them, the new cookies
should no longer be vulnerable to this bug (because they will be set
only for a specific hostname, eg fr.wikipedia.org, and the technique
doesn't work on such a cookie). However the
en.wikipedia.org/en2.wikipedia.org setup currently requires using the
domain cookie to share sessions between the two servers and remains
vulnerable. (Not to mention all those other web sites out there!)
If you're using Safari, consider clearing your stored cookies and
disabling accepting new cookies until Apple releases a fix. Mozilla 1.5
and Camino 0.7 are not vulnerable and are very functional browsers.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> Chuck Smith <msochuck(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I was thinking the other day that the goals of
> Wikipedia are in line with those of Unesco and I was
> wondering if we could somehow try to become officially
> connected with Unesco to gain a better reputation. We
> might also be able to get significant financial grants
> from them in this way.
>
Looks good on the surface. However official connections with other
organizations may bring certain responsibilities and restrictions we
would be better off no dealing with. It's something to look into.
> Also, I think it would good if we could put the
> Wikipedia project and the Wikimedia foundation in the
> TakingItGlobal database which is a database for
> activists, so that we can connect. TIG works as an
> umbrella organization for other non-profits.
Well, maybe. I don't know anything about TIG.
>
> I know people are going to yell at me, but I think
> Google AdSense would produce an incredible amount of
> money for the project. We could show them to
> anonymous users and people who log in could turn them
> off if they wanted. Well anyway, it's just a
> suggestion, don't bite my head off.
Yell, yell, rant, flame, etc, etc. No ads, please. It's not that I think
that all advertising in all forms is evil, but it's really nice to
have an ad-free space for everyone to work in. Plus, many people will
quit on principle. The possibility of advertising seems to have been a
major factor in the Spanish fork.
Stephen Gilbert
From: Peter Gervai <grin(a)tolna.net>
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Switching everything to
Hi Peter, that was a long and interesting message.
I thought of perhaps adding a couple of words to
complete what you wrote.
>What was the memory footprint of opera 4,5 or
whatever
>you use? What browser do you use regularly, under
what
>operating system? How much memory do you have?
>I just checked: opera 7.21 uses 35MB virtual (20MB
>resident) memory, I believe this is not outrageous
>for a graphical browser. (Latest opera is 6.03 for
>Mac as far as I see, but I won't downgrade mine.)
I will first reassure you, I finally found a solution
with Netscape 7.02. Not perfect (slow in particular,
and sometimes unexpectedly crash, but that was my best
option). My mac is a 128 mo, and I use a bit of
virtual memory. System 9.04. I can't check memory
requirement of Opera 6. It was so desastrous I put it
in the trashcan. Netscape 7 is currently at 53 Mo.
Opera 5 is at 25 Mo. The system is at 34 Mo. IRC at
nearly 1 Mo. And Photoshop is at 47 Mo...hum...I would
have said Photoshop would require more than Netscape.
Curious. But no images are open. I get in trouble when
on top I open QuarkXPress and Canvas :-)
>> The upgrade is perfectly ok if you have a recent
>> computer. But you cannot expect every user to have
so.
>> There was a big campaign about 4 years ago in
France,
>> and many many people bought some imacs.
>That's a problem. I can't tell you about Mac
browsers,
>apart from the fact that I see "Mac OS/X" (whatever
it
>might be) in Mozilla download pages. Don't Mac have
>any more recent browsers than Opera 6.03 or Netscape
>4.xx? (I see netscape 6.2.xx for MacPPC.)
OS 9 is the previous system. X is the new one.
Requires quite a bit of memory. Running system X on my
computer would be problematic. Many machines are still
in OS 9. Opera 6 is the most recent one. Netscape 7 as
well. And there are plenty of good browsers, but they
work only on X. The jump between 9 and X was
...well... it is really different.
>I'm sure you going to have troubles with that "fine
>for internet" soon. dmoz.org is going to be changed
>to utf-8 "real soon now" (see
>http://dmoz.org/Test/World/
>utf8 categories, like Catalan or Arabian), and most
>international project are either already utf-8
>or going to be soon.
As I said, I solved the problem. What I fear is that
most people I know who bought macintosh around 3 to 4
years, are usually quite "unable" with computers, and
have no idea how to upgrade a browser or a system.
They really do not. It is no joke. These people use
the computer they brought from the shop, and they do
not change anything on it, unless they have a nephew
able to fix the stuff for them. They will keep the
computer as is, till the they change it because the
dvd reader is dead because kids put chewing gum in it.
These people are also our public. Better even, as far
as I am concerned, they are the people I try to reach
to be editors.
Also, some people only have access to computers in
public libraries (there are two in my city...computers
in the main library I mean...not much he ?), or in
school (there are more in my kids school than in the
library).
Most of these computers are *not* changed very often
(understatement). Even in universities. Students do
not pay very expensive fees for their studies, the
drawback is that material is not great, not replaced
often.
Though I am quite a joke in computer stuff, I was the
one who explain my daughter teacher how to use her
computer last year; she have some pedagogic games for
the kids on it. Good stuff. The least I can say, the
computer was not brand new...but it was connected to
internet. Just seeing how she approached the "thing",
I can tell you she won't upgrade the stuff. Which does
not mean she will not show the kids great stuff.
But I think she, and the kids, are also our public,
and perhaps our editors.
>Can your browser edit utf-8 articles which does NOT
>contain non-latin1 characters?
>> I know it is not possible for these users to use
>Opera
>> 6, and not possible to switch to system X.
>I believe you, but then, they are in a dead end, and
>they can expect more and more problems as unicode
>gets used more widely. usemod wikis just being
changed
>to utf-8, we'll see what happens.
They are not in a dead end, they are just "old"
computers. Newer ones do not have problems.
>Come:
http://narya.grin.hu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UniCodeTest
>Edit, enter your browser and opsys, and see what
>happens.
I did. Of course, this will work well, since my
browser is now working.
Peter, *my* problem is solved now, or I promise I
would be screaming with the idea of switching the
french wikipedia utf 8 *now*.
All what I say is that there are still people with
these, and I really do not feel like telling them, "go
away". That is all I mean.
>> I do not understand that comment.
>If the iso8859-1 encoded page contains illegal
>characters,
>it breaks if you edit it with a standards compliant
>browser.
I did a good old edit with my favorite browser on your
test page as well :-))))
>> > Can you figure manually correcting each time
after >a
>> user ?
>Well, I'd revert it and tell the user to use a
>different
>browser. :-/
I understand. This is not a good option to my opinion,
but I am sure Brion and co will find a good solution
that will be acceptable to all of us :-)
>> and perhaps those editing
>> wikipedia right now are people technically better
>> equipped that the average human being connected to
>> internet,
>Definitely, if you count in the Albanian orphans and
>the chinese peasants.
Hum...about 6 months ago, I was at the technical level
of an albanian orphan then :-)
I could perhaps launch a subscription for a new
computer ?
>Otherwise no. I can run opera well on a pentium 233
>with
>32 MB of memory (and on 16MB either, but it's much
>slower).
>How much is a P233 nowadays? $10? (convert to FFR at
>will :))
Peter...we are in euros...
Peter...I have no idea what a P233 is. I suppose
memory. But in truth, Peter, some people just *do not
know anything* about all this.
>Most end-users are using windoze, and it is well
>equipped
>with utf-8 conform browsers.
I would regret it if we gave another motive for
windows to win over other systems :-)
>I stay silent, and let the old timers decide. If I
can
>be any technical help, I'll start talking again.
I do as well, because I can't help at all :-(
>Hoping the best,
>Peter
Thanks Peter :-)
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