[Foundation-l] A modest proposal: ads on wikipedia.com

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 4/23/07, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I mean is, the cost of hosting per page-view has dropped
> tremendously, and we still have a ways to go there.

I don't believe that we have any concrete plans which will decrease
our cost per view any further. There are some possibilities, but we
are not exploring them at this time.

I am also concerned that the increased use of multimedia content will
continue to drive an increase in cost per view which could only be
offset by the most aggressive cost reducing strategies possible.

>Someone should
> compare pageviews to ambient donations absent a sitenotice.

Yes, well, the ratio of donations to views has had a long term
downward trend as a function of views.  This is my cause for concern.

> There are further magnitudes of scale to be realized, and a ways to go
> before it is actually simple and natural for site visitors to realize
> the site is supported by donations, or make a donation. For instance,
> as has been raised dozens of times in the past, there should be some
> highlighting of "Donate" / "faire un don" / "Dary pieniężne" on the
> default skin, so that people who would love to donate, but don't know
> we have such a link, are able to support to the project.

Well there is the anon-notice on enwiki...

There *is* much we can do to improve donations, but they don't have
much to do with scale. They have to do with our approach towards
donors and our followup with past donors, and many other places where
we do not do well compared to other charities.