[Foundation-l] Ads and monobook

[Brian McNeil]

Wikinews has the following code in its sitenotice...

{{#switch:{{#expr:{{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} mod 8}}|0=Did last week go by in a
blur, or do you remember your current affairs? 
<br>Take the '''[[Wikinews:World News Quiz|World News Quiz]]'''!
|1=Want Wikinews on the go?
<br>Read our daily '''[[Wikinews:Print edition|Print Edition]]'''!</br>
|2=Wikinews is written by people like you. Did you see something deserving
of an article?<br/>
Learn how to '''[[Wikinews:Writing_an_article|Write an article]]'''!
|3=Have a question about Wikinews?<br/>
Ask at the
'''[http://en.wikinews.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikinews:Water_cooler/assistan
ce&action=edit&section=new&preload=Template:Water_cooler/fromsitenotice
Water Cooler]'''.
|4=Want to know what the weather is like?<br/>
View the current temperature in [[Template:Weather World C|&deg;C]] or
[[Template:Weather World F|&deg;F]].
|5=Help keep knowledge free.<br>[[wikimedia:Fundraising|Donate]]
|6=Want to know how Wikinews works?<br/>
Walk into our '''[[Wikinews:Newsroom|Newsroom]]'''!
|7=Walk into our [[Wikinews:Audio Wikinews|audio room]]!
}}

Note the "Help keep knowledge free.<br>[[wikimedia:Fundraising|Donate]]"
option in that list.

For all anon users one of these messages is always displayed. For registered
users there is the option to dismiss this until [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice id]]
is updated, but as it generally changes with every page you load and is
relatively unobtrusive I suspect few bother to.

My personal opinion is that most projects should adopt something like this
for the sitenotice when there is not a special reason to have a static,
specific message. A fixed message is something people learn to tune out very
quickly, but if it changes almost every page view then there is a higher
likelihood of it being read.


Brian McNeil
-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Robert Rohde
Sent: 20 March 2008 15:15
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Ads and monobook

Another option is to show ads to readers and not to logged-in editors by
default.

A similar thing has been done with the Anonnotice making an appeal for
donations only to readers.

-Robert Rohde

PS. Was the Anonnotice appeal intentionally disabled on EN?  It seems to
have been turned off some months ago, but similar notices appear in several
other languages.

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 4:20 AM, Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com> wrote:

> On the subject of ads, I have a question. Given that all registered users
> can
> edit their WP stylesheet to suit their needs, /if/ ads were added, what's
> to
> keep the registered users from putting something like .ads {display:
> none;}
> to make sure they saw nothing? And by that extension, what's to keep
> a project from adding that to their local mediawiki's stylesheet? I would
> assume a policy would exist to prohibit the latter.
>
> Just some food for thought.
>
> -Chad
>
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