[Foundation-l] Banners to increase editors

[MZMcBride]

James Heilman wrote:
> We had a banner last year to raise funds for the WMF.  Unsure if anyone has
> suggested this yet but how about running a banner to encourage our readers
> to: 1) add content 2) correct spelling 3) revert vandalism?

This was implemented on the English Wikipedia for quite some time. I called
it "anon tips." The tips were placed above the discussion, edit, etc. tabs.
It included some donation appeals ("Wikipedia is sustained by people like
you. Please donate today.") as well as some informative tips ("Ten things
you may not know about Wikipedia."[1]), with random rotation and a bias
toward the donation messages, I think. The banner was shown only to logged
out users.

I removed the anon tips banner[2] because the content was getting old, there
was a concern about having too much noise with the upcoming annual
fundraising banner, and the code needed to be rewritten.[3]

Something along the same lines, either for the English Wikipedia or for
other projects as well, might be something to consider.

MZMcBride
19:14, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

[1] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ten_things_you_may_not_know_about_Wik
ipedia
[2] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monobook.js&diff=3225884
03&oldid=288720468
[3] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Common.js/Archive_17#Anontips_ba
nner