[Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

[Michael Peel]

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