[Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long

[Michael Snow]

On 12/3/2012 12:25 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> On 3 December 2012 20:11, Pavel Richter <pavel.richter at wikimedia.de> wrote:
>> "the thing we are selling to people" As I see it, we are not *selling
>> *anything.
>> Wikimedia provides a free encyclopedia to the public, and it promotes Free
>> Knowledge worldwide. For this, we ask for donations, during a limited time
>> each year, and with very humble messaging and banners. We do not have to be
>> ashamed to do so.
> The difference between fundraising and sales is pretty small - both
> are about convincing people to part with their cash. We have to
> convince people that donating money to us is a good idea in exactly
> the same way a company needs to convince people that buying their
> product is a good idea - you do that by emphasising your key selling
> points. In our case, being ad-free is one of our key selling points,
> which is the point Mono was making.
Even if it's fair to equate fundraising banners with advertising, that 
only holds up as an argument for keeping the fundraiser as brief as 
possible. Once you accept that there will be such banners (and I believe 
we have, at least provisionally), it does not actually follow that the 
use of editorial principles from advertising is undesirable, which is 
essentially where this discussion started.

Take, for example, the objection on account of the "painfully bright" 
banner colors. There is a well-established tradition in 
advertising-supported publication, one that long predates the internet, 
that considers it desirable to maintain a clear distinction between 
"advertising" and "editorial" content. Those who value this tradition 
tend to object strongly when advertising is designed in a way that blurs 
this distinction, aesthetically or otherwise. And yet, one of the 
concessions we keep pushing for from our fundraising is that it somehow 
merge into the background and not call attention to itself as being 
different from the rest of the site. To be honest, compared to past 
fundraisers, one of my reactions when I saw these banners was to think, 
"I don't find them especially attractive, but at least I can tell them 
apart from Wikipedia at a glance." From this perspective, that's an 
improvement on designs where the layout and color scheme is actually too 
integrated with the site, and the banner is just an overgrown site 
notice that could just as easily be informing me of some downtime for 
scheduled maintenance, or giving me some notification on my watchlist.

That's not to say that I necessarily agree with all of the decisions 
that went into the current banners as to aesthetics or content. But I 
also don't have the expertise or all of the data that's behind those 
decisions, which is why I tend to reach a similar conclusion as Ziko. I 
trust that the fundraising team will attempt to balance all of these 
considerations, that they do listen to the concerns people have, and 
that they will make the best choices they can in light of the 
information available. Keeping that in mind usually helps me as I 
reflect on whether my own concerns are merely matters of personal taste 
or something more important.

--Michael Snow