8 ms·
I'm aware it is temporary, but I'm surely not the only one thinking that banner is more annoying than the occasional ad would have been.
by Ryan_IRL 16y ago
I'm aware it is temporary, but I'm surely not the only one thinking that banner is more annoying than the occasional ad would have been.
- chaosmachine 16y agoThey could definitely make a killing with just a single AdSense block at the bottom of every article. Maybe even just the top 1000 articles. Instead, we get places like Answers.com mass-duplicating Wikipedia content and slapping big image ads on it.
- _delirium 16y agoOne of the things people are worried about with that it would allow something close to paid additions/rebuttals to Wikipedia articles, at least if ad buyers were good enough at the AdSense targeting. The goal is to have a neutral article that covers all viewpoints fairly, but then you'd have this little box where whoever pays the most money would get the opportunity to insert a link to their take on the subject.
- axod 16y agoSurely if you just have general 'run of site' advertising which isn't targeted to specific articles, there's little chance of conflict.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoExactly. Or to put a finer point on it: there becomes a much greater pressure to insert ads as content. Why pay for an ad sense spot if you can just insert your own ad into the relevant wiki article?
- jimmybot 16y agoSo all the merchants that can't buy an ad aren't trying to subtly insert ads as content currently? Advertisers only have one choice now--try to get a mention, try to get a link, perhaps as a source--do whatever it takes to get into the content of the article. If Wikipedia sold ads, they would have the alternative to buy an ad instead; I don't see how the problem of advertisement-as-content would be worsened when given a choice to buy an ad. If anything, I think it's the other way around.
- redthrowaway 16y agoThe express purpose is to remain neutral and to avoid conflicts of interest. They're not in it to make money. Wikipedia isn't in the Answers.com business, and doesn't particularly want to be.
- tokenadult 16y agoThe express purpose is to remain neutral and to avoid conflicts of interest. How well do you think Wikipedia is doing at that? (I ask as a new Wikipedian, registered and actively editing only for about a half year, who has seen many very controversial articles that are anything but neutral in point of view, ads or no ads.)
- redthrowaway 16y agoI've been editing for a couple years now. The vast majority of articles beyond stub class are great. The ones that get brought up on AN/I or ArbCom or MedCab are generally on subjects that people hold very strong opinions on. For example, the first article I became very involved with was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Ar.... When I came to that article, it was in the middle of an edit war between Republican and Unionist factions. Each wanted the article to reflect their POV, so there was much arguing over whether the IRA "caused"/"was responsible for" X deaths, or they "murdered" X people. Similarly, many editors wanted to be sure that the page clearly showed they were a terrorist organization. WP:TERRORIST specifically prohibits the labelling of an organization as such, so instead those editors fought to have the article state that other organizations had labelled the IRA terrorists, etc. That's generally how it goes on the sensitive articles. The three main areas of political debate on Wikipedia are Israel/Palestine, Eastern Europe, and Northern Ireland. There have been perennial edit wars, and many ArbCom cases. There have been mailing lists and drives by external organizations to infiltrate the ranks of Wikipedia so as to have their viewpoint expressed. There are admins who have acted improperly and had their status stripped, and there are others who have done the same with impunity. Basically, it's a shitstorm. It also affects less than 0.001% of articles on Wikipedia. As far as articles with promotional points of view, recognize that many companies will actively edit the article on them, and it takes diligent community members to counteract their whitewashing. That's why WP:COIN and other noticeboards exist. Similarly, some people will edit an article with the goal of making the subject of that article look bad. The remedy is the same as for whitewashing: a neutral community member needs to fix the article. The problem is that there are millions of Wikipedia articles, most of which the average editor will never come across. The community is big, but not that big. We will never make Wikipedia perfect, although I have some ideas for making it more so. In the end, the best you can do is fix problems as you come across them. If you notice any patterns that you think could be identified algorithmically, consider writing a bot or, if you are unable to do so, approach one of the prolific bot writers like MZMcBride with your idea. Otherwise, just keep plugging away, and realize that the dramawhoring that characterizes the Wikipedia community is largely absent from the articles themselves.
- iwwr 16y agoOnce they allow ad revenue to flow in, they will become dependent on it.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- visakhcr 16y agoI wrote a blog post on similar lines sometime back in 2008. "Wikipedia should display ads and donate surplus to charity" http://bonchibuji.blogspot.com/2008/12/wikipedia-should-display-ads-and-donate.html http://bonchibuji.blogspot.com/2008/12/wikipedia-should-disp...
- jiganti 16y agoI'm not sure I agree with their definition of 'advertisement'.
- steveklabnik 16y agoIt's not about annoyance, it's about conflict of interest.
- jeffclark 16y agoSure, it's annoying... but it worked 16 million times.
- sorbus 16y ago500 thousand times. 16 million dollars donated, but only 500 thousand donors. EDIT: Paragraph wondering about A/B testing removed, as two people responded with links to the results of A/B testing, which I was not previously aware of.
- sliverstorm 16y agoIf they just made it half as tall... it currently takes up 1/4 of the screen on my laptop when the page first loads.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- w1ntermute 16y agoGet the userscript Jimmy, Go Away: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/91712 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/91712 If you're using HTTPS-Everywhere (Firefox) or KB SSL Enforcer (Chrome), add https://secure.wikimedia.org/* as an @include statement.
- thailandstartup 16y agoIt was much more intrusive than it could have been. Also, the claim of 'Urgent' was not credible. Maybe they've managed to engage with their 500,000 sponsors. They've also shown they're willing to degrade the quality of the site to raise funds. That's no different to advertising for the casual user.