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Archive 1

Anon-only version

(copied from MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice)

Upon request, Robchurch has created a version of the sitenotice only viewable by anonymous users (ie, most of our readers; the target audience for requesting donations), at MediaWiki:Anonnotice (not yet live). I'll ask the CFO and/or board members about this, but I think one of them originally suggested the idea. So, we would be blanking this one, and putting some form of it in the anon-only version. Comments? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-16 02:12

  • I've read the above discussion and can't understand why. Are registered users not supposed to donate? Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:22, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, both Jimbo and Mav have said that they don't expect editors to donate, since they already donate their time. Assuming that most of the non-editing readers are anons, this would be the best solution that would both target the largest audience while not causing an annoyance for regular editors (see any of this page for the annoyance I speak of :)). — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-16 02:25
  • This would solve all the problems. Ambi 02:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Not really since it means that the people inflicting inconvience on others don't experence it themselves. It also weakens our hand in our next clash with bugmenot. It also presents posible long term problems with meatpupets.Geni 02:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Geni, since you seem to feel so strongly about these notices, what alternative approach to financing would you like to see? Dragons flight 02:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Link more prominat in the side bar. Making the wikipedia logo link to the donations page rather than the main page. Looking to increase the success of fundraising drives. Getting mechandise produced by anyone other than cafepress (both pennny arcade and slahdot use thinkgeek I don't know what terms they would offer wikipedia though). There are many options.Geni 02:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks to Rob for creating the possibility of this compromise. I think showing this to non-logged in users, and keeping just the donate link in the sidebar for logged-in users, should definitely be trialed. I don't want to make a permanent decision before we've seen the financial effects of this, so it should be done as an experiment which can be reviewed after a few weeks. If the anon version is used all the time, I would still like the sitenotice to be used during actual fundraising drives since it's important for everyone to be aware of these. Please keep whatever goes in the anon version tasteful. I'd hate to see it become an over-the-top demand for money just because regular users don't have to put up with it. Angela. 02:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Does this mean no blinking text-decoration? :) — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-16 02:59
  • Neat! This would solve lots of problems. But I'd still like to do something with the sitenotice during fundraisers. ---mav 02:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • That would be the idea. Keep the regular sitenotice for important matters, and during fundraising events. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-16 02:58

Brion has added MediaWiki:Anonnotice. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-16 03:07

As Brian says, this is now live. During fundraisers, delete the anon. notice or set it to - - MediaWiki will fall back to MediaWiki:Sitenotice, if it exists, so you can standardise. Rob Church (talk) 03:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I notice that they have the same CSS style and placement, should I understand from your comment that only one will work at a time? If so, which has precedence? Dragons flight 04:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes. If it wasn't clear already, anonnotice is shown to anonymous users when it exists, otherwise sitenotice is shown if that exists. Logged in users see sitenotice if that exists, else nothing. Rob Church (talk) 11:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yay, this is great! Despite my criticism of this notice, and my continuing concerns that permanently asking for money is what beggars on the street do with little success and much damage to their reputation, at least this version is properly targetted. I would be keen to see the notice return here during the quarterly fundraisers. -Splashtalk 03:22, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yay! Everybody is happy mav

Great job, guys! Thanks! I agree with Angela, though, that this should probably be just a test at first - in my opinion, registered users would be more likely to donate than unregistered users, but I guess we'll see. I doubt this is possible, but is there a way to see (or perhaps ask?) when someone donates whether or not s/he is a registered user? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 03:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I tried to modify Mediawiki:Monobook.css to avoid pushing down the entire header line with the notice, as I find that to be quite tacky. Despite tests showing it worked for IE and Netscape, my method (setting a negative bottom margin on #siteNotice) was quickly reverted by a firefox user who said it failed for him. Regardless, I would still like to talk about finding a way to not offset the header line just for the sake of the notice. Dragons flight 04:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


Wording

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Should we at least word this so we're no resorting to Jimmy's personal appeal, which will likely loose its meaning if we don't reserve it for when we really need it.--cj | talk 03:44, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I would suggest leaving it as is for a week, to try and gauge how much of a difference there is in focusing on anons only. After that, I would switch it to something simple like "Thank you for your continued donations." — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-16 03:49
    • Jimmy's appeal has obviously led to an increase in donations. My concern is that in continuing to use his appeal now, when we really needn't, users of Wikipedia will be less responsive to a future personal appeal. Shouldn't we just direct readers to the donation page rather than over-use the appeal?--cj | talk 04:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
      • The appeal has led to a big increase in donations. We are still very much in need of funds (if we plan on lasting for more than a year). I think this appeal is a one-time thing, since a second appeal would look kind of odd, as you suggeted. So, we should try to milk this thing for all we can. The next time we're likely to see such an appeal is when the site is going to shut down out of lack of funds. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-16 04:43
        • Your claim is not consistant with previous statements and actions of the board.Geni 12:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
          • Can you be more specific?? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-17 14:12
            We know that major appeals are regualar accurence. We also have this quote from mav:
            "The problem is that non-fundraiser donation totals are way, way smaller than is healthy. Look at October About as much was taken in that *whole month* as a below average *day* in this last fund drive. I would like to get at least several fund drive equivalent days per non-fund drive month. --mav 03:29, 10 January 2006 (UTC)"
            It doesn't make much sense unless we assume plans for further funding drives.Geni 14:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
            • Of course there will be more fund drives. I'm talking about personal appeals from Jimbo. There won't be more personal appeals, I don't think, unless they are absolutely necessary. This is the first time Jimbo has done such a thing, and it really stimulated the fundraiser, but I doubt he could repeatedly release such personal appeals and have the same effect. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-17 14:30

CJ, your concern is one that is held widely. However a small number of very vocal people - e.g. Brian - are choosing to ignore these concerns. You are, of course, absolutely right, but I for one am tired of battling those who cannot see other's points of view (and seem to pull stuff out of thin air, like the statement "The next time we're likely to see such an appeal is when the site is going to shut down out of lack of funds", which is pure conjecture). Dan100 (Talk) 09:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

  • A bit overdramatic, don't you think? I only suggested the wording remain for a while so we could see what sort of an effect switching from all-users to anon-only would have. I really doubt that Jimbo is going to regularly put out such desperate appeals. The only time I could see him putting out another one is when we are really in need of funding, such as.... when the site is about to go down. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-17 14:12

Maybe we can decide on a lower limit. As soon as donations drop below that point, we could say that the personal appeal has served its purpose, and move on to something else. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-17 14:15

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

CSS

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Can't the text be placed at the end of the screen (either by changing where anonnotice goes, or by moving the notice to the footer message) but made to display at the top using CSS with something like { position:absolute; top: 50px; left:200px; }? That way, Google and people with CSS disabled will see it at the end but most users will see it at the top. Angela. 02:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

/me shudders at the browser conflicts that would cause. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Seriously though, that might work but it could very easily cause browser compatibility issues. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Non-CSS browsers should just see it in another place (like in the footer). I don't see why it should break anything. Angela. 02:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm also hesitant to use CSS, since I've seen some weird things happen when people try this. It might be possible, but I'd rather try javascript (although using Javascript would mean alienating some % of people with javascript disabled). — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:49
Please don't do anything that will alienate those not using JavaScript. Isn't it possible to have it do something else for those people, or just not show at all? Angela. 03:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I think in the long run a Footer/CSS solution is the best option. Keep in mind that all the page control buttons (discussion, edit, history, etc) and the User buttons (my talk, my watchlist, etc) are already written in a page footer and moved to the top by CSS exactly because we want Google to index the content first. Dragons flight 03:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Ahh.. Ok then, maybe it is alright :) Do you know how to change this? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 03:25
It still makes me uneasy though knowing that tabs are done that way and they seem to work (for the most part) makes me slightly more at ease with this. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 03:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Moving it out of Google's spotlight will require a dev to move it in /skins/MonoBook.php, and then an appropriate CSS can be applied (more or less copying from the CSS applied to the tabs). So, while yes, I do have a general idea of how to do it, actually doing it is not something I have access to. Dragons flight 03:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Shocking revelation number one. GoogleBot crawls Wikipedia as a logged-out user. Shocking revelation number two. The anon. notice is shown to logged-out users. Hands up those who still don't follow? Anyway, cache-wise, it would be somewhat stupid to add a separate hack, so I would suggest you're a little stuck with what we have for now. Nevertheless, I'll look into a method which doesn't cause interesting peaks in the performance graphs. Rob Church (talk) 17:26, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Replaced wording

I've reworded "Your continued donations keep Wikipedia free!" to "Your continued donations help Wikipedia grow!". I think it's thoroughly inappropriate, if not downright offensive, to suggest that Wikipedia would be anything other than free if donations aren't forthcoming. --cj | talk 07:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

  • My suggestion is still "Thank you for your [continued donations] to Wikipedia," but I'm fine with these versions as well. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 07:31
  • You confuse the content on Wikipedia vs Wikipedia website and project itself. True, the GFDL means that that content will remain free. But lots of donations are needed to keep the website at wikipedia.org free of advertisements, going down (can't be free if you are not online), or even pay for view type solutions..22: So is it not dishonest and you should be ashamed for ascribing bad faith. All that said, I like the new wording better. --mav 12:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
    • It's bad faith to assume bad faith. I didn't ascribe to you any intent – I objected to what wording suggested. And again, lack of funds doesn't mean we'd – the community – consent to advertisements. --cj | talk 13:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Your own words (replace wording - it's despicable to suggest Wikipedia would be any thing other than free.) So you were saying that what I said was inappropriate, offensive, and despicable when you could have been civil when making the change. You were incivil and should have acted btter. Shame. --mav
        • No, I criticised what the wording suggested – I made no comment as to your intent. And your accussatory comments have hardly been polite. You are neglecting to abide by the same convention you accuse me of failing.--cj | talk 08:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
      • When the site becomes extremely slow or goes down for extended periods, then the community will change its mind. This will probably happen by the end of next year, unless we get some huge donations, or Google finally comes through. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 17:25
      • Hardware for the entirity of this year is projected to cost over $3 million, while next year will be up to nearly $20 million. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 17:38
        • At some point this exponential growth in traffic (that has been going on for years) has got to saturate. It actually looked like it had started to before the whole Seigenthaler gave a big kick in exposure. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said it would be many years before we made it into the top 10 websites, while right now it looks like it could in fact be soon. The top site on the web (Yahoo) only gets about 25 times the traffic we do right now. Since most of the capital goes into hardware to manage growth, eventually the growth should slow and we'll reach a point where most of the funding goes towards maintainence expenses, right? Dragons flight 18:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
          • You're assuming that we'll survive to the point where the growth even begins to level out. Even if it starts to level, we can't even raise near $3 million, let alone $20 million, or anything in between. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 18:36
          • Well there will be the background level of internet growth. However in thoery the cost of servers should fall which should counter that. Hmm where can we see these cost projections? Oh and past promisies mean that pay per view is not an option.Geni 18:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
            • Advertisements are inevitable, however. The cost projections are on the meta site's budget page. I checked them earlier today. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 18:36
              • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget/2006/Q1 seems to be blank.Geni 19:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                • [1] — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 19:52
                  • They expect that over the next two years our hits will increase by two orders of magnitude? Are they assumeing that everyone in india will be given free internet access or something?Geni 20:03, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                  • (edit conflict) Someone should point out to whoever is writing the budget that we probably don't need to write the 2007 budget to accomodate 6 fold more traffic than Yahoo, the present internet leader, gets today. Hence, I believe the $20M hardware budget is inflated. Dragons flight 20:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                    • Of course it's not right. That's not the point. We can't even meet this year's hardware needs, let alone next year's, which will only get higher. If you have better data, let us know. Until then, it's the best we have. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 20:06
                      • Well if you don't believe it, then don't be citing it all willy-nilly like you did above. We cleared ~$320,000 in the last drive, and we are apparently budgeting for continued 85% traffic growth per quarter. If donations can be made to grow at that same 85% rate per quarter then you'd clear $3M after 4 quarters, which makes that number somewhat less scary. Do you have similar plots showing donations versus traffic? Dragons flight 20:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                        • According to Mav, the increase in donations has always been slower than the increase in traffic. I don't know by how much. We'll probably come close to meeting the $3M for this year, assuming that the number isn't higher, but as I said earlier, by next year we'll probably have to do some short-term advertising in some form. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 20:50
                          • hmmm run a comparison of donations against database server hits then. If we assume that the grow rate predictions for this year are correct then growth pretty much has to crash in early 2007 which will massively reduce the budget requirements.Geni 21:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                            • You're still missing the point. Yes, the requirements will drop, but they will still be higher than now, and most likely still increase much faster than donations. Simply sitting back and hoping for more donations is not going to fix this. No new predictions are going to turn $20M into something realistically achievable. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 22:51
                              • In fact they do. Zero growth would mean that server expenditure would be reduced to whatever needed to be replaced. That could quite easyerly reduce the costs by a couple of orders of magnitude. Now growth isn't going to drop to zero but I suspect that either the 2006 budget is a massive overestimate or the 2007 budget will be a lot closer to 2 million than 20.Geni 23:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                                • You are not basing your predictions on any evidence though. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 23:15


Actually, the only projection done for 2007 is based on a model I created in October 2004. That model predicted that if we continued growing at the same rate of exponential growth as we were in the 2 years previous to that month, that we should expect to spend about 10 million dollars on hardware in 2007 (adjusted for Moors Law). However, our growth appears to be even more strongly exponential now than it was then. A more recent projection I made of PayPal donations indicates we should expect to bring in 1 to 2 million dollars per month by December of this year. So that makes the 10 million dollar figure not seem so scary. Much more systematic projections are needed and a consistent source of traffic data is also needed (the only one I can think of is Alexa ; our server logs are an inconstant mess for the time periods we need to check). Oh, and so far it does not appear that we have felt any effects of saturation of our potential Internet audience. I do imagine we will start to see some of those effects as we approach the popularity of the top five websites on the Internet. So any projection we do on current growth rate will need to be adjusted because of that. My October 2004 model did not consider saturation plateau effects. BTW, by ‘plateauing’ I mean that we would only follow the much weaker exponential growth of the Internet itself instead of our past and current insanely exponential growth. --mav 18:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

  • How did you arrive at this $1-2 million/month figure? Right now, we're at about $90,000 per month ($3000 per day). Even with January's successful fundraiser, we came in at just under $300k for that month. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-2 18:51
    • Via very rough analysis. :) Just input the total PayPal revenue from each month minus the current and first ones (both incomplete datasets) here into a spreadsheet program and then add exponential and logarithmic trend lines. Also note that our Q4 2004 fundraiser brought in about $50,000. We have exponential growth in donations as well as traffic. I'm less fearful now than I was previously that our traffic growth would eventually outstrip our donation growth. But much better analysis needs to be done to confirm that. -- mav


killing indent Ok lets consider the following logic:

  • At any given time there if a finite amount of traffic on the internet
  • This traffic grows at a slower rate than trafic going to wikipedia
  • There is a maxium number of hits per internet user
  • The biggest coast asscoated with servers is buying them
  • Servers have a life expectancy of more than one year.

From this we can conclude that wikipedia's growth is not sustainable at anything like it's current rate for an indefinate length of time. We can also conclude that server costs will fall then stabilise when this happens.

So the problem becomes one of modling the various fall off rates. This is tricky in that there are no websites we can usefuly compare ourselves with. Still we can make a start.

The upperbound is probably yahoo we are not realisticaly going to overtake it so if we modle the worst case in cost per quater (no slowdown untill we hit saturation point) we end up with a situation where the cost for 2006 goes down to around $6million. Remeber that is from traffic greater than yahoo so it really isn't going to happen. If we settle for half yahoo's traffic we end up with a budget of maybe $3million. That includes a million for server replacements.

Figures taken from that bit of "financial modeling"Geni 00:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually if you think about it, what a hypothetically completed Wikipedia represents is what a substantial portion of people come to the internet for anyway. Search engines only represent a chance to find what you want, while in a "finished" Wikipedia it would be there and be comprehensive. Now we all know we're very far from that, but the point is Wikipedia could eventually outstrip Yahoo, et al if the content here continues to improve. What Wikipedia's traffic limits are is the percentage of web uses that are for seeking reference information. The one's that are for social networking, real time info such as stock quotes, etc are not Wikipedia's potential market. So I don't know what that number is, but it's a substantial portion of web traffic. Of that, what does Yahoo pull in now? I think it's not even a percent of monthly overall internet traffic. This is all pie in the sky, but the point is Wikipedia's potential traffic is well larger than what any other single sites currently have. After the rambling, I disagree with the wording change, because without funding Wikimedia won't be able to support a free Wikipedia, and free is a very powerful motivator that we need to focus in on for bringing in donations. - Taxman Talk 16:45, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Yahoo.com has a daily reach of 296,000 per million, which is 29.6%. Wikipedia's daily reach is 35,550 or 3.56%. In other words, on a typical day, about a third of all people on the Internet visit Yahoo.com and about 3.5% visit Wikipedia. Yet Wikipedia.org is growing much faster than Yahoo.com in terms of reach. So the gap is narrowing. I agree with everything else you said. :) -- mav 18:08, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
29% visit the site according to Alexa's numbers, but those same people also visit many other sites, so Yahoo's share of overall traffic is much less than 29%. In other words the reach numbers for all web sites total many times 100% of internet users. Still I was way off on my guesses for the numbers. Then again, myspace.com has been growing as fast as Wikipedia so far. My overall above point, I stand by though. :) - Taxman Talk 18:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia completely misses out on the social and gameing side of the internet. A lot of material people want is copywriten and it would be pretty hard to create GFDL replacements (music and increasingly films). We are not the best for news which is another large chunck of traffic and we don't cover the weather.Geni 18:53, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
It helps that many of the top-ranked sites are also people's homepages, usually by the program's default (msn.com or google.com/firefox). Maybe we should try creating an equivalent page (something simpler than the Main Page)? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-2 18:58
I don't think that is the type of traffic we want. Anyway anyone who wants wikipedia set as their home page probably already has (if only to pick up extra points in the are you addicted to wikipedia quiz).Geni 20:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

New wording

Since the anonnotice changed, donations have dropped by $2-3,000. Should we try a different wording? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-5 00:33

  • How about we go back to the way it was before? People don't care as much about donating to improve the site as they do donating to keep it around at all. Help keep Wikipedia free was the most accurate and powerful message we could have. That much of a drop in donations is the only reason we need to go back. - Taxman Talk 19:24, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
    • While I do understand others' complaints about this wording, I agree that we should at least try it out to see how it affects donations. Monday (today) should have been our highest day of the week, but now it's looking more like donations are continuing to drop with the less direct wording. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 19:49
    • To be clear, when I referred to a $3000 drop, that was when we switched from Jimbo's personal appeal to the "grow and improve" wording. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 19:53
I disagree with the keep Wikipedia free wording since we'd never allow wikipedia free to become unfree and Jimbo has expressed this several times in the past. There has to be a better way to phrase this that isn't blatantly lying to the readers. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 20:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
How about one of these: "help keep Wikipedia alive/going/operating/running"? It's more accurate and to-the-point than either of the versions currently being debated. Regardless of what is finally chosen, it must be something other than the current version, which is just not cutting it. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 20:50
You can't conclude that since you have changed more than one variable.Geni 21:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
What has been changed besides the wording of the notice? Let's try to be productive here. Which of my suggested alternatives are you alright with, or please make another suggestion. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 21:30
I honestly don't have one but stating that Wikipedia is suddenly not going to be free if you don't donate is beyond deceptive it's outright lying. It's true that Wikipedia will face a budget crunch soon and the prospects aren't good in terms of growth with this current rate of donations but you'll have a hard time convincing me that it's actually accurate to be telling people that wikipedia won't still be free if they don't donate. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 21:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Which version of this sounds alright: "help keep Wikipedia alive/going/operating/running"? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 22:04
Based on the quick and totally insubmissible poll in #wikipedia, everyone who replied favored "running", so I'll go with that for now. Please reply here with suggested changes. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 22:12

Broken?

I noticed that all pages momentarily (for a couple of minutes) had some kind of error or pasrsing on them; that seems to be clear now. However, when viewing while not logged in, the anonnotice appears as a red link, and it goes to a "bad link" warning when clicked. This is a problem that needs to be fixed, unless it's only my computer (I've cleared my cache). Try logging out and tell me what you see. For now, though, I'm going to blank the page so that the red link doesn't appear. Feel free to revert if it's fixed already. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, appears to be fixed. Probably a temporary bug. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

donor fatigue

Looks like it has set in. Anyone want to go and talk to the board?Geni 16:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

  • I wonder when Mav and Brion will implement the Donate button on the sidebar. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-15 01:06
Umm I've got one bottem left.Geni 08:08, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Last we had figures average was below 1000 per day. This is likely to make the next proper fundraiseing drive difficult. Interesting alexa stats suggest that traffic to wikipedia is starting to level off.Geni 17:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes. It's also interesting that gravity makes objects fall. Your point? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-03-23 17:54
There is a reasonable posibilty that it have a negative inpact on the next drive.Geni 19:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Donations could be dropping off for many other reasons. Those could include no clear updates about current budgets including where the money from the last fundraiser has gone and/or is going, and no clear information about how much more is needed. Clarifying those now or adding them into a specific fund drive could completely change the picture. I hear no one claiming donor fatigue on the donations link on the left navigation toolbar. That's always been there. - Taxman Talk 18:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah but it's pretty clear that one always go ignored so is rather a non issue. in any case I don't have donation figures for when it first appeared.Geni 19:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Houston, we have a problem

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The donations link on the sitenotice is causing a problem with the spoken article template. Have a look at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not when logged out and you'll see that the icon is superimposed on the text. Any ideas as to how to fix this? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 07:03, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah convince Brian that the annonotice does more harm than good and get him to remove it since god knows that unless he agrees with removing it then he'll do everything in his power including edit warring over it to keep it in place. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 07:10, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Can I get an answer that does not involve Wiki-politics? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 07:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I've moved the icon down and right to avoid the overlap. Not the best position aesthetically, but certainly better than it was. Just so you know, the position is controlled in {{Spoken Wikipedia}} and {{Spoken Wikipedia boilerplate}}. Dragons flight 07:53, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, that was my fault. I put the speaker where I did so that it was just to the left of the star for featured articles. I didn't notice a problem on any of the pages I looked at, because I was always logged in when I was looking at spoken articles. T J McKenzie 10:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
If you have evidence (beyond conjecture) that this does more "harm" than "good", let me know, but those words are pretty subjective, so right now you could mean almost anything. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-20 14:06

Someone was trying to fix a similar problem with the featured article star by shifting the text over to the left with blank spaces. Maybe you could just add in more nbsp spaces into this notice? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-20 14:04

That would be nice. Is it likely to cause other problems, though? T J McKenzie 03:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
The position of the icon should now be only at {{Spoken Wikipedia boilerplate}}. By the way, its current position conflicts with the line under the title in some browsers. It seems that this will be the case no matter what height we put it at. The only "safe" height appears to be the same height as the featured article star and this notice. T J McKenzie 07:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Blast it!

Check out Equal Protection Clause logged out. The text and the speaker get into a fight and the speaker wins. 68.39.174.238 05:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Correction

"Your continued donations keeps Wikipedia running! " Yonidebest 11:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

"Your donations" is plural, therefore it requires a plural verb. "Keep" is the conjugated plural, third-person verb. Alternately, "Your continuing to donate keeps Wikipedia running" would be correct, but it sounds a million times worse. Jude (talk) 07:05, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
What's wrong with the current one? It is indeed grammatically correct. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 07:07, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
That's what I thought, yeah. Jude (talk) 07:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
The current sentence structure is indeed grammatically correct. There is no reason to change it. --Siva1979Talk to me 03:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Add a few nbsp;s?

Could an admin please add a couple more nbsp;s to the end of this message? That way it won't clash with the Spoken Wikipedia icon. Thanks, TheGrappler 16:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Added 5 now; ALT+160 =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Election notice is bad

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The election notice is not useful to the vast majority of people who are not logged in, and following those links will actually waste their time. This is an internal matter and it is not helpful to the public at large. Such an announcement does not belong in the Anonnotice. Dragons flight 03:25, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

The election is a very important event in the life of the Wikimedia Foundation, and of its constituent members, including English Wikipedia. Many of our contributors do not remain signed in all the time, because they use public computers, or a number of other reasons. It only makes sense that for the English Wikipedia to have a fair voice in the election, that all eligible voters should be made aware of the election. This is yet another instance of people thinking anons have nothing to do with the workings of the encyclopedia. This will also give greater visibility to the existence and functioning of the Foundation, which I think is a good idea. Many people don't understand our structure, or think the Foundation is part of English Wikipedia or something. It's not large or blinking or anything, and if it doesn't apply to people, they will very quickly ignore it. Mak (talk) 03:36, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
The voting process is a very irrelevant to anons since they have no say in it, and we shouldn't be wasting people's time by putting up notices that we know the vast majority of people will want to ignore. (To say nothing of the fact that non-editors substantially outnumber editors.) We have a long history of tailoring the use of site notices to target the relevant constituencies and shouldn't start targeting irrelevant groups now. Also the purpose of the site notice has nothing to do with educating people about how the Foundation works. Dragons flight
You have not responded to my argument that many anons are also contributors who have enough edits to vote in the election in one project or another. I understand not wanting to get anons to ignore all site notices by putting them up all the time, but this really is an important thing for all of Wikimedia. Mak (talk) 03:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe that's true, and even if it were true, I'd consider it a red herring because they are too small a fraction of all anons to justify this. Wikimedia sites get 20,000 requests / second, millions of visitors per month while enwiki has only ~40,000 active editors. Dragons flight 03:57, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I was just asked to come here.. I discovered the election tonight through the anonnotice and would very likely have missed it otherwise. I have many thousands of edits on my enwikipedia account and have voted in the prior elections. I have not voted yet because it will take me time to read all the questions and answers... but I will, thanks to MakWik. Dragon's flight, the fact that you'd like to exclude me, and others like me, who are currently only active editors for a few days at a time every few months makes me both disappointed and angry. --(signing anonymously in solidarity with everyone else currently logged out)72.165.205.173 04:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not trying to exclude you, but rather I'm trying to avoid annoying the literally millions of non-editors who have nothing to gain by being shown a link they are ineligible to use. Dragons flight 04:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I also think it's important for the site's governance to be understood, even if you can't participate in the voting. It might encourage people to be more active, or to sign in when they edit, if they understand that those who do so have a say in the running of the place, not only the ability to edit articles. But this is all aside from my main point, which is that we have a duty to do our due-diligence to make sure all eligible voters are made aware of the voting. Mak (talk) 04:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I would like to point out that I'm eligible to vote from at least two projects, but generally browse Wikimedia projects while not logged in as I am not very active in any of them. I can't imagine that I'm the only person who does this sort of thing. 12.152.208.226 05:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with Dragons Flight here. It's important that we maintain a divide between that which is important to our readers and that which is important to our editors. The Board Election, while an important event for all of Wikimedia, is a "behind the scenes" process, one that truly matters only to our editors and not to our readers. The vast majority of our readers will not give a damn about the board election, especially since they are ineligible to partake in the voting process. Granted there are some anons who have accounts and are also prolific editors; however, they are most certainly in the minority. As DF stated, we have millions of visitor's per day and only about 40,000 active editors--there is no point annoying all of our readers to the benefit of getting a handful of additional voters. Additionally, the secure server, which is being used for the board election, can not support much of a load at all--most certainly not the load of even a relatively small fraction of our anonymous editors--and I'd hate to see voting come to a crashing halt when the server is overloaded as the result of too many ineligible users following this link. For this reason, as well as the others I mention, I'm going to remove the message for now, and I would strongly advise against reinstating it until all of these points are addressed. AmiDaniel (talk) 19:07, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Quick retraction: Boardvote is not being run off of bart, as I originally asserted, but rather through our new SLI server. Additionally, basic eligibility checks--such as "is this user logged in?"--are running locally before forwarding to the SLI. As such the additional load produced by such a link would be minimal. My other points still stand, and I still am opposed to the inclusion of this message. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Note that this is in no way "our" server; it is being run the servers of a neutral third party, Software in the Public Interest. Jon Harald Søby 01:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

This is so unobtrusive it will hardly annoy anyone. Moreover, I can easily see this being useful: I'm a contributor eligible to vote, who's not currently actively contributing with my mine account. I'm browsing one day and see this. Useful, no? Blimey, I can think of zillions of people like that. I even know some IRL. Hell, if the machine's broken, fix it. Moreschi Talk 21:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

However, this is an extremely small minority of the people who will see this message, which everyone here would be a member of. For any anons who follow this, it wastes time (I recall seeing at least one complaint), and causes confusion as well as cluttering the page. Therefore, this should not be included here. Prodego talk 22:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey guys, here's an idea which I'm sure you all are totally incapable of doing. How about you all stop edit warring, grow up, and make yourselves useful by leaving the damn thing alone? It would be nice of you all to agree with each other rather than abusing your tools, but that's clearly never going to happen. Maybe you all can even prove to be friendly and professional for a change. That will be the day I can bend over backwards. Pilotguy 16:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that this message is displayed thousands of times a second. While not having it up poses no problem, since the election will last a while yet, displaying it has the possiblity of confusing tens of thousands of people. Prodego talk 21:32, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
This message is posted personally, and not on behalf of the Election Committee. I prefer that the site notice about the election stay up throughout the active voting period. I'm gravely concerned about doing anything that would keep potential voters from being aware of the election, and since the sitenotice is one of our main tools to get that word out, removing it keeps potential voters from knowing. My very strong (again, personal) preference is that sitenotice message about the election should stay live. - Philippe | Talk 21:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Philippe, you are aware that the site notice at Mediawiki:Sitenotice is the one shown to editors and the message is still there, right? We are talking about the Anonnotice shown to millions of non-editors. Dragons flight 21:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Quite aware. I'm also very aware that I don't stay logged in, and the anon-notice is helpful to me. - Philippe | Talk 19:56, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion the anonnotice should not have a note about the election. As has already been asserted, there are literaly millions of people for whom this doesn't mean squat, and to whom it is only annoying. Sure, there is a small handfull of users who are eligible to vote who find out about the elections this way, but I believe that does not outweigh the downsides to it. The notice should of course be kept in the Sitenotice, but not in the Anonnotice. Jon Harald Søby 01:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Only established users are eligible to vote, and 99% of them is logged in anyway. This message is just annoying for anons. Just remove the voting thing. SalaSkan 13:49, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. We know that other language wikis had a spike in votes when they added it to the anon notice. Believe it or not, a lot of our sporadic editors who are eligible to vote don't stay logged in all the time. Many people don't use the "remember my login" options, especially those who share their computers with others, especially children. These people still need to be informed about the election. Also, I consider it rather ridiculous that some of you are acting like it is our job to be as unobtrusive as possible. It's not. The encyclopedia only exists because the Foundation is running things and keeping the server bills paid. If some of our readers learn more about the Foundation by this notice then that is a good thing. I don't understand the mindset that we should just keep them in the dark, and that they should use this encyclopedia like a black box without ever knowing where it came from or how it is being sustained. --Cyde Weys 16:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

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It needs to be moved up or over:

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

It covers up templates like {{sprotected2}} and others that occur up there. It would be fine if it was below the line but on top of the line it messes a lot up. Look at the top of this page to see what I mean. (this is what it looks like from an annons POV.) --Darkest Hour|DarkeBot 17:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Note: the code is inside <pre> now since the issue seems to be resolved already. Remove <pre> and use Preview button to see how it looked ∴ Alex Smotrov 22:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
<div style="position:absolute; z-index:100; right:37px; top:5px;" class="metadata" id="donate">''<small>Your [[m:Fundraising|continued donations]] keep Wikipedia running!</small>''</div>

<div style="position:absolute; z-index:100; right:25px; top:8px; height:10px; width:300px;"></div>
<div style="position:absolute; z-index:100; right:54px; top:8px;" class="metadata" id="administrator"><div style="position:relative; width:18px; height:18px; overflow:hidden;"><div style="position:absolute; font-size:18px; overflow:hidden; line-height:18px; letter-spacing:18px;">[[Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy|<span title="This {{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}
|=article
|Talk=talk page
|Category=category
|Category talk=category talk page
|Help=help page
|Help talk=help talk page
|Image=Image
|Image talk=Image talk page
|Portal=portal
|Portal talk=portal talk page
|Template=template
|Template talk=template talk page
|User=user page
|User talk=user talk page
|Wikipedia=project page
|Wikipedia talk=project talk page
}} is semi-protected." style="text-decoration:none;">   </span>]]</div>[[Image:Padlock.svg|18px|This {{#switch:{{NAMESPACE}}
|=article
|Talk=talk page
|Category=category
|Category talk=category talk page
|Help=help page
|Help talk=help talk page
|Image=Image
|Image talk=Image talk page
|Portal=portal
|Portal talk=portal talk page
|Template=template
|Template talk=template talk page
|User=user page
|User talk=user talk page
|Wikipedia=project page
|Wikipedia talk=project talk page
}} is semi-protected.]]</div>
</div></div>
Yes, I'd agree with you (and the section above, which is asking the same thing), so I've placed {{editprotected}} here. This needs to be moved substantially to the left as long as Wikipedia continues to use CSS hacks to put things in the top-right corner. --ais523 18:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Can you post this on WP:VPT? This is an extremely visible part of the interface, and it isn't something that should be subject to a sandbox treatment. Let's get it right the first time around. Titoxd(?!?) 19:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Hi there,

Is it just my computer, or is the link "continued donations" NOT clickable on internet explorer 6.0 in general? Firefox, opera, and others work, but IE... :-( Fantasy 18:44, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I can confirm the issue in IE6 on Windows 2000. IE6 still seems to have approx. one third of total userbase, so this needs to be resolved. You can experiment by running IE6, getting Anonnotice source, pasting it into any other page and doing Preview.
This seems to be some quirks in IE6: if you simply do document.getElementById('p-cactions').style.border = 'medium none' the link suddenly becomes clickable again.
P.S. Somebody please archive this talk page ∴ Alex Smotrov 22:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
For the record, IE 7 on XP is working for me, so if there is a problem it would appear to be fairly specific. Dragons flight 23:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Except IE6 is extremely widely used, possibly the most widely used browser. This is probably not true among editors, but readers are usually less technically adept. It is extremely important this works in IE6, and I recommend this be reverted immediately, as we are no doubt losing donations. Prodego talk 20:15, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I can also confirm that the previous version does not work in IE6. --- RockMFR 21:05, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
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Ten things you didn't know about Wikipedia

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Why on earth does that need to be on every page?Geni 23:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I like it there. It is important for people to be informed about the encyclopedia. Too many news reporters report incorrect things about Wikipedia and too many people are unaware of basic principles of Wikipedia, such as the fact that it exists in multiple languages, is free (as in speech, and not as in beer), and is a not-for-profit organization. —METS501 (talk) 23:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Annonotice is not the place to communicate with news reporters. Fails KISS principle big time.Geni 00:00, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't care if it is there or not, but I reverted that, it is breaking IE6 (again). Prodego talk 00:02, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Your revert is causing the text to get overlapped by the FA star, and other such article icons. Did you actually test it in IE6? Earlier today I had three people confirm that the text worked fine in IE6, two of them confirmed the old text did not work for them. --Gmaxwell 00:14, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to to see go back once the IE6 issue is worked out. Mets501 summarizes it pretty well and it's not like it's intrusive or anything. -- John Reaves 00:21, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, tested it a few minutes ago. The "continued donations" text was behind the article tab, and none of the links were clickable. In addition it screwed up the main page. I don't mind the link, just breaking IE I mind. It is still one of the most popular web browsers. Prodego talk 00:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I cannot confirm any sort of malfunction under IE 6 from this end. Prodego, my guess is you have some sort of interface mods installed that are screwing things up. The version you reverted to tries to display links behind FA icons and the like, which is broken in all browsers. --Cyde Weys 00:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any graphical modifications installed for IE. However, I discovered that text size affects the page in IE. In some sizes, the link is clickable if you click the very bottom of the text, and the alignment is ok. But other sizes the link is not clickable, and the alignment is behind the tabs. Prodego talk 00:28, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, Prodego is right. I think that the link should be there, but the new format breaks when you enlarge the text size (such as on my grandparent's monitor, because they have the text set REALLY big. —METS501 (talk) 01:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Ah ha! It seems our problem is described here. This should be easy to fix. --Gmaxwell 01:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I also confirm what Prodego described: in IE6 the new version (with 2 links) only looks okay with "smallest" font size, with fundrasing click is a bit difficult to click; four other font sizes hide the link behind tabs. I'm not sure what kind of HTML is accepted in Anonnotice, maybe we could use IE Condional comments? Also note the the developers already use that approach to call IE60Fixes.css ∴ Alex Smotrov 01:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Spent a while on this. It is, indeed, the IE6 bug I linked to above. The issue is that IE6 mishandles z-index for nested containers. So if you have a div inside a low z-index div you can never be higher than the z-index of something outside of that div whos parent is any higher than the low z-index div... 0_o blah blah. It's stupid and broken.

So there are some workaround on the web, but none of them work for nesting more than one level deep. Which is what we have. The only way to fix this is to actually put the anon-notice in a different part of the page. Using site JS to accomplish this was my first idea, but I dismissed it because it produces an additional JS dependence. It was then pointed out to me that the anon-notice is already injected via JS, so that search engines don't index it. So thats what has been done, the donations link is now part of the site JS and not part of the anon notice anymore. It's perfectly clickable in IE6.

If anyone sees any layout problems, please leave a note. Thanks! --Gmaxwell 03:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

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Two continued donations message?

Why are there two donations messages? The one next to the *10 things list* is interfering with the main page so that it overlaps with the portals. Both links are clickable in IE6 for me. --Hdt83 Chat 05:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I would say that your browser received a mix of old and new special pages, simply pressing Ctrl-F5 to "refresh" should fix that ∴ Alex Smotrov 13:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Because of the movement of the notice back to the top it's going to be doing this again today. The issue will go away on its own. --Gmaxwell 21:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Side effect

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This is having an unfortunate side effect of appearing in all Google searches. Wikipedia results now start "Please read Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's personal appeal. ... " before giving any details about the topic. I think this is a significant problem. violet/riga (t) 20:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Whatever we place in there will also be on Google. Jimbo seemed to like it, as his name now has more hits than Jesus and the Beatles combined :) — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-25 20:36
  • The only thing I can think of to solve this is to turn it into a picture. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-25 20:38
  • According to Brion, it can also be done with javascript. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-25 20:40
    • You know we could just do what de,fr,pl,ja,it,sv,nl,pt and es (ie all the other ones around the centeral globe) have done.Geni 23:55, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I don't think it's really a problem. It's just more advertising for us, and really it's something Google needs to fix, not us (at least, that was the opinion the devs shared when I talked to them). — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 00:16
        • I am holding my tongue on what I think of the recent decisions regarding this and the sitenotice by you and your fellow devs lest I get blocked for WP:NPA but I'll leave it to say that you guys are stuck in your own little world since very few people support your arbitary decisions both on this notice and on the sitenotice and you seem fit to push it on everyone with zero approval by lording the fact that your a dev over us. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 01:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Since it's something we did, IMO it's something we should fix - at least as far as not having it show up in Google results. That's counterproductive. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 01:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I would remove it once and for all and be done with it but I know for a fact that I would be reverted if I did so since some people can't stand the thought of not having a notice stating that Jimbo is begging for money on the main page. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 01:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I have deleted the notice at least until it can be fixed since it is clearly broken especially since it's currently showing up in google results before the actual content which is clearly harmful. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 01:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Google doesn't update their index every day. There was no need to delete the notice; if something needs to be done, it can be done before Google updates. In case you've forgotten the people who supported this, I'll copy it above for you. See #Anon-only_version. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:08
Problem is that google doesn't spider the whole site in one go. The result is the longer it is up there the worse the situation gets. See [2] where it hasn't hit yet and [3] where it has.Geni 02:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to go along with Mav and say that this really isn't that big of a deal, and certainly not a pressing problem. Even Jimbo knows about it and had nothing negative to say. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 03:24

Ideas on how to fix this

I figure that instead of just complaining the constructive thing would be to think up ideas on how to fix this. The ones so far:

  • Picture
  • Javascript

JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:12, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Thank you for finally trying to work this out. I've asked Lupin and LockeCole about javascript. The only problem with a picture would be that it wouldn't scale like text does. According to the devs, we should be telling Google to ignore it; they (avar, brion, etc) say that it is Google's problem, not ours. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:16
  • I see that Geni appears to believe this is yet another chance (YAC) to go on a blanking spree, as was done with Anthere and Mav repeated times before. Just an observation. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:21
    • Sorry about my use of rollback. A bit trigger happy :) — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:25
    • Well you know how it is. The minutes of the meeting still are not online. We do have something though [4]. Of course the report of the Financial committee wont turn up until 11 February so it is open to question if the minutes of the meeting will be of significance to this issue.Geni 02:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
        • We have the opinions of several of the people that were in that meeting already. A few of them are above in #Anon-only_version. That's why Anonnotice was created. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:32
    • Brian, believe me when I tell you that I am tempted to revert you and to keep it blanked since unless Jimbo or the board states otherwise the wiki isn't going to end tommorow just because we don't have this notice but our ability to get google results that people will actually follow to wikipedia is immediately hampered by the fact that people are getting crap when they see a wikipedia result on their google search. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
      • You just said above that you were going to work on discussing it. Now, suddenly, you want to revert and screw discussion? I've talked to several people about fixing this. How many have you talked to? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:32
      • I would rather figure this out with the notice intact than to blank the notice and lose a potential $4000/day. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:34
You misunderstand me, I'm not going to revert you, at least not until we can try to fix it first if that fails then yes I will unless you can prove an impending financial crisis. I am willing to discuss fixing this but you seem to have some thought that the wiki will fail if we have this down for one second even if it is totally fucking up google results. JtkieferT | C | @ ----
Could you give me a search term that would show this fuck up? I Googled a few terms within en.wikipedia.org and did not see anything odd. Google generates a lot of traffic for us, so we should try to fix things in a way where we keep the message and Google searches remain useful. --mav 03:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Try [5]. Dragons flight 03:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
To be fair, those a terms in the index for which the message was included in the page cache. In many cases, the search blurb associated with one of those pages will not actually show the appeal comment. Instead it may choose to highlight some other section of the page. I don't have any good sense of how often the appeal is showing up in the blurbs. Dragons flight 03:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I just had a thought, will mediawiki allow us to use a meta tag or equivalent coding to stop google from indexing that one element? JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I looked through the Google documentation and didn't find any provision for hiding text from them. Which makes sense since they want to pages in their index to appear as they do to readers, so as to avoid various optimization hacks. Dragons flight 03:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The text has long been hidden from google via javascript. This discussion is dead. :) --Gmaxwell 21:12, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

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Rotate different messages daily

It is a well known fact in advertising that displays exactly the same message over and over again will eventually lead those who view that message start to ignore it. I therefore propose that we think of and figure out the best way to rotate a growing set of different messages. Also, some of these messages need not, IMO, all be modeled on a simple reminder/plea. Even some relevant quotes (esp from past donors) might be good.

Rotating messages may be possible right now by using the same template trick used to rotate Featured Articles/Selected anniversaries on the Main Page. There will likely be a cache issue but I think that will work in our favor since it may result in anons periodically seeing a different message at the top of pages the same day they visit. --mav 15:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Please add your suggestions below. Anything in [brackets] indicate a link to the donation page.

Annonnotice message ideas

General

  1. [Make a donation today] to support Wikipedia!
    Help us provide free content to the world by [donating today]!
    Think Free! [Support Wikipedia]
Explanation: Paraphrase of Apple's 'Think Different' ad campaign
  1. Invest in free knowledge. [Donate to Wikipedia]!
    Help us improve Wikipedia by supporting it financially. Please [donate today]
    Help us make the Internet not suck! [Support Wikipedia].
Explanation: Paraphase of Jimmy Wales famous "We make the Internet not suck" statement.
Pros: Edgy and funny
Cons: Might be too edgy and not appropriate for younger childern.
  1. Get Wiki with it! [Donate to Wikipedia]
Cons: Outdated slang term now known only for its relation to a Will Smith song.

Donor comments

A second line in small font would give credit for comments

  1. "Wikipedia is what the Internet was intended for." Please, [donate today!]
Explanation: Paraphrase of comment by Ned Miles in the Day 1 of Q4 2005 fund drive
  1. "Wikipedia is a revolution so large it is difficult to comprehend." [Support it today]
Explanation: Comment by Louis Mackall on Day 1 of Q4 2005 fund drive
  1. "Wikipedia has saved my academic career so many times! Thank You!" Please, [donate today]
Explanation: Comment by anonymous donor on Day 1 of Q4 2005 fund drive
  1. "Wikipedia is better for my brain than 10 Frappucinos!" Please, [make a donation]
Explanation: Paraphrase of comment by anonymous donor on Day 2 of Q4 2005 fund drive
  1. "For my children." Please consider [donating today]
Explanation: Comment by Asa Canaway on Day 3 of Q4 2005 fund drive
  1. "Wikipedia gives me renewed faith in humanity." [Donate today]
Explanation: Comment by anonymous donor on Day 3 of Q4 2005 fund drive

.... More help needed on listing the best of past donor comments. See Wikimedia:Fund drives/2004/Q4, Wikimedia:Fund drives/2005 and http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/

Feedback on the idea

I think this is a great idea. :-)
James F. (talk) 14:23, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! --mav
Here's some related discussion. I'm all for rotation. If the order of the messages is randomized, rotation should even allow for measurement of the effectiveness of the messages. Presumably we should show the more effective ones more often and vice versa.Jeremy Tobacman 08:38, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
This message is almost certain to be cached really agressively, from my experience with MediaWiki messages, which implies that it would probably need an adminbot to edit it every day and/or null edit it to update any templates that might be there. --ais523 14:20, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea.

The notice is now injected in via common.js. The notice has long been injected using javascript in order to avoid its text showing up in Google, but now that it is added via common JS we have a lot more flexibility in doing things like randomization with no worries about caching interaction. We can also adjust the link so that each different message uses a slightly different URL to reach the fundraising page, this way we could look at the logs and see which message is most effective. I'd also recommend that rather than showing a different one every day, we instead show all of them to different users and have the permutation change daily. That is, today you see message 1, I see message 2.. tomorrow I see 1 and I see 2. This will get us faster data on the messages, and it avoids the issue of some messages under-performing based on getting a bad day of the week. We could also just make the display purely random.

I propose we start with these messages:

Any support or objections to those options? I think they are mostly similar in character to the current notice, so they should be good starting points. --Gmaxwell 21:36, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good, let's do it. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with even more variant forms of the same basic message. --Cyde Weys 22:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

 Done Feedback anyone? —METS501 (talk) 01:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Probably not the feedback you expected, but I think preliminary testing should be done in one's monobook.js, not "live" in global Common.js ∴ Alex Smotrov 03:39, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I definitely agree. But unfortunately I had tested it with GreaseMonkey, it had worked, and then when I went to add it to common.js I made a couple of superficial changes which I then made errors adding :-) Sorry. —METS501 (talk) 04:57, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Wow - seems to work really well. Is there a limit to the number of possible messages? Is it randomized? Would it be possible to track click throughs to measure the effectiveness of each message? --mav 05:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Yep, it's 100% random which message is displayed. I think Mindspillage is setting up some way of tracking click-throughs; I'll let her report on that though. —METS501 (talk) 06:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
No limit to the number of messages. We will be able to get some data on which messages are being clicked, yes. --Gmaxwell 06:38, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Clashes with not-unreasonably long titles

Such as, for instance Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, which is not so long that it ought to need a dispensation. Advertising walking on content is <optimal. Splash - tk 23:35, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

This notice is really obnoxious. Not only does it interfere with longer than usual titles, it also interferes with userlinks at the top of user pages and items on talk pages, such as the time on Talk:Main Page. Is it really necessary to have "Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!" two places at the top of the page? It's already above every article; it seems really unnecessary to have it to the right of every article title as well. 68.17.169.142 15:50, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Splash's issue is a result of the anon notice being two lines long. The anonnotice should never be made two lines long because the space provided is only enough for a single line. The anonnotice was made two lines long as the result of an apparent misunderstanding. The anonnotice has been corrected.
68.17.169.142's complaint of duplicate donation requests is a result of seeing an old cached copy of the anonnotice. This is a technical artifact from our aggressive caching for anon users interacting with the movement of the donation notice back to the top and will go away in a couple of hours, or as soon as whatever page you are seeing is purged. There is no easy way for us to avoid a few hours of duplication, which is why care and consideration should be used before moving the notice off the top of the page. --Gmaxwell 20:58, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

This is not fixed. I just logged out, cleared my cache, and the text collision is a problem with long titles or narrow windows. Can we please move this down to the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line, to avoid the collision? ←BenB4 09:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Random message

I like it, but does this affect caching at all? Ral315 » 07:33, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Not at all. If it did the site would be down right now.. very very down. :) --Gmaxwell 07:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
The servers send all the messages to each computer (so as not to interfere with caching), and the user's computers are told to pick one at random for themselves. (Nothing appears if Javascript is off.) --ais523 14:05, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
It should also be noted that the notices are in common.js, it's loaded as a seperate object... so a user will usually only download one copy per browsing session, so this doesn't add overhead on every page load. --Gmaxwell 00:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

&bull?

Whats with the &bull at the end of that message? Looks like a typo where you meant to put a bullet. 71.112.225.88 08:53, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

It was a typo; I noticed it independently and fixed it. --ais523 13:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

This looks crap

Do we seriously need rotating messages telling people stuff they don't particularly need to know? Like "Interested in contributing to Wikipedia?". These notices have even less utility than those clickable banner ads someone set up for user pages: "Interested in the UK? Then join Wikiproject UK!"

To accommodate this gimmick, the donation beg has now been moved to the top row, above the tabs. It looks terrible, and only adds to what I call the "patchwork quilt" which the Monobook skin has become with too many people adding little things here and here.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, the two anon notices are the only parts of the Monobook skin which consistently break when you set your browser to a high text size (though not, farcically, Internet Explorer 7, which zooms very well). I only have to zoom to 170% in Opera full screen at 1024x768 for overlap to occur with the newly-positioned donation beg and the sign in link. In Firefox 2, going up 3 text sizes in a maximised window similarly causes overlap. These are not ridiculous text sizes, and are frequently used by people with poor vision to browse the internet. - Mark 12:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Lets see. The donation notice was moved to the top because many people think it is better there. The addition of the reader education messages was something separate. Donations are up 50% month over month since the move of the notice moved up to the top although, of course, more data is needed yet to pin the actual cause of the donations increase. Rotation appears to also be an effective fundraising research tool: preliminary data shows the most clicked message is clicked 5-7 times more frequently than the least clicked.
The overlap didn't occur even at 3 steps size increase in firefox at the prior notice font size. We could shrink the notice back, but I'm fairly confident that we can prevent the overlap even at the current size by adjusting the page so that there is a single block element which contains the sign in button and the donation notice, so that there is a line wrap when they intersect. I need to do some testing first, however. --Gmaxwell 14:31, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I copied this from the Wikipedia:Village Pump (technical) where I wrote it, not knowing how to find this page.
Hi, if this is not the right place to discuss these, could someone point me in the right direction. For those who spend their entire time logged into Wikipedia, and thus wont have seen these; when you view Wikipedia anonymously, two sets of links appear at the top of the page. The first, at the very top right is a subtle link to the Wikimedia donations page, which is understandable; The second is a list of Wikipedia Essays and Help Pages and it appears at the top of the article space on the left. I would like to propose the removal of these left-hand links from Wikipedia:
  • They are scruffy, aligned to a random position at the top of the title bar, in a smaller, slanted font which is hard to read.
  • They are irritating, just like Google adverts, but not even targeted, and also repetitious.
  • They are inconsistent, The two essays in the list are targeted at semi-wikiholics, whilst the four help pages are targeted at new users.
  • They are hacked in, added by Javascript in an absolutely positioned div, which unsurprisingly makes the occasional mistakes, resulting in a garbled mess.
If the consensus is that Wikipedia is improved by these links, could they please be rendered tidily and legibly, targeted at a specific audience, and dismissable. Also, a few more than seven links would make it seem as though there was a point to this exercise; just because we have the technical ability to do something like this, does not make it a good idea.Conrad.Irwin 19:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Two messages vs. one

Firstly, I think it's a good idea to experiment with the ways we can use our website for messaging. A recent press report already cited the WP:10T page, for example, which I assume it is due to being featured here.

My subjective impression of the two messages is that they make pages look more cluttered and a bit amateurish. The "tip" message is also very close to the page title when it's very long.

I therefore think it would make sense to merge the two messages into one. The message above the tabs seems to be reasonably clean (though we need to make sure it doesn't overlap at low resolutions). Why not have the "tips" appear with about 10% to 20% frequency among the donation messages?

I also think merging the messages would be clever for another reason: If the donation message is always about donations and never particularly helpful, people are more likely to simply phase it out. If we occasionally show useful bits of information there, we encourage readers to keep scanning that particular part of the screen.--Eloquence* 15:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

That seems to be logical. The more interesting stuff they see in a space, the more likely they are going to look (and click) there in future. - Mark 16:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Once I'm comfortable with the testing I've done with local data storage I was planning on introducing rotation that causes a user not to see a message again for a span of time after they've clicked on it. The same functionality could be use to avoid showing duplicate messages for users. Before we make any more changes to the donation notice I'd prefer we wait a few days so we get a full week of data on the donation click through rates... Then we'll be able to make objective decisions about the effectiveness of any particular strategy. --Gmaxwell 18:17, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Will that rotation use cookies? ←BenB4 23:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I hope not! I have set mine to reject all cookies and I don't want to have that happen. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 03:19, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

<span/>

I cannot check this at the moment, but I remember that <span/> caused some page appearance issues for Opera 8, and in another project we had to replace it with <span style="display:none"></span> —AlexSm 07:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I checked and the <span/> does break the page for Opera 8.5 (can be downloaded at http://arc.opera.com/pub/opera/win/850/en/) in monobook skin: logo is missing, user and actions portlets on top are missing, there is a huge gap between "interaction" and "toolbox" portlets on the left. —AlexSm 14:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I switched <span/> to <p></p>. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

crowded up there

Hi,

currently there are three messages being displayed on top: Registration for Wikimania, just on top of that (and almost on the same space, for my pc a very ugly layout) " Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia " and finally all on top, on the same height as the login button, a small text about donations. Could we please get rid temporarily of the " Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia " until the Wikimania notice is gone? Right now it doesn't look too charming imho... effeietsanders 09:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I've disabled the Wikimania notice for anons. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:09, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Why? They're members of the community too...
James F. (talk) 22:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Of course. But it was far too crowded with banners. I consulted with Cbrown and a few others, and after the Wikimania notice had been up for a week, I took it down for anons. Ideally, the anon tips (i.e., "Ten things," etc.) will be merged with the donation banner eventually (the beginning of June-ish) and there will be a bit more breathing room. The other issue with having the anonnotice active for long periods of time is that it causes serious issues with page layout. Icons are pushed down, text overlaps, etc. If you strongly feel that anons should see the notice again, feel free to simply blank the MediaWiki message (that will cause the sitenotice to be shown to everyone). --MZMcBride (talk) 20:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Talknotice

There is a proposal here to create a talknotice, a dismissible notice displayed on all talk pages, for community announcements. Your input is requested there. Cenarium (talk) 19:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

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