Wikipedia talk:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements/Archive 1

Archive 1

Free.

If Wikipedia had advertisements, it would no longer be a free encyclopedia, but one you paid for by looking at ads. ^HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The "free encyclopedia" isn't about money (that it's gratis is a side effect), but means "no significant legal restriction relative to people's freedom to use, redistribute and modify the content" - free content. With ads a number of regular editors will leave and fork WP - tho we'll have to niche (maybe like Citizendium but without CZ's ads) because I don't think anyone can compete with the brand those same editors have helped give WP. -- Jeandré, 2007-03-04t11:06z

Would these people really leave over that? They don't sound like the most loyal people... Perhaps the ability to turn off the adverts would sway them? Jack · talk · 17:54, Sunday, 4 March 2007

See Spanish Wikipedia. The unloyal ones feel that being loyal to a foundation that does a bait and switch would be unethical. -- Jeandré, 2007-03-06t18:52z

It's pretty much sad that there's such strong opposition to ads on wikipedia. To me seems a perfectly valid way to gather resoureces, that could, along with donations, make wikipedia much better. I think that along with just paying what is currently paid solely with donations, perhaps it could grow somewhat larger, such as, having servers for download of WP in a sort of offline version on a CD or DVD. I think that something similar to it already exists, but that would benefit from that too, schools could have WP on their PCs, even if there's no access to the internet, or at least, minimizing the bandwidth, both for the school or institution, and for WP servers. To me the opposition of ads looks way too much ideological (I say that in a pejorative sense), as if it would be better to stick with silly "fundamentalistic" ideals of "free" content/use at the expense of not bringing wikipedia's wonderful content to more people, and more reliably. If I were a millionaire I'd build a self-updating mirror of wikipedia, and put ads within it, to achive the same effect, hehe. Even donating part to the "real" wikipedia. --Extremophile 20:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

We are all free to donate to Wikipedia now too. Furthermore, so we all should, because that's the way we have to support Wikipedia. If ads were involved, on the other hand, then many potential Wikipedians would be unwilling to contribute to it, because it's less tempting to support something partly commercialized than something completely non-profit. Would you, without any payment in return, contribute to e.g. McDonald's or the Coca-Cola company? Even if the product might taste good, it's not enough. Ads take a step in that direction. Thus, even if ads in the short-term might speed up Wikipedia, they will inevitably in the long-term slow it down, because less people will contribute to it. Mikael Häggström 05:08, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

There needs to be a bit of a paradigm shift. Contributing to Wikipedia with edits and new content would be a far better service to humanity with ads than without. Each new page or additional information would quite directly contribute to the funds that allow Wikipedia to do what it does, and expand its humanitarian efforts. This is the meme that should be out there, with the accompanying policies to enforce it: an ad-enabled Wikipedia would let you donate in a very real way to a good cause even if your specialty in life is something like 1970s action films. Editing an ad-enabled Wikipedia would be an altruistic effort, not one that lines the pocket of "some corporation". 68.4.202.68 (talk) 19:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I understand the ads are supposed to improve Wikipedia. However, this is going to affect mainly the technical aspects of Wikipedia, like reducing the downtime. The true value of Wikipedia is in the contributions, and keeping as many people as possible willing to contribute. I can imagine ads have a potential to discourage some people from contributing, and that is a loss that cannot be compensated by the money won. 204.104.55.242 (talk) 17:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Spyware/Adware

Another topic it would be interesting to have discsussed here is the impact of Spyware and Adware authors like these guys: http://www.nebuad.com/ and whether or not any users currently see ads on the Wikipedia because of them. What impact does adware have on the Wikipedia, and is it possible to measure the number of Wikipedians affected? Certainly relevant to discuss those users already seeing ads in this essay. MrZaius^talk 16:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it'd be a great idea

The ads should only be on the main page, on the blank space on the left nav bar, which would not get in the way of anyone's actions at Wiki. It would allow for more servers to be purchased, or whatever else Wikipedia is in need of, and due to the massive amount of site traffic, revenue would be tremendous. But ads should not appear anywhere on any article page, no matter if they're related to the article or not. Miles Blues 05:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I think ads would be okay. I would suggest something akin to Uncyclopedia, which uses Google ads in standard colours. --ŴôôD ẼĿF 18:18, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

My own thoughts on this...

Wait, after hearing of only administrators can turn off ads, doesn't this remind you of George Orwell's book 1984? Only members of the inner party can turn off their telescreens. Everybody else is forced to leave them on 24/7. Just want you to know. -Uagehry456talk 18:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, now we know your opinion. That is a very minor detail which would be need to be worked out only after implementing the design. Discussing the idea as a whole would be much more productive 82.16.7.63 22:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Keep the ads highlighted

Wikipedia must not turn into a click collector. If you keep the ads in standard Monobook colours, people will click them accidentally. That would poison Wikipedia. If the background of ads were a different colour, people will only click them when they intend to. Whether ads need to be clickable is another question entirely, of course... Spamsara 03:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that it's not risky unless the ads come blended within the article's text, which is not they way it is intended to be. Think of the ads that come with the google's results, aligned at the right side of the page; I think that it the right column on WP had, below the "navigation", "interaction", "search" and "toolbox" frames, another one with the title "Sponsored ads", it would hardly fool someone to think that its contents are some wikipedia result or anything else than ads. --Extremophile 20:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh no!

This text (Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements) is already written like advertisment. May I come up with some conspiracy theory?: Is this idea from somebody who himself wants to make money from Wikipedia's traffic?
No, please; fuck of with that!
Next thing is that we rewrite some articles to please the advertiser (like it already happens in big newspapers), or what? (“think of the revenue!”) – I think Wikipedia's success is based on a quite different philosophy!

(Speck-Made (talk) just had to express its anger about this sh**... around 22:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC))

Categories for discussion

Please see:

• Wikipedia:User categories for discussion#Wikimedia and advertising --Timeshifter (talk) 16:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That discussion is now archived here:

Wikipedia:User categories for discussion/Archive/December 2007#Wikimedia and advertising --Timeshifter (talk) 07:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Optional advertising

Just adding my support for optional advertisements. Should be easy to implement (mess with the ucp a bit, and the styles, but thats OK!) and it won't affect anyone who doesn't want it to. Also, use of an "off the shelf" ad network like google adsense would considerably lower the work needed.

I would volunteer to help with this project. I understand that wikipedia is free, and free it should be. But those who wish to help wikipedia (and have no money (!)) should be able to. All the income that wikipedia forks are making from copying content and dumping adsense proves that advertising still works.

As to a few anticipated problems: I don't think google adsense would be pleased with this scheme because those who wish to "help" wikipedia would be more likely to participate in click fraud. If you need some kind of ad network, php ones are available (phpadsnew) or you can create a bespoke one for wikimedia. Also, a CPM vs CPC model would probably be better for mitigating click fraud.

Again I stress that there cannot possibly be any opposition to this: only those who want to view ads would. I can understand concerns about performance, but the revenue gained would easily overcome that barrier.

Feel free to comment/discuss here or on my talk page. --Gigitrix (talk) 23:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Please spell out CPM and CPC. I am not sure exactly what you are talking about. I don't think click fraud would be a serious problem. I am sure Google AdSense already takes that into account in the many places it is used. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

So ACME inc. pays wikipedia $1M a year to run ads for its products, however ACME inc has been secretly dumping waste into "The cute & furry animal reserve" but someone finds out, and soon it is splashed all over the media. Ever vigilant to document history, wikipedians flock to add this information into the encyclopaedia (appropriately referenced). However it transpires that ACME inc provides an ultimatum to wikipedia, lock the article or we pull $1M of funding and slap a lawsuit of great expense and dubious grounding upon you. Wiki has grown to the point where it has become dependant upon funding from ACME.

Worse still would be a situation where it transpires that a few well-intentioned but ethically lax admins have been tilting articles in favour of the company in order to gain favour from ACME as there are rumours that ACME is not getting the return from its investment that ACME had hoped for.

Advertisments are NPOV, biased and contain unverifiable claims, this should NOT be in an encyclopaedia that claims to be free/libre.

Again another bad thing would be if a group of users decided that since wiki has decided to support advertising and think "stuff this, we will simply rip the content, as its GDFL, and make a "Librepedia" website instead, dividing the editing community in two and stunting the development of the articles as most editors time is spent comparing articles between the two (or three or four, depending upon how many people splinter off, however usually only one or two groups survive a fork....) User A1 (talk) 11:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

By using an ad service like Google AdSense we would not have problems like the Acme one. Google Adsense has a large variety of advertisers, and Wikipedia/Wikimedia would not be dependent on any one advertiser. Who cares if one advertiser out of thousands bails out? Or even dozens bailing out. There are always plenty more who would want to advertise on Wikipedia.

There would have to be lots of discussion before an optional ad system were implemented. Until most people are satisfied enough with it, then it should not be implemented. Precisely to avoid the "Librepedia" problem previously mentioned.

As for advertisements being POV, biased and containing unverifiable claims, I agree. We could solve that problem by putting a notice above the ad section to that effect. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

But what if Acme Inc were google? Wiki would be dependant upon a good POV of adsense. You haven't solved the problem, but rather shuffled it from the ad content to the ad supplier. User A1 (talk) 01:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Are there examples of Google using AdSense to pressure anybody? Why would they want to do so? There are other ad consolidators besides Google. So it is the same solution as with individual advertisers trying to pressure us. We move to another ad consolidator. We play them off against each other. In fact we should use multiple ad consolidators for this very reason. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia might be subject to a different kind of pressure, because anybody can edit Wikipedia. In traditional media, there is a clear distinction between people who buy ads and people who create content. Advertisers can pressure the creators in various ways, but advertisers cannot grab the controls. On Wikipedia, anybody can edit. It will not be "us" vs. the evil advertisers, building consensus and maintaining neutrality, because "us" will include "them." The consensus will have to expand to include advertisers, one way or another. Already, without advertisements, Wikipedia attracts thousands of non-neutral contributors who write overly promotional articles, which other Wikipedians must then waste time debating and deleting. When the promoters object, we can lecture them with some authority about conflict of interest because they aren't paying for Wikipedia. Once Wikipedia begins accepting ads, we may weaken that argument. The fact that there are millions of advertisers does not necessarily dilute their power; the collaborative nature of Wikipedia may allow their power to consolidate into an emergent phenomenon. It's important to understand that much of what happens on Wikipedia results from the misconceptions that new users initially form about it. There doesn't have to be some deep evil conspiracy of advertisers bent on corrupting Wikipedia. It could be as simple as, say, a million casual newcomers who notice their employer's ads on Wikipedia, and then mistakenly assume they should astroturf their employer's coverage here a bit. Even if they straighten up when we correct them, someone still has to correct them, one at a time. That's why I don't feel comforted by reassurances that there are millions of advertisers - multiply a small mistake by a million and it's a big mistake. Even so, this is not an argument against advertisements on Wikipedia, rather I'm claiming that the impact of advertisements is unpredictable. The only way to determine how it plays out would be to try it. But I'm not sure that once we flip the switch, we can easily flip it back. Consider how government spending works - once a revenue stream occurs, it builds up a constituency, making it politically costly to kill. I do like the idea of search engine revenue; that looks like a way to get advertising revenue, possibly without giving potentially millions of advertisers the incorrect impression that they have purchased the right to edit Wikipedia in ways that increase their click-throughs, since it might not be obvious that Wikipedia is getting paid to refer users to search engines. --Teratornis (talk) 07:33, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Also note the search engine optimization industry. Ads on Wikipedia might create a small industry of professionals who find ways to game the system to increase the Click-through rate. Since we cannot anticipate all the creative ways people might do this, I don't think we can easily dismiss the power of the individual advertiser if they can hire an expert. I think the problem might be much less if we restricted advertisting to search engine referrals. Then there might be less incentive to find ways to game Wikipedia, when people already try to game the search engines. --Teratornis (talk) 07:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Some ideas for how to implement this that would keep within the spirit of Wikipedia

There are some ways to do this without compromising the integrity of Wikipedia.

For starters, there needs some internal policy to manage spending as such that the board feels no pressure to increase advertising revenue, as the main concern with advertising is that it would cause top-down changes to favor the money flow. With the amount of traffic Wikipedia gets, even very poorly converting google ads would at least match the donation income, probably much more. Get some proper internal oversight, perhaps a mechanism where any changes in advertising policy is made public and allowed comment, and bam. 90% of the sources for advertising "tainting" the information is gone.

More uniquely, Wikipedia has one major mechanism already built in that could strike a wonderful compromise that would please all but the most ardent anti-capitalists (and for them I can honestly request that they please grow up a little, or donate a few million out of their own pocket). Wikipedia already has a lively community that can create and execute complicated rules and hammer out a reasonable decision most of the time in ambiguous cases. As such this is what I suggest: draw up guidelines on articles that should include advertising and articles that should not include advertising. Ultimately this line would be left to the community, but I would suggest that things that are considered to have scholarly, academic, historical, scientific, "stuff you'd find in a printed encyclopedia" merit be given a no-ads status. Articles that are about pop culture, fashion, celebrities, 80s cartoons and anime (60% of wikipedia right here ;D), corporations, products and services, other websites, etc. etc. etc. that has little academic merit (and is stuff that is fueled by advertising anyway, so there's not much to "taint") are served with very clearly marked (put a border around it and clearly mark it as advertising and put it in a place in the layout where it will not be confused with content such as on the sidebar or above the article title somewhere), contextual (MUCH less room for jockeying or manipulation) text-only (graphics/flash make things very ugly very fast) ads. Draw up a contract with Google or whomever the provider is (I'd recommend them simply because with the depth and breadth of their clientèle, which is great for a myriad of obvious reasons, one important one being that no one or even group of advertisers has any significant leverage) to allow Wikimedia staff to easily respond to any community complaints of any particular ad in rotation that seems to be trying anything funny or unusual. Since adsense already has tools to block certain advertisers, this is probably more of a technical/organizational issue anyway.

Finally, no matter what you're gonna piss off the very vocal "hey maaaaaaan everything should be like, freeeeee" crowd who might resent that their volunteer work for Wikipedia is being "like, exploited by capitalism" but their main concern that their volunteer work is lining someone's pockets is a legitimate address that should be concerned. There should be very clear disclosure on exactly how much money comes in through advertising, and what that money is used for. I have full faith that Wikimedia will put every last penny of those funds into worthwhile causes, and as such full disclosure of where the advertising dollars are going and showing that each and every edit and added content to ad-enabled pages is a valuable donation to the Wikipedia cause and not going to the Jimbo Wales Golden Yacht Fund.

The best thing is that done right it will INCREASE Wikipedia's contributions to the world and society at large. Right now the only way to support Wikipedia financially is to hand over cash. Meanwhile, I've long felt a bit depressed that this attempt at the sum of all human knowledge tends to overconcern itself with anime and 80s cartoons. However under this kind of system, these niche pop culture obsessions would lead to a source of revenue and help sustain this great project rather than be a drag on it in both finances and reputation, and the cause could be furthered not just with cash donations but also with someone sharing their comprehensive knowledge of everything GoBots with the world. :D Implemented properly this kind of advertising could be a win for everyone. 68.4.202.68 (talk) 19:05, 12 March 2008 (UTC

Poll of Facebook users

Has anyone else seen this - Page at Meta? DuncanHill (talk) 17:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this info. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Jimbo Wales

Note: This discussion was started on Jimbo Wales talk page. It is copied from this talk archive: User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 35#Wikipedia:Advertisements - Feel free to continue the discussion here.

Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements

The last fund raising campaign did not give the desired result. Neither the unified login nor approved versions are in production use yet. Let alone the WYSIWYG feature or other MediaWiki improvements that could make the life of Wikipedians so much easier. It seems to me that Wikipedia is stuck in a stalemate. On the other hand, if advertisements were radically introduced, Wikipedia would lose many editors; the little advertisement in one of the earlier fund raising campaigns was not received well. But what about a less radical attempt? Perhaps Wikipedia could start with an advertisement only on the main page and gain some experience with that. Such a conservative attempt would not face the NPOV issues that have been put forward as the main argument against ads, at least not in the same way. I know that I am certainly not the first user to suggest this, but given the stagnating state of the project, I think that things need to be reconsidered. I find it strange that the Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements article does not mention such a moderate, tentative solution but only radical attempts to introduce advertisements in all articles (be it optional or not). Also, it doesn't give crucial arguments such as the possibility to use parts of the money to buy copyrights and put the associated works into the public domain. If people see that they get something back for the advertisements, tolerance would perhaps increase even for putting them into regular articles. --rtc (talk) 08:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

While I continue to oppose the introduction of any advertising in Wikipedia, I also continue to agree that the discussion should evolve beyond a simple binary. I believe that if we looked at putting ads into the search results page (only), with the money earmarked for specific purposes (with strong community input into what those would be, either liberation of copyrights or support for the languages of the developing world or...). As the Foundation continues to evolve into a more professional organization capable of taking on and executing tasks (yay Sue and the growing staff!), it begins to be possible to imagine many uses of money that would benefit our core charitable goals.

Lest I be misunderstood: I am not saying anything new, but saying exactly what I have said for many years.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

RE: Wikipedia's tin-cup approach wears thin http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wikipedia10mar10,1,6437552.story. I fail to see what would be the *problem* for allowing, for example, a couple of text Google adwords, as a subsection of the external links sections on articles. With the number of page views Wikipedia has today, allowing such ads for a couple of months a year, will generate enough income to support the project for that year, and expand and explore new uses of Wikipedia that cannot be considered today for lack of funding. Why would such activity be considered "commercialization of Wikipedia"? Unless there is an issue with the 501(c)(3) status , which I doubt, why not to openly explore this? A vigorous debate may be needed about this, but I think it is time. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

In addition to the search results page, another place to consider the placement of text ads would be anything marked as a stub. We're already admitting that these are pages where we don't have as much information about the topic as we should, and that further information is (supposedly) easy to find. When we consider all that could be done with the project if there were even a small amount of cash infused (paying more coders, getting graphic designers involved, commissioning articles on topics that are embarrassingly sparse (e.g., dance history)), we need to find a compromise between the all or nothing approach. Adding stub articles to the list of ad-supported pages would greatly increase the number of funding sources without greatly altering the feel of Wikipedia. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 00:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

This user supports search-related ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia.ads

Please see: Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages. Concerning the search box (for Special:Search) on nearly all wikipedia pages, it has been estimated that millions of dollars a year could be raised solely from ads on search result pages. See: [1]. To the right is a userbox I created in support of this.

Another option is to add a search toolbar with a dropdown menu for search engines from Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon.com, etc, and to charge them for searches sent their way. The Mozilla Foundation raises millions of dollars a year this way through the search toolbar at the top of the Firefox browser. See Mozilla Foundation#Financing. The Firefox browser comes with a search toolbar with several search engines set up in its dropdown menu. The user can add more search engines easily by clicking "Manage Search Engines" in the dropdown menu. Any, or all, of the search engines can be removed by the user. In 2006 the Mozilla Foundation received US$66.8 million in revenues, of which 61.5 million is attributed to "search royalties". See: Independent Auditor's Report and Consolidated Financial Statements. The foundation has an ongoing deal with Google to make Google search the default in the Firefox browser search bar and hence send it search referrals; a Firefox themed Google search site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006 but was renewed for two years and expires in November 2008. Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract.", this equates to approximately US$56.8 million.--Timeshifter (talk) 14:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

And here's another option..

no adsThis user is against advertisements on Wikipedia.

Because most of us don't want our Wikipedia cluttered with Viagra ads, even if it is on Viagra. - ✰ALLSTAR✰ ^echo 10:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I support on/off buttons for opt-in ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia for all readers (via cookies).

None of the ads on search result pages would be on wikipedia pages themselves. And there is no reason these ads could not be user-optional on wikipedia's search pages. Most of us wouldn't mind ads on search result pages. Also, there is money to be made by allowing Google to put a searchbar on wikipedia pages. You already use Google to search for stuff, and usually a wikipedia page is near the top. So, I doubt that most people get apoplectic (look it up) over the viagra ads on Google result pages. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 14:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The userbox is quite ambiguous, do you mean optional with the default being that users see the ads, or do you mean users would have to open their preferences and check some option before they can see ads? I think that the latter would not be successful and few people would do it. Can we move this discussion to some place where more people can get involved? I think merely stating positions is not enough, we need to debate them, collect the ideas and arguments, and, if possible, come to a conclusion or a compromise or something that a large part of the community can support. This could then be sent to the foundation as a petition. That is how I understand Jimbo's message – that the community has to actively find consensus on ads and request them from the foundation. --rtc (talk) 21:55, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The default setting would be no ads. Click the link in the userbox for more info and discussion. I think a lot of people would allow ads. Even if only a small percentage of people allowed ads a lot of money would be raised yearly. A button on the search page, or on wikipedia pages, would turn ads on and off. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:22, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that this approach would not raise a lot of money, contrary to what you you predict. But I'd certainly support an experiment and be happy if it shows that I was wrong here. What about moving this discussion? --rtc (talk) 21:37, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion is good here. We can maybe copy it to Wikipedia talk:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements when it is archived. As for how much money could be raised I think it depends on what kind of deal wikipedia makes with the various search providers. If a dropdown searchbar with multiple search providers were added to the top left of all wikipedia pages (above the wikipedia logo), and wikipedia charged the search providers for every search we sent their way it could raise a lot of money. Millions of dollars. I would use the searchbar frequently. Especially if there were a Google search of Wikipedia as one of the options. Currently, I have to go to a new browser tab and open this bookmark:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awikipedia.org

It would be so convenient to use a Google searchbar. Google is so much better and faster than any other search of wikipedia. With many more options. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, except that I don't think that putting it above the wikipedia logo would really be the right thing. Why not put it into the search box on the left, below the current search form? --rtc (talk) 10:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we could start there. It would need to be announced though, so that people know there is a Google searchbar available for web or wikipedia searches. Otherwise it may not be noticed by most people. I gave up on wikipedia's search tool long ago. I always use http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awikipedia.org and then add search terms. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:40, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think ads are bad anywhere, relying that they raise money that is then used to improve wikipedia, they are not intrusive and have a message saying something like "The ads are not part of wikipedia, nor do they neccessarily conform to the wikipedia standards of of being unbiased etc" Ultra two (talk) 16:03, 26 March 2008 (UTC)\

This is where the real money is. But I think it should be user-optional with the default being no ads. I think ads on search results should be tried first, so people see that the sky will not fall due to ads. I have websites on free web hosts. Their ads do not bother me, nor most of my site readers. I have never been pressured by the web host, nor by advertisers to change anything on my sites. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:35, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I just thought about it and found that there is not really much to discuss about user-optional advertisement, search bars or whatever. Every user can actually already add advertisements or a search bar at any place and in any context he likes at his option — via a monobook javascript. The necessary javascript code would be trivial. What is missing is a contract between the Wikimedia Foundation and google or other companies, so that it actually gets money for this. --rtc (talk) 20:03, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

People just need to look at the Google-funded Firefox browser that many are using right now to read this, and then realize that Google ads are already paying for their access to Wikipedia. The ads are not on the browser itself, nor would Google ads be on wikipedia pages if wikipedians added the Google search toolbar to wikipedia pages via monobook javascript. Also, imagine the number of spelling errors on wikipedia if people did not have the Firefox browser and its spelling checker. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is not people using the javascript, but it is the fact that there is no contract between the Wikimedia Foundation and google and ad providers. Wikipedia users cannot do anything about that; only the Wikimedia Foundation can. All the community can do is a petition, but we need many people to do that. How could such a petition look like and how do we set one off? --rtc (talk) 23:10, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting idea. I don't know offhand how to start a petition. People can add the userboxes to their user pages. I can make different userboxes if necessary, too. The contract would be between the Wikimedia Foundation and Google and the other search providers in the searchbar. There would be no contract with advertisers. Google handles that end of it. Wikimedia would not have to deal with advertisers at all. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I meant contracts with ad providers, not with advertisers. We should give users who want to watch ads as many choices as possible (or at least more than one), including ad banners above articles. I don't see why users should be forced not to watch aggressive ads if they want to. Making ads optional does not mean a yes-or-no-choice for some predetermined style of advertisement. Perhaps some people even enjoy content-related ads at the top of each article. Just because many people object that does not mean that there is no significant amount who would love it. Userboxes are frowned upon; they never changed anything and the Foundation won't care about them at all. Except for babel boxes, there is not a single userbox that has improved Wikipedia. We need a real petition, something like a list titled "I support that the Wikimedia Foundation makes contracts with ad providers and google such that users have the choice to support Wikipedia by including such paid ads, search bars, whatever using javascript. We emphasize the many charitable things that could be done with the money, including buying copyrights and releasing them, paying more programmers, holding conferences, paying professional authors to revise and write articles, etc." under which people can put their signature and that will be made widely known, for example with a message on WP:VP. After one month or so, we can notify the Wikimeda Foundation about the petition and perhaps it would consider it as a first step towards a Wikipedia that is at least partly supported by ads. --rtc (talk) 23:40, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with everything except the userboxes part. They are useful for getting the word out. Ad providers are also called ad servers. See ad serving and Google AdSense. I think the petition should be broken down into parts. People should be able to sign up for the parts they agree with. For example; many people might agree with adding a Google searchbar, but not with having ads directly on Wikipedia pages (not even user-optional ones). --Timeshifter (talk) 03:02, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

That would be outside of the scope of the petition, which is to ask the Foundation merely to make the necessary contracts. It is not up to the community to prescribe users which ads they want to see and how they want to see them. That's a private matter. Also, such a broken down petition would be complicated. A petition needs to be easy to understand and unequivocal in its message. --rtc (talk) 07:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, then start with a simple petition asking the Wikimedia Foundation to make the necessary contracts for remuneration from Google and other search providers when a searchbar is added to a wikipedia page. This is the petition that would be most likely to get popular support, and the least opposition. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Or we could just spend less

I think the Wikimedia foundation should focus on its core competitive advantage: Wikipedia and its volunteer contributors. The donations Wikipedia gathers during donation drives would be more than enough if they didn't waste money on extraneous endeavors such as buying copyrights, paying more programmers, holding conferences, paying professional authors to revise and write articles, PR, expanding to other Wiki projects, etc. Risking the support of Wikipedia's volunteer contributors in order to put a few more people on the WikiMedia payroll seems a little shortsighted to me. johnpseudo 22:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Of the possible uses for additional money most uses are for the core Wikipedia project. See Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements#Possible uses for additional income. I agree that buying copyrights, holding conferences, and paying professional authors to revise and write articles, PR, etc. are secondary uses of the money.

I believe that paying more programmers is a core Wikipedia project. Wikipedia use is increasing very fast in many languages, and continually needs much more hardware and software improvement. That kind of help must be of a very high standard, and it costs money to maintain such a huge number of daily hits. We can not just spend less.

I consider the other Wikimedia projects to be core projects too since they use many of the same volunteer contributors to produce related knowledge. I am talking about Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, etc..

So, just for what I consider the core projects, there is a huge increasing need for additional money. Looking at the charts for yearly Wikimedia fundraising shows the rapidly increasing yearly fundraising need.--Timeshifter (talk) 23:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

From your point of view and the point of view of the Wikimedia foundation itself, Wikimedia's charitable goals may come first, before the goal of simply maintaining and expanding wikipedia.org. From the point of view of most Wikimedia contributors, however, I would guess that most have not even heard of most of the other Wiki projects you mentioned. I would be curious to see exactly what percentage crossover you actually see from Wikipedia volunteers to the other projects. 10%? 20%? Certainly not more than that. Just looking at the comments on the donations during the fundraising drives, you see how important Wikipedia is relative to other projects. Nearly all of the comments are something to the extent of "Wikipedia is great!" or "I use Wikipedia all the time!". Nearly half of their donations, however, are used to support only peripherally-related goals. I fully agree with Wikimedia's goals- free access to information is crucially important. But if the level of spending in pursuit of those goals exceeds the level of voluntary donations, then perhaps the foundation is getting ahead of itself and should think more about what changes are necessary to guarantee Wikipedia's long-term fiscal situation. johnpseudo 15:14, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the core goals come first. I believe that the other Wikimedia projects I listed also are core goals. Not as important as Wikipedia of course. Most contributors who are editing Wikipedia probably know of the Wikimedia Commons. The other projects don't have as many volunteers because there is no unified login for users. Unified login is currently being implemented for admins only. I don't know why you say "Nearly half of their donations, however, are used to support only peripherally-related goals." It seems to me that nearly all the money is being spent on core goals. And the need for more money keeps increasing as the popularity of Wikipedia keeps increasing. This is because it increases the need for ever more servers, software, bandwidth, staff, etc.. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Your "core goals" are only peripherally-related to Wikipedia. johnpseudo 15:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you think the Wikimedia Commons is only peripherally-related to Wikipedia? What about Wikispecies? It is encyclopedic stuff found in encyclopedias. Wikiquote quotes are found in encyclopedias. Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and Wikijunior may not be encyclopedia stuff, but they are compilations of knowledge. I wouldn't call them peripherally-related to Wikipedia, though I can see how others might think so. I personally think they are directly related to Wikipedia. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:58, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Move to Meta

This should be moved to meta, since advertisements are a possibility on all Wikimedia projects, and virtually all of the same issues would apply to them as well. Mr. Ambassador (talk) 21:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Meta pages, and their associated talk pages, will not get as many readers and contributors. Wikipedia:Meta has far fewer registered users. Since this topic is being discussed in English it makes since to keep it on English wikipedia where there are many more registered users. Of course, the final decisions concerning fundraising are coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

We could solve that issue using a redirect, e.g. to m:Advertisements. Most conversation on meta takes place in English, so that should not be a problem. The talk page can be moved as well, and the conversation resumed there. And people can create accounts on, and contribute to, Meta just as easily as to here. A lot of the people who hang out on Meta are interested in governance issues, so they is a natural audience for this type of page. The only downside that I can think of is that you would have to check your meta watchlist to detect any changes to the page once it's moved there. Even that issue, though, is obviated by the existence of the multi-wiki watchlist at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~luxo/gwatch/ Mr. Ambassador (talk) 14:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

The main problem in my mind is that many people would not comment at Meta because they don't want to bother registering another user name. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Effect on contributors

Wikipedia editors work for free. They donate efforts that they could make elsewhere and for financial reward. Given that WP is thriving this is a system that one should be wary of tampering with.
One explanation of why so much work is done for free is that the contributors know that their financial selflessness cannot be exploited elsewhere.
As soon as advertising is allowed onto WP then someone somewhere will be making decisions about how this money is spent: the work freely given will now be harvested.
The revenue created won't be going into the pocket of any Wikipedian, but the money will be spent. Somebody, somewhere, will now be benefiting from the efforts of the editors. Furthermore, those Wikipedians spending the money will now be wielding the power that money is. Power relates to money like energy relates to mass.
For some contributors, the opportunity provided by WP to make a difference will still be the deciding factor in continuing to offer their labour. For other editors though, donating time and effort so that other people can get rich, or so that other people can exercise power, will be less appealing than the current system. Furthermore, some editors will find it distasteful that their contributions are presented next to an advert, especially as they will have no say over the style or content of the advert.
The net effect would be that WP would lose contributors—myself for one—and what for? So very little.

Beware the thin end of the wedge almost-instinct 13:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

"One explanation of why so much work is done for free is that the contributors know that their financial selflessness cannot be exploited elsewhere."

The GFDL already allows this, example. -- Jeandré, 2008-06-30t20:02z

True, but I see it links back to us: the material quoted is presented as "from Wikipedia"—although it isn't on the WP's website it is still clearly part of the WikiPediaMountainOfStuff. almost-instinct 12:00, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the possibility that some editors may leave if explicit advertisements appear on Wikipedia, but if someone thinks their selflessness on Wikipedia cannot be exploited (commercially) elsewhere, they probably haven't used Google lately. Wikipedia articles appear near the tops of many Google search results now. That means Google is making money off our work. Google knows it makes more money by ranking Wikipedia articles high than if it ranks them low. Simple as that; Google is not running a charity. The goal of PageRank is profit. Given that something like half of Wikipedia traffic comes from search engines, Wikipedia is contributing importantly to search engine traffic, and thus to someone's revenue, already. Google is making money hand over fist in part because it has found a way to monetize people's urge to look up information that often happens to be on Wikipedia, thanks to our selfless efforts. (Mechanism: Wikipedia articles often provide users with a satisfying search engine experience, encouraging users to do more searches on the search engine. While there, they may click on some sponsored links. Cha-ching!) I don't have a problem with Google making money off my contributions (if it has), because that's what the GFDL is all about: we give away our work to anyone, even including some evil genius capitalists who have found a way to capitalize on it without violating the GFDL. Consider: regardless of whether it's Google or someone else, the content people put on Wikipedia has value to lots of people. Somebody is going to get richer in some way, perhaps even monetarily, as a result of reading stuff on Wikipedia. The point of the GFDL is not to stop people from making a profit off information, but to stop some people from preventing everyone else from making a profit, by hoarding the information. --Teratornis (talk) 08:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Another point: Wikipedia is always "losing contributors" for one reason or another. That's one thing I like about Wikipedia: no commitment, no obligation. People come and go as they please. Originally Wikipedia allowed non-logged-in users to create new articles. In the aftermath of various editing abuses, Wikipedia clamped down a little by requiring users to register accounts and log in before creating new articles. Undoubtedly, that policy change caused some unregistered users to leave. So what? The number of new articles kept going up. Now it's up to 6,915,258 and still growing. However, only a tiny fraction of articles are up to featured status yet. Out of 48,310,887 registered users, only some tiny fraction have the editing experience necessary to bring articles up to featured status. For example: what percentage of people who edit on Wikipedia have a solid understanding of WP:CITE, WP:FOOT, and WP:CITET? Editing skill on Wikipedia probably follows something like a power law distribution or Pareto distribution, with the vast majority of contributors able to make only relatively simple edits, and drastically fewer contributors at each increasing level of skill. The problem is that getting up to a high level of skill requires an enormous amount of time and effort. Not many people can afford to sink in the necessary time unless they are fairly well off financially. Someone working two jobs to make ends meet won't have the leisure time or energy to become a Wikipedia expert. Wikipedia needs a lot more experts if it is going to get a large fraction of its articles up to high quality. One way to get more experts might be to start paying people a little something to get up to a high level of skill. I don't think the pay rate would have to be comparable to professional work, since Wikipedia does not burden contributors with overhead expenses like buying business clothes and traveling to a physical office. Wikipedia is already fun enough to do for free, so a lot more people might pursue it seriously if they could just break even on their minimal expenses. Of course once money enters the picture then lots of things start to change; I have no idea whether the net impact would be positive. I'm simply saying that while Wikipedia is not having any trouble attracting vast numbers of contributors, it's doing less well at motivating enough of them to learn Wikipedia editing in depth. This might be even more true in the poorer countries, such as in parts of Africa, where even a modest stipend for skilled editors could make a huge difference. In a place where the average income is $1/day, being able to earn even $10/day for editing on Wikipedia would be a dream job. --Teratornis (talk) 08:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Money for MediaWiki developers

I don't think the problem with the number of featured status articles is that we need some paid editors. There are many ease-of-use impediments imposed by the MediaWiki software. Those impediments can be resolved by hiring more developers. There is a definite lack of money for this. There are many longstanding feature requests, bug reports, etc. that are not getting resolved. Such as section watchlisting. That would greatly help in allowing more busy people to get involved. More knowledgeable people are often busy people. We need more of those people to bring articles up to featured status. Paying those people would not solve the ease-of-use problems. I think the money would be far better spent on MediaWiki developers. And a lot less controversial. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that money could be well-spent on software development, but who could develop the MediaWiki software without also being a heavy user of it? The only way to understand what the problems are is to spend time actually editing articles. The fact also remains that Wikipedia doesn't have nearly enough users who have invested the hundreds of hours of study necessary to become able to produce featured content. (I don't believe the software is the main bottleneck here, since all the basic editing features pretty much work. Anyone who has a featured article in their head can type it into Wikipedia without much difficulty. But only a few users know enough about Wikipedia to produce featured content.) Adding more features to the software would not reduce the learning burden for advanced editors - more features would probably make Wikipedia even harder to learn. Wikipedia has advanced enormously since, say, 2002 - has all this progress made Wikipedia easier to learn? Almost certainly not. Each release of MediaWiki has more features than the previous release, and Wikipedia also accumulates more templates, more procedures, more instructions, more internal manuals, etc. The more developed Wikipedia becomes, the harder it is to master. That's how it almost always works with technology - progress usually equals more complexity.

If there was a way to pay developers so their work reduced the number of hours an editor requires to learn how to produce featured content, that would be great. But I don't think the development effort has had that as a goal, and neither do we collect any data from which to determine what effect development has on the learning burden. Note that "ease of use" is distinct from "ease of learning." The vast majority of Wikipedia users are not going to learn as much about Wikipedia as you and I probably know. What makes Wikipedia easier for experienced users - more features - probably makes Wikipedia harder for new users to learn. For the casual user, "ease of use" on Wikipedia basically amounts to how quickly and how well they get help from more experienced users. We don't have enough of those more experienced users to go around, and thus the average article quality is well below featured quality.

Note that subject-area experts are often distinct from Wikipedia-arcana experts. Someone who knows a lot about widgets may not have a clue about how to bring the widgets article up to featured quality. Wikipedia also needs people who will pour in the time to specialize in Wikipedia itself, to become encyclopedists. One way to get such people might be to pay young people a modest stipend to learn more about Wikipedia. I agree this could be wildly controversial, but that doesn't change the possibility of its effectiveness. Probably thousands of college kids would leap at the chance to edit on Wikipedia for cooperative employment. Of course there could be all sorts of problems if you pay some people and not others, but paying developers is not entirely immune to the same problems, particularly since MediaWiki blurs the line between "users" and "developers." For example, templates can save the time of many editors, but developing them can be something like programming. Do we pay users for writing templates which become widely used by other editors who lack the technical skill to create such templates? Another area is citation tools. Currently only a small fraction of Wikipedia editors have put in the work to understand how to make citations properly, and that slows the progress of many articles toward featured quality, regardless of the subject-area expertise of the contributors. A huge bottleneck on Wikipedia is looking up reliable sources and formatting them properly into footnotes with citation templates. (See the history of the Panicum virgatum article, where I spent a while unscrambling the ad hoc citation formats used by contributing scientists who were Wikipedia novices.) Improvements in search tools and citation tools could help enormously with that, but we would need users who are willing to spend the time necessary to learn and then apply the tools. See for example {{Google scholar cite}} - when the tool works, it makes adding citations almost trivially easy. We need citation tools built on top of search tools that limit results to sources pre-screened for reliability according to Wikipedia's standards.

One straightforward area where it makes sense to pay for content is illustrations. Only a tiny minority of people have the ability to create professional-quality illustrations, and illustration is not usually a collaborative task. (MediaWiki has no real support to let people collaborate on images.) Wikipedia already has arrangements to pay illustrators for their work. That area could probably absorb as much advertising revenue as Wikipedia would collect - what would it cost to produce featured pictures for all 6,915,258 articles? I'm not aware of any controversy over paying for illustrations.

There probably wouldn't be much controversy over providing modest grants to attract (and equip) contributors to other-language Wikipedias that serve less-developed countries (e.g., Swahili Wikipedia). In countries where the average person doesn't even have access to clean drinking water, there won't be much leisure time and disposable income to support hobbies such as Wikipedia editing. For those small Wikipedias to develop, they will probably have to pay for contributors. Given the low wages in these countries, it probably wouldn't cost much to hire lots of editors. --Teratornis (talk) 04:02, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I see your point that the additional features may make editing better for some editors but not for other editors. The MediaWiki software itself may require a massive redo in order to fix many problems created by the many additional features and bug fixes. But that is the nature of most software. Most programs require a complete rewrite eventually, and not just more revisions. That massive MedaWiki rewrite will require a lot of money. Since we don't have the money we just do more and more revisions of MediaWiki.

Making MediaWiki easier to use should be a key goal of that complete rewrite. Ease of use is not cheap!! The most skilled developers and programmers are required, because many developers and programmers just don't understand ease of use. They still believe in command-line computing instead of WYSIWYG and intuitive Graphical user interfaces. I am a basic webmaster myself, and making websites easy to use and navigate is an art.

A large part of the problem in learning how to edit is the lack of good talk pages. The MediaWiki software lacks section watchlisting. The best talk pages are busy talk pages. The most skilled editors and experts in any field are busy people. They don't have time to visit talk pages every time they see an edit of parts of the talk page in their watchlist. Most of those edits are in sections of the talk page they are not interested in. I have given up on many talk pages and articles due to this problem. People can't easily learn to edit if they can't quickly ask questions and quickly notice when answers come in.

In spite of all this, I believe articles are much better in quality than before. So Wikipedia muddles along, but it is creaking badly lately. Many slowdowns and many serious problems. A serious lack of money.

The problems are huge! We need to pay more MediaWiki developers to repair the many longstanding MediaWiki bugs, develop many requested enhancements, and quickly implement the MediaWiki roadmap beyond MediaWiki's current features.

The reporting of those problems is seriously lacking too. See mw:Talk:Bugzilla#Email addresses do not need to be public anymore. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:51, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

You have a point with the inability to watch for replies to one's talk page comments. I have left comments on some talk pages, and remained oblivious to other user's replies, because there is no active notification of a reply except on one's own user talk page. I thought liquid threads was supposed to address that problem (with yet more features for users to learn), but gee, it seems development is going slowly there too. However, I personally have not found the awkward aspects of talk pages to be much of a problem, since the advantages more than offset them (compared to alternatives such as e-mail). When I have directly collaborated with other Wikipedia users (for example, see Wikipedia talk:Editor's index to Wikipedia), I found using talk pages to be far superior to similar collaboration I have done with e-mail (due to the power of having the full wikitext markup available on talk pages, in particular the ability to easily type links). As far as usability goes, I agree with Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant) who says the only way to judge usability is to actually observe users as they attempt to use a system (preferably rigging them up with eye trackers and so on). Actually observing users is essential because users (especially new users) often cannot accurately articulate what they are having problems with. Actually observing users costs a tremendous amount of money, so the Wikipedia developers probably do not do it in any kind of rigorous unbiased way. However, having lots of money does not guarantee great results either (see: Microsoft). --Teratornis (talk) 07:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I like wiki talk pages. I also like watchlists. Watchlists are usually much better than email notification. My problem is that one can't put individual sections of talk pages or articles on the watchlists.

Microsoft's problem is that they don't listen to users. Wikipedia staff and developers try to listen to users, but the problem is that (as with Microsoft) there are so many users to listen to. Also, there is so little Wikipedia money to hire more developers to listen to users (especially new users) and then develop, test, and implement solutions to the many user problems. I agree that watching users would be helpful, too. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:13, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Beta-testing search advertisements with a Google custom search engine

Anyone can sign up for a free Google account, create a custom search engine, and put AdSense on it. Furthermore, the owner of the custom search engine can invite other Google account holders to collaborate on the search engine design. It might be interesting to create a custom search engine, add useful Wikipedia-specific search features, make it available to Wikipedia users, and donate the AdSense revenue (if any) to the Wikimedia Foundation. This would be one way to test the acceptance of search engine advertisements to Wikipedia users, and to supplement the abstract discussion with a working prototype of something that people can critique. I might poke around with this a little; if I get anywhere, which probably won't be soon, my notes will be at:

• User:Teratornis/Notes#Google custom search engine

--Teratornis (talk) 07:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Some additional Google search options like the ones you mentioned could be added to Special:Search. In addition to the Google search already in the menu of that main Wikipedia search form. Then some statistics could be generated as to what percentage of users of Special:Search use the various Google options. This would indicate how much revenue might be possible if more people used Special:Search and if Wikipedia contracted with Google for money for those hits to its search options. Many more Wikipedia users might use Special:Search if it were conveniently linked from the sidebar of every Wikipedia page so that people could right-click the link to it and open the page in a new tab. Better yet would be to place that search form with the dropdown menu at the top of Wikipedia pages. At least for those users who aren't offended by making some money for Wikipedia. I am talking about the main search form (from Special:Search), but without the "Search in namespaces" checkboxes. All in one line. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:31, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

What exactly is the incentive to do this over using a more efficient, browser-based solution? When I use the built-in search bar in my browser, my traffic goes from Me -> POST to Search Engine -> Back to me. Using a form in a third-party website adds more unnecessary bandwidth consumption on the part of Wikipedia, as well as taking more time in the long run, as it has to pass from Me -> POST to Wikipedia -> CGI script to pass searches through to Google -> Back to me.

As a user, why would I want to use a slower solution that doesn't provide any extra benefit? Even apart from that, why should we have a search utility here on Wikipedia that could return non-RS material, blacklist and spam sites? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 08:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The search form at Special:Search has a dropdown menu with options to use Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. to search Wikipedia. It saves time and bandwidth. Versus using Wikipedia's search engine.

As I said on another talk page, most people aren't ideologues, and don't object to indirect advertising found on search result pages. Ideologues can choose not to use the Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft search options. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:52, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

A variation of this allows the non-profit Mozilla Foundation to raise around $60 million dollars a year. They put Google search as a dropdown option in their Firefox browser search form at the top of all their browsers. For more info please see Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages.

Here at Wikipedia the search results could be made to open up in a new browser window or tab. Any ads would only be on the search results page and not on Wikipedia pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Both here and elsewhere, you seem to be extremely confused about the search page. All that does is run a search of the format "(searchterm) inurl:en.wikipedia.org". It isn't a webwide search.

Also, your first point is incorrect. It saves neither time nor bandwidth. In fact, it increases the both the time complexity and the bandwidth usage by an order of magnitude; re-read my comment for an explanation of how that occurs. The most obvious problem for the user is the time problem, since they're going to passing their traffic through functions on one server to a function on another server (and you can't use something like javascript to circumvent this, since a user could easily replicate the script and make mass searches to increase income; revenue sharing programs simply wouldn't allow it). As a user, why on earth would I want to use a search that takes around twice as long as it would take to use my browser's search function?

Firefox, obviously, being a clientside application, doesn't have the problem of having that extra step, since they can freely just modulate a search within its own routines clientside. Also, the load benefit is minimal, since searching is done via hash tables and since we don't use the full capabilities of the MediaWiki internal search routines; just raw title and intext searches. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 01:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I don't know exactly how the Teratornis ideas would be implemented.

I think you are mistaken, though, concerning Special:Search. When Special:Search does a Google site-search of Wikipedia it uses a variation of this:

• http://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org (add search terms)

Specifically, it uses the following sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org format:

• http://www.google.com/search?sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org&q=nonprofit+ads (with search terms)

As with most links there is no intermediary involved. It is a simple browser-controlled search form. I have created these type of search forms for my web site. The URL goes directly to Google. It pulls up a Google site-search page. That results page has standard Google text ads on the side. That is where the ad money comes into the picture. It is not a web-wide search, but it is still a Google search results page with ads. There is a possibility of a financial arrangement being made with Google to place the Special:Search form (without the checkbox table) at the top left of every Wikipedia page. Similar arrangements could be made with Yahoo, Microsoft and other search engine providers to be in the dropdown menu.

There is no problem with "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" (as you discussed elsewhere) since those search results and ads are not on Wikipedia pages. Any source link or external link on Wikipedia (including searchforms) can lead to "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" being linked on the external link page. Wikipedia can not control what other pages link to.

Even more money could be made by putting an option to search web-wide too. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:52, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If you don't want to take my word for it, you can review the relevant MediaWiki code yourself (although, yes, it does use the 'site' keyword rather than 'inurl', sorry). Since you still don't seem to quite understand, you may also want the review the basic concept of time complexity; basically the more function calls you make to complete any given task, the longer that task going to take. Regardless of how 'simple' the script is, you're still pressing a button that POST/GETs a CGI script. Whether it parses your string and returns simple javascript that opens a new tab for that search and then GETs that for you (which is how it currently works), or you do something more complex (which is what typically required in these kinds of arrangements to prevent click farming and other forms of abuse) doesn't matter; in both cases, you're adding an entire POST to what only needs to be a single GET.

Anyway, you can pull the code from here. In any case, those are really secondary issues; they're just more reasons why it wouldn't be a good idea.

The fact we can't control what other pages link to is exactly the problem, and that's why I don't want to have anything to do with creating any kind of "official" impression that we support the use of external search engines to crawl this domain. Wikipedia can certainly control what we link to. For us, its as easy as going to the page, clicking edit, deleting something, and adding "rv bad side per EL". We don't get to pick and choose advertisements (unless we go with an entirely different model open to several more forms of abuse, which is even more fraught with problems than this one). They just show up.

That in and of itself is especially problematic; while you may see this as "Oh, hey, Wikipedia can make teh moniez!", the reality is that encouraging this kind of behavior for searching with external, ad-ridden search utilities leads down a slope rife with search-engine optimization companies and the like analyzing web pages and the advertisements tied to searches and trying to maximize revenue for their clients by manipulating the project into producing a given advertisement more often. While this doesn't happen now (no one really cares enough), as soon as you stick a box up there and say "USE THIS", its going to. I've spent enough time at startups to know the sad truth of these scenarios.

Also, regarding the placement of your proposed box, I have to echo the other statements people have made to the effect that is also a terrible idea. That's a really ugly, unnatural, klunky place for a search box. If this was anywhere, it should be in a gadget that you have to install that places another search bar below the one we already have. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 08:59, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

JavaScript is done inside the browser. So a JavaScript-only search form is no burden on the Wikipedia servers. It can be done without JavaScript. That is how the search form on my site works. It is just a basic HTML form. Whatever Special:Search is using on the server side must not be much of a burden currently, because the browser-only search forms I mentioned are available to remove any server burdens.

Of course, if money is being made off of search click-throughs, then a record of those click-throughs will require a more advanced search form, and more server use. But that server use would be more than paid for by the ad money.

Moving search from the sidebar to the top left of Wikipedia pages is no big deal. Neither location is unnatural or klunky. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Javascript is INTERPRETED by the browser. In this case, it is generated by a CGI script serverside. Again, you may want to re-read my previous comments, as you don't seem to quite understand that it isn't a form that just executes "open up a new tab with a google search for this string". It's a form that executes a script that returns javascript that executes "open up a new tab with a google search for this string". If you're going to continue to advocate this, you should probably become more familiar with MediaWiki.

I guess it's just a matter of opinion; I certainly wouldn't want it there, since there's no room, and going by the 80-20 rule, you'd have fonts even smaller than the ones that give you your watchlist, contributions and the like. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

OK. JavaScript can be combined with CGI. I am just saying that the level of server involvement can vary from none to a large amount depending on how the search form is set up.

There is plenty of room for the search form at the top of the page. The left half of the page is available on my 17 inch monitor. The search form at Special:Search combined with the dropdown menu there is not that long. "Advanced search" can be shortened to just "Search". The form itself can be shortened slightly. The whole thing would then fit fine at the top of the page. It would use currently unused space (unused by registered users). The Wikipedia logo at the top left can be pushed down a quarter inch. The sidebar search form can be removed to keep the sidebar short. The sidebar search form would be unneeded then because it would be a duplicate search form. The "Go" button can be moved next to the top search form.

|___________________________| .Dropdown menu. Go. Search

I drew a schematic above. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The real effects of advertising on Wikipedia

Note: This discussion was started at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).

Meta-discussion about socking, archiving

 Note: Swinglineboy G and JBackus13 are blocked sockpuppets of a banned user, JeanLatore/Wiki_brah. Darkspots (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to whoever figured this out and blocked them. This is a much better discussion without them. It was becoming more and more obvious as Swinglineboy G and JBackus13 continued to comment that "their" contributions were becoming more and more about trolling than good faith discussion about the issues. Please see WP:Troll. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:39, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Three Wiki_brah socks, is enough already. Darkspots (talk) 04:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I count 2 who participated here, and they were blocked early on. You are not an admin according to the full list of admins [2]. Please do not shut down talk by putting talk sections in archive format without some kind of authority. Please see WP:TALK. We are currently in a fundraising drive, and this talk is relevant now. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Brandon Rochelle is a blocked Wiki_brah sock. Please do me the courtesy of assuming that I can count. Also, nobody had contributed to the thread in three days. Once you hit that level of socking it's better to start a new thread, which is all I'm saying. Nobody can separate the good faith contributions from the socks after a while.

Also, we all have "authority" to archive a thread, it's clearly a reversible action, so I will archive threads in good faith in the future. Nothing in our talk page policy says you need to be an administrator to archive a thread. It's best not to invent new administrator powers, they have enough already. :) Darkspots (talk) 12:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I have archived sections of many talk pages, usually after those sections were months old or more. I archived them to a subpage of the talk page. Using {{archivetop}} and {{archivebottom}} is best left to admins in my opinion. It is unnecessary here most of the time since a bot automatically archives inactive talk sections after 5 days, and moves them to a subpage. I was busy the last few days, and so I did not check here for replies. Without talk section watchlisting it is difficult to know when a reply has occurred here. Anybody could be a sockpuppet, and normally we shouldn't let the appearance of sockpuppets in a thread determine whether a discussion is terminated or not. They are annoyances, and they should be pointed out so that their comments are not respected. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:38, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

And I'm not edit warring with you about it. It looked like the discussion was stale except for more socking, and JL seems like he's on a roll here, so I thought that archiving was the way to go. I'm just trying to keep the bullshit to a dull roar. I don't get what you mean when you say that "anybody could be a sockpuppet". Wiki_brah socks are super obvious trolls. And seriously, administrators are people who are around when you need an account blocked or a page deleted, not the decision makers on the project. Darkspots (talk) 17:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

There is discussion within the last few days other than that from the troll. I marked the last sockpuppet of the troll. I wish I had known before I had replied to that sock. It wasn't obvious. Some of the troll's comments are obviously troll-like, and some aren't. At least not at first reading. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:37, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Mischief managed. I removed his post per WP:BAN, and your responses, since you indicated you wished you hadn't responded. Cleans it up a lot so other users can contribute to the actual discussion. Any banned user's contributions (and this editor has been banned by Arbcom) can be reverted by any editor since they are assumed to be unwanted. Cheers, Darkspots (talk) 00:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Good job. Thanks. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

So yeah, I know that they say what will happen if Wikipedia allows paid advertising. Yeah yeah, like everyone will get upset and fork off, start their own Wiki, and all that. But its not like EVERYONE would leave. Some people, especially the newer ones, will stay. Even if a majority of editors left some would stay behind and continue to contribute to Wikipedia even with ads. But what would result? "Wikipedia" still would continue to get mad google hits and attract new users in its post-advertising era, and those disgruntled editors who left in the wake of advertising would be at what would become a wanna-be "forked off" project, not THE wikipedia, which would linger on in obscurity. Wikipedia will thrive even if many of its productive editors left -- no one is irrplaceable, and on the internet, people leave all the time anyway. How many of the productive editors and admins from four years ago (2004) are still here, for instance? The conclusion here is that if and when Wikipedia does decide to allow paid advertisements, it will not suffer one bit for it. Your thoughts welcome. Swinglineboy G (talk) 18:08, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

this has been discussed a thousands times and the answer is always NO, see here. --Cameron Scott (talk) 18:11, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe optional advertising (user decides) has ever been seriously discussed. It has been mentioned at Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:49, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

No, i'm just saying the main reason that advertising has been nixed is because of the massive editor opposition to it and their threats to boycott or leave. My point was that their threats have no weight to them. Wikipedia has a critical mass of its own now, regardless of its individual editors. I guess I was just using advertising as an example to prove that. Swinglineboy G (talk) 18:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

It has been discussed to a vast extent. However, the main issue is that as soon as advertising is allowed, advertisers would get pressure from readers to affect the encyclopedia. What company would want their ad on the page for penis, for example? (well...Trojan, maybe) Maybe American Express, if those photos weren't posted. So to please advertisers we could get rid of offensive photos. Then maybe questionable content. Then...what next? Money brings pressure. No money has pressures of its own, but when it's introduced, it has a bigger influence on distorting knowledge. --Moni3 (talk) 18:51, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Who needs troublesome advertisers? There are millions of advertisers. If optional advertising (user decides) is the mode of advertising used, then neither Wikipedia as a whole, nor the individual users will be effected by anything an advertiser does or demands. Each of us can turn ads on and off, and Wikipedia as a whole can tell troublesome advertisers to go to hell. Or we can move their ads off pages they don't like. There are millions more advertisers who would be happy to advertise on most of the controversial pages on Wikipedia. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:57, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I am interested in that discussion. Do you know where to find it? What if wikipedia would allow ads but explicitly not entertain any demands. Just be like hey I got your money now naff off. Swinglineboy G (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, my. I want to live in your world. Srsly. I am much too cynical. You might want to read this page, and its talk, and join along in the discussion there. --Moni3 (talk) 19:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hey how much would the article advertising space sell for? Would it be specific by article? More importantly, you can say that every editor can "advertize" here on Wikipedia, for free, by editing it. Like if i wanted to talk about how great Zack Enfron is there is noboby that would stop me really -- and I would not have to pay any money to do so! JBackus13 (talk) 00:56, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Another point: Wikipedia is always "losing contributors" for one reason or another. That's one thing I like about Wikipedia: no commitment, no obligation. People come and go as they please. Originally Wikipedia allowed non-logged-in users to create new articles. In the aftermath of various editing abuses, Wikipedia clamped down a little by requiring users to register accounts and log in before creating new articles. Undoubtedly, that policy change caused some unregistered users to leave. So what? The number of new articles kept going up. Now it's up to 6,915,258 and still growing. However, only a tiny fraction of articles are up to featured status yet. Out of 48,310,887 registered users, only some tiny fraction have the editing experience necessary to bring articles up to featured status. For example: what percentage of people who edit on Wikipedia have a solid understanding of WP:CITE, WP:FOOT, and WP:CITET? Editing skill on Wikipedia probably follows something like a power law distribution or Pareto distribution, with the vast majority of contributors able to make only relatively simple edits, and drastically fewer contributors at each increasing level of skill. The problem is that getting up to a high level of skill requires an enormous amount of time and effort. Not many people can afford to sink in the necessary time unless they are fairly well off financially. Someone working two jobs to make ends meet won't have the leisure time or energy to become a Wikipedia expert. Wikipedia needs a lot more experts if it is going to get a large fraction of its articles up to high quality. One way to get more experts might be to start paying people a little something to get up to a high level of skill. I don't think the pay rate would have to be comparable to professional work, since Wikipedia does not burden contributors with overhead expenses like buying business clothes and traveling to a physical office. Wikipedia is already fun enough to do for free, so a lot more people might pursue it seriously if they could just break even on their minimal expenses. Of course once money enters the picture then lots of things start to change; I have no idea whether the net impact would be positive. I'm simply saying that while Wikipedia is not having any trouble attracting vast numbers of contributors, it's doing less well at motivating enough of them to learn Wikipedia editing in depth. This might be even more true in the poorer countries, such as in parts of Africa, where even a modest stipend for skilled editors could make a huge difference. In a place where the average income is $1/day, being able to earn even $10/day for editing on Wikipedia would be a dream job. --Teratornis (talk) 08:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The last time advertising was seriously considered, the result was that the Spanish Wikipedia community split off and started Enciclopedia Libre. My best estimate is that the split set the development of the Spanish Wikipedia back by almost two years. Losing a few contributors is no big deal; losing 90% of the core community is much harder to recover from. --Carnildo (talk) 03:04, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Going with opt-in advertising (user decides) would probably only cause a small percentage of users to leave Wikipedia. Wikipedia really needs the money, and there is so much basic bug fixing and feature enhancement that needs to be done. We need to pay more developers. Better, more intuitive wiki software equals more users. So there would be a net gain in users. Probably a huge gain in users because there would be far fewer slowdowns. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:49, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Only a tiny fraction of users have an account and can set preferences. Even if every user turns it on, you're going from a few million people per day (based on the number of hits per day on the main page) to a few thousand people per day (the number of users who have made at least one edit in the past month) who will see the ads, not including the people who would leave the project if we add any ads, opt-in or not. We would still make money off it, but not nearly as much, it may not even offset the loss in donations from putting ads on. Mr.Z-man 17:01, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

People could opt in through cookies whether they are a registered user or not. The few ideological users who leave because of what other users choose to do (view ads) would be far offset by the many new users who would enthusiastically participate due to a faster Wikipedia, and more choices of things to do such as Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, etc.. And whatever else the Wikimedia Foundation decides to start. The money could be used to create unified watchlists. Unified watchlists [3] [4] would greatly increase participation of both new and old users due to being able to more easily participate in multiple Wikimedia projects. I personally would like the option to unify all my watchlists other than English Wikipedia and the Commons. I like those 2 on separate watchlists. The millions of dollars raised from even a few users and readers opting for ads would greatly offset any loss in donations. Those who opt for ads are donating their eyeballs and their time. It is condescending and paternalistic to say that their contribution is not also worthy, and that ads would hurt them somehow. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:32, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment. I agree completely. Essays i just read on Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements suggest that Wikipedia might be able to raise nearly $1,000,000,000.00 a year in advertising revenue. That's larger than the budget of some smaller states in the USA and most developing nations! I think Wikipedia should jump on this opportunity, put away a modest 10% for growth and investment in Wikipedia, then divide the rest up and sent something of a "dividend" cheque to each editor at the end of each fiscal year. Said payments could be based upon the number, and quality, of his edits throughout the year. Even if the dividend simply were equally split by registered users (8.1 million I read), the payout still would be in the neighbourhood of 80-90 dollars. But if the divdent were equitably split as a function of edit quality, edit count, and active service to the wiki, then each of the active 2,000 or so users would get quite a large payout each year. If wikipedia does do ads, then it is obvious that they should give most of the money not to charity, but to the wikipedians. This also would deflate much criticism of advertising! JBackus13 (talk) 02:08, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I once saw an informal study suggesting that most raw content is contributed by occasional users, frequently anonymous users. They might not be as enthusiastic about contributing if some arbitrary set of "core" contributors is receiving big checks based partially on their work and they receive nothing.

However, I for one do favor paid full-time editors - particularly in developing countries where labor in cheap and the local language edition of Wikipedia is in urgent need of beefing up. Dcoetzee 06:19, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Wait! Profits from advertising on Wikipedia are that much?? Zomg! Before you know it we'd be clawing over each other like rats in a cage fighting over that money! I'm buying a pony with my dividend check, and you better be sure i'd be making like hella edits 24/7 on here to get a bigger cut! Hellz yeah! Swinglineboy G (talk) 20:29, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Turning a free and altruistic project into a cash cow (see above) is one of the best arguments not to allow advertisements. Arnoutf (talk) 21:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

These type of discussions frequently bring in some crazy ideas. As long as the Wikimedia Foundation stays non-profit and is run by experienced Wikipedia users who truly believe in WP:NPOV, then I think we are OK. Newbies are usually the main ones who go off on the money and glory tangents. Most people who know how much time and effort it really takes to put out all this WP:NPOV info to the world don't usually have these low-level goals. And ramping up the opt-in ads will gradually increase the ad revenue. I doubt it will reach ten million dollars a year instantly. I believe we are on a 4 million dollar a year budget now. We need, and could easily absorb a few million dollars more a year. I believe many registered users would opt for ads over time. Many know the need for the money. A lower percentage of non-registered users would opt for ads. They don't know the need. But there are far more of them. But most don't want to bother clicking an opt-in ad button that would put ads on their Wikipedia pages whenever they stop by Wikipedia. They just drop in from Google and leave. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:51, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with making a little money? The United States would like wikipedia to sell ad space for it would love a 28% tax cut (in the area of $250 million in taxes a year) of wikipedia's revenues to fund the war in Iraq, and Jimbo and the execs would love it because they could give themselves huge salaries and corporate expense accounts. The editors would like it because they would not even have to look at the ads (with ad preferences discussed above) and still get healthy dividend checks each quarter, and Wall Street would like it because with that profit margin (cash flow in the hundreds of millions v. operating expenses of 5 million?), Jimmy could take the thing public and soon be awash in billions of dollars in investor capital....maybe enough to buy a seat on the exchange or get listed on the Dow Jones index. These kind of millions generated into the economy would seriously do a lot to blunt the current financial crisis. So there, advertising on Wikipedia might be worth it to a lot of people, including our veterans and average americans who don't even use wikipedia. JBackus13 (talk) 01:39, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

(unindent)

I support on/off buttons for opt-in ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia for all readers (via cookies).

--Timeshifter (talk) 14:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The simplest and easiest managed way of raising ad money would be to use Amazon's existing partenership scheme. We don't need full ads, just a change that means anytime any book is listed with an ISBN in an article, the reader would see a little link beside it saying "review this book on Amazon". It's fairly useful for the reader to be able to do that, and if of course he then buys it, the foundation would get cash. If readers are annoyed by it, they can set preferences and opt out. Strictly speaking it isn't advertising, since there is no "hey buy this" on out site, just a link to where you can see if it is in print and what the cost is, if you want. Given that wikipedia is often the first port of call for someone interested in a subject, the number of people interested in buying on of the books listed might be quite high. It also solves the problem of add selection, as the "ads" would be selected by those constructing sources and further reading sections. And I imagine, all products linked from Penis would be genetailia or sexual health related.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 15:40, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Good idea, and fairly simple to implement now. There are more choices than just ads on every page, or no ads on any page. From Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements: "In a comment dated March 7, 2008 on his Wikipedia talk page Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has stated"

While I continue to oppose the introduction of any advertising in Wikipedia, I also continue to agree that the discussion should evolve beyond a simple binary. I believe that if we looked at putting ads into the search results page (only), with the money earmarked for specific purposes (with strong community input into what those would be, either liberation of copyrights or support for the languages of the developing world or...). As the Foundation continues to evolve into a more professional organization capable of taking on and executing tasks (yay Sue and the growing staff!), it begins to be possible to imagine many uses of money that would benefit our core charitable goals. Lest I be misunderstood: I am not saying anything new, but saying exactly what I have said for many years. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:28, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think the ISBN link is a terrible idea-- we're being spammed heavily enough as it is. If everyone with a book to sell thought they could increase sales by finding a way to use it in Wikipedia references, we'd go mad trying to clean up the results. -- Mwanner | Talk 20:03, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Good point. It was a creative idea, though. But you are right about the incentive it would create for authors and booksellers to reference their books on Wikipedia. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:45, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that is a terrible idea. We get enough spam and references to vanity publishing as it is. We certainly don't need to create a financial incentive to make more of it and further degrade the quality of the project. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 13:11, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion many of the past discussions ended up in silly binary ideological arguments over capitalism. As in; 1: We use ads on all pages and we will have to bow to the evil capitalist swine, or; 2. We remain pure and chaste by having no ads on any pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:28, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment This thread is not up to the usual Wiki_brah standard. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about JBackus13 though. ;) --Timeshifter (talk) 07:28, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

So............... how much revenue will advertising bring? Is it $10 million a year, as suggested by another user above, or is it $1,000,000,000? That is obviously a huge disparity; does anyone know? I can see passing on it if its just $10 mil, but $1 billion? Man, gimme a piece of that shit! Does wikipedia know what it can do with that kind of money -- like buying Encyclopedia britannica, for example? Or funding its own military force like Blackwater Worldwide or some such other worthwhile endeavor. JBackus13 (talk) 22:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Dividends based on edit count? Any suggestions on how I should spend my $3,000,000? --Carnildo (talk) 01:15, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Well the thing is wikipedia can't keep the money, since its a non-profit. So the only thing they could do is pass the profits (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) to somewhere else. The U.S. government would prefer that the money be passed onto taxable entities-- the users, so the gov't could collect income taxes on it. And the editors do have a "stake" in wikipedia based on the equitable value of their contributions to wikipedia. Thus, Wikipedia will be a "pass through" non-profit where the revenue is taxed when it "passes through" to the users themselves. That way the government benefits, and the user benefits, for even after taxes, that's a lot of money. Like carnildo said, he would stand to gross $3m, which would still be about $1.8 million, post-tax. JBackus13 (talk) 04:31, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion Wikipedia is not about making money for its editors. I think if we ever have enough money (highly unlikely) to think about paying editors to edit pages, then it should be editors from disadvantaged parts of the world. And it should only be concerning regions where we do not have enough Wikipedia articles. See also: WP:Countering systemic bias. A better idea would be to put out some public service ads asking for expatriates from those disadvantaged countries to do more editing. People in the poorest parts of the world don't even have computer access, so paying them will do little good. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:40, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

"Disadvantaged" parts of the world are rife with corruption and graft. If Wikipedia started paying Africans and other third-worlders money to edit chances are this money would be intercepted by the warlords and public officials, not doing the average "wikipedian" in Africa the slightest good. This money would simply be used to fund war and human rights violations. Swinglineboy G (talk) 15:14, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't clear in my last comment. I actually do not support paying editors. I think it is better to make greater efforts to recruit editors from countries that need more coverage in Wikipedia. There are now WikiProjects for many nations and regions. Their efforts have done a lot of good. I think we need to further extend their reach with free public-service ads to places with expatriates from those countries. For example; university press and media and websites. University-connected radio stations often air ads from nonprofits for free. The expatriate students can pass the word on to their friends and associates in their countries. Even though the poorest nations may not have internet access in most parts of their nations, even the poorest nations oftentimes have internet access in some of the cities. Personal internet access and internet access in libraries, businesses, cafes, etc.. I communicated with someone who used internet cafes in Laos, for example. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:23, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing new under the sun... First, estimates of ad revenue are just that: Estimates. Revenues depend on supply and demand. All of Wikipedia suddenly being open for advertising would greatly increase the supply of ad space. Selling in bulk always decreases the price. And apart from editors leaving, there also is the question of donations. Would you donate to a Wikipedia that's raking in cash hand over hand via ads? Also, ads need infrastructure. So part of the revenue would immediately go towards more servers and bandwidth. Developers, currently often volunteers, would also expect to be paid. Assume US$250000 per developer per year if you have to pay real costs (and that is probably rather low). I would be surprised if a solidly argued business case even exists. And I'd only trust it if the author backs it by guaranteeing an increase in revenue - and a faster one than Wikimedia has managed on donations alone. As for the the idea of paying "dividends" to editors? Just image the overhead, and the possibilities for abuse. How do you evaluate the quality of contributions? If you reward quantity, be prepared for an invasion of bots. In short, this idea seems to be completely unworkable. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:46, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

We need more developers. And they don't cost anything close to US$250,000 per developer per year. Some would get paid, some wouldn't. Just like now. You are making several incorrect assumptions in my opinion. Ads do not require a massive infrastructure. Google ads for example are easy to implement. Google does most of the work. And there is no doubt that opt-in ads would raise more money than donations eventually over time. More money than donations alone could ever be reasonably expected to do. That is not a bad thing. We can ignore the dividend ideas. That was started by the sockpuppet trollers. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

If we need more developers, then the solution is to reach out to students and others interested in the development of Mediawiki, not to throw money it. Paying them simply isn't necessary; all that's necessary is that we rid ourselves of the elitist developer mentality that we have now and welcome the code commits of new people. There are other solutions to the problem than becoming corporate slaves. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 13:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

We obviously need more developers. Good ones, too. Because some mistakes can be very damaging. Here is a message currently at the top of my Commons watchlist:

"On Friday September 5, 2008, a human error resulted in the loss of many images (most current list). Since then, the vast majority have been recovered by various means. Please see the post to the commons-l mailing list for technical details. Please do not request deletion of any of the affected images. If you have a copy of these images, please upload them at the image's current page. You may be able to find the images on web.archive.org, Google cache or similar sources. Further inquiries may be directed to commons-l."

I am distressed that we don't currently have the multiple levels of hardware and software backup that we need to prevent these types of serious losses. Imagine the huge amount of time that went in finding, uploading, describing, and categorizing these lost images. I have donated thousands of hours of time editing Wikipedia and the Commons. I am not surprised by this problem, though, because of the small budget that Wikimedia has. Relative to the huge number of hits that Wikipedia gets. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Backing up commons to disk would be a massive task, and would require a ridiculous amount of storage. Most of the images that you mention were found in the squid cache, leaving only around ~500 orphaned, which really isn't all that many when compared to the vast amount of data that resides there. But, yeah, we do need more developers. Why not ask them to accept more? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 13:35, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I am really glad that in the end only ~500 images were lost. I have websites of my own, and have worked on others. One gallery I helped out at recently lost most of its albums. The images remain, but without most of the albums the images might as well have been lost since they are no longer easily accessible by most people. Maybe 6 months from now and with a lot of work the gallery can be rebuilt from web.archive.org copies of the albums. Web.archive.org purposely is always 6 months behind in its archiving of a site. I hope that the Wikimedia Foundation accepts more qualified developers. I have seen the damage that inexperienced web developers can do. I have asked Bugzilla to accept more reports. See: mw:Talk:Bugzilla#Email addresses do not need to be public anymore --Timeshifter (talk) 13:51, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

"rid ourselves of the elitist developer mentality that we have now and welcome the code commits of new people" - Do you actually know what the process is to become a developer? Its basically:

1. Submit a few patches to Bugzilla that don't suck and get them reviewed and/or write up a nice extension and get it committed to SVN, to establish that you know what you're doing.
2. Send an email to Brion or Tim asking for commit access.
3. Get approved, exchange SSH public key, checkout a copy of the code.
4. Start working.

If you use IRC, you can do the last 3 steps in a few minutes. As far as I know, there's no backlog of people waiting for access, just not very many people volunteering. Mr.Z-man 16:24, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, if not dividends (I am opposed to that myself), Wikipedia should then keep the profits. Become a for-profit corporation. Imagine what Mr. Wales could buy with all that money. Not to mention offering stock in Wikipedia, which would raise more billions of dollars. Seriously, this kind of money being put to use in the the economy would do a lot to stave off the financial crisis and coming recession. JBackus13 (talk) 04:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Big misunderstanding. Money is not being made, it is being redistributed. And advertising dollars that go into Wikipedia would go missing somewhere else. The real value that Wikipedia offers is the encyclopedia. This value is the higher the less strings - visible or invisible - are attached. And if Wikipedia became a publicly traded for-profit, the board would be forced by law to maximize investor returns, not encyclopedic quality. American Idol meets the WWWF - here we come. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:22, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I see you fail to appreciate even the rudimentary aspects of capitalism. Your "zero sum" take on the economy hearkens back to simple Marixan ideology that has been defunct for at least a century. Get with the times... Swinglineboy G (talk) 17:59, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Semi-arbitrary break

I support on/off buttons for opt-in ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia for all readers (via cookies).

The trolling by Swinglineboy G and JBackus13 became very obvious with their later comments. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

no ads

This user stands against advertisements on Wikipedia.

For balance.  :) Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 13:08, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment. Direct advertising is not the only choice we have. Indirect advertising would work too. For example; the Google search box. See: Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages. For example; from AdSense#AdSense for search is this:

"A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search, allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box, Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner. However the publisher is paid only if the advertisements on the page are clicked: AdSense does not pay publishers for mere searches."

A variation of this allows the non-profit Mozilla Foundation to raise around $60 million dollars a year. They put Google search as a dropdown option in their Firefox browser search form at the top of all their browsers. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I emphasize again that paying out "dividends" is utterly infeasible for Wikipedia - our contributor base has many core contributors, but also a fat tail of occasional contributors who contribute a large proportion of all content. The administrative and transaction costs are far too high to pay all these people proportionally to their contributions (it's difficult to even determine the value of each user's contribution). There's a reason donation money goes to hardware, and not to us - any kind of compensation system would create perverse incentive to contribute for return without contributing any content of real value. Dcoetzee 20:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I don't know why you are replying to me, though. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:28, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not. I was replying to the original poster. Blame wiki-based threads and indentation resetting. Dcoetzee 23:48, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

We're not the Mozilla project. They make a browser. We're not a browser. That makes sense in a browser; it doesn't make sense here. Placing a widget to provide search functionality for an external website not connected to the project and that may lead to non-RS/blacklist/spam sites doesn't seem like a particularly good idea by any reasonable stretch, not to mention the ideological problems with an advertisement-driven Wikipedia, which I think are more than enough to keep this from happening. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:46, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing special about a browser searchbox. Nor is there anything special about a Wikipedia searchbox. There is one in the left sidebar. As I said earlier, the objections to opt-in ads and expanded searchboxes seem mostly to come from a few ideologues. But I haven't heard any objections to the Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft search tools in Wikipedia's main search page at Special:Search. Click on the dropdown menu there. That searchbar could be moved to the top of Wikipedia pages. There would be no namespace table. So there would be a short searchbar using up half a line. Using space that is currently unused at the very top of Wikipedia pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:03, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Where on the top of the page? The only empty space I can see is next to the page title, but that's only if the title is short enough. And that would be a really annoying place for a search box. Mr.Z-man 21:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a big difference between a browser searchbox and a Wikipedia searchbox. A webwide search bar makes sense in a browser; it is, after all, a web browser. That's kind of one of its functions. On the other hand, Wikipedia is a web site; beyond that, we're an encyclopedia. We are not a webwide search engine. if someone wants to search the entire web, they should go to a search engine.

There's also a big difference between using another searching utility to crawl Wikipedia's contents (which makes perfect sense, and can be accomplished without advertising nonsense) and using advertising and adding more searchboxes to confuse users. I don't go to Wikipedia to search the web; I go to Wikipedia to search Wikipedia.

What you propose doesn't even make sense; why on earth would I want to add more steps to a simple process? If I wanted to search the web, I'd use my more efficient browser search bar, which sends my search directly to the wanted search engine; no unnecessary duplicated POSTS happening. I don't want to see all kinds of sponsored crap showing in my searches, and I certainly don't want any kind of corporate interests leveraging any kind of search on-wiki. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:07, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

You obviously are ignorant about Special:Search, Wikipedia's main search page. The dropdown menu allows one to use search engines from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc. to search Wikipedia.

The left half of the very top line of any Wikipedia page is open. That is what I see right now to the left of my user name at the very top of the page. I am signed in. The searchform and dropdown menu from Special:Search could easily fit there. There is even more space if the Wikipedia globe on the top left is pushed down a little bit.

It is mainly ignorance and a few ideologues that are against millions of dollars of search engine money coming our way. Control-freak ideologues try to control others. They want to prevent others from viewing what those other people want to view. Such as ads. This is paternalism. A non-paternalistic attitude would not feel that optional ads are wrong. Wrong for who? Shouldn't readers decide what to view? --Timeshifter (talk) 05:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

You're obviously ignorant about what The search page is. Those items on Special:Search use existing utilities to search Wikipedia; they don't add interstatial ads, popup ads, or any kind of extra fluff nonsense. They're a search engine for here, nowhere else; they don't search outside domains. They're not there to make Wikipedia your "web portal". That's not what Wikipedia is. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. And again, like I said, there's a big difference between using someone else's search to trawl Wikipedia and using it to generate ad revenue by putting it in the worst possible place I can think of; the first is current practice. The second ties us to advertisers, as well as making searching clumsy and unprofessional.

If remaining independent from corporate influence and remaining untied to the ad market is 'ignorance', then I guess that's a label that I can live with. At least I'll have a clean conscience and a nice, readable, sensibly designed encyclopedia that doesn't rape me every time I want to find something. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 13:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Such hyperbole. So you use Special:Search and the Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft search engines there to search Wikipedia? Putting a half-line version of Special:Search on the top of every page would not "add interstatial ads, popup ads, or any kind of extra fluff nonsense." It is strictly a change of location for a search form that you already use. The big search form would remain at Special:Search. The truncated version would be at the top of every Wikipedia page, and would be much more convenient.

The search results page can be made to open up in another browser tab so as not to cover up the Wikipedia page one is reading. You won't be raped. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 05:26, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

So, then, you're seriously proposing a per-search revenue stream without any kind of advertisements wherein the search only operates on a specific domain? Where's the financial incentive for them to do that? You seriously think anyone would go along with that? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 14:09, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

A variation of this allows the non-profit Mozilla Foundation to raise around $60 million dollars a year. They put Google search as a dropdown option in their Firefox browser search form at the top of all their browsers. For more info please see Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Please re-read my previous comment. Mozilla's arrangement with Google involves webwide search; it isn't "(searchterm) inurl:mozilla.org)". By your previous comments, you seemed to be advocating re-implementing the search page as a gadget at the top of the page, and inserting advertisements in the ensuing results. If you were referring to implementing a web-wide search, see my comments earlier about the problems of having a search that could return non-RS/blacklist/spam sites. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 01:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) When Special:Search does a Google search of Wikipedia it uses a variation of this:

• http://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org (add search terms)

Specifically, it uses the following sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org format:

• http://www.google.com/search?sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org&q=nonprofit+ads (with search terms)

As with most links there is no intermediary involved. The URL goes directly to Google. It pulls up a Google site-search page. That results page has standard Google text ads on the side. That is where the ad money comes into the picture. It is not a web-wide search, but it is still a Google search results page with ads. There is a possibility of a financial arrangement being made with Google to place the Special:Search form (without the checkbox table) at the top left of every Wikipedia page. Similar arrangements could be made with Yahoo, Microsoft and other search engine providers to be in the dropdown menu.

There is no problem with "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" since those search results and ads are not on Wikipedia pages. Any source link or external link on Wikipedia (including searchforms) can lead to "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" being linked on the external link page. Wikipedia can not control what other pages link to.

Even more money could be made by putting an option to search web-wide too. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

There are several big issues with this:

1. Google is not free software - Wikimedia uses free/open source software for pretty much everything possible. The current "advanced search" thing is JavaScript based and maintained entirely by users. If we make it "official" and organized through the foundation, then it potentially becomes an issue. Especially as we have a developer actively working on the MediaWiki internal search.
2. Any source/EL can potentially lead to "non-RS/blacklist/spam sites" but we would probably try to avoid those in favor of sources that don't contain links to problematic sites, those other sources aren't paying us for prime placement, and they aren't officially endorsed by the foundation. We can't control what they link to, but we can remove them from our site if necessary. We can't control what Google puts in their ads (Google may not be able to either [5]) so we'd basically be stuck with whatever they want.
3. We avoid the same scale of potential COI/NPOV issues as we would have with ads directly on pages, where advertisers may attempt to exert control over pages, but there would still be some potential issues. Even if they don't actually exist, people have a tendency to see conspiracies given any shard of potential evidence.

Personally, I think the first issue (closed source + proprietary technology) would be the biggest for the Foundation, though the second and issues (we have no control over what appears in search results and Google has potential leverage over us) would probably be an issue with the community. Mr.Z-man 03:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It does not seem to be an issue now with Special:Search, Wikipedia's main search page. I have not heard of anyone complaining about the options there in the dropdown menu to choose Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. to do site searches of Wikipedia.

Site search by Wikimedia's own non-proprietary search engine (MediaWiki search) is not effected by any of this. It is currently the default search engine at Special:Search. I think it should remain the default search engine no matter where the search form is placed.

The other site-search options (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, etc.) have to be selected in the dropdown menu. People need to try Special:Search themselves to fully understand. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:20, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You act like none of us know it exists; there's just no reason to complain about it now. It's not our revenue stream, so we don't get leveraged by ad providers. It's not widely advertised or used here, so there's no need for SEOs to manipulate the project to optimize ad placement for their clients. It's more "these are better search tools than MediaWiki's internal search, which isn't particularly intelligent, you may want to use it." If the Foundation started gaining sustainable income from sites not based on OSS, you bet I'd start complaining. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 09:06, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation board would not let anyone pressure or manipulate them or us. The fact is that ads are already on pages found via external links and source links. Same as on Google search result pages. It is just another external link. We might as well make some money from it. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

As I said, the current Google search thing is maintained entirely with JavaScript by users here. It is not the default search engine, and you only see it when the internal search doesn't work. If we put a Google search box on the top of every page, we can't argue that it isn't the main search form anymore. Currently, all external links are voluntarily added to pages, the community, or in most cases, any editor, can remove them at any time. If Google is paying us for prime placement and we build the form into the software, we lose that ability, and Google gains leverage. If Google were to want to exert influence over us now, the only thing they could really do is stop indexing Wikipedia pages, which would mainly hurt them. If they have monetary influence, then they have a much stronger bargaining chip. Mr.Z-man 16:06, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Why would Google care to pressure us? If they exert pressure we can ignore them. What can they do? Not renew the contract? So what? We can always go back to donations. But it would not be in Google's interest to try to manipulate Wikipedia. They probably know how independent-minded we all are. We can also make this very clear during the initial contract negotiations.

We can build in a "kill switch" into the MediaWiki software. So that if Google, Yahoo, or Windows Live pressures us too much, or does not renew the contract, we can easily remove the relevant search engine from the dropdown menu.

I don't quite know what you mean by "you only see it when the internal search doesn't work." I see Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live all the time in the dropdown menu at Special:Search. I assume you are talking about the sidebar search form? --Timeshifter (talk) 16:36, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ads are not already on our pages, and saying that they are because external links have them is a non-starter. We don't make money from them. We can't do anything about sites that do have them. While it would be nice to be able to link to sites that don't have advertisements, the sad thing is that many of them do, and its more important to have a good source than a bad one. But that's an entirely separate issue. It seems like you're grasping at straws at this point.

Also, you still don't seem to quite understand the problem with SEO and what not. It's going to affect the project whether you want it to or not; SEO companies will see it as a new manipulation vector when we start encouraging people to use ad-ridden external search utilities.

Also, have you given any thought to the look-and-feel issues? Apart from putting the bar in the proposed location (which would be gross, and in at leas 8 point font), searches aren't going to look the same as regular searches. They're going to be browsing Google's index of Wikipedia rather than Wikipedia. Is that really what we, as a project, want? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Celarnor (talk • contribs) 18:33, 11 November 2008

Site-search form example

(unindent) The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Search engine optimization (SEO) only works if companies are able to add links to their sites and products. Spam links are currently controlled by the many spam admins and spam-watching editors on Wikipedia. Most editors keep an eye out for questionable external links. Wikipedia results are already at or near the top of many, if not most, searches on Google. A site-search engine will matter little concerning already ongoing SEO-motivated spam links.

Here is a schematic of a possible search form at the top left of the page.

|___________________________| .Dropdown menu. Go. Search

There is plenty of room for the search form at the top of the page. The left half of the page is available on my 17 inch monitor.

The search form at Special:Search combined with the dropdown menu there is not that long. "Advanced search" can be shortened to just "Search". The form itself can be shortened slightly. The whole thing would then fit fine at the top of the page.

It would use currently unused space (unused by registered users). The Wikipedia logo at the top left can be pushed down a quarter inch. The sidebar search form can be removed to keep the sidebar short. The sidebar search form would be unneeded because it would be a duplicate search form. The "Go" button can be moved next to the top search form. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:39, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

And you'd want to use the portlet size fonts for this? You'd have to scale them down by about 20% to fit them with a a text input and buttons to keep them from being gross and looking like it was hacked together as some Freshman's intro to multimedia project. At that point, you're talking about 6-point font. I can't even read six point font. If, by some craziness, this actually does get implemented, it should be implemented as a gadget that replaces the current search bar, with radio boxes or a dd menu underneath it for selecting which search to use; this way, there's no unnecessary ugliness, and it only gets used by those users who expressly choose to by installing the gadget. Note, however, this doesn't deal with any of the secondary, indirect problems that are created for the project by becoming advertisement-supported that effect everyone, regardless of whether they opted in or not. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 04:12, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, I don't quite understand the points you're making regarding SEO; the fact that it exists in another vector doesn't really matter. What matters is that, with this implemented, you're talking about a huge influx of people who think that the external search is the "right" one to use, so we're going to get inundated with spam links and edits trying to link products in adwords to individual pages and searches for a vector that was heretofore unused (or at least, practically so). Its already bad enough it is with regards to spam links and the like, it really doesn't need to get any worse. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 04:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Readable font sizes should be used. People can choose any search engine they want for site searches of Wikipedia. They can do that now. More people will find what they want to find this way. Competition between our own non-proprietary search engine and other search engines will make both better. Both types of search (ours and theirs) can be selected from the dropdown menu. Ours is the default search engine. All is good, all is fine. The sky is not falling! --Timeshifter (talk) 04:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

You don't seem to understand what I said, so I'll reiterate. Normal size fonts could not be used by any stretch; the biggest you could use without being completely ugly would be the portlet fonts (the "My watchlist", etc links in the upper right), and in order to keep it from looking like its attached to the rest of the page, and in keeping with the rest of the monobook theme, there should be about 20% of the widgets distance in empty space between it and other elements. That leaves you using six point font in a search form and a drop down menu.

Users can do that now at the search page, but we:

A) Aren't making money from it, and as a corrolary, not encouraging users to use it,

B) Don't have it directly doable from the main page, also not encouraging users to use it.

In fact, I imagine a lot of people don't even know its there. As I've said before, its a small, small subset of people who use Google in such a way. Wikipedia is one of the top 10 most accessed sites. We also give anyone the ability to edit content that gets crawled and indexed. Are you seriously so naive as to think that there won't be any kind of repercussions from encouraging the use of a advertisement-driven search engine isn't going to result in them trying to ramp up Wikipedia's content for their clients? If I were them, I'd be drooling over this conversation and eagerly waiting.

Also, MediaWiki's internal search can be quite intelligent when configured properly and with sufficient power behind it; it has a lot more analytical capability than most people give it credit for simply because it isn't enabled beyond its most basic functions here on Wikipedia. Its code doesn't need much in the way of improvement, and I really don't see how simply having a link to another search engine is going to spur developers to write a better search engine. At the moment, the reason it sucks is that we just don't have the computing power necessary to run it at its full potential. And, really, I don't think that its particularly necessary. Between internal links, lists, categories, and what not, its quite easy to find what you need without an extremely intelligent search engine. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 07:47, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I hardly ever use MediaWiki's search engine. Google is fast, consistent, and has a multitude of equally fast advanced options for site-specific search.

There is no need to use a small font for the search form. I gave an example previously:

|___________________________| .Dropdown menu. Go. Search

Look at how little space it needs. The search form itself could be shortened more if necessary. The Wikipedia logo could be moved down a quarter inch. That leaves a blank space between the search form and the User name (when logged in).

Many people like me are already using their Google toolbars to do site-searches of Wikipedia. So the incentive for SEO addition of spam links has long existed. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:14, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't know where you're getting that you think something that size is going to fit in that space, especially taking into account the need for ~ 20% of its height in empty space, or at least 10% in one direction. If you really do think it can fit there, you must be using a different skin than anyone else. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:20, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

It is 4 words of text: Dropdown menu. Go. Search

Plus a search form of variable length: |____________________|

I am using the default monobook skin.

"Dropdown menu" is placeholder text for whatever the name is for the default search engine listed at the top of the dropdown menu listing search engine options for site searches of Wikipedia. At Special:Search it is "MediaWiki search" which is our own non-proprietary site search engine.

The search form can be shortened even more. The Google Toolbar is optionally installed on browsers of all kinds (MS Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc). It combines the "Search" button with a dropdown menu of more search choices. One of those choices is to search the site one is currently viewing. The Wikipedia search form I suggest putting on the top left of every page could be shortened by combining the search button with the dropdown menu.

The Google Toolbar on my browsers (MS Internet Explorer and Firefox) uses one quarter to one third of a line. It depends on how big I choose to make the search form. I can drag it to make it any length. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:24, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

It's not about the length; its about the width. There's just not enough vertical room there unless you're going to use the portlet fonts, and that's ridiculous. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 01:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with vertical room for

|_______________| Search. Go.

The text size can be made any height we decide. Space under the text can be as wide as we decide. Relax. Be happy, don't worry. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 13:19, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

You should probably familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of UI design if you can't understand why having something smaller than those portlet items is completely okay, because I don't seem to be doing very well in getting that point across. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

There is space in the user interface on Wikipedia pages for placing the search box above the Wikipedia logo at the top left. The Wikipedia logo only needs to be pushed down a little. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Indirect advertising

If somebody is proposing something, could they start a new thread at WP:VPR, please? This appears to be a very confused discussion, that is taking up almost half the VPP page... If there is still relevant ongoing discussion about advertising, could we perhaps have a summary? -- Quiddity (talk) 23:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

It is about indirect advertising. Please see: Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages.

From the lead section of Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements:

In a comment dated March 7, 2008 on his Wikipedia talk page Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has stated

"While I continue to oppose the introduction of any advertising in Wikipedia, I also continue to agree that the discussion should evolve beyond a simple binary. I believe that if we looked at putting ads into the search results page (only), with the money earmarked for specific purposes (with strong community input into what those would be, either liberation of copyrights or support for the languages of the developing world or...). As the Foundation continues to evolve into a more professional organization capable of taking on and executing tasks (yay Sue and the growing staff!), it begins to be possible to imagine many uses of money that would benefit our core charitable goals. Lest I be misunderstood: I am not saying anything new, but saying exactly what I have said for many years."

This is not at the proposal stage yet. The previous talk section is about getting some of the money from the ads on Google search result pages for site searches of Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales was talking about putting ads on MediaWiki search result pages for site searches of Wikipedia.

I think Jimmy Wales idea would work if people opted in for those ads on MediaWiki search result pages. Then people like Celarnor would not have to view them. Only people who chose to view the optional ads on MediaWiki's search result pages would see the ads there this way. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:51, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

We could even make the dropdown menu of outside search engines be an optional addition. Then no one would have to view the indirect ads that did not want to view them. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that. Not this year. The sky is falling, and we'd like to not think about the economy right now, please and thank you. Also, considering all the variables, it might become more realistic to officially/foundationally consider such things in the near future. Lastly, they're in a better place (organizationally, professionally, and SanFranciscanally) to consider such things than you or we are... I'd suggest dropping it for at least 6 months (Unless you're getting traction above. You didn't mention support, so I assume not). -- Quiddity (talk) 08:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, let's not think about the economy right now. ;)

The Wikimedia Foundation could do this right now if they wanted to. They need the feedback of this kind of discussion. I only see minor opposition to indirect advertising or optional ads. There is support here and in other talk pages. It will be interesting to see if we reach $6 million in donations. The number of weekly page views of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project pages is probably increasing so fast that $6 million may not be enough to prevent frequent slowdowns in the next year, and to resolve all the new bugs in a timely manner. A constant battle. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

You're only seeing minor opposition because nobody seriously expects it to happen, and therefore, it's not worth getting worked up about. If a member of the Foundation were to post a proposal, I'd expect people to start screaming bloody murder. --Carnildo (talk) 00:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I, and others, have discussed various aspects of this in multiple places, and there have been only a few opponents. The wholesale opposition, myself included, is to direct ads on all pages without user or reader choice in the matter. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I think when, and if, it comes to a site-wide vote of some kind--god forbid--, then it would become quite obvious that pretty much everyone is opposed to the idea; at this point,it just isn't something most people need to worry about. If a member of the Foundation posted something, or if it started garnering wide enough support for something like that to actually *happen*, then you'd probably start seeing people screaming. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

There would be a few people screaming. But looking at our discussions here and elsewhere, I believe that the actual percentage of Wikipedia users that would be opposed to optional ads (direct or indirect) would be fairly small. Especially after thorough discussion, and after the screaming ended. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:01, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Table of userbox usage.

Re advertisements&diff=260625274&oldid=260350438 which says the boxes were put on user pages "back around 2001" and is therefor "not an accurate representation of the viewpoints of Wikipedia users" - it may not be, but not for that reason: the oldest box was created on 2005-12-30. -- Jeandré, 2008-12-31t11:42z

OK. I removed the totals for the number of users transcluding the user boxes. The number of users transcluding any of the user boxes is not an accurate representation of the viewpoints of current Wikipedia users and readers. There has been very little discussion of optional ads or search income in the wider Wikipedia community. There was a very loud community-wide discussion concerning mandatory ads back around 2001. No community-wide discussion or representative poll has ever been taken concerning optional ads or search income. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:02, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Alternative to blatant advertisements/AdSense

Google Adsense or any other similar system should not be on Wikipedia's pages. I propose an alternative that could kill two birds... offer a Sponsored links section at the very bottom of article pages, down by the "See also" or "References" section. Business continually try to put their links in Wikipedia's articles (so much so that they had to nofollow them) so why not offer a paid service that does it?

1) Advertisers would choose the article they want their link to appear on.

2) The service would be bid based and only display the top 3-5 winning bids. It would be beneficial to both advertisers and visitors as all sites would be relevant to the content of the article and a user would probably find the link useful.

3) The service would be a Javascript instead of being hard coded into the site. This way users could still block the sponsored links if they want and it wouldn't cause problems for scrapers/search engines.

The system could/should all be managed inhouse and allow for significant revenue as well as killing (some of) the spamming that is going on. Why would someone spam an article only to have their link removed if they could pay $5/month to have it displayed legally?

Take the Automobiles article for example. Down at the very bottom of the article below the "External Links" section a "Sponsored Links" section would appear. In that section, there would be a list of links such as Toyota, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, etc. It would be a helpful section and not annoying and ugly like Adsense/others. Plus, all revenue generated would go directly to Wikipedia instead of some to Google.

This is the only type of advertising I would be OK with on Wikipedia. The day I see an actual "ad unit" on Wikipedia will be a sad day for everyone.

There are currently over 1 million articles on en.wikipedia.org. That means if just one link is sold per article at $0.50/month Wikipedia would pay for itself.24.11.209.231 (talk) 00:25, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

suggestion to add advertising

Note: This discussion was started at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).

feel free to shoot me down for an already overwrought topic, but I would like to again suggest that instead of a [rather annoying] yearly banner add that wikipedia adopt google ads in a very conspicuously noted place [very bottom, somewhere where people can tell exactly what is going on]. Add a disclaimer, do what you need to do, but a fund drive is not necessary. Just my $0.02. Thoughts? Rogerdpack (talk) 16:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

No, no and thrice NO. – ukexpat (talk) 16:21, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

hm... no. although I wish Wikimedia would make a virtue of slimming down so they wouldn't need to go asking for multiple millions in the middle of an economic crisis. --dab (𒁳) 16:55, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

What needs to happen is an advertising-inserting gadget. I would have no problem whatsoever with an opt-in system, and it could net the Foundation a fair amount of funds without all the "but I don't want to see any ads!" nonsense that plagues this idea. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:02, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

re: Opt-in advertising: Hmm, I'd actually go for that. However, I don't see it happening soon unless there's a financial crisis. It would give those of us who don't have a lot of cash a way to financially support the project. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

No, nein, le, nu, non, na, nei, nej, ne, and further more, NO doktorb _words^deeds 17:41, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I would like to suggest that instead of (rather annoying) google ads, Wikipedia adopt a yearly banner in a very conspicuously noted place. Goochelaar (talk) 14:16, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Strong opposition. This is a perennial proposal and should probably be closed as per the snowball clause--Ipatrol (talk) 17:24, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Even if WP were to adopt ads, it would have to be something they have better control over; with Google ads there are stories of people finding their websites suddenly displaying pro-Prop 8 ads or other sorts of things that could be objectionable to large numbers of people. Given the number of people who look at WP, someone would have to have pretty tight control over what ads are getting shown. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:28, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I've found AdSense ads to be fairly relevant to whatever page they are displayed on; generally, stuff like pro-Prop8 ads get inserted when they don't have anything else to display. Besides, if it's strictly opt-in, the people that choose to have ads displayed will likely understand that there's going to be a small percentage that aren't relevant. Besides, if the Foundation takes a hands-off approach, that'll be that much less effort they have to put forth; I'd rather that they not have to hire a new person just to manage the ads. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:29, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Why start threads like this when you already know that the answer will always be no? This has been suggested many times, it has always received wide opposition, and you clearly know that this is a perennial proposal. Adding ads would completely contrast what Wikipedia is all about. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 15:47, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Support opt-in advertising. Opt-in advertising is not a perennial proposal. It has been little discussed. There has never been community-wide discussion. For more info see Wikipedia:Funding Wikipedia through advertisements and its talk page. It seems to have taken a long time to reach our fundraising goal this time. And even having reached it Wikipedia is badly in need of more funds. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I support advertising in whole, I would want. Reasons l84. Silk Knot (talk) 17:18, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I still don't understand why people oppose search-tool income. We used to have it on Special:Search, but it was removed. It seems (to me) like a good balance between the two raging sides. Unknownlight (talk) 01:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Against advertising

I am strongly against advertising on Wikipedia. I would gladly donate several tens of Euros to Wikipedia every month if it would only help Wikipedia to remain free of advertisements. Is there an official discussion somewhere where I could add my opinion? JIP | Talk 19:01, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

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