MediaWiki talk:Anonnotice

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This page was created on January 16, 2005 (one day after Wikipedia Day). It is the equivalent of MediaWiki:Sitenotice except that it shows up only for unregistered (anonymous) users. According to the developers, by either deleting this page or setting it to -, MediaWiki software will fall back to the SiteNotice. Flcelloguy (A note?) 03:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Anon-only version

(copied from MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice)

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

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

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

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

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

Yay! Everybody is happy mav

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

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


[edit] Wording

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Side effect

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

  • Whatever we place in there will also be on Google. Jimbo seemed to like it, as his name now has more hits than Jesus and the Beatles combined :) — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-25 20:36
  • The only thing I can think of to solve this is to turn it into a picture. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-25 20:38
  • According to Brion, it can also be done with javascript. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-25 20:40
    • You know we could just do what de,fr,pl,ja,it,sv,nl,pt and es (ie all the other ones around the centeral globe) have done.Geni 23:55, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I don't think it's really a problem. It's just more advertising for us, and really it's something Google needs to fix, not us (at least, that was the opinion the devs shared when I talked to them). — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 00:16
        • I am holding my tongue on what I think of the recent decisions regarding this and the sitenotice by you and your fellow devs lest I get blocked for WP:NPA but I'll leave it to say that you guys are stuck in your own little world since very few people support your arbitary decisions both on this notice and on the sitenotice and you seem fit to push it on everyone with zero approval by lording the fact that your a dev over us. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 01:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Since it's something we did, IMO it's something we should fix - at least as far as not having it show up in Google results. That's counterproductive. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 01:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Well I would remove it once and for all and be done with it but I know for a fact that I would be reverted if I did so since some people can't stand the thought of not having a notice stating that Jimbo is begging for money on the main page. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 01:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I have deleted the notice at least until it can be fixed since it is clearly broken especially since it's currently showing up in google results before the actual content which is clearly harmful. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 01:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Google doesn't update their index every day. There was no need to delete the notice; if something needs to be done, it can be done before Google updates. In case you've forgotten the people who supported this, I'll copy it above for you. See #Anon-only_version. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:08
Problem is that google doesn't spider the whole site in one go. The result is the longer it is up there the worse the situation gets. See [1] where it hasn't hit yet and [2] where it has.Geni 02:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to go along with Mav and say that this really isn't that big of a deal, and certainly not a pressing problem. Even Jimbo knows about it and had nothing negative to say. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 03:24

[edit] Ideas on how to fix this

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

  • Picture
  • Javascript

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

  • Thank you for finally trying to work this out. I've asked Lupin and LockeCole about javascript. The only problem with a picture would be that it wouldn't scale like text does. According to the devs, we should be telling Google to ignore it; they (avar, brion, etc) say that it is Google's problem, not ours. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:16
  • I see that Geni appears to believe this is yet another chance (YAC) to go on a blanking spree, as was done with Anthere and Mav repeated times before. Just an observation. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:21
    • Sorry about my use of rollback. A bit trigger happy :) — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:25
    • Well you know how it is. The minutes of the meeting still are not online. We do have something though [3]. Of course the report of the Financial committee wont turn up until 11 February so it is open to question if the minutes of the meeting will be of significance to this issue.Geni 02:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
        • We have the opinions of several of the people that were in that meeting already. A few of them are above in #Anon-only_version. That's why Anonnotice was created. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:32
    • Brian, believe me when I tell you that I am tempted to revert you and to keep it blanked since unless Jimbo or the board states otherwise the wiki isn't going to end tommorow just because we don't have this notice but our ability to get google results that people will actually follow to wikipedia is immediately hampered by the fact that people are getting crap when they see a wikipedia result on their google search. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
      • You just said above that you were going to work on discussing it. Now, suddenly, you want to revert and screw discussion? I've talked to several people about fixing this. How many have you talked to? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:32
      • I would rather figure this out with the notice intact than to blank the notice and lose a potential $4000/day. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-26 02:34
You misunderstand me, I'm not going to revert you, at least not until we can try to fix it first if that fails then yes I will unless you can prove an impending financial crisis. I am willing to discuss fixing this but you seem to have some thought that the wiki will fail if we have this down for one second even if it is totally fucking up google results. JtkieferT | C | @ ----
Could you give me a search term that would show this fuck up? I Googled a few terms within en.wikipedia.org and did not see anything odd. Google generates a lot of traffic for us, so we should try to fix things in a way where we keep the message and Google searches remain useful. --mav 03:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Try [4]. Dragons flight 03:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
To be fair, those a terms in the index for which the message was included in the page cache. In many cases, the search blurb associated with one of those pages will not actually show the appeal comment. Instead it may choose to highlight some other section of the page. I don't have any good sense of how often the appeal is showing up in the blurbs. Dragons flight 03:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I just had a thought, will mediawiki allow us to use a meta tag or equivalent coding to stop google from indexing that one element? JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 02:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I looked through the Google documentation and didn't find any provision for hiding text from them. Which makes sense since they want to pages in their index to appear as they do to readers, so as to avoid various optimization hacks. Dragons flight 03:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CSS

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

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

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

[edit] Replaced wording

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

  • My suggestion is still "Thank you for your [continued donations] to Wikipedia," but I'm fine with these versions as well. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 07:31
  • You confuse the content on Wikipedia vs Wikipedia website and project itself. True, the GFDL means that that content will remain free. But lots of donations are needed to keep the website at wikipedia.org free of advertisements, going down (can't be free if you are not online), or even pay for view type solutions..22: So is it not dishonest and you should be ashamed for ascribing bad faith. All that said, I like the new wording better. --mav 12:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
    • It's bad faith to assume bad faith. I didn't ascribe to you any intent – I objected to what wording suggested. And again, lack of funds doesn't mean we'd – the community – consent to advertisements. --cj | talk 13:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Your own words (replace wording - it's despicable to suggest Wikipedia would be any thing other than free.) So you were saying that what I said was inappropriate, offensive, and despicable when you could have been civil when making the change. You were incivil and should have acted btter. Shame. --mav
        • No, I criticised what the wording suggested – I made no comment as to your intent. And your accussatory comments have hardly been polite. You are neglecting to abide by the same convention you accuse me of failing.--cj | talk 08:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
          • You have been rude and incivil. I have merely pointed out that fact. --mav 18:08, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
      • When the site becomes extremely slow or goes down for extended periods, then the community will change its mind. This will probably happen by the end of next year, unless we get some huge donations, or Google finally comes through. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 17:25
      • Hardware for the entirity of this year is projected to cost over $3 million, while next year will be up to nearly $20 million. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 17:38
        • At some point this exponential growth in traffic (that has been going on for years) has got to saturate. It actually looked like it had started to before the whole Seigenthaler gave a big kick in exposure. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said it would be many years before we made it into the top 10 websites, while right now it looks like it could in fact be soon. The top site on the web (Yahoo) only gets about 25 times the traffic we do right now. Since most of the capital goes into hardware to manage growth, eventually the growth should slow and we'll reach a point where most of the funding goes towards maintainence expenses, right? Dragons flight 18:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
          • You're assuming that we'll survive to the point where the growth even begins to level out. Even if it starts to level, we can't even raise near $3 million, let alone $20 million, or anything in between. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 18:36
          • Well there will be the background level of internet growth. However in thoery the cost of servers should fall which should counter that. Hmm where can we see these cost projections? Oh and past promisies mean that pay per view is not an option.Geni 18:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
            • Advertisements are inevitable, however. The cost projections are on the meta site's budget page. I checked them earlier today. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 18:36
              • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget/2006/Q1 seems to be blank.Geni 19:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                • [5] — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 19:52
                  • They expect that over the next two years our hits will increase by two orders of magnitude? Are they assumeing that everyone in india will be given free internet acess or something?Geni 20:03, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                  • (edit conflict) Someone should point out to whoever is writing the budget that we probably don't need to write the 2007 budget to accomodate 6 fold more traffic than Yahoo, the present internet leader, gets today. Hence, I believe the $20M hardware budget is inflated. Dragons flight 20:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                    • Of course it's not right. That's not the point. We can't even meet this year's hardware needs, let alone next year's, which will only get higher. If you have better data, let us know. Until then, it's the best we have. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 20:06
                      • Well if you don't believe it, then don't be citing it all willy-nilly like you did above. We cleared ~$320,000 in the last drive, and we are apparently budgeting for continued 85% traffic growth per quarter. If donations can be made to grow at that same 85% rate per quarter then you'd clear $3M after 4 quarters, which makes that number somewhat less scary. Do you have similar plots showing donations versus traffic? Dragons flight 20:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                        • According to Mav, the increase in donations has always been slower than the increase in traffic. I don't know by how much. We'll probably come close to meeting the $3M for this year, assuming that the number isn't higher, but as I said earlier, by next year we'll probably have to do some short-term advertising in some form. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 20:50
                          • hmmm run a comparison of donations against database server hits then. If we assume that the grow rate predictions for this year are correct then growth pretty much has to crash in early 2007 which will massively reduce the budget requirements.Geni 21:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                            • You're still missing the point. Yes, the requirements will drop, but they will still be higher than now, and most likely still increase much faster than donations. Simply sitting back and hoping for more donations is not going to fix this. No new predictions are going to turn $20M into something realistically achievable. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 22:51
                              • In fact they do. Zero growth would mean that server expenditure would be reduced to whatever needed to be replaced. That could quite easyerly reduce the costs by a couple of orders of magnitude. Now growth isn't going to drop to zero but I suspect that either the 2006 budget is a massive overestimate or the 2007 budget will be a lot closer to 2 million than 20.Geni 23:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
                                • You are not basing your predictions on any evidence though. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-1 23:15


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

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


killing indent Ok lets consider the following logic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] New wording

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

  • How about we go back to the way it was before? People don't care as much about donating to improve the site as they do donating to keep it around at all. Help keep Wikipedia free was the most accurate and powerful message we could have. That much of a drop in donations is the only reason we need to go back. - Taxman Talk 19:24, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
    • While I do understand others' complaints about this wording, I agree that we should at least try it out to see how it affects donations. Monday (today) should have been our highest day of the week, but now it's looking more like donations are continuing to drop with the less direct wording. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 19:49
    • To be clear, when I referred to a $3000 drop, that was when we switched from Jimbo's personal appeal to the "grow and improve" wording. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 19:53
  • any way we can switch back to jimbo appeal so with can callibrate for donor fatigure?Geni 20:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm fine with that too. - Taxman Talk 20:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with the keep Wikipedia free wording since we'd never allow wikipedia free to become unfree and Jimbo has expressed this several times in the past. There has to be a better way to phrase this that isn't blatantly lying to the readers. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 20:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
How about one of these: "help keep Wikipedia alive/going/operating/running"? It's more accurate and to-the-point than either of the versions currently being debated. Regardless of what is finally chosen, it must be something other than the current version, which is just not cutting it. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 20:50
You can't conclude that since you have changed more than one variable.Geni 21:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
What has been changed besides the wording of the notice? Let's try to be productive here. Which of my suggested alternatives are you alright with, or please make another suggestion. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 21:30
I honestly don't have one but stating that Wikipedia is suddenly not going to be free if you don't donate is beyond deceptive it's outright lying. It's true that Wikipedia will face a budget crunch soon and the prospects aren't good in terms of growth with this current rate of donations but you'll have a hard time convincing me that it's actually accurate to be telling people that wikipedia won't still be free if they don't donate. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 21:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Which version of this sounds alright: "help keep Wikipedia alive/going/operating/running"? — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 22:04
Based on the quick and totally insubmissible poll in #wikipedia, everyone who replied favored "running", so I'll go with that for now. Please reply here with suggested changes. — 0918BRIAN • 2006-02-6 22:12

[edit] Broken?

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

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

[edit] donor fatigue

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

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

[edit] Houston, we have a problem

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

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

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

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

[edit] Blast it!

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

[edit] Correction

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

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

[edit] Add a few nbsp;s?

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

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

[edit] It needs to be moved up or over:

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

Yes, I'd agree with you (and the section above, which is asking the same thing), so I've placed {{editprotected}} here. This needs to be moved substantially to the left as long as Wikipedia continues to use CSS hacks to put things in the top-right corner. --ais523 18:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Can you post this on WP:VPT? This is an extremely visible part of the interface, and it isn't something that should be subject to a sandbox treatment. Let's get it right the first time around. Titoxd(?!?) 19:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
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