Wikipedia talk:Advertisements

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This is a controversial topic that may be under dispute. Please read this page and discuss substantial changes here before making them.
Make sure to supply full citations when adding information and consider tagging or removing uncited/unciteable information.

Note: There is a long history to this issue. See: meta:Polls, meta:Advertising on Wikipedia, Enciclopedia Libre, Wikipedia talk:Tools/1-Click Answers, and Wikipedia:User categories for discussion/Archive/December 2007#Wikimedia and advertising. See also the archives linked below to the right. They are the old talk pages for the various, defunct, "for and against" categories/WikiProjects concerning advertising.

Archive
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Contents

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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. MrZaiustalk 16:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Oh no!

This text (Wikipedia: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))

[edit] Categories for discussion

Please see:

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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: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: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: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
ads		 This 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)
ads This user supports user-optional ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia.


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: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)

[edit] 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: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)

[edit] 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)