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Proposal:WikiWords - A way to advertise wikipedia in other websites

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  1. Achieve continued growth in readership
  2. Focus on quality content
  3. Increase Participation
  4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
  5. Encourage Innovation


Summary

I propose that we create a program similar to popular internet advertising that can be put on other websites and link directly to Wikipedia Articles.

Proposal

I propose that to increase the distribution of the Wikipedia knowledge to more than half the people (even in the most penetrated country) that already access the internet but do not access wikipedia, we need to use willing websites to spread the word. This need not be like commercial advertising programs where someone is paid, but be a voluntary effort. The meagre fact that there are wikipedia articles linked to a page would make any page more valuable and hence more attractive. This fact would make it worthwhile and the effort would not be considered entirely charity for the contributing websites too. We would succeed in getting more coverage and they (the contributing websites) would succeed in making the page more attractive to users. A win win proposal that could take Wikipedia to the next level. Moreover most of the volunteers here in wikipedia will get an opportunity to highlight the articles that they are actively involved in.

This will be more than any routine links provided to wikipedia, they will stand out and have a short description of the article, may be similar to what appears on a web search.

Initially we could start with the author of the page contributing the articles which they want the page to link and then move on to a more automated way to find which would be the most relevant articles to be linked to.

Since the initial model will just require lesser programming effort, we could easily find out the effectiveness of this program to decide if we should take this forward without involving huge costs.

I am willing to contribute monetarily and any other help required in the implementation of this proposal, however I am sure there would be others who would be willing to contribute as well.

I did make a search for this page using things like adwords, advertisement etc, but did not find this exact proposal, if anyone finds a similar proposal, feel free to merge this with that.

Implementation Ideas

This could just be a box containing links to wikipedia article(s) with heading "Wiki articles of interest" or "WikiKnow" or "WikiWords" as a heading. Later we could add summary of words relating to each article for people willing to donate more space. A full implementation would be an auto search of relevant keywords and displaying relevant article(s).

Ideas for improvement and successful implementation would flow in once we start off this initial phase.

Motivation

The simple motivation today is the success that commercial advertising has had. Even though the word that we are spreading isn't really advertising in its commercial sense, it is advertising knowledge, probably something like advertising charity to get more coverage.

Key Questions

Are there any threats, including security, misuse or legal issues in implementing this idea?

How much would the initial implementation and later full implementation cost, will anyone be willing to contribute to this specific project.

Potential Costs

Initial costs, if we don't find a suitable programmer, should not exceed a weeks salary to the programmer to create the box that can be used. Creating a HTML snippet that can be added with links to wiki articles should not be a tough job but creating the interface and allowing customization to the same might require some effort.

Cost for later phases can be determined based on the extent to which we would like to go and the extent of voluntary efforts that we get.

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal talk:WikiWords - A way to advertise wikipedia in other websites.

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