Proposal talk:Solicited advertisement/en

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 00:49, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Direct impact:

There can be users wanting advertisement and users not wanting it. For users not wanting it the impact will be nil because every thing will be as usual. For users wanting advertisement they will get information of interest for them.

Indirect impact:

Income from advertisement will help to improve all the project with positive impact for users.

--Gomà 15:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Advertisement on English Wikipedia? I don't care if they should advertise about something related to an article that I'm reading? Wikipedia is supposed to be commercial-free like PBS. You're trying to make it like NBC and that will ruin the educational factor about it if they see a Pokemon commercial while reading an article about Pokemon. GVnayR 18:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

This is not the idea. You never will see a Pokemon commercial while reading an article about Pokemon. Only if you explicitly ask for commercials while reading the article then you will go to your solicited page of commercials.

The thesis behind the proposal is that readers are free to ask for commercials or to do nothing and continue reading as usual. This cannot change the spirit of anything because you are not imposing anything. Readers don’t have the need to say no, if they say nothing it means no.

--Gomà 15:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

So in other words, you can check off in your options screen whether you want commercials in your Wikipedia or not. I understand now. GVnayR 03:04, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

And even if you check you want commercials they never will be mixed with the article. You only will have a small button in one corner. If you push the button then you go to an advertisement page with commercials related to the content of the article. If you don’t push the button then you have the same wikipedia as always. --Gomà 09:20, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

(copy/paste from a similiar proposal) I for one wholly disagree with this idea; I find it not only against the principles of the Foundation but in really really bad taste. It would further erode our credibility, caste doubt on our NPOV, and just look really tacky. Advertisements are not encyclopedic at all and I know I will personally not volunteer to benefit a site that undermines itself with commercial ads. I doubt it will draw more traffic to the site, and will drive away contributors, leaving the project at an even greater deficit in editors. No amount of additional funds can counterbalance a radical change such as this. Themfromspace 03:05, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia made a non-commercial decision years ago as part of its non-profit, mass education goal. You can't have it both ways. If you look at Britannica online or other encyclopedias they do not advertise as part of the encyclopedia. Advertisements mainly appear as pop-ups. Now you suggest we should not only reverse the foundation policy but out-commercial the commercializers. Frankly if it were not against Wikipedia policy I would question your motives. It seems to me the sacrifice of your major ideals and goals should be the very last resort, something you would do to avoid going under. Your main contributions of material are from persons who act in good faith. Now you want to say, well, now that we have your contributions in good faith, we are going to show you the very worst faith. We all know that business has no morals and only one ethic, to make a profit. Are we to join in? Perhaps we should have an additional message "If you are not prepared to have your writing sold and ruthlessly exploited by Wikipedia also, don't contribute either" or "if you do not accept the principle that it is fine for us to steal from you, Wikipedia is the wrong place for you." Like any other business profit or non-profit Wikipedia has to do what it has to do, but let's not do it until we have to.Botteville 00:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Past discussions of optional ads (opt-in ads)

Please see Wikipedia:Advertisements and Wikipedia talk:Advertisements.

Discussions at the Village Pumps and elsewhere find less and less people opposing optional advertisements. Some of those discussions are copied to the pages at the above links. See the archives there too.

Wikipedia has not been raising enough money to meet its basic current or projected needs. Staff is overworked, equipment is inadequate, wait times for pages to load are frequent in many parts of the world. We need more money for more staff and equipment. And this is just for the basic goals of Wikipedia. --Timeshifter 02:31, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

A Very Valuable Compromise

We can have our cake and eat it too. That is, we can get Advertising Revenue, and lots of it, if we let the individual user decide if they want to receive ads or not, and tailor what kind of ads they receive. Those who don't want ads won't get any! But if I, and millions more, choose to support Wikipedia by allowing Ads to get through to us, then why not. Someone has to make the decision on Ads. Why not let each user make the decision, instead of a constant "war" amongtsdt the top level decision makers.

See Proposal:Users Can Choose to Take Advertising --Richardb 02:41, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

This is not exactly the same idea. It is not only an issue of deciding to receive ads to support Wikipedia. It is also to satisfy the wish of receiving adds because you are looking for commercial information about some topic. The idea is not to say: Yes from now I will receive annoying ads I am not interested in but I wish to help Wikipedia. The idea is: I am looking for commercial information related to this article I am reading, please give me adds.--Gomà 21:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Travel reservations

One could offer travel reservations without an advertisement system. The travel destination could be selected by the geographic coordinates of the page. Showing a list of hotels, for instance, doesn't require showing advertisements. The lists can be retrieved in XML from the booking systems. --Fasten 17:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

One could also use content from Wikitravel for the purpose (It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike).

See also: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Travel_reservations

Open Directory Project

Expecting users to ask for a page full of advertisements only might appear too unsophisticated. Jimbo Wales mentioned that one could put advertisements into Wikipedia search results [1]; there may be a more interesting variant: One could add a further tab to the navigation bar: "Project page", "Discussion", "Directory", ... The directory could then be a combination of relevant Open Directory Project references, http://websitewiki.wikia.com/ and advertisements. This way Wikipedia wouldn't contain advertisements itself and the search wouldn't be a search inside Wikipedia (which may not be what the users wants) but in the references gathered by the Open Directory Project. A convenient way to generate results could be to map Wikipedia categories to ODP categories and to allow the user to view and search the combined set off references from all mapped categories the current Wikipedia article was in. --Fasten 14:02, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

One could use JavaScript to allow searching and filtering the page without reloading the page. A directory page combined from different ODP categories could, for instance, allow to view the individual categories only. --Fasten 14:08, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

See also: Proposal:Wiki ESP, Categorical imp

Google Directory

One could ask Google if they would cooperate and make a version of Google Directory for the purpose but with Google ads. The advantage would be that Google ads could be merged into the Google Directory entries and could be text advertisements without any images, making the advertisements less obtrusive.

(Of course one could ask them to donate a share of their own revenue from the page, too.)

clicks4charity.net

One could link from an ODP page to clicks4charity.net, which would increase the perception that looking for advertisements on the ODP page had an additional value. Clicks4charity.net collects commission from affiliate programs and donates most of the revenues to charities selected by the individual user. --Fasten (Wikinews: Aktion Deutschland Hilft asks for donations after the earthquake in Indonesia) 13:22, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

See also: Proposal:Cooperate with kaioo.com