Wikipedia has finally seen the light and started putting on some animated banner ads. Moreover, they’re not limited to the article space, but placed where editors are most likely to see them: on the pages showing information about users, and the internal communication system (“user talk pages”). It seems that the Wikimedia cabal even recruited the users themselves to add the ads to the pages (possibly through some kind of revenue sharing arrangement). Here are some examples:
It’s good to see that Wikipedia has given up its communist pinko resistance against advertising. Now that they’re raking in the money, I hope they’ll finally stop asking for donations like some maggot infested hippie. Jason Calacanis was right again!
March 13, 2007 at 2:19 pm
hey, just cause i don’t want to see an ad for ANYTHING (value neutral here), i’m a commie pinko? i don’t want to see any banners, it’s just distracting and i’ll prolly remove it from any page i see. it falls under ‘anyone can edit, anyone can improve this page’. >:(
March 13, 2007 at 4:20 pm
The ads are only supposed to go on user pages, put there by the owner of the user page in question. If you see them anywhere else, kill ’em and nicely ask the perpetrator not to do that again.
March 13, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Personally, I don’t like idea of wikiproject banners. People on Wiki are doing what are meant to do, and – I think- they shouldn’t be bothered by some banner from projects they might find useful for them.
March 13, 2007 at 6:30 pm
I suspect I need to be more careful about satire now that my blog has a wider audience 😛
March 14, 2007 at 7:19 am
er, now that it is the end of the day, i’d like to retract my initial statement; it was a bit harsh. i should be assuming good faith even if im not on wiki – i don’t much like ads of any kind, but i see you mean best. i think a lot of my object too has to do with blinking anything on a webpage – no matter the message it is distracting and subtly instinctive to squash it with NukeAnything (an FF addon) or to hit the ‘back’ button right away. even if it is restricted to userspace, the president it sets is not all good; imagine a userpage full of blinking ‘i like cheese so much my middle name is cheddar!’ kinds of userboxes! i think their use should be rethought a little bit, for at least a while longer…
March 14, 2007 at 9:37 am
this is interesting, i like them, especially the clean up one, reminds me of the shirts…
The idea is already applied but not like that, people write some kind of advices like these..guess they can use these banners now.
March 14, 2007 at 6:05 pm
> I suspect I need to be more careful about satire now that my blog has a wider audience 😛
You had me going there…
March 16, 2007 at 9:02 am
You should see the one for RFA…