Talk:Fundraising 2008/design drafts

This banner and its design got several highly critical comments from Polish editors

This banner and its design got several highly critical comments from Polish editors from Polish Wikipedia mailing list <wikipl-l@lists.wikimedia.org> - thread "bannerek". Several editors feel that banner is much to big and gives Wikipedia user negative experience resembling the look and feel of commercial portals. Also its design is not well harmonised with the whole site design.

Is it possible to make it smaller or to enable national sites to design it for themselves?

Wladek 10:25, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Please make it smaller

Same on enwiki.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Donate_ad
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#.22Support_Wikipedia:_a_non-profit_project.22_omnipresent_banner

The banner is way to big and intrusive. Last I checked, Wikimedia had no funding crisis, so an ordinary size banner should be enough. Also, make the hide button actually hide it! --Apoc2400 17:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

We want it smaller

Same to Italian wikipedia. Please! --Roberto Mura 18:41, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

• Maybe this is the place to show that for someone (at least for me) this banner is nice and effective. --Panairjdde 19:41, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Please make it smaller on no

There seems to be a community backing for asking for a reduced size (to big and intrusive as stated above) on this fundraising banner for the Norwegian Wikipedia (no) at the admin mailing list wikino-admin-l <at> lists.wikimedia.org (subject Reklamebanner) and at Wikipedia:Tinget#Fundraising_2008-banner. nsaa 20:12, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a workarund for people who wants to remove it completely at Wikipedia:Torget#Fjerning_av_det_digre_banneret_.C3.B8verst_p.C3.A5_hver_side by adding #siteNotice {display: none;} to your local Special:Mypage/monobook.css file. nsaa 20:21, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

This is definitely not acceptable. The banner is too big, too ugly and worst of all it is not possible to remove for users who don't know how to edit their monobooks. The various wikimediaprojects must have the possibility to redesign this banner, and the "dismiss"/ "hide" function must work as it is supposed to do. Not amused and not impressed. Finn Rindahl 20:27, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There should be possibility to hide the banner completely for at least registered users. This big red button is irritating even when the sitenotice is "hidden". Previous foundrising banners composed well into monobook's color scheme, this one is very, very disturbing. Exprienced Wiki contributors usually know well what is foundraising, why to annoy them with this banner and make it invisible only by editing .css? McMonster 20:34, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I was glad to see that adblock took most of it - but (as the others state) think of the possible donors! If anything, this'll scare them off! Noorse 20:30, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the banner should be smaller.--Pere prlpz 16:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Please make an option directly below the notice, about how to turn it off

See w:Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#.22Support_Wikipedia:_a_non-profit_project._Donate_Now_.3E.3E.22 and w:Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Will_the_ugly_banner_go_away.3F. Thanks. Cirt (talk) 21:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Collapsed version needs to be minimal

The collapsed version should be extremely minimal -- its primary purpose is to contain the "Show" link so someone who has hidden the notice can re-show it again if they want to look at it again.

Currently it's large and distracting, which annoys people into attempting to find other ways to hide it for themselves -- or the entire site -- which is counterproductive.

1. Reduce the font size
2. Remove the RED BUTTON for a regular link
3. Remove the border

--brion 21:56, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Amen to that. If the collapsed version could be just as easy (and small) as the "Help translate..." cite notice here at Meta that would be best. Finn Rindahl 22:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

What I want us to do at this point is reduce the size of the collapsed version for logged in users. I don't think the collapsed version is particularly intrusive for readers, especially considering that we didn't even allow readers to collapse it in past fundraisers.--Eloquence 22:13, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The reason we didn't have that capability was that it required a cookie, which would break caching for anonymous users. This is no longer the case -- the extra cookie is ignored by our caching system as it doesn't affect the HTML pages. --brion 23:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice if in the collapsed version, the red button and the text could at least occupy the same line. vertical screenspace is precious to me, and this thing is a monster killer in that regard (even collapsed). TheDJ 00:48, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be a style bug -- they are meant to share the same line, and do in Firefox. In Safari they show on two separate lines, so there's something a little funky going on. --brion 23:32, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

'Counterproductive' is an excellent summary. Does the Foundation believe that it has such large amounts of goodwill as to be able to burn through it blithely, in the vague hope of getting a few more donations out of it? (Setting aside the dependence of the donations on said goodwill, vs. sheer 'pester power'.) Repeatedly poking contributors with this, or driving them to use "adblocking" just sends an entirely horrible message. Alai 07:04, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, response has been overwhelmingly positive -- donation stats, donor comments. Style improvements to the banner (which itself is attractive and clean, and has received negative feedback only regarding the details of the font size and the collapsed view) will be ongoing. --brion 21:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

As I see it, the collapsed version should be one line of normal-sized text, with no red look-at-me graphics. Is it possible to do this sitewide using common.css, and if so, how long would I be banned for if I implemented it? --Carnildo 07:21, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, but if you did, I would testify in your defence at your WikiTrial. Or in the extreme case, give a eulogy at your WikiFuneral. I entirely agree that anything more instrusive than the above smacks as being deliberately obnoxious. If it's entirely necessary to have such a thing. Alai 16:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with brion, collapsed version should be minimal, text-only, without border. --Yuma 16:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

A minimal text-only version is in partial rotation on English Wikipedia for testing; we'll poke at options more in a bit. --brion 23:32, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, finally got a chance to tweak things up so they work properly. Minimalized collapsed form is now shown for all logged-in users. The original version is still there for anons per Erik's request. --brion 19:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Current state of banner & future plans

Hello all,

I would appreciate it if you could copy & translate this message to your relevant communities; I'll also post it to a couple of the mailing lists.

First: Does Wikimedia have a funding crisis, does it need to ask people for money?

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization, and the vast majority of its funding comes from fundraising and grants. It operates more than 300 servers which keep Wikipedia alive, the associated hosting and bandwidth, and the staff needed to support it. Its annual expenses for the current fiscal year amount to approximately $6 million. We have already raised $2 million of that, which leaves us with a gap of $4 million which we need to raise through donations small and large. We also need to build our annual reserve to protect us against shortfalls, but this is not even part of this campaign's goal.

If we fail to meet our budgeted revenue goals during and past this fundraiser, we will eventually have to lay off staff and reduce our capacity planning for servers and bandwidth, both of which will directly affect your experience of Wikipedia. If you feel, for example, that developers are often slow to respond to requests, well, imagine how much worse it will be if we have to lay off some of them. If you feel that editing is often slow, imagine how much worse it will be if we cannot pay for additional servers or needed software improvements.

As you know, the world is in economic crisis. At this point in time, we do not know what the impact of this economic crisis will be on the Wikimedia Foundation. We need to meet our targets to continue to operate Wikipedia.

I realize that having a banner on the site you read and/or edit every day is not convenient. We plan to create a smaller (plaintext) version of the banner for signed in users. But we do not plan to reduce the banner size of the standard banner, at least not until we have a better idea of what the online fundraiser revenue will be for this year. We are doing some systematic A/B testing of different banners with different messages, and as we learn more, we will iterate the banners further.

We do need to raise the funds to operate Wikipedia, so that you can continue to use it, both as a reader and a contributor. Rather than invite antagonism, I want to invite your collaboration in refining and developing the banners. We are open to community suggestions here -- please feel free to post mock-ups on Meta Wiki at this page:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2008/design_drafts

However, if we feel (or measure) that a banner will significantly reduce the number of donations received, we will not use it. So if your primary goal is to make the banner smaller or less "obtrusive", rather than making it more effective or at least retaining its current level of effectiveness, I don't think we'll come up with something that can replace the current banners.

Please let's remember that the Wikimedia Foundation exists to support this project's continued existence, and the Wikimedia movement internationally. This means we need to create awareness for the fact that we need to raise money, just like any other charity. This fundraising drive will run until January 15. Until then, I ask for your patience and cooperation in making it work.

Please feel free to contact me: erik(at)wikimedia(dot)org. Thanks, Erik Möller 22:10, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I have a question, and please take this as a legitimate query -- when the annual report says that you need 3M from community gifts, and you have stated that you are not aiming for a surplus to use as a year-to-year buffer, why is the target 6M? This is quite unclear at the very least. Also as a query along this line is where can we find a *detailed* expenditure list. The annual report is very waffly. 129.78.64.100

This Annual Campaign does not only include community gifts -- we will update the thermometer with any unrestricted funding we receive during the fundraising period. Note that the initial $1.9M in gifts the thermometer included when we started represent all gifts committed or received in the current fiscal year, including e.g. the $1M/year Sloan Foundation grant. Please review the 08-09 Annual Plan for more details on our spending.--Eloquence 20:11, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I think most of us that use and contribute to Wikipedia understand that money is needed to buy servers, bandwidth, hire developers etc - not all work can be done by volunteers. And to speak for myself I have give at each fundraising (besides my editing for 4 years, at least one man-year, which by would earn me around 100 thousan dollars if I did it at my ordinary workplace). But - is annoying your contributors the way to go? And what about starting with informing us up front that there would be a fundraiser? All of a sudden the banner was there, and not even information regarding how long the fundraiser would last.

Again, I have given before, and I will give now, and I will try persuading my friends to give, but the way this fundraiser has been run until now is not helping, so much is clear. I would advice strongly towards evaluating both the size of the banner and the length of the fundraiser - with having a date set for next year people might just postpone the donation, but if everyone know it goes on for a month then it's more urgent to give. It should also be possible to turn off the banner completely. And a last hint, try to turn the banner off and then on, just the change of it may make people notice it more. Ulflarsen 08:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Here are some poignant comments about this fundraising notice from en.wiki's w:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard:

• this is possibly the most full-on and intrusive site notice I've ever seen and many people will want to know how to get rid of it.
• It should be good enough that we work here for free... we shouldn't have to pay to work here.
• It looks awful, the ad should be posted on articles, since most of the donations should come from the users who read, we shouldn't be paying to work here.

And from w:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical):

• It's like going to the blood bank and being constantly told while you're donating blood that they need your money
• To join in raining on the parade here, this is quite easily the most obnoxious donation banner ever. Perhaps if the Foundation weren't spending so much money on cross-country moves and over US$300,000 on the Office of the Executive Director, there'd be more money for seeking grants, buying much-needed hardware, and hiring developers to work on any of the numerous MediaWiki features that have been requested for years and years, and the Foundation wouldn't have to engage in unprofessional and obnoxious begging so often.
• I agree I think it looks more like a blood donation site. I am not at all impressed in the way in which this years fundraising has been addressed. What about the people who have already donated, must they suffer this glaring at them for every page of wikipedia they visit for the next few months? I agree with the comments above that it is not exactly the most luring of requests and is quite irritating. Can't it be done a little more subtlely? Also whats with the emotional blackmail "we are here when you need us. Now we need you". Having a "Donate Now" in red on every wiki page seems to be rather forceful to say the least.
• This is absolutely beyond ridiculous. I should not have to use adblock plus on Wikipedia.
• Just wanted to add my voice/opinion into the mix (because let's face it, you can never have too many). This banner is ridiculous, ugly and a pain in the arse. Thanks so much

It would seem that there are many members of the community that do not appreciate the usage of this solicitation banner. Cirt (talk) 09:01, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

See my response above. Right now, on en.wp, it is possible for any logged in user to hide the banner using a gadget through Special:Preferences, and anyone is free to implement the same mechanism on their project. We'll also make a much smaller collapsed version for logged in users. But, we'll keep it at the current size for readers for the time being, until we have a better idea of how different sizes & different banners perform.--Eloquence 19:08, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Enable the gadget in smaller wikis too, please!

I was glad to find this gadget the one that hides the annoying button) in the Preferences in enwiki, but couldn't find it in Hungarian Wikipedia. Can we have a similar gadget too? Alensha 22:56, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure, just have an admin copy it over. Jon Harald Søby 11:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

A more detailed explanation might be useful. I'm pretty techy, and I don't know how gadgets get installed. Dragons flight 18:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

You need to do 3 things (well, maybe 4) and have admin acces.

• 1) Copy the contents of en:MediaWiki:Gadget-HideFundraisingNotice.css to your local wiki (name after the - can be localized)
• 2) Create a page with a description to show in Special:Preferences (e.g. en:MediaWiki:Gadget-HideFundraisingNotice, again: can be localized after the -)
• 3) Add to your local en:MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition-page ([1], where the first part is the name of your description page, second the actual script page).

This should do the trick and make the option appear in Special:Preferences. If it doesn't, you might want to

• 4) perform a null-edit on your local en:MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition-page (edit the page, don't change anything and save).

HTH. Niels 20:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, it's installed now! Alensha 21:34, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

An alternative

Seeing as the current banners are huge, ugly and universally condemned (!) I thought I'd take up Erik on his invitation to "feel free to post mock-ups". How would people prefer this? Pretzels^Talk! 17:45, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hide

Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you.  Please donate today.

Make 'no thanks' clearer. It would probably be better if you change the background to an off-white. How's this? Dendodge 18:06, 6 November 2008

Hide

Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you.  Please donate today.

I'm sorry to say I'm not sure I like this design much better... The design is a matter of taste I suppose, and there we would always have many different opinions. But what is really not OK with Pretzels new proposal is replacing "hide" (or "dismiss", "collapse" etc) with "no thanks". I'd like to say yes, thank you to donating, but also to be able to toggle show/hide every now and then to see the development of the fundraising campaign. For me the real problem here is that the banner is still to big&red in the collapsed version. Finn Rindahl 19:11, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

The design is much nicer, but I agree "no thanks" should be "dismiss" or "collapse". Hersfold ^(talk) 19:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, I changed both to "Hide". Pretzels^Talk! 19:48, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I think this might be better:

Hide

Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you.  Please donate today.
Donations so far: $n out of a target $6million.

When hidden:

Show

Wikipedia needs your donations. Click 'Show' to find out more.

Dendodge 21:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, the last design is not bad, but the text? Turgon ^{the dark side of a normal user} 17:04, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

What about it? Dendodge 21:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is there when you need - now it needs you" isn't the best. Try with a new version :-)--I will try, too. Turgon ^{the dark side of a normal user} 12:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Pre-donations

It is probably too late to change it now (because the deletion would be very obvious), but I'd like to say that I think it is rather weird to pre-fill the donation meter with nearly $2M in income from July-October. It makes more sense to me to have a target specifically for the fund drive and start at zero. Dragons flight 20:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a reasoning behind doing it in this fashion: In real-world testing, researchers have found that making a solicitation where leadership gifts (AKA challenge gifts) have already been received or committed and only a smaller total amount needs to be raised tends to be more successful than just raising towards a fixed amount starting at zero. People are more comfortable giving when others have already made commitments. See: Matching and Challenge Gifts to Charity: Evidence from Laboratory and Natural Field Experiments. It may also appeal to early donors -- we've explicitly solicited leadership gifts from some of our past large givers prior to the fundraiser for this reason.--Eloquence 21:11, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand that leadership gifts can attract donations. They make people more comfortable with the notion that a project is worthy of support and help apply social pressure. However, I disagree with the current approach to present leadership donations by pre-filling the bar. The study you cite, where challenge gifts increased donations ~18% has a once-off, dead tree model. By that I mean a single solicitation is made and donors get no feedback. Wikimedia fundraisers are interactive and donors get immediate feedback. Some of the comfort and social acceptability arguments are addressed by that feedback already. In addition, past fundraisers always showed an initial rush to donate at their beginning (e.g. twice as many donors on the first day as on the tenth), and I think you partially undercut that by having the bar 1/3 filled to start with. In other words, there can be an excitement factor associated with donating early that is partially lost with the current approach.

As it stands, I also think you are missing out on some of the benefit of having major donors, because there is no obvious discussion or acknowledgment of them. Highlighting major gifts on the donation page would have more of an impact than simply filling the bar, in my estimation. Most people have no way of knowing those totals include large donor gifts at the moment.

Because the fundraiser is an ongoing thing with direct feedback, my suggestion would have been to solicit major donors so that their contributions could be folded in and announced during the drive itself. Of course that's not possible with things like the Sloan grant, but you get the idea. Anyway, that's my opinion. Dragons flight 22:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Button in IE

The big red button doesn't seem to be affecting the cursor the way links normally do on IE. Specifically, with Firefox when you mouse over the button the cursor changes to the style of cursor usually used for links. On IE, this doesn't happen. In fact, moving over the "Donate Now" text generates a text selection cursor on IE. Clicking on the button still works on either browser, but it would nice if the cursor changed on IE to make the presence of a link obvious. Dragons flight 21:06, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, one could argue that most of the banner should be clickable and take you to the donation page. It is common with banner ads for the entire ad to be active area. Dragons flight 21:08, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

For anyone reading this, adding the "cursor:pointer;" attribute to style of the div surrounding the button (or "cursor:hand"), I don't know which, should address this... bastique ^demandez! 23:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's "cursor:pointer:". Pretzels 00:41, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Improved collapsed version only at en:wikipedia

OK, now there's an improved collapsed version at wikipedia in English, what do we have to do to get a similar collapsed version for other languages? Finn Rindahl 13:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

That one is solely in testing. If it ends up working, it will be enabled on the other sites (which means I'll have to publish all the translations again :o). Cbrown1023 talk 14:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that new one's a decent balance. Could use some highlighting, I think, but at least there's no big red button. Werdna 13:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Finally got a chance to squidge things the way we need; attractive small version is now shown for logged-in users on all projects. Bigger version still shown for anons per Erik's request. --brion 19:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Holy goodness that slider is moving fast

What, is the world rewarding the Foundation for Obama's election or something? http://upload.wikimedia.org/centralnotice/images/progress/p2.5.png Right on! No Numbers in this Username 22:23, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Please add the gadget for this project

Please add the gadget in preferences to be able to enable turning off this sitenotice, the same way that was done at en.wiki. See w:MediaWiki:Gadget-HideFundraisingNotice.css. Thank you. Cirt (talk) 01:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually Metawiki is the home of the fundraiser, this is where people actually develop individual templates that should be used and I don't think we should try to hide it here, Our project needs money to remain neutral or we may end up like wikia etc, having unneeded google ads and thus making wikipedia commercial. People who try to hide the banner are generally not interested in the projects which is sad since I don't see the banner interfering with anything or taking much space, it has been significantly reduced as well in size after all the complains, nevertheless I will create the gadget just for the sake of it for those who don't have the project at heart....--Cometstyles 01:47, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

People who try to hide the banner are generally not interested in the projects... This is an incorrect assumption, please assume good faith. See comments about this from en.wiki, above. Cirt (talk) 01:50, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I also disagree with that statement... a lot. It's the choice of individual users whether they want to hide the banner or not, we shouldn't think of them any differently for doing so. Cbrown1023 talk 02:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Mr. Cometstyles, your statement is absolute incredible. What is your interest to polemicise and work against a lot of people who do good work for Wikipedia in different countries, but have the courage to criticise the form of banner ads in Wikipedia? --89.58.176.225 01:22, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

FYI, you have to follow the rest of the steps outlined above at Talk:Fundraising_2008/design_drafts#Enable_the_gadget_in_smaller_wikis_too.2C_please.21 as well. Cirt (talk) 01:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Gadget-HideFundraisingNotice.css does not appear to be showing up yet in Special:Preferences. Cirt (talk) 01:56, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It does. Cbrown1023 talk 02:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

yup, weird, I hope it doesn't collide with Special:CentralNotice for the admins who adds the gadget...--Cometstyles 02:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Dont worry Comets... it couldn't and won't. Cbrown1023 talk 02:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Cbrown1023 (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 07:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

What's the logic of not allowing anons to hide banner ad?

When I click "collapse" on the banner advert on en.wikipedia, the banner ad changes from very large to just large (or large to medium size, depending on my screen size and perception of what very large, large and medium are). I remember the "collapse" link used to say "hide" but it didn't hide the banner and was then fixed to say "collapse" instead. It seemed to me at the time that it would have made more sense to fix it by hiding the banner when one clicked "hide" rather than fixing it by changing the meaning of the "hide" link to say "collapse" instead. What I don't understand is, why can't I (anonymous users) hide the banner. Surely if I or anyone else wants to collapse the banner it's because I don't want to see it, not because I like it but want a smaller version. My question is this really. Is there some reasoning, logic, study or evidence that leads the designers to believe that if you have an anonymous user who doesn't want to see the banner and wants to hide it and you deny them the ability to do that and instead only allow them to collapse it to a smaller banner, they then donate to Wikipedia? Segesta 21:54, 16 Novembera 2008 (UTC)

If this isn't the right place to find out what that reasoning is, if someone could link to the discussion that framed that reasoning elsewhere it would be appreciated as I'm not familiar with where these discussions take place on meta wiki. I can see a description of the evolution of the two states of collapsed banner for logged in and anon users above [2], and mention of a request by Erik but I can't find the actual request and I'm trying to understand the reasoning rather than the banner's evolution. Segesta 09:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

This is the correct place to post questions regarding the fundraiser. Basically, it comes down to this: the Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization and operates highly-trafficked sites without advertising. There are large costs to keep the Foundation operational, and so an annual fundraiser is done. Registered users are able to easily hide the banner in their preferences. Unregistered users don't have that benefit. (They also miss out on a number of other benefits of account creation.) Put simply, if you don't want to see the banner, register (which it looks like you already have, and enable the Gadget in Special:Preferences. The banner will remain collapseable for both anonymous users and registered users alike, and as far as I'm aware, this isn't up for debate. It simply is the way it is. Cheers. :-) --MZMcBride 01:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

First, it's important to note three facts:

1) This year's fundraiser is the first time ever that logged out users can collapse the banner to a smaller version. In all previous fundraisers, logged out users were permanently exposed to the full size banner.

2) When collapsing the banner, logged in users see a significantly smaller version than logged out users. (This is a recent modification.)

3) Logged in users can also completely hide the banner through a so-called gadget in Special:Preferences, provided the gadget code has been installed on the wiki in question (see above).

We are collecting data throughout the fundraiser about the performance of different sitenotices (how many people click through, how many people donate). Our data so far indicates that a significant number of people still donate after they collapse the banner. In a time window in which we received 17285 donations overall, 1156 of these came through the collapsed banner. There could be many reasons for this, including initial confusion about the nature of the banner (noticing the ability to collapse the banner before actually processing its meaning), or a positive to neutral reaction where the collapsed banner later functions as a reminder to donate.

Anyone who absolutely wants to hide the appearance of the banner should either log in, or utilize adblocking software to do so. We're not going to make it significantly smaller for logged out users, as all the evidence so far indicates that it's working at its current size.--Eloquence 01:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, so the logic and evidence is that if anonymous users can't remove the banner advert a percentage of them will donate, although which of the specific reasons they have for donating via the collapsible banner isn't clear. Just to clarify the evidence, with respect to the 1156 donations that came from a collapsed banner....

• There was a significant amount of time where the collapsed banner was displayed for both logged in users and anonymous users. Do these 1156 donations only include anonymous users and exclude logged in users that clicked on the collapsed banner (for example because at that time a collapsed banner was also displayed for logged in users and/or they didn't use the grommet to remove it). What I'm asking is, is there complete certainty that the 1156 can only possibly include anonymous users.

• If the 1156 do only include anonymous users, is there a way of knowing which of the 1156 come from internet cafes, libraries, etc i.e public internet access areas with multiple users of each computer and which come from private residential IP addresses?

As well as the questions above, I have a suggestion. It's possible that anonymous users see the large banner, make a decision to donate but to donate at a later time rather than at that precise moment (perhaps they want to look up whatever they actually came to Wikipedia to look up first), collapse the banner so it's less intrusive (or believing it will hide it), do whatever they were going to do on Wikipedia and and then click the collapsed banner later to donate because they have already decided they will. In this hypothetical case, denying them the ability to remove the collapsed (graphic) banner isn't causing them to donate, they were going to donate anyway. It might be worth testing a percentage of anonymous users with a banner that is identical to the banner that logged in users get (i.e. one that collapses to text with the ability to click it to donate later). This way you can find out if anonymous users would or wouldn't donate as much with a collapse-to-text banner as a collapse-to-graphic banner. In other words, you can use an empirical test to verify that anonymous users + only allow collapsed graphic banner = donations is true rather than anonymous users + any collapsible banner, including a collapse-to-text one = donations. Segesta 15:28, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

We are more than enwiki

Please recall that we have over 700 wikis, and only one of them is English Wikipedia.

• Not all our projects have articles - Wikibooks has "modules" for example, and Commons has "media files". Translations for these are in the software already.
  • That means you'll want to use the local figure instead of 11 million - enwikibooks doesn't have 11 million articles ... we have 33,097 modules.
  • Or you may want to use global figures - perhaps "700 wikis" is a figure that would attract attention. Or you could say X million content pages in X languages.
• The Wikipedia puzzle piece is OK, but perhaps try altering that by project.

 — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

A global figure across all wikis probably would make the most sense. Right now we're testing this particular design in English only for a couple of days to see if it actually performs better than the existing banners (perhaps in part simply because it's new) -- if it does, we'll refine it further before using it on a larger scale (no pun intended).--Eloquence 02:31, 10 December 2008 (UTC)