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Florence Devouard wrote:
> Would it make a difference...
>
> if an advertisement is only there to reach out to the attention of the
> reader, and is only beneficial to the one paying for the advertisement
> (eg, a Ford ad on a Toyota article)
>
> or if the advertisement also was a bringing a benefit to the reader ?
>
> I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> book. Typically, an Amazon link. It would be an advertisement of course,
> but it would bring a service to the reader. It would not be a
> GoogleAds.

Advertising brokers such as Google already attempt to make ad selection
based on contextual information as relevant to the reader as possible --
there is a direct commercial advantage for them to provide ads that
readers will want to click on.

> We would be able to exactly select which articles we want
> the ad to be on (for example, all articles about books. all articles
> about DVD). It is not damaging the NPOV of the article. It could be
> identified in a special area. Deals could be made with one, or several
> providers. It would bring some money, but not huge amounts of money (who
> could disrupt the organization...).

That sort of direct dealing with individual advertisers and articles is
*exactly* the sort of thing that would be considered suspicious.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
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or if the advertisement also was a bringing a benefit to the reader ?

I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
book. Typically, an Amazon link. It would be an advertisement of course,
but it would bring a service to the reader. It would not be a
GoogleAds. We would be able to exactly select which articles we want
the ad to be on (for example, all articles about books. all articles
about DVD). It is not damaging the NPOV of the article. It could be
identified in a special area. Deals could be made with one, or several
providers. It would bring some money, but not huge amounts of money (who
could disrupt the organization...).
ant
******
That's exactly the kind of example that looks sensible to a casual reader
and causes monumental headaches for volunteers. After all, why should
Amazon.com pay to have an outgoing link from that book article when anybody
can insert that link for free? And Amazon's competitors can insert their
own external links for free also?

This problem seriously detracts from encyclopedia-building. For example,
the textile arts project on en:Wikipedia. has about 500 articles and 5
active members. The topic sees large numbers of of cottage entrepreneurs
whose only interest is in generating links to their own particular online
stores, and smaller numbers of professional PR folks who pepper articles
with pitches for this or that brand name. Extracting that dross is no fun.
Look away for a few weeks and linkspam even creeps into the navitational
templates.

The problem drains the productivity of the most active individuals and turns
off the fair weather volunteers from helping at all. To be specific, the
time I've wasted on linkspam is why our featured portal drive isn't
completed yet, and why the "Sumptuary law" article isn't in good article
candidacy by now, and also why I haven't started a new article on
traditional Maori textiles. We've also got basics to put in place: 16 of
the project's 28 top-importance articles are start-class or stub-class.

So Florence, I have an invitation for your husband. If he really wants
Wikipedia to save him ten seconds of looking up a product on Google, please
ask him to come help expand "Beadwork". Five line top-importance articles
are the price of linkspam management.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beadwork

-Durova
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I can recognise both the benefit for visitors of a page and the headache for
volunteers.

Aside from contributing to several wikipedias, i also have a small website
which generates a small income (still insufficient for hosting cosst)
running both amazon and google ads.

The google ads bring in about 3-5 times the amount that amazon brings in.
The amazon links provide imho a better service to visitors. Amazon also
allows better control over the ads displayed, as I select what book/dvd i
will advertise.

IF we allow every company to inserg their own ads, volunteers will indeed be
even more busy to remove unwanted ads. But if the foundation strikes a deal
with Amazon, and just Amazon, we have only one template which volunters can
add or not add to a page. There is little extra risk that this will lead to
an large extra burden on the volunteers. The volunteers keep complete
control over the neutrality of a page.

The main problems with such an approach seem to me:
* how many volunteers are willing to add amazon links to provide income to
the foundation?
* will there be many disputes over neutrality of links to Amazon?
* will links to Amazon only violate our NPOV?
As soon as more than one company is contracted by the foundation, we'll have
volunteers at war with each other about which add must be placed where.



On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 9:52 PM, Durova <nadezhda.durova@gmail.com> wrote:

> or if the advertisement also was a bringing a benefit to the reader ?
>
> I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> book. Typically, an Amazon link. It would be an advertisement of course,
> but it would bring a service to the reader. It would not be a
> GoogleAds. We would be able to exactly select which articles we want
> the ad to be on (for example, all articles about books. all articles
> about DVD). It is not damaging the NPOV of the article. It could be
> identified in a special area. Deals could be made with one, or several
> providers. It would bring some money, but not huge amounts of money (who
> could disrupt the organization...).
> ant
> ******
> That's exactly the kind of example that looks sensible to a casual reader
> and causes monumental headaches for volunteers. After all, why should
> Amazon.com pay to have an outgoing link from that book article when
> anybody
> can insert that link for free? And Amazon's competitors can insert their
> own external links for free also?
>
> This problem seriously detracts from encyclopedia-building. For example,
> the textile arts project on en:Wikipedia. has about 500 articles and 5
> active members. The topic sees large numbers of of cottage entrepreneurs
> whose only interest is in generating links to their own particular online
> stores, and smaller numbers of professional PR folks who pepper articles
> with pitches for this or that brand name. Extracting that dross is no
> fun.
> Look away for a few weeks and linkspam even creeps into the navitational
> templates.
>
> The problem drains the productivity of the most active individuals and
> turns
> off the fair weather volunteers from helping at all. To be specific, the
> time I've wasted on linkspam is why our featured portal drive isn't
> completed yet, and why the "Sumptuary law" article isn't in good article
> candidacy by now, and also why I haven't started a new article on
> traditional Maori textiles. We've also got basics to put in place: 16 of
> the project's 28 top-importance articles are start-class or stub-class.
>
> So Florence, I have an invitation for your husband. If he really wants
> Wikipedia to save him ten seconds of looking up a product on Google,
> please
> ask him to come help expand "Beadwork". Five line top-importance articles
> are the price of linkspam management.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beadwork
>
> -Durova
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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We have already an excellent way of accomplishing this--the isbn link
goes to a page from which he can directly go to amazon or whatever
other online book dealer or library desired. That's the spam-free way
to do this.

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Brion Vibber <brion@wikimedia.org> wrote:
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>
>
> Florence Devouard wrote:
> > Would it make a difference...
> >
> > if an advertisement is only there to reach out to the attention of the
> > reader, and is only beneficial to the one paying for the advertisement
> > (eg, a Ford ad on a Toyota article)
> >
> > or if the advertisement also was a bringing a benefit to the reader ?
> >
> > I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> > matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> > provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> > book. Typically, an Amazon link. It would be an advertisement of course,
> > but it would bring a service to the reader. It would not be a
> > GoogleAds.
>
> Advertising brokers such as Google already attempt to make ad selection
> based on contextual information as relevant to the reader as possible --
> there is a direct commercial advantage for them to provide ads that
> readers will want to click on.
>
>
> > We would be able to exactly select which articles we want
> > the ad to be on (for example, all articles about books. all articles
> > about DVD). It is not damaging the NPOV of the article. It could be
> > identified in a special area. Deals could be made with one, or several
> > providers. It would bring some money, but not huge amounts of money (who
> > could disrupt the organization...).
>
> That sort of direct dealing with individual advertisers and articles is
> *exactly* the sort of thing that would be considered suspicious.
>
> - -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
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> =Ifty
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>
>
>
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>



--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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The idea in theory is nice, in practice it may very easily get ugly.

The advertisements may contain false or misleading information giving undue
weight.

Also this may be impractical for the majority of our articles. No one wants
George W. Bush merchandise. :) Joke aside, what kind of an advertisement
would we put on an article on the second world war or a pharaoh from ancient
Egypt.

Not so surprisingly, aside from fiction related topics most of our articles
would run into problems. We already do select advertisement by having
articles on commercial products such as movies, TV episodes and books. Maybe
we could ask such companies for cash in donations.

- White Cat

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:58 PM, Florence Devouard <anthere@anthere.org>
wrote:

> Would it make a difference...
>
> if an advertisement is only there to reach out to the attention of the
> reader, and is only beneficial to the one paying for the advertisement
> (eg, a Ford ad on a Toyota article)
>
> or if the advertisement also was a bringing a benefit to the reader ?
>
> I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> book. Typically, an Amazon link. It would be an advertisement of course,
> but it would bring a service to the reader. It would not be a
> GoogleAds. We would be able to exactly select which articles we want
> the ad to be on (for example, all articles about books. all articles
> about DVD). It is not damaging the NPOV of the article. It could be
> identified in a special area. Deals could be made with one, or several
> providers. It would bring some money, but not huge amounts of money (who
> could disrupt the organization...).
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Durova wrote:
> or if the advertisement also was a bringing a benefit to the reader ?
>
> I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> book. Typically, an Amazon link. It would be an advertisement of course,
> but it would bring a service to the reader. It would not be a
> GoogleAds. We would be able to exactly select which articles we want
> the ad to be on (for example, all articles about books. all articles
> about DVD). It is not damaging the NPOV of the article. It could be
> identified in a special area. Deals could be made with one, or several
> providers. It would bring some money, but not huge amounts of money (who
> could disrupt the organization...).
> ant
> ******
> That's exactly the kind of example that looks sensible to a casual reader
> and causes monumental headaches for volunteers. After all, why should
> Amazon.com pay to have an outgoing link from that book article when anybody
> can insert that link for free? And Amazon's competitors can insert their
> own external links for free also?
>
> This problem seriously detracts from encyclopedia-building. For example,
> the textile arts project on en:Wikipedia. has about 500 articles and 5
> active members. The topic sees large numbers of of cottage entrepreneurs
> whose only interest is in generating links to their own particular online
> stores, and smaller numbers of professional PR folks who pepper articles
> with pitches for this or that brand name. Extracting that dross is no fun.
> Look away for a few weeks and linkspam even creeps into the navitational
> templates.
>
> The problem drains the productivity of the most active individuals and turns
> off the fair weather volunteers from helping at all. To be specific, the
> time I've wasted on linkspam is why our featured portal drive isn't
> completed yet, and why the "Sumptuary law" article isn't in good article
> candidacy by now, and also why I haven't started a new article on
> traditional Maori textiles. We've also got basics to put in place: 16 of
> the project's 28 top-importance articles are start-class or stub-class.
>
> So Florence, I have an invitation for your husband. If he really wants
> Wikipedia to save him ten seconds of looking up a product on Google, please
> ask him to come help expand "Beadwork". Five line top-importance articles
> are the price of linkspam management.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beadwork
>
> -Durova

Indeed, that makes sense.

For the record, I am about against ads (and against private investors),
but I am also open minded and try to listen to other opinions.

My husband does not participate to Wikipedia, and we had about 100 times
this discussion over "links to purchase books". Sometimes quite heated :-)
He actually do not really care links to Amazon for mainstream books. You
are right that it is the "easy" situation to solve in one search on
Google. He is a collector of old books in mineralogy. 100, 200, 300
years old, you name it. As a researcher, his problem is also to find a
paper version of a book printed only once 20 years ago, super high
quality, super specialized, but unfortunately printed only once because
the editor have no interest to produce a mineralogy book in for 300
fanatics more than once. So, for researchers, the game is to either find
a used-version of the book in sale somewhere on the net (ebay or
similar), or to try to find an electronic version of the book (if
another fan took the time to digitize it).

Sometimes, he is completely excited to find an article about such books
in Wikipedia (probably a fan added it). And usually, he asks ME to go on
the net and to try to find him a new or used version. That's when he
argues that proposing links for sales to online libraries would be a
fabulous service to add to readers, as it would help them to get access
to information (right ?). I usually try to explain him how difficult it
would be to maintain such a service :-)

Now, his other best dream would be to find the book in electronic
version in wikibooks. He considers that the job of the local
associations and Foundation should be to identify out-of-print
specialist books, contact and visit their editor, and convince them to
release the books under a free licence :-)

Which is... yeah.

Ant


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How about a button at the lower part of an article, beneath "References",
"Weblinks" and close to the link to the Wikimedia Commons. The button leads
the interested reader to "Commercial offers related to this article", to a
different page or site, provided by our commercial partner.
This would be commercially less powerful, but hardly an annoyance to any
reader.
Ziko





2008/3/21, Florence Devouard <Anthere9@yahoo.com>:
>
> Durova wrote:
> > or if the advertisement also was a bringing a benefit to the reader ?
> >
> > I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> > matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> > provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> > book. Typically, an Amazon link. It would be an advertisement of course,
> > but it would bring a service to the reader. It would not be a
> > GoogleAds. We would be able to exactly select which articles we want
> > the ad to be on (for example, all articles about books. all articles
> > about DVD). It is not damaging the NPOV of the article. It could be
> > identified in a special area. Deals could be made with one, or several
> > providers. It would bring some money, but not huge amounts of money (who
> > could disrupt the organization...).
> > ant
> > ******
> > That's exactly the kind of example that looks sensible to a casual
> reader
> > and causes monumental headaches for volunteers. After all, why should
> > Amazon.com pay to have an outgoing link from that book article when
> anybody
> > can insert that link for free? And Amazon's competitors can insert
> their
> > own external links for free also?
> >
> > This problem seriously detracts from encyclopedia-building. For
> example,
> > the textile arts project on en:Wikipedia. has about 500 articles and 5
> > active members. The topic sees large numbers of of cottage
> entrepreneurs
> > whose only interest is in generating links to their own particular
> online
> > stores, and smaller numbers of professional PR folks who pepper articles
> > with pitches for this or that brand name. Extracting that dross is no
> fun.
> > Look away for a few weeks and linkspam even creeps into the navitational
> > templates.
> >
> > The problem drains the productivity of the most active individuals and
> turns
> > off the fair weather volunteers from helping at all. To be specific,
> the
> > time I've wasted on linkspam is why our featured portal drive isn't
> > completed yet, and why the "Sumptuary law" article isn't in good article
> > candidacy by now, and also why I haven't started a new article on
> > traditional Maori textiles. We've also got basics to put in place: 16
> of
> > the project's 28 top-importance articles are start-class or stub-class.
> >
> > So Florence, I have an invitation for your husband. If he really wants
> > Wikipedia to save him ten seconds of looking up a product on Google,
> please
> > ask him to come help expand "Beadwork". Five line top-importance
> articles
> > are the price of linkspam management.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beadwork
> >
> > -Durova
>
>
> Indeed, that makes sense.
>
> For the record, I am about against ads (and against private investors),
> but I am also open minded and try to listen to other opinions.
>
> My husband does not participate to Wikipedia, and we had about 100 times
> this discussion over "links to purchase books". Sometimes quite heated :-)
> He actually do not really care links to Amazon for mainstream books. You
> are right that it is the "easy" situation to solve in one search on
> Google. He is a collector of old books in mineralogy. 100, 200, 300
> years old, you name it. As a researcher, his problem is also to find a
> paper version of a book printed only once 20 years ago, super high
> quality, super specialized, but unfortunately printed only once because
> the editor have no interest to produce a mineralogy book in for 300
> fanatics more than once. So, for researchers, the game is to either find
> a used-version of the book in sale somewhere on the net (ebay or
> similar), or to try to find an electronic version of the book (if
> another fan took the time to digitize it).
>
> Sometimes, he is completely excited to find an article about such books
> in Wikipedia (probably a fan added it). And usually, he asks ME to go on
> the net and to try to find him a new or used version. That's when he
> argues that proposing links for sales to online libraries would be a
> fabulous service to add to readers, as it would help them to get access
> to information (right ?). I usually try to explain him how difficult it
> would be to maintain such a service :-)
>
> Now, his other best dream would be to find the book in electronic
> version in wikibooks. He considers that the job of the local
> associations and Foundation should be to identify out-of-print
> specialist books, contact and visit their editor, and convince them to
> release the books under a free licence :-)
>
> Which is... yeah.
>
> Ant
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



--
Ziko van Dijk
Roomberg 30
NL-7064 BN Silvolde
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On 21/03/2008, Florence Devouard <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Now, his other best dream would be to find the book in electronic
> version in wikibooks. He considers that the job of the local
> associations and Foundation should be to identify out-of-print
> specialist books, contact and visit their editor, and convince them to
> release the books under a free licence :-)


This is very close to a proposal Danny Wool just made on his blog:

http://allswool.blogspot.com/2008/03/trouble-with-orphans.html

Basically: a subproject to (1) list orphaned works (2) use WMF's voice
to get them freed up. Mostly what it needs is someone to actually take
an interest and start on it.


- d.

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On 20/03/2008, Florence Devouard <anthere@anthere.org> wrote:


> I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> book. Typically, an Amazon link.

I make a practice of removing well-meaning Amazon links, because we
currently have a structure to do this trivially, automatically, and
with a lot broader scope.

[.The following is as it works on enwp - I believe many other projects
have the extension, but I wouldn't want to claim to know how they
handle it! The model should be similar, though.]

Any text string of the form "ISBN xxx", where xxx is a ten-digit or
thirteen-digit valid ISBN or ISBN-13 string, will link to a page at
[[Special:Booksources]]. It will create, automatically, a set of
deeplinks into the pages of a wide variety of online booksellers
(including Amazon) - but also to a wide range of library catalogues,
book exchange sites, etc.

There are implementation problems in getting this to work well - and
we certainly don't make it nearly as prominent as we ought to - but a
link to many commercial sites with no implied preference is no doubt
vastly better for our readers than a link to one.

It falls down somewhat for non-ISBNed literature - broadly speaking,
editions published before 1970 and not reprinted since - but this is a
relatively small set of material, and one online booksellers handle
very badly as it is.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk

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Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 20/03/2008, Florence Devouard <anthere@anthere.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>> I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
>> matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
>> provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
>> book. Typically, an Amazon link.
>>
>
> I make a practice of removing well-meaning Amazon links, because we
> currently have a structure to do this trivially, automatically, and
> with a lot broader scope.
>
> [.The following is as it works on enwp - I believe many other projects
> have the extension, but I wouldn't want to claim to know how they
> handle it! The model should be similar, though.]
>
> Any text string of the form "ISBN xxx", where xxx is a ten-digit or
> thirteen-digit valid ISBN or ISBN-13 string, will link to a page at
> [[Special:Booksources]]. It will create, automatically, a set of
> deeplinks into the pages of a wide variety of online booksellers
> (including Amazon) - but also to a wide range of library catalogues,
> book exchange sites, etc.
>
I agree a generic interface is the right way to go, but the main problem
I have with it is that it seems almost purposely designed to make it
hard to find a link to a bookseller. I'm not sure if this was the
intent, but it comes across as if the person who made the layout is sort
of ideologically against buying books or something. You have to scroll
through something like 8 pages of links to hundreds of different
libraries before you can find any possible link to a bookseller the
book---"Booksellers" is currently section 7... and section 5 which
precedes it has *64* subsections.

It'd be somewhat easier if there were only a handful of links at the
top, maybe to 2-4 library meta-search engines (e.g. WorldCat) and to 2-4
bookseller meta-search engines (e.g. AddAll), before dumping the reader
into a morass of literally hundreds of links to individual libraries. Do
we even need the latter? Surely someone who has access to, say, the
University of Colorado at Boulder library, already knows how to visit
ucblibraries.colorado.edu, or else can find it through WorldCat/etc. if not.

-Mark


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On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 1:30 AM, Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
...
> I agree a generic interface is the right way to go, but the main problem
> I have with it is that it seems almost purposely designed to make it
> hard to find a link to a bookseller. I'm not sure if this was the
> intent, but it comes across as if the person who made the layout is sort
> of ideologically against buying books or something. You have to scroll
> through something like 8 pages of links to hundreds of different
> libraries before you can find any possible link to a bookseller the
> book---"Booksellers" is currently section 7... and section 5 which
> precedes it has *64* subsections.

One solution could be to choose favourite book source via user
preferences. The granularity of such a choice is a practical issue.

-Palnatoke

--
http://palnatoke.org * Ole Palnatoke Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
* CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc *
**38 glas honning, hvoraf 24 uden omrøring**
h:+45 61 91 48 88

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White Cat wrote:
> Joke aside, what kind of an advertisement
> would we put on an article on the second world war or a pharaoh from ancient
> Egypt.

Just for discussion purposes, the two ads I see on google right now for
"World War II" are for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
for World War II History magazine.

The Museum advertisement leads to a special section of their website
focussing on D-Day. From my cursory reading of it as a non-specialist,
it does not appear to be POV pushing. It is an educational site about
the war.

At Britannica,
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9110199/World-War-II

I see a banner at the top, apparently unrelated to the content (for
Advair, an asthma medication). Further down, I see an advertisement for
the Lincoln Navigator, a giant SUV car thing. And I see an
advertisement for the University of Phoenix. And another ad for the
University of Phoenix. And the google ads. (I am not even counting
their ads for their own products.)

Interestingly enough, at Ask.com, I see no advertisements for "World War
II".

At Yahoo, I see a series of text ads similar to google's (though, more
of them).

A search for "Tutankhamun" at Google (the most popular pharoah I
suppose), shows 3 advertisements for tickets to the Tutankhamun exhibit,
which is currently in London.

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Well. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" doesn't strike as a problem
unless you are on the perspective that denies the holocaust. We disregard
such minority opinions for the most part, which is fine. But wait till you
get to topics like Palestine and Israel...

Let's assume advertisements are assigned to articles randomly and not in an
Adsense manner... Adsense would be more problematic on occasions
particularly on controversial topics.

- An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Palestinian may
be problematic.
- An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Iran may be
problematic.
- An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about cheese may not
be problematic.
- An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Toyota may not
be problematic.

Likewise

- A Ford advertisement on an article about Palestinian may not be
problematic.
- A Ford advertisement on an article about Iran may be problematic.
- A Ford advertisement on an article about cheese may not be
problematic.
- A Ford advertisement on an article about Toyota may be problematic.


What I am trying to say is how do we know with 100% certainty we are with a
situation where an advertisement shows up at a problematic article? An
advertisement that is not problematic on one article may be problematic
elsewhere.

- White Cat

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:

> White Cat wrote:
> > Joke aside, what kind of an advertisement
> > would we put on an article on the second world war or a pharaoh from
> ancient
> > Egypt.
>
> Just for discussion purposes, the two ads I see on google right now for
> "World War II" are for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
> for World War II History magazine.
>
> The Museum advertisement leads to a special section of their website
> focussing on D-Day. From my cursory reading of it as a non-specialist,
> it does not appear to be POV pushing. It is an educational site about
> the war.
>
> At Britannica,
> http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9110199/World-War-II
>
> I see a banner at the top, apparently unrelated to the content (for
> Advair, an asthma medication). Further down, I see an advertisement for
> the Lincoln Navigator, a giant SUV car thing. And I see an
> advertisement for the University of Phoenix. And another ad for the
> University of Phoenix. And the google ads. (I am not even counting
> their ads for their own products.)
>
> Interestingly enough, at Ask.com, I see no advertisements for "World War
> II".
>
> At Yahoo, I see a series of text ads similar to google's (though, more
> of them).
>
> A search for "Tutankhamun" at Google (the most popular pharoah I
> suppose), shows 3 advertisements for tickets to the Tutankhamun exhibit,
> which is currently in London.
>
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On 22/03/2008, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> White Cat wrote:

> > Joke aside, what kind of an advertisement
> > would we put on an article on the second world war or a pharaoh from ancient
> > Egypt.

> Just for discussion purposes, the two ads I see on google right now for
> "World War II" are for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
> for World War II History magazine.


A more apposite example might be answers.com, which uses the Wikipedia text:

* a picture ad for "Free Lotto!" where "Everyone WINS!!"
* a picture ad for a mobile phone plan
* a picture ad for "£500/month off your mortgage" from a builder
* a banner ad for a historical castle at the bottom of the (very long) page.

None particularly relevant to the text, only the first struck me as
particularly annoying and distasteful.


- d.

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I still don't like it. And how are these examples a service? - White Cat

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 6:31 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 22/03/2008, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> > White Cat wrote:
>
> > > Joke aside, what kind of an advertisement
> > > would we put on an article on the second world war or a pharaoh from
> ancient
> > > Egypt.
>
> > Just for discussion purposes, the two ads I see on google right now for
> > "World War II" are for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
> > for World War II History magazine.
>
>
> A more apposite example might be answers.com, which uses the Wikipedia
> text:
>
> * a picture ad for "Free Lotto!" where "Everyone WINS!!"
> * a picture ad for a mobile phone plan
> * a picture ad for "£500/month off your mortgage" from a builder
> * a banner ad for a historical castle at the bottom of the (very long)
> page.
>
> None particularly relevant to the text, only the first struck me as
> particularly annoying and distasteful.
>
>
> - d.
>
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If Foundation would drop the world saviour attitude, drop wikimania
which accounts a large part of the budget and first securing budget
for running the site for a few years, then this nonsense advertising
talk would not need to happen.

Yes, it's good to think beyond. But you first must secure your
immediate and more important goals (that is running the site) and only
once you get past that point, when you don't worry if you'll be able
to run the site next year, you may start thinking where to spend money
that you don't have and only then, think about putting advertising
the site to afford those extra activities.

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Right, we do not have an immediate need for advertisements, I like to think
all this as a mere thought exercise.

- White Cat

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez@gmail.com> wrote:

> If Foundation would drop the world saviour attitude, drop wikimania
> which accounts a large part of the budget and first securing budget
> for running the site for a few years, then this nonsense advertising
> talk would not need to happen.
>
> Yes, it's good to think beyond. But you first must secure your
> immediate and more important goals (that is running the site) and only
> once you get past that point, when you don't worry if you'll be able
> to run the site next year, you may start thinking where to spend money
> that you don't have and only then, think about putting advertising
> the site to afford those extra activities.
>
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 5:30 PM, Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
> > On 20/03/2008, Florence Devouard <anthere@anthere.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
> >> matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
> >> provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
> >> book. Typically, an Amazon link.
> >>
> >
> > I make a practice of removing well-meaning Amazon links, because we
> > currently have a structure to do this trivially, automatically, and
> > with a lot broader scope.
> >
> > [.The following is as it works on enwp - I believe many other projects
> > have the extension, but I wouldn't want to claim to know how they
> > handle it! The model should be similar, though.]
> >
> > Any text string of the form "ISBN xxx", where xxx is a ten-digit or
> > thirteen-digit valid ISBN or ISBN-13 string, will link to a page at
> > [[Special:Booksources]]. It will create, automatically, a set of
> > deeplinks into the pages of a wide variety of online booksellers
> > (including Amazon) - but also to a wide range of library catalogues,
> > book exchange sites, etc.
> >
> I agree a generic interface is the right way to go, but the main problem
> I have with it is that it seems almost purposely designed to make it
> hard to find a link to a bookseller.

There's been a recurring debate in the library world about how to
handle this exact question in library catalogs. When you pull up a
book in your local library catalog (or on worldcat etc) it seems
helpful for the reader to also provide a link to a commercial site to
buy the book if they wish, or to get more information. (This is a
"service" the way Florence refers to it). The ideal and obvious thing
is to direct them to the publisher's site, but this is not always
possible, especially for older materials. So there's a big question
about a) *whether* to send patrons to commercial sites, and b) *where*
to send them -- since the library, as a non-profit NPOV institution,
generally does not want to *endorse* any particular reseller. As a
library, we have no stake in Amazon versus Powells (a large
independent bookseller in the U.S.) versus Blackwells versus your
corner bookshop etc., and we don't especially want to endorse one over
the other.

It seems to me that Wikimedia is in exactly the same position. Let's
not forget, from the point of view of Amazon a direct and easy link to
Amazon from Wikipedia would be an *amazing* windfall, a simultaneous
endorsement and direct channel of people to purchase materials (and
because of Amazon's nasty habit of retaining your browsing habits if
you're a customer, they might well even know *which* wikipedia
articles with amazon ads you'd been browsing, and be able to use that
information). Other booksellers, however, would be disenfranchised
simply because they don't have the reach or the money to pay for ads
the way Amazon does. And what if we don't think Amazon is a good
company, or don't want to support them, or simply want to avoid
entangling ourselves with any commercial service?

I am very much in favor of sharing metadata and improving our link-out
mechanisms so it's easier to find out more about the books and other
topics on Wikipedia. If someone wants to improve special:booksources
so it's easier to use (perhaps as a javascript menu -- choose your
location, choose libraries vs booksellers?), that would be fantastic.
I am not, however, in favor of directly or obviously linking to a
handful of commercial sites.

-- phoebe

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On 22/03/2008, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez@gmail.com> wrote:
> If Foundation would drop the world saviour attitude, drop wikimania
> which accounts a large part of the budget and first securing budget
> for running the site for a few years, then this nonsense advertising
> talk would not need to happen.

I was under the impression that Wikimania roughly broke even, or at
least is intended to.

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I don't know of anyone, even among those advocating for advertisements,
who advocates putting them in article space.

White Cat wrote:
> Well. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" doesn't strike as a problem
> unless you are on the perspective that denies the holocaust. We disregard
> such minority opinions for the most part, which is fine. But wait till you
> get to topics like Palestine and Israel...
>
> Let's assume advertisements are assigned to articles randomly and not in an
> Adsense manner... Adsense would be more problematic on occasions
> particularly on controversial topics.
>
> - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Palestinian may
> be problematic.
> - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Iran may be
> problematic.
> - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about cheese may not
> be problematic.
> - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Toyota may not
> be problematic.
>
> Likewise
>
> - A Ford advertisement on an article about Palestinian may not be
> problematic.
> - A Ford advertisement on an article about Iran may be problematic.
> - A Ford advertisement on an article about cheese may not be
> problematic.
> - A Ford advertisement on an article about Toyota may be problematic.
>
>
> What I am trying to say is how do we know with 100% certainty we are with a
> situation where an advertisement shows up at a problematic article? An
> advertisement that is not problematic on one article may be problematic
> elsewhere.
>
> - White Cat
>
> On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> White Cat wrote:
>>> Joke aside, what kind of an advertisement
>>> would we put on an article on the second world war or a pharaoh from
>> ancient
>>> Egypt.
>> Just for discussion purposes, the two ads I see on google right now for
>> "World War II" are for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
>> for World War II History magazine.
>>
>> The Museum advertisement leads to a special section of their website
>> focussing on D-Day. From my cursory reading of it as a non-specialist,
>> it does not appear to be POV pushing. It is an educational site about
>> the war.
>>
>> At Britannica,
>> http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9110199/World-War-II
>>
>> I see a banner at the top, apparently unrelated to the content (for
>> Advair, an asthma medication). Further down, I see an advertisement for
>> the Lincoln Navigator, a giant SUV car thing. And I see an
>> advertisement for the University of Phoenix. And another ad for the
>> University of Phoenix. And the google ads. (I am not even counting
>> their ads for their own products.)
>>
>> Interestingly enough, at Ask.com, I see no advertisements for "World War
>> II".
>>
>> At Yahoo, I see a series of text ads similar to google's (though, more
>> of them).
>>
>> A search for "Tutankhamun" at Google (the most popular pharoah I
>> suppose), shows 3 advertisements for tickets to the Tutankhamun exhibit,
>> which is currently in London.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



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Pedro Sanchez wrote:
> If Foundation would drop the world saviour attitude, drop wikimania
> which accounts a large part of the budget and first securing budget
> for running the site for a few years, then this nonsense advertising
> talk would not need to happen.
>
> Yes, it's good to think beyond. But you first must secure your
> immediate and more important goals (that is running the site) and only
> once you get past that point, when you don't worry if you'll be able
> to run the site next year, you may start thinking where to spend money
> that you don't have and only then, think about putting advertising
> the site to afford those extra activities.
What you ignore is that a significant part of this debate is driven by a
fear of advertising that verges on a pathological phobia. I think that
most people view the subject with a greater degree of pragmatism.

Ec

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Pedro Sanchez wrote:
> If Foundation would drop the world saviour attitude, drop wikimania
> which accounts a large part of the budget and first securing budget
> for running the site for a few years, then this nonsense advertising
> talk would not need to happen.

Notice that the Foundation is not proposing advertising at all.

--Jimbo

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On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 3:58 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There's been a recurring debate in the library world about how to
> handle this exact question in library catalogs. When you pull up a
> book in your local library catalog (or on worldcat etc) it seems
> helpful for the reader to also provide a link to a commercial site to
> buy the book if they wish, or to get more information. (This is a
> "service" the way Florence refers to it). The ideal and obvious thing
> is to direct them to the publisher's site, but this is not always
> possible, especially for older materials. So there's a big question
> about a) *whether* to send patrons to commercial sites, and b) *where*
> to send them -- since the library, as a non-profit NPOV institution,
> generally does not want to *endorse* any particular reseller. As a
> library, we have no stake in Amazon versus Powells (a large
> independent bookseller in the U.S.) versus Blackwells versus your
> corner bookshop etc., and we don't especially want to endorse one over
> the other.
>
> It seems to me that Wikimedia is in exactly the same position. Let's
> not forget, from the point of view of Amazon a direct and easy link to
> Amazon from Wikipedia would be an *amazing* windfall, a simultaneous
> endorsement and direct channel of people to purchase materials (and
> because of Amazon's nasty habit of retaining your browsing habits if
> you're a customer, they might well even know *which* wikipedia
> articles with amazon ads you'd been browsing, and be able to use that
> information). Other booksellers, however, would be disenfranchised
> simply because they don't have the reach or the money to pay for ads
> the way Amazon does. And what if we don't think Amazon is a good
> company, or don't want to support them, or simply want to avoid
> entangling ourselves with any commercial service?
>
> -- phoebe
>

Compare Citizendium's approach:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Donate#Other_ways_that_you_can_help

Through "affiliate programs", Citizendium gets 6% of the price for
purchases that come via CZ traffic to Amazon or Barnes&Noble. They
have a much simpler ISBN interface than Wikipedia:
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special%3ABooksources&isbn=0596515162

One way to get some benefit from this type of thing without much
compromise: instead of ISBN links going to convoluted catchall pages
like on en-wiki, the link goes to a page with a choice. Do you want
to find this book in a library or other free source, or do you want to
buy or browse for it on a commercial site. Then the "buy it" link
goes to a page with the full list of vendors (like on the current
page) of new and used books, but near the top it informs users that
they can help support WMF by using one of the vendors that has an
affiliate program.

I think the potential for backlash with something like this is very
small. There is a distinction between advertising and referral, and
it would be a situation where we have complete control of the context
of the links. And I see no problem with favoring one vendor over
another if it is done in a transparent way that makes the financial
aspect of it clear to the user. This is much less intrusive than the
types of non-advertisement advertisements done by nonprofit radio and
television. (And of course, many users will be very happy to
patronize one company over another if they can help Wikipedia by doing
so.)

-Sage (User:Ragesoss)

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Hoi,
I would not rule out advertisements anywhere. We are discussing the use of
advertisements and the notion of where is not the notion of why. I am
interested in more funding for the WMF so that we can fund more activities
that help us accomplish our mission. All notions about where adverts are to
be had need only be considered when we know that we are going to use the
instrument of advertising to increase our funding.

I have been watching TV for a few days, I am at my mothers for Easter, and I
do not like advertisements at all. It is so bad that my mother will not
watch most of the commercial TV channels. I do not like advertisements at
all but when they help us accomplish things...

We could do for instance ads in our stable versions ..
Thanks,
GerardM

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 9:47 PM, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:

> I don't know of anyone, even among those advocating for advertisements,
> who advocates putting them in article space.
>
> White Cat wrote:
> > Well. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" doesn't strike as a
> problem
> > unless you are on the perspective that denies the holocaust. We
> disregard
> > such minority opinions for the most part, which is fine. But wait till
> you
> > get to topics like Palestine and Israel...
> >
> > Let's assume advertisements are assigned to articles randomly and not in
> an
> > Adsense manner... Adsense would be more problematic on occasions
> > particularly on controversial topics.
> >
> > - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Palestinian
> may
> > be problematic.
> > - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Iran may be
> > problematic.
> > - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about cheese may not
> > be problematic.
> > - An Israeli tourism advertisement on an article about Toyota may not
> > be problematic.
> >
> > Likewise
> >
> > - A Ford advertisement on an article about Palestinian may not be
> > problematic.
> > - A Ford advertisement on an article about Iran may be problematic.
> > - A Ford advertisement on an article about cheese may not be
> > problematic.
> > - A Ford advertisement on an article about Toyota may be problematic.
> >
> >
> > What I am trying to say is how do we know with 100% certainty we are
> with a
> > situation where an advertisement shows up at a problematic article? An
> > advertisement that is not problematic on one article may be problematic
> > elsewhere.
> >
> > - White Cat
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >> White Cat wrote:
> >>> Joke aside, what kind of an advertisement
> >>> would we put on an article on the second world war or a pharaoh from
> >> ancient
> >>> Egypt.
> >> Just for discussion purposes, the two ads I see on google right now for
> >> "World War II" are for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
> >> for World War II History magazine.
> >>
> >> The Museum advertisement leads to a special section of their website
> >> focussing on D-Day. From my cursory reading of it as a non-specialist,
> >> it does not appear to be POV pushing. It is an educational site about
> >> the war.
> >>
> >> At Britannica,
> >> http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9110199/World-War-II
> >>
> >> I see a banner at the top, apparently unrelated to the content (for
> >> Advair, an asthma medication). Further down, I see an advertisement
> for
> >> the Lincoln Navigator, a giant SUV car thing. And I see an
> >> advertisement for the University of Phoenix. And another ad for the
> >> University of Phoenix. And the google ads. (I am not even counting
> >> their ads for their own products.)
> >>
> >> Interestingly enough, at Ask.com, I see no advertisements for "World
> War
> >> II".
> >>
> >> At Yahoo, I see a series of text ads similar to google's (though, more
> >> of them).
> >>
> >> A search for "Tutankhamun" at Google (the most popular pharoah I
> >> suppose), shows 3 advertisements for tickets to the Tutankhamun
> exhibit,
> >> which is currently in London.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> foundation-l mailing list
> >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
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