[Foundation-l] Donation banner and strongly negative reactions

Fri Nov 7 19:47:47 UTC 2008

2008/11/7 Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>:
> I don't remember this sort of strong negative reaction before - is it
> expected?

Yes - the fundraising banner always creates a strong, initial negative
reaction when it goes up.

Last year, we had dismissability for logged in users (which led to a
smaller version of the banner which still included a thermometer), and
no dismissability for users who are not logged in. This year, both
logged in and logged out users can collapse the banner to a smaller
version. Many Wikipedians have expressed annoyance at the size of the
collapsed version, especially because it includes a bright red button.

Several wikis now have a gadget in the user preferences to hide the
banner completely. The gadget instructions can be found here for those
who want to copy it to their wiki:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2008/design_drafts#Enable_the_gadget_in_smaller_wikis_too.2C_please.21

I've asked Rand to work with the technology team towards a
significantly smaller default collapsed version for logged in users
(e.g. just showing the current amount and a plain link to donate, plus
an expand link). But, in the absence of data showing whether or not
the current collapsed version incentivizes donations by repeat
viewers, we won't make it smaller for logged out users at this point.

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate