Wikipedia Turns 15 • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#11

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:07 AM UTC

edelans wrote: post #5

bsimpson wrote: post #4

Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…

I find their campaigns rather effective. I have the impression they do a big surge once a year with banners everywhere on the site. I find it very effective at reminding you how wikipedia bring you value everytime you use it. At least it made me donate at each occasions and I don't consider myself as a heavy user (hardly one consultation / week), and I think it is the only project I have donated multiple times.

First campaign were subtler though, making me pay, and then it was big banner fest which me a bit angry. Maybe it's not the case if you're logged in and they track your donation so they can ask in finer ways.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#12

Post by im2w1l » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:08 AM UTC

provemewrong wrote: post #9

rplnt wrote: post #2

I was thinking just yesterday whether wikipedia will ever change its design or if it is timeless (unless devices change radically). I don't remember any major changes, I guess there were gradual that I didn't notice?

There have been design changes. The most noticeable one happened in 2010.[1] [1]: http://www.technorms.com/326/the-new-wikipedia-wikimedia-fou...

In my entirely unqualified opinion, that's a very well done redesign; it looks the same, only better.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#13

Post by glaberficken » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:41 AM UTC

edelans wrote: post #5

bsimpson wrote: post #4

Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…

I find their campaigns rather effective. I have the impression they do a big surge once a year with banners everywhere on the site. I find it very effective at reminding you how wikipedia bring you value everytime you use it. At least it made me donate at each occasions and I don't consider myself as a heavy user (hardly one consultation / week), and I think it is the only project I have donated multiple times.

It's the only site I have ever donated to. I believe that is the same for other hundreds of thousands of people. When I see the banners, I just have to reflect on the huge knowledge value I get from the site, and I donate. simple as that

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#14

Post by wodenokoto » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:42 AM UTC

edelans wrote: post #5

bsimpson wrote: post #4

Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…

I find their campaigns rather effective. I have the impression they do a big surge once a year with banners everywhere on the site. I find it very effective at reminding you how wikipedia bring you value everytime you use it. At least it made me donate at each occasions and I don't consider myself as a heavy user (hardly one consultation / week), and I think it is the only project I have donated multiple times.

Is it really only once a year? I feel like I saw it several times last year.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#15

Post by moonshinefe » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:42 AM UTC

Wikipedia isn't without its problems, but there's no doubt it's been a very positive force on the internet. I'm not sure there's been anything like it in human history, where most people can have such easy access to such a wide variety of encyclopedic topics for free. It's an equalizer for sure in education.

For casual readers like myself it's also a real pleasure to occasionally just dive into a section of history, follow the links around, and learn about the world. Same goes for various other topics but that's the one that came to mind.

Here's to hoping Wikipedia sticks around for a long time to come.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#16

Post by Merem » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:47 AM UTC

provemewrong wrote: post #9

rplnt wrote: post #2

I was thinking just yesterday whether wikipedia will ever change its design or if it is timeless (unless devices change radically). I don't remember any major changes, I guess there were gradual that I didn't notice?

There have been design changes. The most noticeable one happened in 2010.[1] [1]: http://www.technorms.com/326/the-new-wikipedia-wikimedia-fou...

As a reader I prefer the older design, so I was glad that they allowed me to keep using that. Other websites always force you to switch.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#17

Post by tonylemesmer » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 11:08 AM UTC

bsimpson wrote: post #4

Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…

Jimmy Wales was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning (15th Jan 2016) and said they do absolutely everything they can to minimise the length of the banner campaigns. They set a budget and keep the campaign open until they hit the target. According to him they have gotten less agressive over the years.

edit date correction :)

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#18

Post by rodionos » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 11:12 AM UTC

Congratulations, Wikipedia! I found it tremendously useful over the years. I have one suggestion for them. I wouldn't mind making micro-donations for articles of particular quality and relevance to me. Say I find something useful and click on a '2c' donation button. The system doesn't trigger an immediate payment transaction because I would not have time to do it but instead waits until I accumulate $1+ in 'spend' and then displays another button 'Pay'. This way micropayments are easy for me as the reader and at the same time Wikipedia's transaction costs are minimized. Besides, I like to be able to pay later.

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#19

Post by daniel_iversen » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 11:13 AM UTC

I've always wondered if Wikipedia could come up with alternate revenue streams because of the huge amounts of people they touch, the mammoth cross section of content they have. And the kinds of traffic analysis they could do... Targeted ads? Analytics for companies (a medical, tech or other company could learn what their stakeholders are interested in), recommendation engines, content classification engines for media and news orgs (or even SEO or UX navigation conscious web devs) etc.. They could do these thighs gracefully. What do you think?

Re: Wikipedia Turns 15

#20

Post by onion2k » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 11:13 AM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #7

bsimpson wrote: post #4

Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…

I think they will be more than fine once we figure out micropayments.

I don't think so. The problem micropayments face is that they're too close to free to represent value - if something is $0.05 then your brain sees that it isn't free but its value is so close to zero that it feels like it ought to be free. There'a a cognitive dissonance between "This is something I need so I should pay for it" and "This is so cheap it can't be worth anything, so I shouldn't pay for it." You need to persuade people that something they're buying for a tiny amount has enough value that they should pay actually for it. That is exceptionally hard. It might actually be impossible.