Wikipedia talk:Donation appeal ideas

Rotating Slogans?

Perhaps a simple script to rotate some of the best ones through? --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:52, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

That's fairly easy to do:

{{#switch:{{rand|n}}
|0=first random option
|1=second random option
|...
|n-1=nth random option
}}

You get a new one every time the cache gets purged. Or you can substitute {{rand}} for {{CURRENTSECOND}} and get a new one with each page load (n <= 60). MER-C 12:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

that would appear to be a fairly logical attack line.Geni 14:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that rotation of a collection of messages is a good idea. People are diverse; "one message fits all" does not work very well. It would be nice if we could track the last 10 pages visited by each IP and select a message that reflects the apparent interests of each Wikipedia visitor. --JWSchmidt 16:31, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

It makes sense in principle to have rotating messages but if the best slogan we can find is "Every day you do not give money to Wikipedia, God kills a bulbasaur" then we're in deep trouble! I, for one, would happily pray for the destruction of bulbasaurs. Pascal.Tesson 17:11, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

that one would likely violate trademark or something in any case.Geni 18:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

The catch phrase was invented by a now-defunct college magazine, so it's not as if big money is being made off of it. In any case, it wouldn't be proper (or professional) tone. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 21:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Dude, it's advertising. We want their money, not their boredom. - David Gerard 12:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Rotating slogans is a great idea, even if it would give the devs conniptions thinking of the uncacheability. May I say how much I like "Donate! or we'll introduce annoying adverts involving talking emoticons. You have been warned." though I wouldn't want to see it EVERY time.

Possible problem: interesting rotating slogans will lead to excess page reloads just to see the slogans. Perhaps rotate daily. - David Gerard 12:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

slogan of the day contest? could catch on.Geni 16:57, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Too nerdy?

I wonder how geeky our average reader is? Some of those slogans are semi-obscure inside jokes; this would likely increase the donation rate by geeks, and decrease the donation rate by non-geeks who Just Don't Get It. >Radiant< 13:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I think some form of filtering process will be put in place.Geni 02:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, folks, we need some serious suggestions. The nerd humor is funny, but unlikely to have mass appeal or help our credibility. I do like both the idea of randomization, and the concept behind the "Only if you donate to Wikipedia do you get to learn all about the Kwyjibo" suggestion. Perhaps we can come up with a good mix of links from Wikipedia:Unusual articles. One concern is that any article featured with such prominence will attract much vandalism.--Eloquence*

Yay! Both the praised slogans were my idea! Except *someone* (not naming any names, Radiant!) changed it to a valid link which wasn't my intention :P Jack · talk · 15:10, Thursday, 22 February 2007

Measuring Effectiveness

It would be great to be able to measure the absolute and relative effectiveness of all of these ideas for raising funds. Experimental variation is necessary to do this properly. Randomizing the sitenotice by IP has previously been discouraged (and would be ineffective unless, problematically, IPs of contributors were, at least temporarily, retained). However, randomizing the timing of changes to the appeal (as suggested in "rotating slogans" above) would allow such measurement, and probably would even allow measurement of the effect of changing the sitenotice. Jeremy Tobacman 00:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Related Ideas and Discussion

meta:Fundraising_ideas has numerous suggestions which are related to a greater or lesser degree to the objective of this page. Jeremy Tobacman 00:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)