Last modified: 2013-06-22 02:09:52 UTC
This might be a duplicate bug, but... The fundraising banners apparently have an obscure opt out system currently. It's described at <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29&oldid=461156874#How_to_hide_all_fundraising_banners_on_all_Wikimedia_wikis_until_next_year>. There should be a proper UI for this kind of thing. Either a Special page or something similar. Envisioned workflow: * user clicks "x" on a banner * small pop-up asks "do you want to hide all fundraiser banners? y / n" ** clicking "y" leads to a confirmation page (probably with the obligatory begging) ** clicking "n" leads to the small banner disappearing; banners will resume within a week (or whatever the current timeout on the dismiss cookie is) I don't think adding this to the UI will make it any less of an advanced feature than URL magic. That is, I think the same people who would use the URL magic will use the interface. It's just a cleaner, saner way to do it.
I'm not sure what would cause more unhappiness, not being able to instantly dismiss a banner or having to see another fundraising banner after 2 weeks.
(In reply to comment #1) > I'm not sure what would cause more unhappiness, not being able to instantly > dismiss a banner or having to see another fundraising banner after 2 weeks. I wasn't really going for either. The current "x" button should continue work as it currently does. It's got some sort of finite cookie, as I recall. Seven days, maybe? And that instantly dismisses the banner. The idea here is to emulate the behavior of visting "http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You/en" (as described in the village pump), but rather than relying on an esoteric hack, adding a proper UI that sets the same cookies (or better, also tracks the preference to an account, though that's a separate issue).
So you would want some interface element in addition to the 'x'? I'm still not sure I understand your idea fully. We actually have the ability currently to make any/all of the close boxes permanently hide all the banners on all the projects. (It's a bit messy, but I've figured out a way to do it.) Thus there is no need to send people to a special page. It could all happen through Javascript. I'm not sure we'll ever actually implement such a system, though, or increase the default cookie expiration from the current 14 days. We would actually like for people to see at least a couple fundraising banners during the fundraiser even if they dismiss them. The idea behind the thank you page "hack" is that people are very unlikely to donate more than once during a fundraiser, so for those people we have no reason to keep showing them banners. The hack isn't intended for non-donors, but I thought I'd post it on the Village Pump anyway in case some people wanted to exploit it. Of course we know that some people find the banners annoying, which is why we're only going to be running the fundraiser for logged in users for a short period this year. What I would actually like to see is a system where we only show someone a banner every nth time they visit the site. I'm not sure if this would be politically possible though since we would have to do some "user tracking" to accomplish it.
(In reply to comment #3) > So you would want some interface element in addition to the 'x'? I'm still not > sure I understand your idea fully. As far as I see it, there are two ways for advanced users to suppress fundraising banners: (1) put "#siteNotice { display:none; }" or equivalent in their user CSS or (2) visit a thank you page on wikimediafoundation.org that sets cookies for them. Option 1 sucks because it requires editing CSS and it eliminates all banners, not just a particular year's fundraising banners. Option 2 sucks because it relies on cookies and it's obscure as hell. What I'm proposing is continuing to encourage advanced users to turn off the donation banners, but doing so via a less obscure/hackish method than option 1 or option 2. This would be an option 3, where there's the equivalent of a "don't show this again" message and an opt out confirmation page. > We would actually like for people to see > at least a couple fundraising banners during the fundraiser even if they > dismiss them. The idea behind the thank you page "hack" is that people are very > unlikely to donate more than once during a fundraiser, so for those people we > have no reason to keep showing them banners. The hack isn't intended for > non-donors, but I thought I'd post it on the Village Pump anyway in case some > people wanted to exploit it. Well, this is the bug, then. :-) No matter what you do, people will be able to suppress the banners. I just think it should be a bit less obscure and hackish. Put a proper form on it rather than requiring people to edit CSS or set cookies via URL.
I suspect this may be superseded? FR seems to be now using some arcane system that shows banners "five times to each browser of unregistered user in Italy" or other calibrations, rather than yes/no, and I don't hear plans for showing banners to registered users. https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fundraising_2013&diff=5343126&oldid=5343122
(In reply to comment #5) > I suspect this may be superseded? FR seems to be now using some arcane system > that shows banners "five times to each browser of unregistered user in Italy" > or other calibrations, rather than yes/no, and I don't hear plans for showing > banners to registered users. Can anybody of the Fundraising team answer this, please?
(In reply to comment #6) > (In reply to comment #5) > > I suspect this may be superseded? FR seems to be now using some arcane system > > that shows banners "five times to each browser of unregistered user in Italy" > > or other calibrations, rather than yes/no > > Can anybody of the Fundraising team answer this, please? I wouldn't exactly call it arcane as such... we just count the number of banner impressions shown to a user. The edge case is those users who clear their cookies. > and I don't hear plans for showing banners to registered users. Ish; the plan is try and never show a banner to a registered user because we feel that if you're logged in you're probably editing which is contributing in a different way. That being said, if we fail to meet our fundraising goals we will have to annoy everyone so much more! Regarding MZ's original request though; given how we are currently doing fundraising, I would rather not implement this UI. I'm far more open to adding a hook/event to CentralNotice JS that a enterprising user could then write a gadget for; but I also don't currently see the need.
