User:Najevi/sandbox11

= Raising revenue to host wiki communities = I went fishing this afternoon and prompted by a recent discussion with another Wikia user I reflected upon what might be a "kinder and gentler way" to raise revenue to host a large number of wikis within a "wiki farm."

Who should pay the bill
Broadly speaking the users of a wiki are either contributors or consumers. We might debate what level of contribution qualifies a wiki user to be considered a contributor but I suspect that this is not necessary because the number of users who are purely readers/browsers probably dwarfs the number of users who contribute either regularly or casually. To use an analogy from the world of torrent based file sharing we can equate:
 * contributors with seeders and
 * consumers with leechers

I reckon the contributors ought not be the ones who pay the bill for hosting a wiki even though those contributors are probably the individuals who are the most willing to do so. The time that these contributors invest in a wiki to: create it, adopt it, maintain it, populate it and market it is surely so much more valuable than any monetary contribution ... don't you think?

So that leaves the question of how the consumers/leechers of a wiki might be encouraged to pay the bill for hosting a wiki.

I'm starting this blog to explore that question and welcome any creative ideas. I don't expect Wikia staff to be influenced by this blog but I suspect that some readers might be inspired if enough ideas are expressed in sufficient detail. Indeed I am not necessarily thinking of Wikia communities when I write about this concept however, it does seem an appropriate topic to address in light of the current iteration of bait and switch tactics that we are reading about.

Agreement in principal
A fundamental principal is to first seek agreement for cooperation (from the contributor-base) to achieve a specified amount of revenue from advertising and/or other sources to cover the cost of hosting each wiki on a periodic basis.

Specifying what that cooperation might be is the next step and allowing each wiki community several degrees of freedom to satisfy that definition of cooperation would be a welcome change from the heavy handed approach used at Wikia. Some options might include:
 * some philanthropic user(s) of each wiki writing a cheque each month
 * periodic fund raising activities by each wiki community
 * PayPal or similar donation buttons
 * advertising on wiki pages
 * can you think of any other methods?

How much revenue can be generated from advertising
I have zero experience with advertising revenue at web sites and I suspect that many wiki founders or adopters find themselves in a similar situation. It might help each community if the sys-ops were privy to certain information about
 * 1) the effectiveness of the wiki in attracting readers
 * 2) the frequency that click through ads are clicked
 * 3) which 10% of wiki pages are the most frequently viewed
 * 4) can you think of any other useful data?

Some fundamental counter data such as page-views, visits from unique IP's per day and so on are needed for starters. Some sources such as QUANTCAST aim to objectively assess the popularity of a wiki but I am not aware of any tools for estimating revenue from advertising. If you have knowledge in this area then please share.

A respectful advertising strategy
The following describes a hybrid Impact/Click-through approach for presenting ads at a website in general but I am primarily thinking of this for a wiki farm collection of wiki communities - like Wikia but not necessarily Wikia.


 * 1) A "show sponsor" link allows the user to manually unhide the ad
 * 2) If "show sponsor" link is clicked the add appears and that link changes to "hide sponsor"
 * 3) When ad is hidden using "hide sponsor" link the ad never auto-expands again
 * 4) If the "show sponsor" link is never clicked then the ad automatically unhides after 15 seconds of no activity
 * 5) The auto-expanded ad can be hidden again by clicking the "hide sponsor" link but ...
 * 6) the ad will automatically unhide again after twice the previous delay of inactivity (i.e. 15s, 30s, 1m, 2m, 4m, 8m, 16m, 32m, 64m, etc.)
 * 7) This automatic unhiding can be disabled at any time by clicking the "show sponsor" link and subsequently clicking the "hide sponsor" link
 * 8) Once the ad is displayed it does not auto-hide so if the user is happy for the ad to remain displayed then it causes no further disruption to browsing that page.

So in essence what this describes is a type of "nag advertisement" which can
 * very easily be disabled by manually viewing the ad just the once
 * very easily be ignored by allowing it to auto-expand and do nothing about trying to hide it again

The frequency of the nag decreases as time passes for so long as the same page is being displayed but that timer restarts once the browser navigates to a new page.

Further to the above the advertising should not auto-appear at every page but rather: AND if the pages being browsed are not in that 10% most popular pages then only: AND if the logged in user is among the top 50% of contributors then:
 * only that 10% of most frequently viewed pages
 * at the rate of 1 page in every 5 pages viewed
 * that user should be exposed to advertising at the rate of 1 page in every 50 pages viewed

The above is designed to ensure that advertising is used at those pages that have greatest probability of being viewed but not every single page viewed and that frequent contributors are not plagued/annoyed by advertising but also not completely insulated from advertising. (Any semi-sophisticated user knows that they can very easily use CSS hacks and/or browser add-ons to completely defeat the display of advertising at any given domain. Nothing need be done to make that task harder for these users - it is a futile game to play in any case.)

Although the auto-expansion of an ad is not triggered at every page the "show sponsor" link should be displayed at every page. I may be proven wrong about this but I suspect that many users might (i) respect and (ii) be overcome by curiosity about a sponsor who remains hidden on 4 out of 5 pages viewed. In any case this degree of opt-in to view advertising is a far cry better than the in-your face approach that is most commonly used.

Community involvement in selecting which advertisements appear
The following may be a little controversial but it is intended to be a fair balance among:
 * free market supply and demand
 * censorship based on each community's values
 * constructive feedback to advertisers regarding the relative popularity of the advertising they have submitted

In bullet form the key ingredients are as follows:
 * 1) Ads are static images only with just one (external) link permitted per ad
 * 2) All available ads may readily be viewed at a central gallery-style wiki page
 * 3) * let the number of ads in this pool be P
 * 4) The sys-ops at each wiki community may hand select a subset of all available ads so that
 * 5) * those subscribed ads get displayed at some higher frequency than those ads that have not been expressly subscribed
 * 6) * let the number of subscribed ads be S
 * 7) The sys-ops at each wiki community may hand select a subset of all available ads so that
 * 8) * those censored ads never get displayed at the wiki
 * 9) * let the number of censored ads be C
 * 10) The only constraint on the above two numbers is that C &le; S
 * 11) * if we let A be the number of ambivalent ads - ads which are neither censored nor expressly subscribed then:
 * P = C + A + S


 * 1) * The relative frequency of seeing each type of ad might be in the ratio:
 * C:A:S :: 0:1:10
 * 1) Advertisers get to see the data on how many wiki communities are: (i) subscribing to, (ii) censoring, and (iii) ambivalent about, their submitted ad(s) - this is the constructive feedback aspect
 * 2) Advertisers pay a modest annual fee for their ad to be included in the wiki farm ad pool
 * 3) The sys-ops at each wiki community may refer advertisers to the wiki farm

Remembering that ads can be (i) unhidden, (ii) hidden, or (iii) clicked-through, by a user's browsing mouse clicks; it is quite feasible that for each ad, data can be gathered to accurately report how users are reacting to each ad. I may be proven wrong but I suspect that advertisers would welcome this level of detailed feedback.

What do you think
Well that is the alternate approach to advertising-based revenue raising that came to me while fishing today. Pick it apart and put it back together in whatever way you see fit. I'd love to learn from other's experience in this area. I just profoundly believe that there is a more reasonable and mature approach to advertising at web sites and that the traditional approach of cow-tailing to the advertiser's every whim is not the only approach and certainly not the best approach to effective advertising.