I would gladly have 2-3 lines of relevant Google ads shown to me everytime I visit wikipedia if it meant I didn't have to see Jimmy staring back at me for a few days.

I felt the same way ...so strongly that it took me several days to notice the little 'x' in upper right corner. However, after once having clicked box, wikipedia remembered for me (on all pages) that I did not want to be distracted by Jimmy's rugged good looks.

That's funny, because I'd rather have Jimmy stare at me instead of being tracked by Google in even one more place.

From my personal experience as a Wikipedia editor and contributor (which is a few years old; things may have changed) enough editors are opposed to advertising, and the Wikipedia community is conducive enough to the formation of angry mobs, that advertising is a non-starter.

That's what Greasemonkey scripts (aka userscripts) are for: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13657

Lots of stats here, and you can view each variation:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testi...

When I saw the 'personal appeal', I thought Wikipedia was to shut down if they didn't receive funds. After reading the letter, I realized they were in no more danger than any other nonprofit. I wonder if others who donated did so because of what that sort of advertisement implied to them.

tldr; I feel like wikipedia cried wolf this year.

I absolutely agree. The header emphasized this- "A personal Appeal from Jimmy Wales" gave the impression that they were in trouble, and badly needed help.

Further, the "Please Read:" header at the beginning implies that this banner is more important than the others they had shown you before.

While it may have raised revenue this year, if they try the same tactic next year I suspect they'll start seeing user fatigue.

This was discussed two days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908546

And last year for the 2009 campaign: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006438

Oh great, I guess that means I can expect to see more faces staring back it me when surfing the web now. Is anyone writing a "face blocker" browser plug in? I have a feeling I'll be willing to pay for one soon.

Also of note: if you follow the link to the source of the data, it shows that the click through rate for the "staring eyes" banner was sometimes 10x greater than some of their other tries. See https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=t79ue7YKT1c4AmHRs6ss...

How much of clickthrough were because of the desire to donate, and how many were people misssing the tiny X close button?

The Wikimedia Foundation collected similar data from their 2008-2009 campaign, where they also varied the appeal:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/Fundraising...

If you look at the 'Total Donation by Template' graph, you'll see that the "jimmy letter" appeals (templates) generated the most donations then as well.

Instead of turning it of, just activate it for all sites. hilarious. https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/idkjdjficifbfjjk...

While its really cool that they have raised 15-X donation, for the "staring eyes" banner on every single wiki, for a site that has 400 million monthly users, 47 K still seems less. I would have expected atleast double the amount.

That's the number from some small test. You can view daily numbers for this campaign (and prior ones) here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatis...

They're currently pulling in over $400K per day. If they keep it up, and/or the pattern from prior years holds, they should have no problem raising their $16 million target by January 15th.

Put up a female face up there and see what happens....

Or perhaps some other female aspect instead of (or in addition to) face...

Worked for Evony...

I still don't understand why they didn't use a more pleasant image, say, pictures of kids learning in classrooms.

Funny: Add says "founder", article says "co-founder". I thought only Steve has a reality distortion field.

http://yfrog.com/mv3nvp

Lots of people have them. It's just that Steve's is particularly strong and the transition from RDF to reality is particularly jarring.

maybe they regard co-founder as a subset of founder ;-)