If the name ‘Jimmy Wales‘ rings a bell, that’s probably because you’ve seen his name & face plastered all over wikipedia recently. Wikipedia, as most of you probably know is non profit and they obviously can’t run the site (certainly of Wikipedia’s size) on fresh air… so they need donations and often run these ad campaigns until they hit targets…
Recently, wikipedia has asked for another wave of funding and it wants you and i to support the site we’ve come to love. Imagine a world without wikipedia – i don’t think i could 🙂 Anyway, whilst i don’t think any of us doubt the value of wikipedia and the importance of keeping it non profit, these type of ads and banners frustrate a lot of people. You could question why Jimmy Wales’ face and name need to be on them…. why not come up with something more powerful and meaningful for the average user… after all, not many people will have heard of Jimmy Wales or indeed care who he is. But you can be sure they know what wikipedia is and know how useful it is…
Just to make a mockery of these donation banners and the over the top Jimmy Wales branding, ‘vodka45’ has developed a chrome extension called ‘Jimmy Wales’ which adds a wikipedia donation banner to every single page on the web you visit. It’s a very clever way of making a point – enough with the Jimmy Wales ads. Perhaps it’s time for something more innovative… the web gets bored easily and you can’t keep employing ‘rinse, wash, repeat’ tactics without boring users.