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Comment by edelans | Hacker News Reader

I find their campaigns rather effective. I have the impression they do a big surge once a year with banners everywhere on the site. I find it very effective at reminding you how wikipedia bring you value everytime you use it. At least it made me donate at each occasions and I don't consider myself as a heavy user (hardly one consultation / week), and I think it is the only project I have donated multiple times.

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It's the only site I have ever donated to. I believe that is the same for other hundreds of thousands of people. When I see the banners, I just have to reflect on the huge knowledge value I get from the site, and I donate. simple as that

First campaign were subtler though, making me pay, and then it was big banner fest which me a bit angry. Maybe it's not the case if you're logged in and they track your donation so they can ask in finer ways.

FWIW, the more obnoxious campaigns also met with considerable dissent from the community as well.

Is it really only once a year? I feel like I saw it several times last year.

It should be. There are sometimes banners for other things, though, like to announce the Wikimania conference: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar >. There are apparently also smaller fundraisers aimed at different languages/countries at different times of the year, so maybe you remember one of them.

Test banners are run through the year - small audiences, particular countries or whatever. (Wikimedia Fundraising A/B-test the heck out of everything they do.) But the big fundraiser is the annual one, around Nov/Dec, in which they go all-out to raise this year's target as quickly as possible.

I think these campaigns work. Kiva started doing it last December, we've been asking them to try for a while now. I believe that was effective too.

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