Wikimedia fundraising banners
There is an almost annual contention over the Wikimedia fundraising banners that appear on websites including the widely visited Wikipedia requesting donations. As it is that time of year again, it appears prudent to formally explain the position of subscriptions towards such items.
EasyList policy dictates that self promotion is not specifically blocked by the subscriptions, although such items are equally not whitelisted if they happen to be removed by general filters; as the Wikimedia banners are present to inform people about the organisation's own products, they fall into this category. Furthermore, as we actively encourage website owners to request donations from users for financial support as an alternative to placing advertisements on their domain it is hypocritical to subsequently remove them using the subscriptions.
While there have been criticisms of the banners being annoying, this is not a reason for them to be blocked by EasyList. "Annoying" is a subjective quality that is very difficult to define and therefore implement as a fair and unbiased policy.
It should be noted that EasyPrivacy blocks tracking on the domains with the filter ||geoiplookup.wikimedia.org^, a rule that incidentally removes the banners. This filter is present to prevent the collection of personal data rather to fulfil than the additional purpose of removing the site notices that ultimately appears to have been served.
If you want to block the Wikimedia fundraising notice, just add the following rule to your "Custom filters" in Adblock Plus:
/w/index.php?title=*:bannercontroller
People who want to donate money to Wikimedia should do so on their donations page.
Some are probably subscribed to EasyList but not to EasyPrivacy.
It can be easily added by a single click at easylist.adblockplus.org
Comment by Jake — Nov 17, 2010 12:44:23 AM | # - re
Isn't that even more hypocritical to decide for the users what is good and what isn't? The truth is, wikipedia banners don't promote any "product", they just ask people to pay them - the same people who created the content of wikipeda. In what way is that acceptable?
Thanks for the info anyway, the line "/w/index.php?title=*:bannercontroller" goes to my twitter right now =)
Comment by dimag0g — Nov 19, 2010 1:46:55 PM | # - re
Thanks for the info. I don't understand how this banner is not considered an ad. It's begging you for money, just like all the other ads are asking for your money and attention. This ad was especially annoying because it gives you the option to close it, and then keeps coming back.
Comment by Adam — Nov 22, 2010 4:12:58 PM | # - re
Adam, advertising, for the purposes of EasyList, is defined as the promotion of a third-party product. Many websites will have some space in which they can display information about recent articles or events, and editors intend people to follow these links; however, the very fact that these areas are detracting, annoying or request money does not require them to be blocked by the subscriptions, and to remove them would be to cause serious issues on a variety of websites. I would advise reporting technical problems with the fundraising campaign to Wikimedia, although it is possible in this instance that the issue has arisen because the domain was not permitted to set cookies.
Comment by Michael — Nov 22, 2010 4:52:06 PM | # - re
It's bad enough that Easylist isn't automatically blocking Jimmy Wales' persistent and creepy e-begging. To make matters worse, though, I just found out from having a look at my Adblock Filters In Effect that Easylist has actually been white listing these adverts: my own custom AdBlocks hadn't been having an effect specifically because Easylist had identified his spam as something it was explicitly declared as OK to render. I for one find this completely unacceptable, and will be looking elsewhere for my Adblock services in future; when your blocking service gets into bed with spammers, that's extremely worrying.
Comment by Rachel — Nov 27, 2010 7:31:08 PM | # - re
"EasyPrivacy blocks tracking on the domains with the filter ||geoiplookup.wikimedia.org^ ... This filter is present to prevent the collection of personal data"
Except of course that it does nothing of the sort. All the geoiplookup domain does is use a IP->location database, which can be downloaded for free off the internet. There's no personal data that can't be gathered solely based on your IP address, which they have regardless of whether or not you block that specific domain.
Comment by Alex — Nov 28, 2010 12:33:27 AM | # - re
Rachel, the filter @@||upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ only protects images hosted on Wikimedia commons and does not whitelist the promotion banner, which is located in the upload.wikimedia.org/centralnotice/ directory. It should be noted that many other similar subscriptions also include the filter to prevent problems on, for example, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Advertising.
Comment by Michael — Nov 28, 2010 8:05:00 AM | # - re
Alex, EasyPrivacy policy suggests that location is sufficiently personal data to be blocked. While I acknowledge that it is possible for the information to be gathered from the logs, this filter prevents the processing from occurring in the browser and will disrupt attempts to locate users of EasyPrivacy, if the requests are indeed analysed, as the location may only be derived from resolving the IP address recorded in the logs rather than using the position already specified when the banner was downloaded.
Comment by Michael — Nov 28, 2010 8:39:13 AM | # - re
I keep trying to block this with element hider and nothing works. What filter do I use?
en.wikipedia.org##[id="JA1banner"]
en.wikipedia.org##[id="EditorBanner"]
wikipedia.org###centralNotice
Nothing works.
I'm only subscribed to EasyList.
Comment by fdsa — Dec 4, 2010 1:41:17 AM | # - re
I am unable to understand why the element rules suggested do not collapse the section and have therefore posted a message to Wladimir to enquire further (https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1796&p=39915#p39915). All I can suggest is the use of the blocking filter "/w/index.php?title=*:bannercontroller" mentioned in the article.
Comment by Michael — Dec 4, 2010 7:23:41 AM | # - re
How to get rid of Jimmy for good:
1) Click on the 'ABP' icon in your tool bar, 2) Disable all whitelist entries that Easylist has created for Wikipedia without your permission on your behalf (shown in green text in the active filters list), 3) Add the following custom filter /w/index.php?title=*:bannercontroller, 4) Re-load the page. Jimmy and his "come to my van, child" eyes will be no more.
NB: Adding the filter described in Step 3 above and elsewhere on this page on its own does not work, despite the erroneous claims made by Michael above to the contrary. I only added the filter on its own at first, and it didn't work. It was only when I disabled Easylist's Wikipedia free spam passes that I was finally able to get rid of Jimmy once and for all. Try it for yourself and see.
Comment by Rachel — Dec 6, 2010 8:19:45 PM | # - re
Here is the simplest solution paste2.org/p/1129900 Just run a JavaScript which changes a wiki cookie.
Comment by polibtesi — Dec 7, 2010 11:19:12 PM | # - re
Neither of those filters does work here:
/w/index.php?title=:bannercontroller ||wik.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BannerController |en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BannerController&cache=/cn.js&283-12
This annoying guy sucks like hell...
Comment by Me — Dec 26, 2010 8:29:46 PM | # - re
This rule works for me:
wikipedia.org##div#siteNotice
Comment by Preston — Dec 31, 2010 4:40:18 PM | # - re
I could actually live with the ads if I could just get rid of that gd pic of Jimmy Wales -- but the only thing I can get rid of is the ad! Why can I create a filter to block the ad but not the image?
Comment by Amy — Nov 21, 2011 10:23:26 PM | # - re
"It should be noted that EasyPrivacy blocks tracking on the domains with the filter ||geoiplookup.wikimedia.org^, a rule that incidentally removes the banners."
Comment by MonztA — Nov 22, 2011 2:49:30 PM | # - re
Ok, thank you for the stop-ads-string. And I found also that there are many userscript for Greasemonkey plugin, like this one: userscripts.org/scripts/show/118432 It's the "JimBlock Plus" filter. :-)
Comment by UserOfAB — Nov 23, 2011 6:52:51 PM | # - re
Thanks Rachel, worked for me!
Don't mind Wikipedia asking for donations, just can't stand Jimmy's face or the deceitful language they use!
Comment by Soda — Dec 9, 2011 8:15:25 PM | # - re
Fuck them! They have become nothing but a propaganda site for the narrow delusional world views of uneducated egomaniacs who sit in their basement all day long but think they are the only ones with the right to define what is reality. They must go broke!
Comment by BAReFOOt — Dec 17, 2011 11:10:43 PM | # - re
So much for their protest, as this also bypasses it.
Thanks
Comment by Demi — Jan 18, 2012 5:58:34 AM | # - re