Remove adverts on Wikipedia
Wikipedia are currently having their annual fundraising drive and consequently a large 'encouragement' to donate appears on every single encyclopedia article, which is an annoyance. It is fine if it is displayed once or twice, but it does not make sense to display it on every page load as it increases the load time - albeit minimal - and moves the content down by a notch.
Whilst it is possible to 'collapse' the advertisement to a much smaller one, having to do so is about as big an annoyance as the original advertisement.
A popular Wikimedia-themed newsletter, Wikizine, pointed out that by modifying the theme, it is possible to remove it.
All registered users can edit two files which modify CSS and JavaScript on Wikipedia for them. By default, the monobook theme is used and to my knowledge, this will work only under that theme.
To remove the advert, ensure you are logged in, then go to Special:mypage/monobook.css. Go to 'edit this page' and paste the following:
/* Remove fundraiser banner and sitenotice */
#siteNotice, #fundraiser, .fundraiser-box { display:none; !important; }
Save the page and then do a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5). The advert should be gone!
Wikimedia obviously requires money in order to operate and they massively value donations, but I find begging for money in such an obtrustive fashion very annoying and it really makes Wikipedia less easy to use.
Update: Wikipedia is currently again asking for donations. This is handled in very much the same way as it was handled in 2008. You see a large donation banner on every Wikipedia page. It is possible to close the banner but it will eventually reappear.
One of the options here is to use userscripts, small JavaScript based files, to remove the banners from Wikipedia. Remove Wikipedia notices is one of the scripts that you can install in your browser to remove the donation banner on Wikipedia. Chrome users can install the script right away, Firefox users need to download and install either the Greasemonkey or the Scriptish extension before they can do so.
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@Gwern, I beg to disagree. Hosting companies definitely do NOT charge millions of dollars per month. If your hosting companies attempt to charge you more than they should, then you should use some other hosting company. Or, if you’re still unhappy, then you should cut your costs by OWNING your own private servers.
@Skeptic, I DO AGREE with you. There should be some transparency; a section on Wikipedia that shows their expense report and balance sheets. Without that, I wouldn’t give anything! NOT even a dime!
This highly aggressive begging is more than annoying. This begging is worse than advertising. Don’t give them anything! NOT even a dime!
I heard about Wikipedia having a large overhead, but I don’t know what that is. Nowadays you can have a web site that costs you $5 a month with unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. See BlueHost. Almost all Wikipedia workers are volunteers, so I don’t know how they burn through those millions they raised. There should be a section on Wikipedia that shows their expense report and balance sheets. Without that, I wouldn’t give them a dime.
Oh really? Try putting a few terabytes of data on that $5 a month server and funneling in hundreds of megabytes of bandwidth a day, and see how quickly your host bans you. If you think Wikipedia has a high overhead, look at the IT costs of any other Top 10 website.
@iampriteshdesai: I have donated before and donated hundreds of hours to the project, so I find it rude they beg for more.
Hey!
You shouldn’t say that Wikipedia is begging. Imagine a world without Wikipedia!
Sure the ads are obtrusive but still they are 1000 times better than those flash ads other sites have. A better option according to me would be that Wikipedia start ads. These ads should be 1 line and embedded at the bottom.
I don’t see these ads.