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Are these banners really better than advertising? (What revenue would half the pixels, devoted to tasteful ads instead of a pledge drive, yield?)

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Fundraising drives don't raise questions about the impartiality of the content in the same way that ads might. However, even NPR has sponsors these days (but not ads per se). I think it'd be interesting to hear whether Wikipedia has considered that approach.

I don't know about that. My local PBS station experiences a lycanthropy where they degrade into infomercials for older people every pledge week. They very well know the kinds of programs that pull in more funds.

If the Wikimedia Foundation at any point decides to use their "business sense" and look at the articles that raise the most funds, well... there are questions that will be raised.

It's a non-profit. They're not interested in maximizing revenues.

They are interested in 'maximizing impact'. If less staff effort (and less screen real-estate inconveniencing users) could generate more sustaining revenues, their mission is better served.

Works for Mozilla! (So far...)

Non-profit has nothing to do with revenue. Every non-profit that survives has to consider revenue carefully and improve efficiencies.

Particularly ones that require a lot of infrastructure and maintenance to keep running. (servers)

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