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Wikimedia Proposes Advertising [Updated]
user9918277462 writes "The Board of the Wikimedia Foundation has announced a new partnership with the Answers Corporation, which provides the content for Google Definitions links. There is also a lengthy discussion, wiki-style for those who wish to participate." Update 10/25 18:42 by SM: An announcement has been posted on Wikipedia to help clarify the original submission (which thankfully was patently false and has since been cleaned up a bit, our apologies to Wikimedia). Answers.com will be creating their own co-branded version which will show ads and no ads will be shown on wikipedia.
Frequently Assumed Quandaries resolved:
- The deal is not finalized. Nothing is "struck" or required.
- Nobody is forced to use the software.
- There are no ads/adware/spyware in the software.
Er, surely there must be adverts in the software, or where does the money come from?? Dan100 (Talk) 18:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
The software lets you go to a web page, such as http://answer.com/foo - The web page has all the advertisements. -Fennec () 19:04, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
- The link to the software will only be at WP:TOOLS, nowhere else.
- A link to WP:TOOLS will be placed in the sidebar, not a link to the software.
- The tools page already links to non-free software.
- Answers.com could have posted their link on the tools page without offering the Foundation a cent.
- Bob Rosenschien and Jimbo Wales have been in firm and absolute
agreement from the beginning that the form of link chosen by the
community is up to the community.
- The community is free to remove the link from WP:TOOLS, but know that this will stop Wikimedia from receiving additional funds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:ToolsThe World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I agree with you in spirit; the problem I have is that Wikipedia recently had a fundraising drive where they accepted donations. Although they certainly didn't say "we're never going to have ads," I think -- given that they were ad free and asking for donations -- a lot of people may have given them money while under the impression that they were contributing to an ad-free site (or to keep it that way).
For the Wikimedia Foundation to have taken people's money so freely and then to start putting up ads isn't going to win them many friends with the community they've spawned, and perhaps most especially among the people who just donated.
At the very least it's going to make a lot of people more reluctant to give money to similar causes in the future, because they'll feel like I do now: I didn't donate anything other than my time (although I was considering it), but if it's true that they're going to an ad-supported business model then I'm just glad I didn't cut that check, since clearly they don't need my money.
It's not that I don't think Wikipedia is a good service -- I do, or even that the Wikimedia Foundation isn't within their rights to put up ads -- they are. What I'm not comfortable with is that they asked for donations from individuals without exhausting the other options first. In my mind, asking your users for cash ought to be an option of last (not first) resort, and that they did ask for donations should have meant that they had either taken the idea of advertising completely off the table as unacceptable, or already pursued it as far as it could go.
It's the difference between somebody asking me for money when they're truly destitute and desperate, or asking me for money and then waiting to see how much I cough up before they decide whether to get a job.
Hopefully there's more to the story that I just haven't found out yet, but right now I think that their timing really stinks, and that a lot of other people will probably agree.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Before everyone starts inventing stuff about wikipedia having banner ads, here's what the deal is: - A link will be added in the left side bar on Wikipedia to the WP:TOOLS page. - That page lists software that can be used to improve the user experience of the Wikimedia projects, such as toolbars and other web helpers. - On that page the 1-Click toolbar will be listed on top. - People using this toolbar and seeing the ads will bring revenue to both 1-Click Answers and the Wikimedia Foundation.
That'd be hard. All the actual advertisements will appear on pages at Answers.com - not on actual Wikipedia pages. There will be a link to the software at the Wikipedia Tools page, but there are lots of links to software at the Wikipedia Tools page. They'll also put the Tools page in the sidebar, but they were considering doing something like that anyway.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Unfortunately the situation was not helped by a rather badly worded press release which led the community to a false sense of what the deal actually was. The above is what will occur, according to Jimbo Wales and the other members of the Board.
Chris
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
From the page:
Welcome to visitors from Slashdot. Please be aware that the Slashdot story is completely wrong. There is no proposal to have advertising on Wikipedia. There are numerous errors of fact on this page. (See below if you're interested.) --Jimbo Wales 19:12, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
From the page:
Welcome to visitors from Slashdot. Please be aware that the Slashdot story is completely wrong. There is no proposal to have advertising on Wikipedia. There are numerous errors of fact on this page. (See below if you're interested.) --Jimbo Wales 19:12, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
P.S. I originally posted this as AC so as not to be seen to be hording karma, but then I realised it wouldn't be seen if I posted it that way, so here goes again.
(Wouldn't it be nice if you could EDIT your posts on slashdot)
Quote wikipedia: Michael Moore was born in Davison, Michigan, near the city of Flint. At the time, Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his mother was a secretary, and both his father and grandfather were employed. His uncle was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and was part of the famous sitdown strike.
But really, I don't mind seeing ads in wiki pages at all. Actually, I think that Google's context ads would fit the concept quite nicely - due to the nature of encyclopedic articles, there should be more than enough keywords to produce ads with very high degree of relevancy.
the socialist agenda would include things such as:
a right wing agenda would include:
having an agenda is not some grand conspriacy claim. Socialist promot socialist ideas, republicans promote republican ideas, libertarians promote libertarian ideas, simple as that.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
I don't mind people repeating a comment. Not citing where you got your text from, however, is questionable:
8 23457
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165699&cid=13
The text of the comment link above:
Re:Perhaps they need a team of paid editors
(Score:5, Interesting)
by theLOUDroom (556455) Alter Relationship on Tuesday October 18, @07:09PM (#13823457)
Jimbo started by trying paid editors
What wikipedia needs to do is have both "stable" and "unstable" branches of wikipedia, like the linux kernel does.
Make searches default to the stable page, with the option to add in the more recent changes by clicking a button.
This has a number of advantages:
* Removes the immediate payback for defacing a page.
* Makes it possible to cite a stable version of a wikipedia page in an academic work without it being completely screwed up at a later date. (They should be archived quarterly/yearly/whatever).
* Still allows up-to-the-minute information to be accessed by those looking for it.
* (personal belief here) It would increase the credibility of the information. It's easier to research and verify a small set of changes to a stable page, than to check out a whole page. It's better that this research is done BEFORE some hapless individual uses incorrect information.
--
Life is too short to proofread.