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The Debate Over Advertising on Wikipedia
An anonymous reader writes "Some Wikipedians have objected to Virgin Unite's participation in the Wikimedia Foundation's fund drive, calling it adverising. But there's a strong case that Wikipedia should run advertising. The funds raised could support dozens of Firefox-scale free knowledge and free software projects, outspending all but the wealthiest foundations."
It just seems like every web presence has to have some source of income to pay for their hosting and bandwidth. If they aren't very intrusive (GoogleAds), then it shouldn't harm anything.
"And if you call in with your pledge of support right now, your money will be matched, dollar for dollar, by the generous contribution of ACME Inc. You will also receive a cuddly ACME logoed teddy bear and an assortment of ACME tea bags. Public broadcasting needs you to pick up that phone, and call in, to keep the airwaves free of the usual commercial breaks that other stations need to use to fund the valuable programming you hear."
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PBS manages to do pledge drives without completely losing their identity. Granted, they're also running commercials, but certainly less than regular broadcast TV. Could Wikipedia run ads maybe two weeks a quarter, or something similar? The question really is, what would they do with it if they had (theoretically) unlimited funds?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I'm against.
Advertising inherently trivialises its surroundings.
If the Wiki is bare, it stands alone as a mass of knowledge.
If it is adorned by adverts for books and DVDs and so on, it becomes profane; it loses its sanctity.
People I think see these words and dismiss them, I suspect because of their somewhat religious association; but they represent human feelings and impressions of the world around them. They represent real states of mind and impressions.
What happens when big funding starts to demand what can and can't be placed into articles? "We're sorry, Wikipedia, but I'm going to need you to remove this, that and the other fact from the article because it might turn away our potential customers."
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
This advert is CLEARLY not NPOV. Can we get a citation on the shampoo making hair "glossy and full of bounce"? 84.28.125.19
WTF I USE IT AND IT MAKES MY HAIR GLOSSY 61.101.19.42
Hey no original research you nub 69.120.51.20
Do we having anything on "glossy and full of bounce" as opposed to just glossy? 84.28.125.19
OK HAVE REWRITTEN ARTICLE TO CLEAN UP, NOW "SHINY AND NATURALLY SOFT", NOT "GLOSSY AND FULL OF BOUNCE" 61.101.19.42
nominated for deletion, 01/02/07, not noteworthy enough 83.102.48.18
The debate about ads on Wikipedia has gone on for quite such time. (The first major dispute involved a deal with answers.com) As a result of this, many Wikipedia contributers have formed a Wikiproject (a semi-organized group of Wikipedia editors) against them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiproject _no_ads To summarize this page, these editors think:
_ who_think_that_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_should_use _advertising
1. Wikipedia's philosophy is non-commercial
2. Ads put at risk Wikipedia's principle of Neutral Point of View (NPOV)
3. The information that constitutes Wikipedia is wealth for the community
There are fully three Wikipedians that state their support for advertising. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians
- Running ads makes you dependent. Once wikipedia writes something bad against an advertiser, this company might threaten to pull its ads, therefore putting editors in a dilemma: support the project or support the truth?
- Ads ad new privacy-problems (somebody else tracks what you have visited)
- Ads fight for your eyeballs. Beeing a distraction-free zone is a big plus for wikipedia, because it made it so enjoyable for the authors.
- Some ads try to dupe people into thinking they are seeing error-messages etc. Others blink and distract. Many many ads try to manipulate you. We should not give in to this.
- Hosting costs have come down a lot. The project can very much sustain itself by just relying on fund drives.
Just my opinion on it.
The very fact that this idea is being discussed leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
In Wikipedia's early days there was a good deal of discussion about this very point, with some conspiracy-minded contributors fearing that Jimbo Wales would talk freedom, neutrality, and noncommercialism at the start and change the rules later in the game.
There are a number of precedents for this sort of bad-faith maneuver, one of the most notorious being CDDB, which happily accepted contributions of CD track names from thousands of volunteers who believed they were contributing to an open-source project; sneakily changed their software so that it add "stealth" copyright notices giving the rights to the information to the organization; then took it private and sold people's generous volunteer work and lined their own pockets with the money.
One of Wikipedia's cornerstones is the "neutral point of view" policy. This policy is a fragile and precious thing. Innumerable people are constantly leaning on it and chipping away at it in an effort to use Wikipedia for promotion. The only reason why NPOV works is that the core of Wikipedians truly accept that WIkipedia really is neutral, and are willing to enforce the policy.
If Wikipedia ever accepts paid advertising, I believe it will destabilize the fragile balance. Advertisements will most likely be targeted to appear on the same pages as relevant article. Many WIkipedia articles about commercial products contain substantial amounts of both praise and criticism. In its nature, this material is frequently in a somewhat dynamic state of flux, with competing editors wordsmithing things back and forth; at its best, a stable state is reached in which the editors on one side of an issue grudgingly acknowledge that the wording of the material on the other side is acceptable to them.
What happens when an advertiser notices that the related article contains material that has a different spin from its marketing communications? I think the delicate house of cards comes tumbling down, that's what. I don't see how anyone can ever build a "Chinese wall" between advertising and editorial when any advertiser can be an editor.
And once it becomes generally accepted that Wikipedia is no longer neutral, WIkipedia is dead. That will unleash a flood of self-promoting crap which old-time WIkipedians will be unable to hold back.
It will also piss off everyone who, like me, has made voluntary monetary contributions to Wikimedia almost every time they've launched one of their frequent pledge drives, in the belief, which will have been shown to be naïve, that Wikipedia was promised to be noncommercial.
Wikipedia can survive a reputation for occasional inaccuracy and for "fancruft." But if it is ever seen that Wikipedia articles are a practical avenue for promotion and advertising, or that they reflect the interests of advertisors, all Jimbo's horses and all Jimbo's men will never be able to put WIkipedia together again.
And all the old-time Wikipedians will say "We told you this was going to happen." And they'll be right.
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The means might be sacrificing the purported objectivity of Wikipedia.
I'm not saying this will happen, but will Wikipedia cave to the presure of sponsors wanting to keep harmful information from Wikipedia?
For instance; if Microsoft became a sponsor, would the articles about XBox hacking remain intact? I'm sure the media companies wouldn't like advertising on a site that happily explains DeCSS, and just wait until hacks for Blu-ray and HD-DVD are being documented. And the numerous scandals involving companies that still exist today; would they like those articles? Not to mention politicians, who have already proven not to be trusted when it comes to Wikipedia content.
I'm not saying this will happen, nor that it cannot be defended against. Just to define what "means" may be in this case.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
From another point of view, I assume I spend maybe 100 hours per year working on Wikipedia. Even at my salary level (as opposed to my consulting rate), paying for this would be quite a chunk of money. Multiply it by 3 million of editors, and the "huge" advertising revenue suddenly is not that huge anymore. Even losing a small fraction of good editors over advertising would be a net loss.
Stephan
From what I'm aware, Google pay FireFox for linking to their search engine. Why don't Google (or one of their rivals) contribute some cash to Wikipedia in order for it to become the semi-official replacement for the god-awful Wikipedia search engine? They'd get Adwords stuff, positive publicity and they wouldn't lose much cash at all.
No blatant advertising, improve cashflow and company would get more ad revenue. Win/win.
Once a few big advertising contracts are hammered out, then the funds available to Wikipedia will grow, and so the needs of Wikipedia will grow to fill the available funds. They will lay on more servers, better bandwidth deals, maybe hire some people, and then suddenly Wikipedia is dependent on that cash to continue operating. Thus, the advertisers can start to assert influence, knowing full well what would happen if they pulled the cash. Suddenly you'll see exactly the kind of censorship parent alludes to.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
I was a journalist for about a year quite some time ago. I never personally witnessed an, "if you print something positive, we'll advertise with you," offer. However, I did witness, and participate in conversations in the newsroom where we debated whether a story was important enough to risk angering our advertising clients. I can not recall a single case where we didn't run a story, but the fact that we discussed it always concerned me.
Since then, very often when I pick up a magazine and read a glowing review of a product, I'll look further in the magazine for an advertisement from the company who sells it. Most often I'll find, at minimum, full page ads and often several of them. In fact, you'll probably notice that horrible reviews are rare in magazines. If you look even harder, you'll notice that the company involved almost never has an advertisement in the same issue.
But wait, you say, isn't Wikipedia is edited by the readership? Certainly they won't be influenced by the ads? Sadly, this is not true. The reason this is not true is that advertisers are readers as well. If they were putting money into the publication, they'd read that publication on a much more regular basis and they'd have a much larger motivation to influence the articles published. Since it's so easy to have direct influence over Wikipedia, I would find it hard to believe that advertisers would sit on their hands if they saw an opportunity to make their company or products look better.
TW
But ONLY if the advertisements were subject to the same standards and scrutiny for factualness and neutrality as the articles are.
Wouldn't you LOVE to see free and open discussion threads for each ad? No way for the advertiser to control the content or threaten to sue? I think that concept could catch on.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.