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War of Words Over Wikipedia Ads Continues
Willis W. writes "Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales reiterates his opposition to advertising in response to reports that Wikipedia needs a major cash infusion. Responding to Jason Calacanis' charges that he 'has a fringe, anti-corporate bent to him' that is 'holding Wikipedia back,' Wales says that running ads on Wikipedia is not his decision to make. Though he personally dislikes the idea of advertising on Wikipedia, any decision to utilize ads would have to come from the community. At the moment, he won't rule anything out. 'I can't say if I would ever support something like that,' he tells Ars, 'but I can say that I currently maintain the same position I always have: I am opposed to it.'" What do you think Wikimedia should do to shore up the financial situation of the Wikipedia?
'has a fringe, anti-corporate bent to him'
I don't think that anti-corporate is all that "fringe". Most People feel that Mega-Corps have too much power. Making them a source of revenue, gives them control over the product. Look at the difference between PBS or BBC and most other TV networks. Or just ask your congressman what corperate sponsorship really costs.
We are all just people.
"Fringe, anti-corporate bent"? Obviously. Otherwise Wikipedia wouldn't exist in the first place. To a businessman, the market was already saturated, between MS Encarta and Brittanica. Innovative ideas don't come from businessmen. Only after something catches on can it be exploited to the point that it's just barely worthwhile (i.e. "fully monetized").
Find a different chairperson. This one would let the corps in and ruin it. Remember what happened to CDDB. Expect the same thing to happen here.
Donations continue to pour in, the staff is minimal, and the Wikipedia brand is too powerful to simply disappear into the ether if money ever does get tight.
There you have it. The brand name is what the corps want to exploit. Well if they get their hands on it, then it wil be time to create an alternative based purely on the community. Because this one will become just another "Clear Channel" of web based encyclopedias.
What?
Wikipedia needs to do whatever it can to prevent the need to use corporate advertising on the site. The primary reason the service has become so popular is that there are not any ads; without ads, it feels like a more authentic source of information.
As soon as advertisements are introduced into a project like this, the number of private donations will decrease because the average joe who uses wikipedia and chooses to donate $20 here and there will feel like his money is not what is making it tick anyhow.
User fees for bandwidth is probably the worst idea I've seen for mitigating Wikipedia's troubles. The entire point of the project is to make information available to the most people possible for free. I understand that the foundation needs funds to make the project work, but charging users for access runs contrary to the goals of the project. Advertisements won't work, but neither will this. The answer is increasing private donations. How to accomplish that is the real problem here.
... Is there the slightest chance that is because Google boosts Wikipedia by hand, planning to flood them with hits so that they wouldn't possibly be able to sustain themselves, and then go buy them out when they're about to die out?
What possible reason could you have to oppose opt out ads for wikipedia? If you don't like them you could turn them off and wikipedia would get lots of money it could use for hosting and potentially even enough to fund other projects.
Frankly I don't see any good reason not to put even mandatory small tasteful text ads on wikipedia. I think it's silly enough for public radio/TV not to support themselves by ads but at least they do short sponsorship bits and they at least have the argument that they need to maintain the appearance of not being influenced by corporate money but wikipedia, by it's very nature doesn't need to worry about appearing to tailor its information to advertisers.
As far as Wale's claim that the decision isn't up to him it's up to the community it is correct but may not be the right point. My understanding is the default position is that wikipedia will remain without ads and the community would have to get up and make a demand for it to change. It is Wales (and other foundation members) decision to set the default policy and I think it should be the opposite.
Still, having said all that if other people care enough about wikipedia being ad free to donate money to keep it running then that's their prerogative. At one point I donated money for wikipedia but I won't do so again. I have no problem viewing ads to keep wikipedia afloat but since wikipedia could damn well support itself with zero detrimental effect my money could accomplish a great deal more being donated to projects that actually need it.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Merchandising! Get your Wikipedia t-shirt. Your Wikipedia toilet paper. Your Wikipedia breakfast cereal (each batch is produced according to a wiki recipe -- just hope vandals didn't alter the recipe). Wikipedia the flamethrower!
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
The Wikimedia Board of Directors (or its equivalent) must make decisions that guarantee the long-term viability of the nonprofit organization. If they fail to do so, bad things happen.
The revenue from Google ads on the front page alone would surely guarantee the financial viability of the whole Wikimedia brand for years to come.
I see this as a board decision alone. While the community would have an uproar, the organization would survive. The vast majority of their "clients" would never realize the difference.
Also I should remark that most of the objections I have heard to ads on wikipedia center around the annoyance of seeing ads or some other supposed cost to making the visitors see ads. Now if you don't donate to wikipedia yourself even a little I don't think you really have much standing to object to ads but whether you do or not consider the following point.
The question should not be whether wikipedia is better with or without ads. Obviously no one favors hosting ads for free on wikipedia. The question is whether the cost of having ads is more than the benefits ad money can buy.
Can anyone here really say they would take a million dollars from other needy open source/content projects or other worthwhile charity (cancer research etc..) just so people didn't have to see (opt out?) ads on wikipedia? Yet a million dollars is at the low end of the ad revenue wikipedia might generate, the potential to benefit the community is huge. Can you really say that not seeing ads is worth denying the community that much benefit?
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Buy out? Wikipedia isn't something you can buy. It's backed by a foundation, which as far as I know, can't be bought, and even if it could, such a purchase would mean the instant end of the Wikipedia community (and the birth of Wikipedia 2.0, with new anti buying out protection).
Besides, I think Google has a dual position on Wikipedia. They like them because Wikipedia increases the usefulness of the internet, which improves Google's market. On the other hand, for 90% of my information needs, I check Wikipedia first, and Google second. I used find wikipedia pages through Google, but these days I just use the Firefox quicksearch plugin to search Wikipedia directly. If that sort of behavior catches on, it will make Google very unhappy, because the role of the search engine will decrease. I think that's the main reason why Google isn't supporting Wikipedia more actively (although they have helped out in the past with hardware donations).
My son's school gets ad money.
I take it you're in the United States. See, here in Europe we realize that education is important. Education is what allows for civilization to flourish, and is basically the best investment we can possibly make. A highly-educated society will have far greater productivity than poorly-education societies. A highly-educated society is less likely to engage in violent and criminal behaviour. So do you know what we do? We provide adequate funding to our public school system. We don't have to rely on Coca Cola to fund our children's education. Yes, we pay a little bit more in taxes. But it's well worth it, when you consider how we have a higher standard of living, and a much higher education level on average.
God thats horrible. Your son's school gets ad money? So you're allowing corporations to educate your child on which products they should be buying, from an early age?
Thats sick.
.20$ / gb is a high bandwidth cost. Bulk, wholesale, right off the pipe like Wikipedia pays for it, I'd say something like .01-.03$ / gb. I can buy, pseudo retail, at .045 - and that's expensive. Really very much so. HOWEVER, Wikipedia went through ~192,600$ in staff and power and bandwidth costs in Q4 2006. A huge chunk of that is bandwidth. So yes, it's expensive to run Wikipedia.
If you're transferring more than about 100 GB / month with Amazon, by the way, you're getting ripped off to no end. Buying at end-consumer prices when you shouldn't be.
My little site.
There's an old story about Coleman Hawkins, a noted jazz saxophonist. Once he was assembling a band for several gigs, and decided to give a call to an acquaintance in another city, also a sax player, to invite him in. "How much is the pay?" - the guy asked. Hawkins told him. "C'mon, Hawk, that's barely enough for a bus ticket to New York!" "You know, young man", said Hawkins, "there are jobs worth saving money for". And hung up.
My point is - "what should Wikimedia do about the financial situation of the Wikipedia" is the wrong question and needs to be unasked. Wikimedia should spend money on Wikipedia. They can raise that money from whatever sources they like, but quietly. That is their purpose. Blackmailing Wikipedia and its community (and its founder) into profitability is not their purpose.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
If that sort of behavior catches on, it will make Google very unhappy, because the role of the search engine will decrease.
Google is a lot better at searching Wikipedia than Wikipedia is.
sic transit gloria mundi
Perhaps the debate about BBC ads has some relevance to Wikipedia.
According to The British Internet Publishers Alliance (BIPA), showing adverts to non-UK readers of BBC websites would also undermine the BBC's "worldwide reputation for integrity and impartiality."
Wiki articles are supposed to be written in the neutral point of view and while ads may not compromise that goal, it may be difficult to convey neutrality when you're writing about a product and running a related advertisement at the same time.
I agree. Wikipedia is a good example of the failing of populism and bureaucracy. How many wikipedia users are admins? I don't know, but it seems like every other one is, and they all have an agenda. Those who have greater power than normal admins seem to never use it, or maybe are just so awfully out-numbered that they can't do anything.
Wikipedia is like the wild west, except that the good guys and bad guys both have machine guns that they like to shoot at the citizens in their free time.
Great Intellect...
Philanthropy is an amusing concept. First you wait for someone to come up with a method by which to rip off the public and thereby make billions of dollars, then you ask them to contribute some of that money back to the community.
Surely a better idea would be to just stop them ripping everyone off in the first place and then use that money (via say a fairer tax structure) to fund projects like Wikipedia and the many other "worthy causes" that Philanthropy supports.
As my 9th grade biology teacher Mr. Devlin used to say, "There's no such thing as a free lunch!"
As with any project of this size and scope, someone has to pay for it eventually. Whether it's through paid advertisements, user donations, subscriptions, or quasi-advertisements (sponsors) like they have on PBS and NPR these days, someone has to foot the bill.
Your post doesn't convey much information content, though I do love the use of MS Paint and the novel use of the mathematical term "inflection point" to try and get your message across.
I also like how you used Google Trends, which is an engine that essentially compares for which term is more searched for, and asked it whether MSN.com or Google.com fared better. Because I'm sure the number of people who use google.com to search for google.com are representative of everyone. Everyone with the inability to realize that they are already at the website they want to be at.
They actually just did a big donation drive over several weeks. The progress bar was moving pretty steadily -- the last time I noticed it I think it was 3/4 of the way to the goal. Now if the goal was representative of what they actually needed, shouldn't they be in relatively good shape at the moment? I don't understand why they're crying about money after what looked like a very successful pledge drive.
-- Old Man Kensey
While we're talking about Google... Instead of being bought out, Wikipedia should look for someone with too much money to spend in a lifetime and give that person a chance to buy himself a place in history by creating a foundation that finances Wikipedia but does not own it. What kind of world do we live in where some people have enough personal wealth to buy small countries but something as useful as Wikipedia can't get funding without selling out?
As someone who uses AdSense, let me tell you that the ads do influence the content. Especially since advertisers got the option to target specific sites with their ads, the ad revenue is closely coupled to the type and wording of the articles. It's also a well known effect that click-through rates are higher if the reader doesn't find what he was looking for in the article: excellent articles reduce ad revenue and so-so articles pay better.
If they're going with advertising, and I really wish they don't, they should be looking for a handful of long-term sponsors who contractually agree not to interfere with strategic, tactical or operative decisions, not during negotiations and not afterwards.
I have no problem with ads on Wikipedia...as long as everyone can edit them like articles!
Hmm, this is not a bad idea. They could sell discounted ad space -- cheaper on a CPM basis than anyone else by half, but the catch is, anyone can add their comments to the ad. You wouldn't be able to edit the ad per se, but if you liked/disliked the product or company you could say so. Apart from the obvious astroturf/shill problem, which Wikipedia already has to deal with in its articles, this would be a great way for good companies -- those who haven't pissed off a large portion of their customer base -- to advertise.
Ack - speaking of selling out. Google has proven themselves to be no better a company than any other. They made a mockery of their "do no evil" pledge with the whole search in China thing, and with their lobbying efforts in the various states.
Please stop seeing the world in black and white. They did the right thing given two crappy options and are being punished for it by self-righteous westerners.