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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?
I've heard that he pays people to write in Wikipedia. Perhaps he can pay some hosting fees seeing he's all interested in education and stuff. I'm sure he'd do it no strings attached.
OK, you can stop laughing now ... but I can't.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Wikipedia is suffering from The Peter Principle in which its employees, admins, and editors have grown incompetent in the hierarchy that is Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia effect happens because the article writers of Wikipedia articles automatically link web sites to articles that they wrote or contributed to, in order to boost the pagerank in Google. The more writers, the more people who link to the article in Google to boost pagerank. Then they state opinion as fact in the article and then link some more web sites to it even more. Before you know it, there is more opinion than fact in the Wikipedia article, but everyone links to it because hey it is Wikipedia and if it is in Wikipedia it must be true. Then more opinions are written in the article, and it is used as a reference in forums, blogs, CMS sites, and other things to support the opinions of others who agree with the opinions in the article. By that time almost all facts are replaced in the article with opinions and the Wikipedia article has the number one pagerank in Google. Opinions are acceptable in Wikipedia, as long as they are written in a neutral point of view and links are cited to web sites that state the same opinions on them as well. Usually the same Liberal Editorial message in some web newspaper with a Liberal bias, or a college professor's web site who holds the same opinions as the Wikipedia article, or the blog site disguised as a magazine or newspaper in order to force those opinions on everyone else as facts.
Before you know it, Wikipedia editors and writers suffer from The Peter Principle and grow incompetent and keep using their own opinions instead of facts, and at that point cannot tell the difference anymore, nor can the readers of the article know the difference either. But who cares, number one result in Google, so it must be true!
Yet isn't it odd that the number one page hit in Google is usually an article that has been link whored out with a lot of bogus links to it, planned to increase the page ranking until it hits number one like a Wikipedia article that is mostly opinions with few facts if any? I mean honestly I don't start hitting real facts until the first couple of pages of page scrolling in Google in order to avoid the opinions disguised as facts that have been link whored and take up the first couple or pages or so of results.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"What do you think Wikimedia should do to shore up the financial situation of the Wikipedia?"
Wikimedia should let Wikimedia shrivel and die.
Hey, you asked for my opinion.