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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?
Sell pot.
"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?
I've now edited Jimbo Wales to make him in favor of advertising on Wikipedia, thus saving Wikipedia. You can all thank me later.
The hell he is. He's an objectivist. Objectivists practically get sexually aroused at the thought of corporations.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
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.
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.
Of course you can use it, you just can't cite it, because it isn't a source. It's an encyclopedia. Encyclopedia articles consist entirely of information that stems from other sources. This makes Wikipedia a useful tool to locate relevant sources of information on a subject you want to learn more about or write about.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
A lot of people don't want to donate but many would be more than happy to donate a few gigs of my hard drive and some small part of my bandwidth to wikipedia on occasion. I cite F@H (Folding at Home) for all those who know of it (thanks to all who do it) which I am already doing. If that concept could be applied to hosting Wikimedia then their hosting fees could drop dramatically. (possibly to zero). All those people who already use wikipedia could pay back some of the debt they owe to it by helping host it.
I've taught composition - I encourage students to use it to find topics. How many people have gone on Wikipedia and wasted hours chasing links and footnotes? Of course, I don't let them cite it, but if you can't go further in-depth than a wikipedia entry, your paper has more problems than just sources.
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
Personally, I'm not going to make any donations or support advertising on Wikipedia until someone explains where all the money is going. This link sort of answers your question.