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Should Wikipedia Sell Advertising?
The Narrative Fallacy writes "The LA Times has an interesting story on the state of Wikipedia's finances and how with 300 million page views a day, the organization could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if it sold advertising space. Without advertising the foundation has a tough time raising its annual budget of $4.6 million. The 45,000 or so individuals who contribute annually give an average of $33 each, so campaigns, which are conducted online, raise only about one-third of what's needed. As Wikimedia adds features to its pages, such as videos, costs will rise. 'Without financial stability and strong planning, the foundation runs the risk of needing to take drastic steps at some point in the next couple years,' said Nathan Awrich, a Wikipedia editor who supports advertising."
Get ready for an onslaught of comments from people who want to have their cake and eat it too. (ie. those that don't want the advertising, but also don't want to make a donation to Wikipedia)
Jimbo can embezzle even more if they do that!
Wikipedia needs to move away from centralised servers into a distributed database hosted on hundreds of thousands of volunteer's computers. Instead of donating money donors will donate excess bandwidth.
it ruins the impartiality, it ruins the experience, it compromises the purpose, blah, blah, blah, zzz...
you have to pay the bills. idealism doesn't pay the bills. a "compromised" wikipedia is better than no wikipedia
there really isn't anything you can say that is more illuminating on the subject. either you can run the site financially or you can't. it really is that cut and dry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
to a user looking up a definition for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthymeme?
fortune -s -o
Why does Wikipedia need to sell it? They are already a bastion of free "neutral" articles written by POV cronies by corprorate shells. From Republican politicians to large corporations like Wal-Mart, Wikipedia should start invoicing for hosting their "neutral" public relations flyers.
WikipediAds, the advertisements anyone can edit! Who better to make the ads than the customers?
I am sure there'll be a nice raging debate about IF they should do it, which is good. But if they do decide to do it, an important argument is then HOW to do it. Online advertising needs to be intrusive enough to be noticed, but not so intrusive that it becomes, well, intrusive. Their implementation will mean a lot.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
The fund drive for Wikipedia is thrice of last year. No wonder they only reached third of it.
I am unable to find a link for 2007 right now, but look here:
For 2004-2006
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/28/Wikimedia_2006_fs.pdf
For 2006-2007
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/49/Wikimedia_2007_fs.pdf
Since, according TFA, they just moved offices from FL to San Francisco, and are renting 3000 square feet there. That cannot be cheap. If you're a strapped non-profit, why on earth would you go to one of the most expensive places in the country to run your internet-based business?
I'll just say this, I'd rather have an ad-supported wikipedia than no wikipedia at all.
If the video feature costs more than donations can support, I'm ok with no videos on wikpedia. Perhaps another seperate wikisite can have video with advertisements, while wikipedia itself could maintain its adfree status.
And would be about a perfect match for Wikipedia, unobtrusive and topical. I say go forward and earn enough to keep the doors open and grow.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
OK, a broken business model that based on begging for money every 6 months or so.
... Gazillions good ideas come to mind. Buy out books to the public domain.
Go for advertising. Buy out books to the public domain, give back some money to wikepedia authors (e.g. give money to proven authors for writing additional articles),
But no money means no money for good ideas. And Wikipedia will stay vulnerable to attacks from someone with money (think Google Knol).
Yes yes, money changes people. Articles may get flawed to get more money. If you think, Wikipedia must stay independent, make it independent. Create a Wikipedia-Ad-foundation, that tries to get as much money as possible, but give them absolutly no control over Wikipedia-The-Content-Organisation. Both orgs should be absolutly independent.
And so you'd have a lot of money *and* complete seperation of concerns.
And there are *so* many unbelievably good ways to spend money.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
The obvious way to monetise Wikipedia is to use Google AdSense or a similar technology. In the case of AdSense, Google chooses that ads and not the editor, so in effect the ads are kept at arms length. And if, having read the encyclopedia article, a visitor chooses to click on an ad, then at least they should have a greater understanding of the product.
I run a site with AdSense, but I never compromise the content to encourage click throughs. People either click, or they don't Enough people click to make it worthwhile, and it certainly covers costs.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
NO! NO! Dear God NO!!!
If it does start selling ads, there needs to be a replacement. And I don't mean Uncyclopedia.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I don't see why they shouldn't. But so long as clear unambiguous rules govern how ads are place in the pages and how they interact with content. Importantly, I'd get some accountant type to sort out a trust or something and have revenue classified as charitable donations. In other words, keep the revenue distinct from wikipedia and use the trust to support salaries, running costs, etc., as a form of donation. IMNA accountant, might be obvious, but some sort of separation, board of trustees, etc., would seem like a good idea, imho.
Most of us can pretty readily block out ads, provided they are like the ones at slashdot. There is alot of sidebar space for ads, maybe at the bottom of the page. I don't know what revenue rates are for ads, but when there is a page viewed for every American - per day, assuming 1/10th cent per page, which is probably low, the ad revenue works out to be $109 million. I think less obtrusive ads might just do the trick. 1/200th of a cent would give them over the $5 million they need. Therefore it seems that they can make very small ads and still cover their budget.
Instead of the normal color click they could have double-subline-text that leads to an ad. It's fairly unobtrusive and does not deter from reading. The only annoying part would come if that leads to some flash based add when you hover over the word. But still - adblock does the job :)
It's a scary time. Especially if all of Jason Calacanis' predictions made on this week's This Week In Tech regarding Wikipedia become true. :(
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How about google ads in the corner clearly marked and unintrusive? Or even just a list of "sponsored links" at the bottom of each page after "external links".
There are many ways Wikipedia can add advertising without adding banners or having any of the advertising interfere with the content.
And being able to successfully generate revenue would mean a better Wikipedia if the people who run it wish to invest in improving what they have.
The main problem though is the advertisers editing content. This is already happening and a lot of articles are compromised. Although this problem should be addressed NOW, and is a problem that precedes this issue, this trend may accelerate with the increase in ties between Wikipedia and its advertising clients (so to avoid creating these ties, something like Google Ads might be best).
Yeah, if they want.
I'm already highly aggressive with blocking all advertising and user-tracking anyway, so it won't affect me personally. One of these days, I even plan to start reselling ADSL with a transparent proxy configured my own special way, so other people can also enjoy the same advertisement-free Internet experience (and I can make a few quid as a secondary consideration).
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Not banners.
Something that adds to the value of the site would be good - paid-for "related" links to commercial sites.
Data recovery - link to services. Bridge construction - links to firms building these. Encryption - encryption software. Every single pharmaceutical - online pharmacy. Every single book or movie - amazon.com or other such. So if you're willing to pay for what you've just learned about, you know where to go to buy it or have it done, or learn more about it.
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Around these parts, "broken business model" is normally found in proximity to **aa, mostly so because the **aa could be doing things better and making more money and if they continue on the path they are, they are on the way out. Charities however, that routinely beg (even more often than every 6 months) have been around for a while and will continue to be around for quite a while I imagine. I do however think your idea about an independent organization would a close runner for the best way to approach advertising if it was needed, but that is assuming that charity is on it's way out.
Do what /. did: sell memberships for no advertisements. Seems simple enough.
Or do the gods behind /. use a different browser to me.
/. are the banner ones, and they're fine, but sometimes they are those nasty square ones that block off half the story summary and require multiple reloads to get rid of.
I'm not really going off-topic: my point is that ads really aren't a problem in these high-bandwidth times - at least they're somewhat targeted and they don't intrude.
The problem is, though, that they do. Sometimes the ads on
I have no problem with ads - but they should be tested to see if they work on the 'most-popular' (depending on point of view) browser. Otherwise, don't be bitchin' at me cos I flashblock your ass.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Couldn't one argue that they do already, with their donation drives, a la public radio?
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
Just a quick one, isn't wikipedia exempt from a whole bunch of taxes etc. for being a non-profit? They'd have to sell even more adverts to cover the taxes you pay by being a normal company.
If they wanted to I guess they could launch a new ad supported version, mirroring the content and making "donations" to the standard wiki
Shameless plugs and inaccessible site design FTW! - www.mistletoestreetmusic.com
What wikipedia should do is try to hit up the private sector for some rich sponsors looking to make donations to a tax-free charity.
Maybe a single link on the front page to link to the top 1000 donations of all time and top 1000 donations in the last 12 months will be a nice compromise.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
so keep it in that domain and charge a licence fee...
In countries where a licence fee can't be levied, or enforced, then make it commercial with advertising. Is wiki Geo-IP aware? This is how the Beebeesee does it, and many other TV stations around the Europe.
Yeah, mark me down, but no one had raised the the specter of a browsing tax.
Disclaimer: I don't even agree with my own opinions.
It would be nothing to maintain and with contextually sensitive ads they would vbe related to the pages they appear on (in theory) it would be useful and profitable.
dB Masters
But seriously, those of you say money corrupts, they already have quite a bit of money going through with contributions.
They could certainly make the ads opt in. Pages and/or Users.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Given the independence of the editors (the volunteers) from the publishers (Wikimedia Foundation Inc.), I'm not too concerned about the content. Of course that independence only lasts until Wikimedia insists on seats on the Arbitration Committee or other editorial authority.
But they need a mechanism -- beyond 'trust us' -- to keep an eye on the money. That much money is just too tempting, not only for plain embezzlement but also for things like loans and investments for personal or friends' businesses, unreasonable expenses, etc.
Who controls the money? To whom are they responsible? Ultimately, the responsible party is the Wikimedia Foundation Board. While I don't believe fame and talent are highly correlated, and have no doubts about the board members, it would inspire more confidence if someone was putting a broader reputation on the line for Wikipedia. I want some on the board who have something serious to lose if things go wrong, like Mitch Kapor, Joi Ito, and others on the Mozilla Foundation board. In fact, I wonder why don't have people like already. Certainly it's prominent enough to attract them.
Finally, what mechanisms do similar organizations use to manage windfalls of cash?
Like many people have already pointed out, there are many other options.
You add advertising and it's no longer wikipedia.
So I'll fix that for you:
a "slower" wikipedia is better than no wikipedia.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
No, advertising would inevitably bias the content. Not just bias the editors, but also introduce a bias into those articles in which ads relate to the content. And no, they can't filter out ads that relate to the content, because that would introduce a biased editorial hand into deciding "what's related". And besides, brands have all kinds of biases that aren't necessarily evident (what does "coca-cola" mean to people whose grandparents were slaves on coca-cola plantations?), or maybe just unknown to the person setting the "relation exclusion" filter.
No, the whole point of Wikipedia is that the content of every article is totally controlled by the crowd that's editing it. Implying the editorial voice of Wikipedia endorses those products in the ads will introduce distrust of the Wikipedia editorial voice when people don't like the advertised products (or just the ad itself, or just advertising). Or introduce unwarranted trust in those people who feel more comfortable when they're embedded in a sea of familiar logos, even if they content of the article should look suspicious.
Wikipedia should just raise money in other ways that don't muddy the line between editor and publisher, just like newspapers are believed to do properly (but don't, because they embed ads).
The foundation can sell paper volumes, or magazine subscriptions about the state of Wikipedia - which could contain ads.
It could charge schools whose campuses register above some high threshold of use. Those schools are reselling the content as education, either for school tax fees or private tuitions. They can afford to pay a fee for the resale of the content, and they're too much sitting ducks to try evasive actions (like IP spoofing) that can be caught.
It could sell T-shirts and other schwag.
It could charge its most active contributors small subscription fees. Charging those people who do the most work on the content might be counterintuitive: aren't they already giving more than others, in work if not in money? But those people are clearly getting a lot more use out of Wikipedia than the average person, and are probably addicted. They're the least likely to stop being part of the community if they have to pay, while scaring the others away will kill Wikipedia. And they're the ones most likely to care about the argument "but if you don't pay a little, Wikipedia will die", because they've got so much invested in it already. If the fee is like $10 a year for people who post over 100 edits in "recent edits", that's $50,000. If it's $5 for those posting over 10 or 20 recent edits anytime in a year, that's probably several hundred thousand dollars. Those people aren't going to give up their habit. If they offer them a mandatory $5 for their name on a "page of fame", or sell them a $5 T-Shirt for $20 with their name and count on it, they could make $millions.
Wikipedia is a community. One with varying degrees, whose members get all kinds of benefit from it. There are plenty of ways to monetize the benefits, especially for those getting the most, and those with little alternative to quit it.
--
make install -not war
Ads are against the encyclopedia spirit. I also doubt people want to wait a long time for a page to load because of a slow ad server.
I have a much better idea. Integrate Google search, and let Google pay them for having it there. That kind of tactic works well for Mozilla, which also has a lot of users.
money is really just an abstract expression of human interest and value. pick the most idealistic human endeavour you can think of. it has value to other human beings. therefore, it is monetized. sure, it needn't be expressed in actual dollars, but a conversion to that occurs at some point for anyone who interacts with that human endeavour. the church? marriage and love? science? they all involve cash transations at some point
why do you think you achieve some sort of higher moral ground or purpose by shunning money? all you do is hobble your own ability to properly understand how the world you live in actually functions. i'm not asking you to worship money. and money certainly leads people to do evil things. but again, money is just an abstract expression of human desires. the real evil is aspects of human nature itself, not a piece of green paper with alexander hamilton's face on it
all i'm asking you to do is grant money the proper respect it deserves for quantifying abstract human interest in such a way that it makes the world we live in a better place. yes, money is a great invention, like the wheel or the semiconductor. it makes your world a better place. bartering chickens for school books gets kind of old after awhile. thus the glorious invention of money. and no, i'm not gordon gecko. i'm just a realist. realism trumps cotton candy idealism any day. and the most sober realistic consideration of money in this world is that it makes your life better
cotton candy headed idealists can be so stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously, just a few tweaks to the WP:CIO and WP:NPOV and problem solved- think of the labor that could be saved astroturfing your preferred talk pages, managing your socks and generating those irritating reports to management about your viral marketing efforts or penny pump-and-dumps.
Bonus for cult members: no more flagellation, starvation, or extended co-ordination for wiki-raids. Just tell Dear Leader or Most Holy to budget some coin out of his Malibu/Lear/Bentley/cocaine/hooker/caucasian trophy wife fund and you can breathe easy.
Not everything is about money!
Everything has a cost, and in this case, there is money to be paid. Someone pays that. Would you rather it was a few large patrons who would have corresponding leverage? Google text ads are unobtrusive and could easily be limited to one page in ten or whatever percentage is needed to pay the bills, and then no one has any leverage over funding.
I'd like to know what your alternative is for paying the bills. Either patrons with their own agenda or a few text ads with no leverage whatsoever, or your idea, which is ???
Infuriate left and right
Scenario: "I'm young, I'm idealistic. I haven't got a credit card, I haven't got paypal, but I do have a website with at least some few visitors. And I really like Wikipedia."
Think this is uncommon? I certainly don't.
So. How do we "monetize" this resource? Let them run ads generating income for Wikipedia.
Someone(tm) in Wikipedia, or some trustworthy foundation, should set up an account somewhere, and then volunteers will make a few widgets to easily add ads to your site, a Wordpress plugin, banner rotation so you can donate a certain percentage of page impressions... I'm sure more things will come up.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
They don't need to be worth $100 million. If they have a small number of subtly placed and cleverly targeted ads (through multiple ad brokers to avoid problems with conflict of interest), it shuld bring in all themoney they need without detracting from the experience too much. In fact, it could actually make for a more useful experience.
Of course, a system where customers provide feedback on services clicked through from wikipedia would be great,and would really add a new dimension to the site, but there are a number of really tough social and technical (not to mention legal) problems to overcome before this becomes viable.
Another option is to turn the search bar into a combination search wikipedia OR search the Internet search, with Internet search generating revenue in much the same manner as with Firefox. As a matter of fact, how about ONLY showing ads when the search function is used? That could make everyone happy.
We have deleted the article about Burger King for not being noteworthy. Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
The idea of Wikipedia - a freely available online encyclopedia that anyone can edit - I believe is better if it is impartial and independent. It becomes encumbered, compromised, by advertising incentives. There is added value in advertisement free - vis-à-vis Consumer Reports.
The question is: Why is Wikipedia so expensive to maintain? If it is bandwidth and servers, is the HTTP client/server model the answer? Is there an efficient model to share Wikipedia entries peer to peer? Or perhaps share costs between Universities or other institutions that act in the public interest?
Additionally, if Wikipedia does go to a peer to peer model, can it integrate projects like FreeNet to ensure that the information remains free and accessible.
If you think the complaints about edits, arbitrariness, capriciousness and bias with Wikipedia are bad now, wait until it commercializes. In my (limited) experience, this will change the paradigm of its management. Wikipedia will cease to be a gift to humanity. It will be owned.
i trust random anonymous people than "quality" submissions by someone with an agenda to sell
;-)
random people off the street have no agenda. or rather, in a nonhierarchical structure, the overlapping agendas of random people cancel each other out to arrive at true neutrality on a subject matter. after all, you are posting anonymously and you obviously have a flawed bias
"experts" making encyclopedias in the traditional manner have a bill of goods they need to sell us. plenty of "facts" in this world are nothing more than statements of indoctrination into a given agenda. "experts" in a field of study are often champions of indoctrination, not education
true propaganda in this world never tells a single lie. it merely omitts certain unmentioned facts here and there in such a way to color people's perceptions. that's why they are called half-truths. meanwhile, a wide open encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to is the only way to illuminate those corners of propaganda that someone with an agenda doesn't want you to see
even a subconscious agenda a contributor is not aware of: their own biases they are blind to, such that they have no intent to lie to you, this is a threat to real truth
and so what you see as wikipedia's greatest weakness is in fact its greatest strength
you need to come to understand this
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but more to the point...
I'm starting to read articles on a severe upcoming advertising crunch during the recession. So it will be like they sold themselves out and then the switzer only paid $5 bucks.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Allow advertising that anyone can edit.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Wikipedia's not a "business" by any stretch of the imagination.
NPR and PBS have also shown that this "begging for money" business model can indeed work successfully. If anything, Wikipedia should turn to them for inspiration and fundraising advice.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Obviously, one has never heard of PBS. They are doing their pledge thingie every now and then, no advertisement. No sellout possibility. Capitalism isn't the only way to go, especially with contents that can be deemed sensitive and actual. I would so see Wikipedia talking about the dangers of one drug and seeing the ad for the other drug in the frame of the page. They already have enough problems removing partisan contents from their pages, they'll give yet another open door to their realm with advertisement.
The problem with Wikipedia is they would need to have a non-targeted advertisement model to make it credibly, and this would remove any chances of getting the jackpot from their pages, and would potentially only annoy the users... kind of like Slashdot with their M$-centric advertisements. To open up a flamebait on these, there are inordinate number of ads about M$ on the page... don't you find that annoying? Me, I really do.
All in all, if they are happy with the status quo, good for them. If they can find large subsidies from companies and governments, schools and organizations, all the better.
Yes, Wikipedia should sell advertising, to cover its costs. After all, the many people who take a copy of wikipedia and republish it with advertisements are making money -- why shouldn't wikipedia itself?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Turning to advertising will slowly and surely ruin the best aspects of wikipedia. Just think about it, rather than trying to sell things to wikipedia users and get a cut through ads, why not directly ask for the money (ie. donations), which is working so far. What you call "begging" is actually the most direct and honest way of running independent media.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
I'll be fine with unobtrusive advertising that doesn't disrupt the flow of my Wikipedia experience and doesn't cause the page to load slower than it loads now (from linking to 15 other advertising sites). I understand that nothing is free in this world, and I'd rather see advertisements than send money. Why not turn it into a for profit entity... maybe it'll create a better experience?
as an alternative to donating. I am a skinflint, but if I am browsing a techie article and I see a relevant, well priced O'Reilly advert, I might feel inclined to have a nosey.
That way ad revenue is an alternative to dontaion, and it still allows for an unaldulterated product.
there's no such thing as making more money than you should. you have a value, it should be arrived at. where when i say "you" am referring to any person or corporate entity, like wikipedia
cronyism? nepotism? greed?
do you honestly think purposefully impoverishing yourself will protect you from this?
money is not a prerequisite for such failures of character
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Get over the neutrality and nobility memes and run it like anything else.
Infrastructure costs money and people are obviously more willing to part with their knowledge than their bucks.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If they don't want to "ruin their integrity" they could only put advertising on the sites they deem unworthy. Those sort of articles are likely to be more in line with advertising anyway. While reading about "Who's the Boss" you could buy it on DVD. It just kind of makes sense. The article on weapons grade uranium could pull up some interesting google ads, though...
What happens when the advertiser decided to edit pages their ads show up on for the purpose of endorsing their own service as a reported consumer.
1. They quit talking about accepting advertising every other week. I'm not a huge fan of donating to an organization which keeps saying they are going to make my donation unnecessary and silly.
2. They quit deleting articles because they aren't encyclopedic enough. The value that wikipedia provides is largely based on being able to provide a lot of information on things that don't have enough "encyclopedic value" for a traditional encyclopedia. This isn't just true for the obscure sci-fi stuff. Even detailed articles on math contain far more information than would ever make it's way into the "Brittanica's" of the world.
3. Better Reporting of fund drives - Please just use a simple bar at the top of each page with your goal and time remaining. It works.
Throw the bums out!
I just donated a moderately large sum to Wikimedia.
What are you doing?
At the bottom of an article, allow for paid "premium link" spots for related businessess. In keeping with the Wikipedia philosophy, allow advertisers to put their bid requests into the cue, along with how much they'll pay for it, and have the wiki-editors select from the choices. List those spots as paid links, and all is good.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I'm happy they struck this deal with Google. I'm happy that they drown in money and I'm happy they give me the best browser, support open source and have saved the world from the Microsoft monopoly spreading to the web.
Yes, you could claim that Firefox isn't about money, but about freedom, open source and standards support. But I'm sure that money has helped them to achieve this goal and as far as I am concerned money hasn't stopped or corrupted them.
bye egghat
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Yep, seems fair to me to have a reasonable level of advertising, say some Google text ads (which also means they won't deal with advertisers directly, and can't be accused of favouring advertisers in any manner).
Well, that's the article answered. What now?
reason: GOOD cynical reply to a gp's "idealism is dead"
I'm just wondering if it'll be within 5 or 10 years that they start doing some form of ads. I'm fairly certain that they'll do it. It's only a matter of time. If they do it like those google ads tons of people might not even notice. Sad isn't it. I'm wondering which would be best for them. A simple banner ad at the top, or in that left nav bar. Well, its not really like I even notice slashdot's ads, so why should I care about wikipedia getting them?
I just hope that they aren't annoying ads. People around here seem to think that ads are the end of the world. Honestly, come on. I remember having ads on book covers in elementary school. I remember what we did was put the book covers on so that the blank side was on the outside and the ads were all towards the book. I'd much rather put up with some ads than some PBS style fund raising. (Speaking of Fund Raising that pushes my buttons is the public school sending both my kids home selling their crap. Grr. At least, wikipedia doesn't try to have its users go out and sell something to raise money.)
This is consistent with the Lopez-Ortiz law of Open Source Software, which states:
Once a FOSS product reaches a state of general usability, monetization immediately follows.
The IMDB corollary to that law is:
Most of the FOSS contributors will not benefit from said monetization.
Clearly wikipedia should go door to door selling leather bound volumes of their data.
-- sigs suck --
Instead of using a top-down model (ads), why not instead use Ripple, the money's equivalent to Wikipedia?
http://ripple.sf.net/
https://ripplepay.com/
oft types to run their 'Get the Facts' subv... um adverts. What would be scary if mshaft got their mitts on Wikipedia. They might feign or play an interest in taking a co ownership in them as a coercive means to make Yahoo! submit. So, Yahoo!, you better make the play FIRST and up your value and enhance your poison pill! (Hehe, captcha: drumming)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
As long as those ads are not some kind of flashy... flash ads. Of "you're the millionth visitor" .gifs.
Most users have ads blocked (ok, not most... most of users who know something about computers), and those who don't won't really mind.
And besides, slashdot has ads, and they don't seem to be too bad.
You can model any human activity in terms of money, certainly. But that doesn't make that model the predictor for all classes of activity. I mean you can model every human activity in terms of garbage if you want to: every human activity produces some waste materials, if only from from the excrement of those so engaged and the waste heat of the work performed. You can say every human endeavour is about anything with a little ingenuity.
But the fact that we can analyse Wikimedia purely in terms of money is not an argument for them using ads to finance their operation, any more than being able to conduct the analysis based on refuse constitutes an argument for them buying a fleet of garbage trucks.
Don't confuse the map with the territory, dude.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
...people wouldn't be writing articles lambasting their poor management and decision to relocate to one of the most expensive real estate markets in the USA, and they would have an easier time raising money, while also not needing so much of it. Jimbo's expense account doesn't help, either.
Advice: on VPS providers
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
I use Adblock anyway so don't care, and how can you ruin the impartiality of it when Sales & management have no control over the thousands of editors?
I registered an account here just to say: NO! (Or rather NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!) Advertisement as a business model is pathetic. Most advertisement is intrusive, manipulative, and cultural garbage. An academic endeavor like Wikipedia should rather be funded by universites worldwide.
I read recently that the Iraq War is going to cost the American taxpayer around $12 billion a month. That would be enough money to run Wikipedia for 2608 years. So honestly the money is out there somewhere for Wikipedia to run advertiser-free indefinitely. I think however it has more to do with turning Wikipedia into a profitable business rather than unable to find enough support through donations.
Wikipedia has definitely peaked. The community has become closed off into cliques and the content has become entrenched to the extent new contributers are actively chased off if they suggest any challenge to the status quo. Selling advertising would crush what is left of the community spirit of the project.
Its a shame, because fundamentally Wikipedia is an OK idea. What is needed is a viable, popular fork. I suppose this is as good as anything for speeding that up.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
NPR and PBS have corporate sponsors which sound a lot like ads.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Most of my Google searches' first results nowadays are Wikipedia pages - So practically Google makes Ad-Money with Wikipedia searches... why on earth shouldn't Wikipedia do the same thing?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The Google-Wikipedia relationship is interesting. A huge chunk of Wikipedia's traffic comes from Google, where a Wikipedia entry is the number one entry in many searches. But Google has also announced Google Knol, a service that appears designed to leverage some Wiki-magic to make some ad bucks for Google. In the wake of Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, Google would almost certainly be willing to pay a big premium to monetize millions of pages of targeted high-traffic content, particularly if it could screw Microsoft in the process.
If they sell the space - fine
...! people won't contribute anymore - wikipedia dies
If they sell the content - hey we wrote that you didn't!, people won't contribute anymore - wikipedia dies
If they sell the info about the contributors - hey that's private
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Turn it into a platform only editable from Educational Institutions & allow students from any campus to use it as a study reference. Pay for it with a portion of tuition, surely there's somthing such a system could replace and take the funding of.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
and they receive $y money, where $y money is more than $x
what exactly is wrong with that?
as for advertisers influence on wikipedia: i am glad you are joining me in the boycott of pbs and npr due to their corporate sponsors, right?
oh right, we can get rid of the influence of money by having no advertisers... oh no wait, some guy donated $1 million to wikipedia. therefore, he has a horrible corrupting tainted influence
pffft
dude, welcome to your reality: the money has to come from SOMEWHERE. and ANY source of money can be painted as a horrible corrupting influence
which means what exactly? every source of information in your world has a subtle bias?
well, actually, yes
you have a mind, and you must weigh the overt and subvert bias in every piece of info presented to you, forever. because yes, every single piece of media in this world has a subtle bias, whether the money they get is from advertising, or donors, or corporate sponsors, or government sponsors, or whatever
1. you need money to run the damn media.
2. the money has to come from some damn source.
3. there is therefore an influence and a "bias" introduced
there is absolutely no way around any of these 3 facts in the world you live in. forever. welcome to reality. deal with it?
if you can deal with reality, then you will see advertising on wikipedia really is no big deal and really won't skew bias. or, if you can't deal with the idea of bias everywhere, and your precious snowflake idealism is horribly crushed, then go lock yourself in your basement and cover your ears and never read or listen to another piece of media in your life. to free yourself of taint and corruption of course
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They could accept "corporate sponsorship" like NPR does. The benevolent sponsor gets top of the fold exposure in a classy way, and wikipedia can keep obnoxious banner ads off their site and stay true to their intended objective. It's a win-win situation.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Wiki's reliability is already questionable. Why not sponsor articles? At least they'd get paid for being corrupt agendized liars?
That would be Google, I think - unintrusive ads that, however hard to believe that would be, are often sensible and even useful. Yes, I've used them a few times and found a few products and services I was trying to get much faster than I would have found them myself. I guess the Google Ads' context system would do wonders on Wikipedia - there's everything required to maintain the context of the article and present meaningful, relevant ads. And keep the Wikipedia up and running.
I've got a middle-sized website myself (several thousand users, about 15k views a day, increasing) which is up since 10 years almost completely without ads, save for a tiny Google Ads banner no one notices and a hosting company's banner in exchange for an additional file server - the main hosting is and always was paid with raised money. However, as the site grows, the cost increases every year. In a few years, it will probably get higher than the donations we get and I will have to find some other method of funding the hosting. So the problem definitely is there and it's significant even for small to medium websites.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Of course they should put ads up if they need the money. I do recommend that the ads remain relatively unobtrusive like those found on google. Second, if they are worried about their image, they could apply a lot of the money they earn (as it sounds like they could make a lot) towards things such as scholarships, charities, and grants. Giving away both money and information will definitely keep their visitors happy, provided the user doesn't have to put up with a lot of obtrusive ads.
Don't buy any more internet transit capacity! Instead, just make sure that you are willing to peer with anybody that want's to peer with you.
If you are doing this you would save HALF your budget!
For a volunteer-run project, $4.6M seems like a large chunk of cash. Can anyone shed some light on roughly how this number works out?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
...but not everything, since the "Linux" article must not contain a Microsoft ad with a link to "getthefactswevemadeup".
I think the best solution would be to make wikipedia entirely distributed, where anyone can host any kind of edit to any page. Displaying a page becomes a matter of polling neighbor nodes in the network for information. Edits can be signed by various parties for validity, etc. The main cost then becomes a cost of development, there is no hosting cost.
\u262D = \u5350
Unless wikipedia gets some sort of government grant I really don't see any other option than to go towards advertisement. Really it's the only site I even know of that doesn't have advertisement, and it's not necessarily a bad thing to advertise. I've never really thought Slashdot's advertising has ever effected the stories it posts as it goes for any other new site so why would advertising change a research/information website?
And once they implement that, I want to buy stock in them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It brings us great stuff for free. Television, radio, THE INTERNET! I'm sure even simple Google Adsense along the side of articles will be enough to cover Wikipedia's costs. Instead of making users pay for wikipedia (most don't, but some do, and they're the ones keeping the site alive), why not make businesses pay for it! It seems like a no-brainer to me.
I think it's possibly a bad idea if ads like adsense are used. It then becomes possible for people to edit entries to favor or mention them and have ads start showing up for them on those pages. Such a situation will create a lot of havoc.
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, St. Petersburg, Florida (UNN) -- The Wikimedia Foundation®, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia®, the Free Cheap Encyclopedia(TM), will be introducing paid editing to all projects through the new Virgin Wikimedia® Corporation joint venture with Richard Branson.
A standard paid account will start at US$25 (EUR20 or £0.05) per month per user, with a discount of US$5 (EUR16 or £0.04) per month for users with over 2000 edits. The paid editing initiative was announced during the Foundation's Winter 2006/Q4 funding drive.
Wikipedia® is the number 9 website in the world, and the only website in the Alexa Top 20 run by a nonprofit. Despite its low overheads, with only six paid staff, the Foundation has had tremendous difficulty in keeping up with the ever-increasing demand for server hardware, not to mention the bandwidth bill for serving an average 150 megabytes per second, doubling every six months. Slow page loading and frequent downtime remain perennial problems.
"Advertising on Wikimedia® has been roundly rejected by the community," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikimedia®, "even though we're missing out on about *sixty thousand goddamn dollars each and every frickin' day* by not having two Google text ads. But we got away with proving mathematically that the Virgin Unite logo in the fundraising banner was technically sponsorship and not 'advertising' per se, and as a bonus it shook off a couple of the most troublesome whiners from the Dutch and Italian Wikipedias®. And hey, we outlasted Enciclopedia Libre nicely. *We got the brand name, suckas*.
"We were so desperate for cash that we'd initially considered a rental scheme for volunteers, but Rob Church is still under twenty-one so can't legally work any street corner other than Piccadilly Circus, and Greg Maxwell got a little too excitable with his first rough trade customer once the ketamine wore off. Brion had to resort to the cattle prod. Very enthusiastic volunteer, though, Greg. Totally dedicated. But rest assured, we still hold out hope of finding a Wikipedian(TM) who's actually attractive to anyone anywhere. Cary already bought the wide-brimmed purple fedora and the cane."
The new account levels are:
* WikiFree(TM): You can get a free account by completing offers or reffering freinds to do the same. For an initial setup fee of five dollars (EUR4 or £0.01), you get ten article edits a month, six picture userboxes and one vanity article.
* Sponsored Plus(TM): The new Sponsored Plus(TM) level gives free users more options, paid for by "PUNCH THE MONKEY!" adverti^Wsponsorship messages on pages, images and the 'Save page' button. After your five dollar setup fee, you get 100 edits a month, twelve picture userboxes and two vanity articles, one for yourself and one for your garage band.
* WikiPaid(TM): The WikiPaid(TM) account, at twenty dollars a month, offers unlimited monthly edits, thirty picture userboxes, twenty edits per month in the Wikipedia®: page space, a vanity article each month and sponsorship messages only in the sitenotice banner.
* WikiAdministrator(TM): WikiAdministrator(TM) powers are given to the most highly respected editors on Wikipedia®. For one hundred dollars a month (EUR80 or £0.20), you get all the paid user benefits, unlimited edits in the Wikipedia®: page space, smaller sponsorship messages in the sitenotice banner, immunity to CheckUser and droit de banstick in any edit war with a lesser editor.
Sponsored Plus(TM), WikiPaid(TM) and WikiAdministrator(TM) users can also create their own Wikistress meters and move adversaries' articles to Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense.
The new Virgin Wikimedia® Corporation is a for-profit joint venture between the Wikimedia Foundation® and Richard Branson's Virgin Group. The Foundation owns the trademarks and licenses them to the Corporation, and Virgin engineers run the server network and sell adverti market sponsorship. Wikipedia® remains
http://rocknerd.co.uk
around the turn of the centruy, another period when a small number of people had truly great wealth, J P Morgan was chair of the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art ("the met")
At the annual board mtg, JP would say, roughly, we have a deficit of 5 million this year (a lot back in 1900)
and jp would go around the table
Joe, I've put you down for 200K, ed....
well gentleman, that takes care of the deficit
our next item of business...
... the organization could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if it sold advertising space. That's assuming that people would still use it as much. I know I probably wouldn't - or I would only use it if I could block all the adverts.So Wikipedia might want to sell advertising to erase the problem of funding and exploit its present perceived market value. The problems:
1. This policy would have the effect of juxtaposing editorial content, which is assumed to be true, with advertising, which is false by design.
2. Wikipedia's perceived value would plummet as soon as the new policy took effect, which might increase pressure to compromise further.
3. Wikipedia's competitors, some of which rely on a subscription model, would exploit the change of status in the ongoing "credibility wars."
4. It would only be a matter of time for the first scandal in which someone soft-pedals a critical piece on an advertiser, or an advertiser's (or product's) description is discovered to have been edited under pressure.
I suspect the people responsible for Wikipedia understand these issues. It doesn't make the problem any less acute.
Of course they should accept advertising. If they don't, they'll eventually be cloned by someone who does and provides a better product with the extra funds.
On impartiality - just sell advertising on an exchange to the highest bidder. Google ad-words would be fine and not obnoxious. That way there is no direct connection between a corporate sponsor and a page.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
If you allow Wiki to have paid-for ads, then the companies so represented will DEMAND that any article on the Wiki be "cleaned up" to remove any and all negative imagery or text. This is exactly what happens on TV today. Ever hear of stations losing sponsors over a program that showed a certain product in a bad light? Same idea. What's the fix? No ad revenue, and you have to support Wiki as a charity or something; or ad revenue and you get in bed with the devil.
I regularly donate to the Wikimedia Foundation. Like many others I will stop doing so if Wikipedia sells advertising, and on top of that the advertisements will not be displayed on most people's browsers, including mine. I know it is extremely tempting, but until it becomes a choice between closing and selling, please do not sell.
Yes, I get your point.
That's why I suggest a separation into two organizations - one for the content and only the content, and the other for the financial side (advertising) and only the financial side.
I really guess the Mozilla team did this one exactly right.
bye egghat
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Jimbo Wales has a problem. He's famous, but he's not rich. Wikia is something of a dud; it was supposed to be a "commercial Wikipedia" and a "human powered search engine", but in reality it's just a free hosting service for fancruft. Wikia has ads, but the user demographic lives in their parents basement. There are paid ads for "Star Wars Encyclopedia", "We Sell Yu-Gi-Oh cards", "Free Star Wars TIE crawler", and "Free Lego Star Wars Destroyer" (this last from Overstock.com; somebody must have a warehouse full of the things.) Wikia is not making big bucks that way.
So the notion of tapping into all that Wikipedia content and having 50,000 editors slaving away to make Jimbo rich looks tempting. With some real revenue, Wikipedia could afford nice fat salaries and travel allowances for its nonprofit directors. The people at the top of some of the big nonprofits make out very well.
But it won't work. Add ads, and the better editors will bail out. Wikipedia needs an army of editors to push back the incoming tide of dreck that's added every day. Without extensive, ongoing attention, or much tighter restrictions on who can edit, Wikipedia will turn to mush. Few will do thankless jobs like recent change patrol to enrich someone else.
The simple solution is to allow users to opt out: en.wikipedia.org/noads
This also works for trivial pages: en.wikipedia.org/notrivia
There is no need to commit to a black and white answer.
Google Ads don't annoy most people. If they do, install Adblock.
...
I would really like a Wikipedia with 100 Million Dollar income per year that they can use to built better software, write better articles, buy out copyrighted books into the public domain which then can be translated into other languages, support the OLPC project and really beef up education in Africa,
And what's your point? Ads are annoying? Seems a bit egocentric and short sighted to me.
bye egghat
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Or instead of ads on the wiki pages, have a link at the bottom of each page, "Link to advertising of products related to this topic" and put the ads on a separate page entirely.
And then advertisers could pay for better placement etc. on the AD PAGE, if they felt the urge. Thus the Wiki content would remain unsullied, yet Wikipedia could bring in some cash.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
NO. Only if they want to compromise it the way every other commercialized site is compromised.
In my mind that ruins one of the best things Wikipedia has going for it and what makes it reliable.
Intelligence services and politicians are already trying to control wikipedia and heavily edit entries on certain subjects - and have been caught doing so.
So no. No commercialization. No tolerance for political inerference for any reason. Keep it pure - or destroy it completely and let it become like every other once noble site that harnessed the goodness and knowledge of the crowd-cloud that then went commercial and fucked everyone who believed in it's original premise.
Yes, I do donate to Wikipedia, and I do believe that Wikimedia should attempt to run as much content without ads as possible. However, I also understand that ruynning Wikipedia is quite expensive and the pickings on donations are slim. So why not display ads to normal users, offer a premium advertising free membership for a small annual "donation", and I think that makes a a pretty good compromise. Universities and other academic institutions and non-profits should all be given said premium memberships in addition.
There are benefits and drawbacks to either answer to the question "Should Wikipedia be funded using advertising?".
If yes, the Wikimedia Foundation would have a huge surge in revenue. Donations could play second fiddle to the advertising money that would allow the Foundation enough money to pursue whatever enterprise it wanted, such as launching regular print (or otherwise physical, I imagine Blu-Ray or DVD being ideal) editions of Wikipedia, hosting those Wikipedia Academy events worldwide, or hiring more programmers to improve the MediaWiki software (debugging FlaggedRevs would be high priority). There would be enough money that could buy servers just for the capacity to enable features currently disabled on Wikipedia because of the current lack thereof, like integrated spellcheck, suggestions for search, and dynamic hit counters. With what Wikipedia has achieved on a tiny budget of a few million dollars (consider this relative to Google's billions upon billions), it could achieve so much more if we were to ratchet up the budget by a few orders of magnitude.
On the other hand, advertising can be seen as fundamentally degrading to the content - regardless of whether it actually influences the content, it will influence how the content is seen - content presented with ads beside it is somehow different from content that is simply presented. Visual, intuitive measures of trustworthiness decline when content is accompanied by ads, because there is a sense that someone is doing this for a particular purpose, that there is some sort of corporate motive behind what is presented. Wikipedians who cannot abide advertising beside their work would leave and either fork the project or abandon it; the sense that one's unpaid work earns money for another is frustrating to someone even if that other is merely a beneficent organization seeking to perpetuate that work. The mere suggestion of advertising caused one fork already - should advertising be raised again, the split in the community might be devastating. There is a reason that Wikipedia calls its members "Wikipedians" - a demonym - rather than "Wikipedists" or "members": the community is essential to the maintenance of the resource as a whole, and as one of them (an admin), I certainly know this on a first-hand basis.
----
If no, the Foundation does maintain some risk of financial trouble - it is expensive merely to maintain the servers and pay for bandwidth, and the database is huge. The risk is of the free content winking out into the dark, to be perpetuated merely by mirrors and forks - many of which (illegally) try to claim that the content is their own and copyrighted (rather than the GFDL under which Wikipedia content is licensed). The key thing is that what's been created is available for anyone - if you have the bandwidth and the time, you can download the database and start your own fork.
It's not completely a doom & gloom scenario yet - the planned $4.6 million budget drawn up included plans for growth, not merely maintenance. By keeping to the baseline, the budget could be successfully slashed.
----
Overall, it's a bit of drama - while the publicity will certainly be good in that not many people seem to realize that Wikipedia runs on a shoestring budget - the site's relatively professional look and feel, not to mention the lack of ads, would seem to suggest that Wikipedia isn't worried about money, that someone runs the site and people don't have to care.
People do have to care, because ultimately Wikimedia needs a pile of those funny green (or multi-colour, here in Canada) things from your wallet to keep running, to serve up billions of pageviews, to keep a lawyer and an accountant on staff, and those other necessary things.
Personally, if advertising came to Wikipedia, I'd not worry - I know intuitively that it's not about the money, it's about keepin
It is really simple: Advertisement will kill Wikipedia.
You simply can't take a bundle of grand from, say, the Coca-Cola Company and then ignore their request to revert that change on their wiki page that puts them in unfavourable light. Maybe you think you can, but they will explain to you in detail how you can't do both, so its either the wiki page or the end of their ads. Forever. And that includes all their subsidiaries and a lot of their business partners.
Oh, that and it breaks the #1 promise of an encyclopedia, that it contains reliable information. I know that's debatable about Wikipedia anyways, which is why making the subject any more difficult will be another nail in the coffin.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The best way to maintain neutrality and to survive is to grow the foundation so they don't have to beg for as much money every year.
Look at Harper's magazine for an example of a media company that survives by this model. Yes, Harper's does have advertising, but less than a typical magazine, and with content of far higher quality, thanks to the independence that the foundation affords them.
The Wikipedia search button doesn't work very well, I can't be the only one who find relevant Wikipedia articles easier from Google than from within Wikipedia.
So instead of the home made Search button, auction it out. How much do you think Yahoo, MSN or Google would pay to provide search for Wikpedia (and get the results on their site, with their advertisements)? Far more than the US$ 4.6M. Mozilla gets most of their money from directing search to Google, and they have a much larger budget.
So the result would be 1) better search results, 2) still no ads on Wikipedia itself, 3) full funding of Wikipedia, and 4) we would get rid of those annying fund raisers.
Funny how people are so quick to rant about Wordpress whenever a site gets /.ed, yet nobody is bothering to mention that the incredibly dynamic nature of Wikipedia is an unnecessary HUGE drain on resources.
If the main content of Wikipedia was static, not only would it be a TON less load on their servers, it could also be cached by ISPs, browsers, and the like.
Static content doesn't mean Wikipedia would never change, it would just mean contributions would be done on the development section, where contributors would see it, and only after it's been up for a week or so would the changes be pushed out to the main site. Really now, how often are most articles edited, only to change one letter? Do you really think Wikipedia should incur the bandwidth hit just to make sure that everyone sees that typo fix immediately?
Besides saving untold resources for everyone, this would pretty much eliminate all vandalism, as it would never be seen by 99% of readers, and most would not bother and give up on it... It would do quite a good job eliminating lots of mistakes and misinformation, as there's time for review and/or discussion before anything goes live.
Personally, I'd like an even more extreme version of this myself... I'd like nothing better than a lightweight GTK app that allows me to browse a local (gzipped) copy of Wikipedia, without using ANY bandwidth to do simple lookups. Every few months, changes can be fetched as (low bandwidth) diffs.
After that's working, I'd like some similar interface to edit articles, which would either verify that the local copy is the newest version, or otherwise fetch whatever is (without all the HTML overhead, or the horrible performance of a slow and memory hogging web browser) and allow me to edit, preview, and submit back changes as simply as using a word processor. Then, everybody saves money, gets huge performance improvements, etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I have no problem with Wikipedia (which I use every day) putting ads on the site, as long as:
:-(
They are text only,
They are not offensive, or weird.
To illustrate the last point, I have seen some strange ads come up on GoogleAds - sometimes very much NSFW, due to some strange word connection in an otherwise safe page (I don't want to see 'Buy Viagra' appearing on pages describing the human body...).
The most bizarre GoogleAd I saw was on Gmail when it was displaying a mail where I'd mentioned the word 'rat' - it was a link to a site that sold miniature Guillotines for killing lab rats
From the article: Ads would be "threatening to Wikipedia's neutrality," said Michael Bimmler, a 16-year-old high school student who has been a contributor for more than four years and is president of the foundation's Swiss chapter. Readers would be suspicious about articles if ads were near them, he said, and would wonder why certain articles were longer than others.
Let's examine the ramifications of this statement.
Ads would cause people to be suspicious about articles (in much the same way that people are suspicious of the New York Times)? Aight, aight. But the fact that the project is put together by people who haven't even completed their basic education isn't of concern? Michael Bimmler, quoted, would have been 12 when he first contributed to Wikipedia. And that doesn't cause people to distrust the site?
Mind blown. Humanity is fucked.
Then I would like a piece of the pie. I mean, all of that content entitles the writers to some of that dough, I would think.
This is my sig.
It would create a conflict of intrests. Would a company want to advertise on the same page that reveals all of their dirty laundry? If they went that route one or the other would have to go, the truth, or the money. They could try and be selective with ads or warn their clients that potentially unfavorable 'facts' could sit right next to their ads. Also this could make the admins of wiki more liable for the information held within since they are now directly profiting from the site.
... a distributed serving approach?: Users download a program that, when your connection is idle, serves to other the data you have downloaded (id est media you have viewed.) In this way, the more popular an article gets (the more people download it) the more bandwidth it gets (there are subsequently more uploaders).
After that post, I happened to notice I was checked for "testing the new slashdot discussion system".. I unchecked it to go back to the old one.. still I don't remember checking it.. strange... but things are better now.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Seems like selling ads might be a little more legit than selling favors [slashdot.org]
Hiya, Internet advertiser here with response to young, idealistic blogger.
Here's the brass tacks: your blog is worthless.
You have:
* no significant traffic
* an audience which is blind to advertising
* an audience which, like you, has no money to spend and couldn't consumate an Internet transaction if they did because they don't have a credit card or Paypal (whoops!)
* an audience which consists of your Slashdot-reading freeloading peers who have had AdBlock installed for forever
* an audience which hates the very idea of advertising
You are proposing to give Wikipedia:
* an unobtrusive textual advertisement
* in a poorly optimized corner of your blog
* placed by an amateur with no incentive to get the placement right or tweak the ad to attract clicks
* which will, most probably, be seen by less than 10 individuals per month, one of them being you, when we need to deal in the quantities of hundreds of thousands per day
Come back when you're willing to actually spend time or money on the causes you support and/or you have something of value to exchange.
Much love,
The Folks Who Pay For "Free"
P.S. Many folks think that AdSense has solved this problem, but a) it has only solved it for Google and b) Google actually makes the overwhelming majority of their AdSense revenue first from their own search engine, second from Content Network partners you have actually heard about, and only a tiny, tiny fraction comes from summing over hundreds of thousands of micro-size publishers and blogs on the long tail.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.