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Wikipedia Almost Reaches $6 Million Target
An anonymous reader noted a story discussing the aftermath of the Wikipedia fundraiser and says "The writer suggests that Wikipedia can earn $50-100 million a month by a simple text ad. He also suggests that contributors should be financially rewarded and that the lack of financial reward is the reason why 98.3% of registered Wikipedia users are inactive.
What do you think? Should Wikimedia Foundation put ads on Wikipedia? Should contributors be financially rewarded? What compensation structure would be best?" Personally I think the independence of Wikipedia is great, and any advertising would not only compromise that integrity, but give contributors a sense of entitlement that the site is better off without.
It really comes down to what Jimmy Whales and the foundation think (and can manage). Sure, me personally, I would be happy to have EVERYTHING advertiser-free (including the street full of annoying billboards near my house, all my favorite TV shows, etc.). But it really comes down to the question of whether Wikipedia can sustain itself on donations and goodwill alone. If they can, then great, more power to them! If not, I couldn't, in all fairness, fault them for allowing advertising or paying particularly useful contributors.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I have no problem with this at all. Many people choose to not "pay" for TV but in exchange they have to watch advertisements.
I would rather put up with ads and still get to use the wikipedia free of charge than to loose it all together (or have to start paying for it.) I do the same thing here at Slashdot. ;)
"Luke, I am your node.parent();"
Maybe its my cynicism but using monetary rewards to encourage contribution (however it may be regulated) will only encourage users to find ways to exploit the system.
One of Wikipedia's greatest strengths is it's non-commercialistic nature. As soon as advertisements are brought in, and money paid for contributors, the focus is lifted from the community, and brought back to money. I'd hate to see that happen. As a scientist, I find the drive to money to be a source of great impurity.
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
"He also suggests that contributors should be financially rewarded and that the lack of financial reward is the reason why 98.3% of registered Wikipedia users are inactive."
Oh! The writer couldn't be farther from truth. 98.3% of users are inactive because rest of the 1.7% users have formed a self-serving "community", and most people who are contributing in their spare time don't have the energy and will to fight their way inside this community.
On a side note, I heard that most content is generated by anonymous users. So why so stress on registered users?
I would not be surprised if such a suggestion is accepted. Community needs care! :)
The article makes a perilous, and all too common, assumption - that the addition of adverts will make no difference to the way users respond to the site. It's getting 10 billion hits now, but would "a simple text advert" drive any of them elsewhere? Would the text advert drive away contributors who are basically what Wikipedia is selling? Would someone else fork wikipedia and set up an ad-free rival?
It's easy to think that massive traffic now equates to massive traffic forever, and you can monetize that traffic without upsetting people, but you can't. It's that simple. Introducing big changes (and it would be a BIG change) would have far-reaching consequences that I don't believe the article writer has fully considered.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
I can understand the idea that by accepting advertising dollars, you somehow compromise your journalistic integrity.
NPR (I am pretty right wing, but NPR is the only non-braindead radio in my area) does a good job of what is called a firewall [findarticles.com] whereby editorial teams are separated from funding decisions and funding teams are not included in editorial decisions.
It's pretty reasonable that Wikimedia could do the same thing. I know, not having ads separates wikipedia from the rest of the icky for-profit websites out there...but as another /. poster pointed out: begging for money all the time isn't a business model.
THL phish sticks
1. Keep them simple: no flashy "shoot the monkey and win $10,000" kind of ads.
2. Make them context sensitive but not insensitive: No porn ads on "Erectile disfuction" articles.
3. Try to use the ads for the common good: focus on open and innovative initiatives
4. Make some sort of mechanism for users to rate the ads (other than by (not)clicking on them)
Any more ideas on the subject?
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
Why does everyone think as soon as you start to throw up billboards and advertisements that the organization in question has become unethical? Wiki provides a service to the community. Do you think those services are free? The internet has many services that are free except for advertising, simply because publishing information is very cheap (but not free). Even this website you're reading this comment on is supported by advertising. I don't think wikipedia should be any different from a million other websites that are supported by advertisements.
There are only a few other options here;
Micro-payments. Hahahaha! lolz. Great idea, but where's the infrastructure? In other news, where are those fleets of alternative-fuel cars? Oh yeah... On the drawing board, waiting for the infrastructure to be built.
Fee-based. Sure, charge maybe $12 a year for access to wikipedia... aaaaand 95% of their userbase says "Oh screw that" and the site tanks. This is pretty much committing suicide online to attempt this; Very few websites have survived the transition.
Subsidized. You know, like the BBC. Quality content, paid for by your tax dollars. Ah, wait... This is the United States and we ere hates dem dar communist bullshiat.
Clearly, advertisements is the best way to go for wiki.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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So some guy with a blog makes a post claiming that Wikipedia needs to change. I missed the part where there was a problem.
The facts are that the goal is within spitting distance. They're 97% of the way their. So what's the problem with this model?
As for the 98% dormant figure, it's irrelevant. Isn't what we care about if Wikipedia is expanding its coverage, increasing it's quality, and serving more people? The percentage of active people could be 1%, it could or it could be 50% and that wouldn't necessarily impact quality, scope, or number served.
(I'm also fairly sure quality, scope, and number served are increasing, but I have no evidence to support that).
AccountKiller
While I would hate to see ads on Wikipedia, I would hate it more if Wikipedia were to close its doors. Therefore I would take the lesser to two evils in this scenario, and go with the ads, but again, only if it was to avoid the financial demise of Wikipedia. This is a non-profit organization, so I would think it should be fairly clear what "required" means from a financial standing. Regarding the second question, I personally don't believe contributors should be financially rewarded. Currently, people contribute to a topic they're knowledgeable about because they have a passion in that topic. If there was a monetary reward involved, people would apply far less integrity to their content.
Quoting any encyclopedia is not "considered a valid source" in any scholarly work.
An encyclopedia is where you get the basic ideas and the pointers to the real sources.
That long end of the "Free Lunch Buffet" is starting to catch up to us.
Anything sufficiently large eventually accumulates overhead costs from vendors who want to be paid.
We're all talking about ads here; Wikipedia recently went more the "Please Donate" NPR route. Other than creating another layer to manage, I'm almost smelling a fork. Maybe there's room for a Wiki variant paid for by ads, but also less strict on notability, etc. It would be known as a more rough&tumble cousin site, but if you liked Original Research blended into articles it could be interesting.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
and have come to seriously question its veracity of late, because just in the last couple of years, nearly every article to which I tried to contribute had a band of "campers" hanging around it, who were much more interested in maintaining their own version of the truth via the preferential enforcement of technicalities in Wikipedia's rules, than they were in the truth content of said articles.
If you want to insist that I cite examples, then use the example of the article on naked short selling in the stock market. If you are not familiar with that case, look it up. It is hardly an isolated case.
Wikipedia was a good idea, but it has been seriously corrupted by people like these, and the foundation has not done anything to address the problem. On the contrary, it has, in some cases, supported people who have worked hard to keep certain articles inaccurate.
They don't get any of my money until they take serious measures to address this problem. Unless they do, Wikipedia will continue to go downhill... just as it would deserve.
However, we don't do scholarly work here. Slashdot is a reasonably intelligent discussion forum, and a Wiki link to get the rawest of raw basics of something is more accurate than complete non-information we had to start with.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you want to see how they spend their money, go here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Questions/en#How_is_the_revenue_spent.3F
There's even an PDF of their 07-08 financial there with projections for the 08-09 FY.
Yes, $6mill could provide alot of clean drinking water.. but did you ever think that maybe information provided to those same people might enable them to provide themselves with drinking water? Wikipedia won't make you an expert in a topic, but it can definitely get you thinking about it.. it's a decent tool for getting a feel for the problems/solutions/etc on a topic of which you are unfamiliar... now we just need to provide useful/accessibility to impoverished persons so they can enable themselves.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
But it may be too late anyway.
In my experience, the Wikipedia community has been deteriorating for some time now. I suspect the percentage of people inactive was lower than 98.3% a year or two ago, but people have been driven away.
Most pages of any significance have a group of people that have appointed themselves overseers, and resist new additions on general principle. Often, they have a collective ideology slant and have chased off everyone who disagrees in any significant way. In this state, the odd person coming along and trying to modify the article against the views of the established mass is shouted down, accused of going against consensus, and chased off. If you took all editors of an article over all time, there would be a completely different consensus than the momentary ones that occur when a single dissenter arrives.
Adding monetary incentives would make this worse. It would make the local tribes more militant and more powerful, finally ending the principle of a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Wikipedia was an interesting and important social experiment, but I think it is past its peak and is due to decline. I personally believe that history will be more interested in the talk pages and edit logs than the content itself.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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