Should Wikipedia Just Accept Ads Already?

Hugh Pickens writes "Large images of Jimmy Wales have for weeks dominated each and every page on Wikipedia, making Wales arguably the single most visible individual on the planet. Now Molly McHugh writes that Wikipedia is once again pleading for user donations with banners across the top of its site with memos from purported authors and this week, Wales stepped up the shrillness of his rallying cry by adding the word 'Urgent' to his appeal. Wales attempted the same request for donations last year, and failed to meet the company's goal until Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar donated $2 million and Google stepped in with another $2 million gift to the foundation. This time around the foundation is approximately $7 million short of its 2010 fundraising goal, and Wikipedia analysts are saying the site would be better off with a marketing scheme as Alex Konanykhin of WikiExperts explains that the donations-only, no-commerce model restricts Wikipedia to relying exclusively on free volunteers, losing opportunities to involve qualified professionals who charge for their time in addition to the thirty staff members already on the Wikimedia payroll. 'Advertising is not cool. You're not as cool if you have advertising. But you know what else is not cool? Begging,' writes Jeff Otte. 'We do not care if there is advertising on Wikipedia, so long as it is not ridiculously invasive. So please, replace your sensitive mug with a Steak 'n' Shake ad or something, and start making advertisers pay for people to have stuff for free and not feel bad about it. It's the Internet's way.'"

Comments

Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Don't set up an admin system that shits all over people who disagree with you. Maybe then your appeal for donations would be considered by a larger number of people. I've been sending SomaFM at least $50 per year for most of this decade and even /. gets $5 from me every now and then. I bought one Wikipedia coaster set back in '03 before I discovered your incompetence and now I quickly close your 'appeals' without reading them. Some may consider that I'm being too picky, but when I saw that Barack Obama had less criticism on his page than Ghandi or Jesus Christ, I knew your system was still flawed, and the Climate Doctor debacle didn't work in your favor, either - and hey, that was, like, 12 months ago, and now you're running out of money - coincidence? Fix that shit and I'll kick down a Ben Franklin.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[MyLongNickName]

Ummmm. No. This has virtually nothing to do with donations. What you are running into is human nature. People generally do not pay for things they can get for free. You will find exceptions of course, but by and large this is true. Although your very generous coaster purchase clearly stands in stark contrast to the rest of us.

Wikipedia is no longer the center of attention that it was. It has a great deal of value and I would not mind seeing some advertising to help support it.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Pharmboy]

Um, no you are wrong. There are scores of people with the means to donate to Wikipedia, and were serious editors at one time, but the "system" turned us away from helping in any way. Wikipedia has a lot of good things going, but their management structure is so flawed and filled with self serving, basement dwelling admins that have an axe to grind, that it turns off many people with the means to contribute. Take a look at the number of people who have thousands of edits but haven't editing or contributed in a long time.

The current structure of Wikipedia administration is fatally flawed. It is functional, but flawed to the point of pissing off quality contributors of both time and money. The concept is valid, the execution is not. If not for a few corporations throwing away money in their direction, it would already be gone. Simply put, it needs to be run like a real business, with real accountability and system of checks and balances that is less subject to the whims of a few anonymous individuals. As it is, it is run like a college project, which is why it is in constant financial distress.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[magarity]

Ummmm. No. This has virtually nothing to do with donations. What you are running into is human nature. People generally do not pay for things they can get for free.

You are confusing paying for something that can be had for free with donating to a worthwhile nonprofit organization. People donate lots of money to what they perceive to be worthwhile nonprofits. Ever heard of the Red Cross or the Humane Society? The GP is complaining that he doesn't see WP as a worthwhile nonprofit, so he doesn't donate to it. It has nothing to do with getting anything from it for free.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Aqualung812]

I completely agree with Pharmboy. The issues I've ran into are:

-Paged fast-deleted for no reason (pages with external sources, links to other Wikipedia pages, etc)
-Trolls that maintain their pet topics to their standards, and lock out changes from others.
-A general attitude that limited information that the admin gang approves of is better than distributed information

I donate to other projects that are free. If I were still able to edit & post on Wiki & have it be used, I'd be donating both time and money. Since I've been run off (not banned at all, just all of my work ignored), I don't donate either.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[TrisexualPuppy]

Exactly. Most people just hate the incessant nagging that goes on with these "Personal Appeal" behemoth banners that have nothing to do with an appeal. Be straightforward and forthcoming, and just ask for the money.

As commonplace as Wikipedia has become, I think that the Web could use less of it. I am tired of seeing the Wikipedia article as the first result on every search. This isn't good for the diversity of information sources in general if everyone is reading from one source and few have a motivating factor to create independent pages or sites on the topics anymore.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[buchner.johannes]

Wikipedia is not collecting money for Wikipedia. Wikipedia has enough money.
Wikimedia is collecting money to build up Wikipedia's sister projects and get funding for 3rd world education projects (e.g. free books). But since Wikipedia is the most prominent project, they go from this angle.

Maybe Wikipedia having ads would be the 'internet way'. But the 'internet way' is also shitty websites. And all the projects with 'paid writers' or 'experts' have failed compared to Wikipedia. So better be independent, and (roughly) continue the way its done now.

Of course, I agree with your criticism. I would even be ok with a regular (e.g. every 3 years) database reset that deletes the discussion pages and user (privileges).

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Teancum]

To evidence that there is a problem, the number of new contributors to Wikipedia has all but stopped. It is a fairly large number, but as I've also pointed out that there are many countries of the world who have more people involved with the development of Wikipedia in their native languages as a proportion of their overall population (Germany in particular comes to mind) than is the case for English language development on Wikipedia. The only reason why English is so dominate is mainly due to the overall dominance around the world of that language.

There certainly are untapped "markets" of people who have the potential to contribute to Wikipedia and simply are not choosing to do so. Some of that is due to the fact that there aren't large blocks of people who are discovering Wikipedia, but mostly individuals one at a time. It is easy to dismiss their contributions, especially as it take effort to train and develop some of these mostly non-writers into encyclopedia article writers. If anything the desire of many on Wikipedia, at least the "active" editors who are also developing and setting policies for Wikipedia governance, also are at least proposing in some cases and certainly by unofficial actions are throwing efforts by new editors away and driving out new contributors. Doing so I argue that those same editors are also driving away the potential growth of Wikipedia as well.

There are also abusive administrators, and little that can be done to stop them other than to stand up to them and call them a bully to their face... setting up the potential for a wheel war and other sorts of nasty actions where admins thump their chests and try to carve out alliances among other admins to support their actions. Ordinary users sort of get lost in the shuffle when that happens too, not to mention imagined "consensus" when "minority" viewpoints are simply blocked or kicked out of the discussion forums for various reasons.

The Wikilawyering going on from time to time is particularly bad, especially when it ends up driving away potential contributors and browbeating opposing points of view to leave. Some of that is admins and the Wikipedia "governance", but a great portion of it also has to do with simply "fellow editors" who may be more knowledgeable about policies and therefore get an edit to stick strictly because of that knowledge... thus pushing their point of view.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[TiberiusMonkey]

The thing is, (and I do plan on giving some money to Wiki next week) the huge "personal appeal" banners are more intrusive than some small (but likely very well paying) adverts would ever be.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[mcgrew]

There are scores of people with the means to donate to Wikipedia, and were serious editors at one time, but the "system" turned us away from helping in any way.

Back in 2006 I developed a cataract in one eye, so the first thing I did was to look it up on Wikipedia. After looking it up I saw a specialist for the surgery, who informed me of a new (FDA approved in 2003) device that replaced the traditional IOLs, an accomodating IOL that unlike older types, is on struts, is operated by the eye's muscles, and actually lets the eye focus like a young person's.

I checked Wikipedia again, and found no mention of this three year old technology on the page about cataract surgery. They had the single focus and multifocal (working much like bifocal or trifocal eyeglasses) lenses, but not the accomodating lens. So I edited it.

A week later the edit was gone. Re-edited, same thing.

Oddly, after I mentioned this in a slashdot comment in an article about editing wikipedia, maybe a year or so later, the accomodating lens was added to the article. Obviously, someone from Wikipedia had seen my comment.

But I'd already given up editing wikipedia; it makes no sense to take the effort to contribute, only to have your easily fact-verified contributions discarded.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Pharmboy]

There may very well be scores of former editors that were once willing to donate but got turned off by Wikipedia's mananagement, but unless those scores of people were millionaires willing to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash, they aren't really going to have any effect at all on Wikipedia's need for donations.

Saying that the thousands of people who can donate a few hundred per year "aren't really going to have any effect at all on Wikipedia's need for donations." is exactly the same type of arrogance that leads to droves of contributors leaving. Do you even realize how that kind of statement guarantees that people will not contribute to the project? It is the same attitude of the admins, that they are the expert and even if 50 editors disagree, it doesn't matter as those 50 people don't has as much effect as themselves. That they care more than those 50 people combined.

And yes, most USERS don't care, but that isn't the issue. The issue is the pool of potential contributors, those of us that have been involved with using and supporting free software for a couple decades and have the means to not donate millions, but our efforts combined IS millions. Saying it doesn't matter just proves that you have exactly what it takes to be a Wikipedia admin.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Pharmboy]

You THINK you understand what I mean when I say "like a real business", as if that is a singular thing, but you do not. Not all businesses have "dictators", and most businesses are not run like the narrow minded version you have inside your head. It is painfully obvious that you have never owned or managed a business, or had a job within a quality organization.

"Like a real business" doesn't imply a particular method, it implies a system of leadership with clear, tangible goals and accountability throughout the organization. There are many ways to fry that catfish. What makes them good or bad isn't the flow chart of power, it is how it is run day to day.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Teancum]

The Wikimedia Foundation isn't pissing people off? I take it you have never read much of the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list (sometimes called Foundation-l), where regularly there are people who do air issues and grievances... including pointed attacks against much of the leadership of the organization.

Some people try to take the issues up the food chain, and on occasion some of those issues do get resolved, but there are some endemic issues that seem to be regularly put off from time to time. One of the issues that seems to still eat at my craw is how the majority of the Wikimedia Foundation is still under the direct control of Jimmy Wales, as he appointed those board members personally and put them into that position. There are "elected" members of the board who as a matter of practice do most of the real heavy lifting work, but they still hold a minority position on the main governing board.

Jimmy Wales himself has sort of stirred the pot from time to time, most notably with his intervention into the governance of Wikiversity and the Wikimedia Commons.... both of which met with some extreme resistance from the respective communities where he was even "uninvited" due to his meddling and forced him to essentially lose his "founder's flag" as a matter of principle with his account. Wikiversity is still a fractured mess, and the Wikimedia Commons community (those who do most of the regular maintenance of that resource) has all but ignored the advise of Jimmy Wales... particularly as it applies to "obscene images".

There are indeed some reasons why there is some complaints about the governance of the Wikimedia projects, and some of it well founded. Perhaps the most current issue is mainly a complaint that the funds are somehow being managed inappropriately. The Foundation headquarters was moved from St. Petersberg, Florida to San Francisco. Perhaps there may have been some merit to that move for several reasons, but it certainly has ended up costing the Foundation much more to hire and keep support staff through financial incentives. Also, the number of staff members has grown considerable over the past couple of years, and there is also some questioning what exactly they are doing other than becoming a bloated bureaucracy of their own which is mainly busy trying to justify their jobs to donors. Most of the new jobs have little to do with the infrastructure of the Wikimedia projects (running the server farm, maintaining the network backbone connection, providing professional software development to the development of the MediaWiki software, etc.) but rather more to "public outreach" efforts or "community relations" issues. In other words, what exactly are those people doing that are spending the donations to the Wikimedia Foundation? In some cases they are duplicating volunteer positions, and those volunteers still exist.

If any of this is new, I hope you are somewhat enlightened. There are some complaints, and for me well founded complaints too. Some of the administrators do get rough from time to time when dealing with new contributors to Wikipedia and the other projects too. An "admin" really is just a volunteer position, which also brings in the problems with volunteer leadership and how to keep that under control. There really isn't an effective way to reign in admins unless they are being blatantly abusive, so for the most part the process to become an admin is usually set at a pretty high bar to begin with. Most of the time what happens when somebody gets upset with Wikipedia is that those new contributors usually have a different viewpoint about what Wikipedia is really all about, and if those new contributions go "out of scope" for what a typical administrator is looking for there are usually conflicts with those new contributors and the admins. Some admins are very blunt about the issues too and don't do a very good job of working with these new contributors either.... which is also why some people occasionally get a bad first impression about Wikipedia. Enough of those with a bad first impression exist where it is a negative factor for new contributors as well.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Thomasje]

Criticism of famous / historical figures has no place in an encyclopedia in the first place; they are supposed to be repositories of information, not opinion. I spent countless hours with major encyclopedias when I was a kid, and whenever I see criticism or praise of people in Wikipedia, it feels jarring and out of place. I don't consider it a problem, though, I just skip over those sections.

What keeps me coming back to Wikipedia is because it is actually truly excellent as an encyclopedia. Whenever I'm looking for something about physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, geography, history, etc. etc. etc., I find what I'm looking for and I find it quickly. The edit wars that so many people seem to have such huge stakes in tend not to affect articles that disseminate actual information, and those are the only ones I'm interested in; those are the only ones that belong there. The fact that lots of other people use Wikipedia as their personal political soapbox or Geocities page is a very minor annoyance, and maybe the way Wikipedia deals with those annoyances is heavy-handed and/or misguided sometimes, but it takes little to nothing away from its true utility. Certainly not enough to stop me from donating $100 a year.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[blue trane]

Disagree. When you get ads, you'll get the equivalent of the old "blinking text" - they'll make it as distracting as possible, so that for example if your mouse happens to be over a certain region an ad will expand in an extremely obtrusive manner. How many times has that precise behavior in the WoW ads that were running above the Slashdot logo caused me annoyance in the past few weeks? I for one prefer the begging on wikipedia. Begging is very cool, Jainism has built an entire religion around it.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Seumas]

I always found it amusing that every single fucking pokemon character gets their own long wikipedia article, while most real human beings of some reasonable note are flagged and deleted as "not notable", just because they're regional or otherwise not someone that you've seen in People Magazine.

I edited for awhile, Got tired of the navel-gazing bullshit. Quit. I hit wikipedia up now and then to search for something, but not so often.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

On the flip side, I've seen articles that *used* to be great resources, e.g., lots of detailed information, images, etc. which have been completely "dumbed down", stripped of good chunks of information. I think its the soundbyte generation at work, it seems more and more articles are being condensed (I guess folks today don't like to scroll or something).

Wikipedia is most certainly not the resource it used to be.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[chdig]

Like many mods have suggested, this is an "interesting" idea. It's also completely without any reference and seems to be a serious accusation. Wales' appeal states that wikipedia does need the money for its website, while you say they're lying, and that it's just a siphon.

Your comments are stated as facts, but you give a note at the bottom suggesting it's just opinion.

I'm suggesting that until you give some valid reference that the money is going to sister projects, that your post is full of FUD and not much else.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[twistedsymphony]

Not even politics but a holier than thou attitude... I own and operate collectorsedition.org it's basically a database of collector's edition video games. A vast majority of the games in the database I bought new, and have taken detailed photographs of the contents and details. then the relevant data is added to the database along with the photos and accompanying descriptions.

Looking though Wikipedia I'd notice some descriptions of the CEs for certain games would be wrong, and/or not sourced, I probably made a dozen small edits one day correcting minor errors and adding my database as a source. All of the edits were denied because my site was deemed an "unreliable source".

I don't know, when a description on Wikipedia is unsourced and says "included a soudtrack CD with 5 tracks" and I change it to read "12" tracks and site a source that has a detailed description as well as a photograph of the liner notes showing 12 tracks... I'm not quite sure how much more reliable they're looking to get.

Another instance is they had some incorrect technical specs listed for the Nissan 240sx, I own two of these cars and know quite a bit about them. I changed the uncited text and and cited a digital copy of the original Nissan Sales brochure that Nissan themselves were hosting online... again my edits were denied with no reason given.

I'd happy contribute time, knowledge, and money on a regular basis, but they've made it pretty clear that they don't want my help, and based on what I've seen on the topics I am already knowledgeable about, I've since stopped using them as a source of information altogether.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Aqualung812]

Great point. I remember creating an article on the producer of "The Dave Ramsey Show" after they won an award for best talk show. It is on 500 radio stations as well, so you think the producer would be notable.

No, fast-delete. Not notable. They would rather than their Pokemon characters and have a big red "Blake Thompson" link on the DR show page. I don't get it.

Note, I don't listen to the show often at all, and don't know the producer. I heard they won an award, and he accepted it. I was curious if he was a producer for other shows or what his history was. When I saw he didn't have page, I did some research and created the page. I figured if I was curious, others would be too.

That is the way it is supposed to work, so I thought.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Unequivocal]

Double plus. I agree. I find a lot of complaints around WP are about someone's inability to insert something they value but which isn't widely known or reported in the media.

There are good counter-examples where legitimate info is rejected for "bad" reasons of various kinds.

But as a core reference work, WP is better than anything else I've ever used. The effort to value ratio is just excellent.

I've had some run-in's with obnoxious editors messing with my stuff or personally insulting me, but I've also had lots of great cooperation and support in improving articles I've written or edited.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[TheRaven64]

And others that have just slowly eroded. For example, there used to be a side bar on all mobile telephone protocol articles, showing them all in them, grouped by generation, so you could easily see where the one you were reading about fitted in with the rest. This disappeared about a year ago. No idea why.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[mcgrew]

If that's you, then do you really think your 2c are really worth even 2c? Especially on popular articles, there has been a lot of thought that went into making them; the edit that took you 20 seconds to dream up was probably thought of already.

Did you read my comment? It only took a minute to add the content, yes, but it was about a revolutionarily addition to the old fashioned IOLs. It was FDA approved three years before I added it. Sure, somebody may have dreamed it up first, and likely did. I wouldn't doubt that a hundred people added the accomodating lens (the new one) before I did, only to have THEIR edits deleted before mine was.

Basically, unless you are willing to become "someone from Wikpedia", you're not likely to make a lasting dent

Well, I'm not. I saw a needed edit, edited, and had the edit deleted. I've got better things to do than play office politics with a bunch of strangers; I get enough of that at work.

It's like throwing a dollar in the Salvation Army bucket and seeing the bucket guy fish my dollar out and throw it on the ground.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Moryath]

Back when Jimbo's former right-hand man, Danny Wool, got the boot, he started letting slip how fast-and-loose King Jimmy The Embezzler really plays with Wikipedia finances.

Yeah. Wikipedia doesn't need money. They just need to jettison dead weight like Mad King Jimmy.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[hairyfeet]

You ever try that? I did...I got banned. I must be some super subversive or something. Hell it wasn't even an issue on a hot button topic or anything, just a simple edit over a TV show. The site said "the story and character is thus" and I pointed out that BOTH the director AND the writer did NOT want it to be thus, but it was changed by executive meddling by the network. i then linked to BOTH the blogs of the writer and the director, as well as cited where on the DVD box set you could find the director's commentary where both were pointing out the executive meddling in the last years of the series run, including the one I pointed out. It lasted a whole 12 hours before being deleted, and when I asked why I got told the matter was closed. I asked what more was required besides the Director AND the writer as far as citations, I got banned.

There are quite a few of us that liked the IDEA of Wikipedia, but found the actual site is nothing but a bunch of basement dwellers on a serious power trip. Now I wouldn't use that site for anything more exciting than info on what the atomic weight of lead is or what wires need to be switched to make a crossover cable. Anything else will most likely be guarded by a wiki-troll. Hell just look above at some of the scandal links to see how many pages are being guarded by wiki-trolls. Personally if the site disappeared tomorrow I would say "nothing of value was lost".

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[Yvanhoe]

Maybe they shouldn't put a picture. Is that an American way of doing things ? When you have a message to give, write it, don't read it in a youtube video. Want to write an edito ? I don't care to see your brushed face with a fake smile on top of the page. If I want to give, I'll give to wikipedia, not to this badly shaved man.

Also, I would like to be able to give to the American wikipedia. Being French I am automatically directed to the French foundation that manages the French wikipedia which, quite honestly, sucks hard.

Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea:

[perryizgr8]

iirc, at the start, one of wikipedia's goals was 'sum of all human knowledge'. when did this notable/non-notable shit kick in?

Big Empty Space

[BondGamer]

Isn't there a big empty space down the left side of most pages? What is the difference between it being blank or there being an advertisement there.

Re:Big Empty Space

[Neil_Brown]

What is the difference between it being blank or there being an advertisement there.

With AdBlock, the end result is much the same.

Is AdBlock sufficiently prevalent that ad-based funding is decreasingly viable? Is an advert annoying no matter what site it might be on, or are there many AdBlock users who disable blocking on sites which they want to support through that site's chosen revenue model?

Re:Big Empty Space

[ColdWetDog]

Isn't there a big empty space down the left side of most pages? What is the difference between it being blank or there being an advertisement there.

I'll bet you have a Google branded plush pony in your bed and the shirt you're wearing says either 'Izod' or 'Brawndo".

It's annoying, that's what. Even the modest, quiet, well bred Google ads of distant history are annoying. Blank space is a critically important design concept as well.

Yes, advertising can be done such that it's minimally invasive, but it's invasive nonetheless.

Re:Big Empty Space

[pz]

Isn't there a big empty space down the left side of most pages? What is the difference between it being blank or there being an advertisement there.

That is precisely the sort of attitude that gets us enhanced pat-downs and video cameras monitoring our every move.

I use Wikipedia frequently, and made a donation. Did you?

Here's a hint: the money to run Wikipedia comes from somewhere. If it came from advertising dollars, that money would ultimately be reflected in a increase in the cost of products, but because the conversion of money in your pocket through a retailer's payment processing system to the manufacturer's accounts receivable to the marketing department budget to an advertising agency to an adbuy at Wikipedia is horribly inefficient, the total cost for you, out of pocket, will be much higher than if you just send Wikipedia money. The only difference is you won't be obviously, immediately aware of it.

Please, donate directly.

For related reasons, when you donate money to a charitable or non-profit organization, don't take the gifts. That just increases their cost of acquiring your money, making your donation less efficient (and reducing the amount you can deduct on your taxes because the US government considers that a sale of goods and your donation is just the excess above fair market value for the gift you received). Just give the money.

Re:Big Empty Space

[DigitalSorceress]

The difference is that advertisers see it as their right to put in flashing/noisy "active content" ads that in some cases (I'm thinking about the recent use of DoubleClick to install driveby downloads) harmful crap on the page. I come to WikiPedia to look stuff up, not to be sold on something.

This doesn't even touch upon the potential for editorial shenanigans... great - I go to WikiPedia to see what kind of MP3 Tag management software might be available... (Free and commercial) and when I get to the articles, I'm seeing targeted ads for someone's commercial offering? yeah, ok great, I can ignore that, but one wonders if there wouldn't be potential conflict - what if the very page I was viewing on that software happened to mention the advertiser's product in a bad light? would they try and pressure that article to be changed? or what if they went and astroturfed the article to make it favor their product?

Even if the article was completely unbiased, I kind of feel that the potential for, or even the appearance of conflict of interest is too great.

Ads would reduce the credibility of WikiPedia and would potentially devalue it as a go-to source for helping improve the signal to noise ratio of today's Internet.

Re:Big Empty Space

[PyroMosh]

I need a plugin that blocks comments on slashdot and other forums where people mention how great it is that they use Ad Block.

We get it. Everyone here knows this technology exists. Some of us choose not to use it. There are half a dozen posts saying "Put up ads! I won't see them! I run Ad Block Plus!" on this article, and only 50 comments total.

You folks made a choice to opt out of the ad model, but reap the rewards of content that ads pay for anyway. I get that, and hopefully you do too. But why are you folks all so damn vocal about it? It's as if you're smug about blocking ads, and I honestly don't know why you would be smug about that.

Re:Big Empty Space

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If you're using AdBlock, you can add a filter to block wikipedia.org##div#siteNotice.

Re:Big Empty Space

[Anonymous Coward]

"You folks made a choice to opt out of the ad model, but reap the rewards of content that ads pay for anyway. I get that, and hopefully you do too. But why are you folks all so damn vocal about it? It's as if you're smug about blocking ads, and I honestly don't know why you would be smug about that."

Advertisers smugly shove everything and the kitchen sink at us day after day. Why are they so damn vocal about it? It's on the web, tv, magazines, billboards, product placement in movies and now games. i have to sit through commercials before I even get to the movie previews at the theater. We're tired of listening to it. I've got a blacklist of products I won't buy because they insist on screaming at me when their commercials come on the tube. The smugness of some adblock users probably comes from being able to say for once, hey, I don't have to look at this crap and neither do you.

i have yet to click the disable adds button on /. despite it being offered to me regularly. There are a number of sites that I frequent that use unobtrusive ads that i exclude from adblock. you may think everyone on the internet knows about ad blockers, but i still run into plenty people that have never heard of them. reactions range from "oh my god, that's amazing" to "is that legal? don't i have to watch the ads?"

Re:Big Empty Space

[QRDeNameland]

It's as if you're smug about blocking ads, and I honestly don't know why you would be smug about that.

Personally, the only time I'm ever smug about blocking ads is when I read about ads being used to deliver malware. It's not the same as ads on TVs, more like ads delivered in person to your living room by random people who might rob or vandalize you. I understand that blocking ads breaks web sites revenue models...but as long as ads remain an unnecessary malware vector, I will not feel one bit of remorse for blocking them.

Re:Big Empty Space

[QRDeNameland]

Say what you will...but when the New York Times got hit with malicious ads last year, as a regular NYT user of the site I was unaffected because of AdBlock. You should have heard the howls of those who didn't.

Re:Big Empty Space

[Tom]

Isn't there a big empty space down the left side of most pages? What is the difference between it being blank or there being an advertisement there.

One occupies just some pixels on the screen, the other occupies space in my mind (to filter out).

Or in more simple terms: Ads are fucking distracting, that's their job. Every advertisement worth its money is built and designed to catch you attention. "catch your attention" is the marketing speak for "distract you".

Re:Big Empty Space

[QRDeNameland]

So I should have allowed the bad ad and hope I don't click it accidentally?

All I'm saying is that if I don't admit the fake mailman in the first place, I don't have to worry about whether or not he's going to rob me. Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

Wrong person on the banner

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace Jimmy Wales with someone hot and you'll get many more donations.

Re:Wrong person on the banner

[pyrr]

At first glance, I thought there was a bum panhandling on Wikipedia. Then I read the caption and realized it was just Jimmy. After a week or two, it seems they at least posted a photo of him that lacked the week-old-stubble look.

losing opportunities to involve qualified professi

[commodore64_love]

That's the whole point.
It's the People's encyclopedia, not the elitists' encyclopedia. It is grown out of the generous volunteerism of billions, rather than those who are like Ebenezer Scrooge - only care about the money.

User revolt

[Gudeldar]

Wikipedia would have to pay a lot of people to edit it because a huge number of their volunteers would probably revolt and quit working on the site if there were ads on it.

Re:User revolt

[Fibe-Piper]

Wikipedia would have to pay a lot of people to edit it because a huge number of their volunteers would probably revolt and quit working on the site if there were ads on it.

There are ads on Slashdot though. We still come here and contribute. /. even rewards our patience and contributions with the means to turn these ads off.

Re:User revolt

[AdmiralXyz]

Revolt and go where? The other ad-free open-access Internet encyclopedia? There really aren't any alternatives to Wikipedia right now, so no matter how mad the purists would be there's nowhere for them to go.

Advertisers are a bad idea

[Omnifarious]

They will end up with editorial control, and that would be a very bad thing. That's a big part of why our modern news media is so awful.

Maybe they could go to a model in which people could contribute resources to handle traffic load instead of directly contributing money? The big problem here is the raft of centralized servers and databases needed to keep Wikipedia fast and responsive.

Re:Advertisers are a bad idea

[mrsteveman1]

Why wouldn't that be true of donors?

You don't think Wikipedia would feel similar pressure if the founder of Ebay decided not to donate because of a specific article on the site?

Just be super-upfront

[drumcat]

Look, PBS has ads now. They still require donations, but they have ads. Just keep the bar very high, and the disclosure very clear. Maybe you make it so that companies can advertise, but cannot advertise with any product specificity, and that all images must carry a small (a) sign to signify it's an ad? It's not impossible. Look, many companies advertise on PBS to improve their image. Wikipedia can position itself the same way... as an image builder. Just get past the begging though. It's old. If your idea is *that* good, you shouldn't have a problem getting ad money.

Re:Just be super-upfront

[Waffle Iron]

What I want to know is: Who is behind the mysterious "Viewers Like You" corporation, what do they manufacture, and why do they feel the need to sponsor almost every single PBS show?

Re:User donation model

[Omnifarious]

The conclusion presupposes three boxes, and I think you're artificially limiting your thinking by having those three boxes.

I used to donate.

[Winckle]

Every year I used to donate what I could, £5, £10, or £15 but I got so pissed off with the deletionist attitude of the last year or two I just won't give anymore. I'm sick of remembering articles, going to check them and they're gone and yet stupid shit like "List of Catgirls" manages to stay.

The most annoying thing with deletionist attitudes is that it doesn't even make sense. The less popular an article is the less resources i.e. bandwith it uses

Re:I used to donate.

[vadim_t]

Weird one. Minerva McGonagall is a catgirl? That's stretching it quite a bit.

Re:I used to donate.

[Daetrin]

"I don't know what you're talking about, because I've never seen anyone use 'resources' as a rationale for deleting an article."

No one uses "resources" as a reason why an individual article should be deleted. They use "resources" as a reason why articles need to be deleted in general. (Certainly not the only reason, as you point out "quality" is another one.)

"The idea is that no article at all is better than an article that has no systematic way of ever becoming factually correct."

I've encountered multiple articles about subjects i'm interested in that were easily verifiable and yet were deleted as being "non notable" or some such. It's happened enough times that i'm certainly not interested in donating.

Re:I used to donate.

[Kjella]

There's a lot of pages that are created on wikipedia that should be deleted, go over the AfD page and give it a read. People that have very little idea what wikipedia wants on its pages, or that blatantly ignore it to promote their own music or sports team or as their personal myspace page, one line mentions in a publication, hoaxes and so on. Sadly I think it's much the same as if you try helping out newbies, with each newbie your patience wanes until it's just RTFM!!! Same if you try fighting the endless stream of trash pages, eventually everything that doesn't fit your strict reading gets a "Delete!". I remember back in the early days of wikipedia, I added a bit to it but it was mostly about just adding information that was factual in an encyclopedic style, since unsourced facts were better than no facts. Today I'm pretty sure they'd get deleted because that's not what they want anymore - perhaps they never did but there were a lot fewer who'd delete a reasonably sane article for lack of sources. In a way you're not looking for quality contributions, you're looking for people who knows how to quote someone else without adding anything of their own. Completely different model, really.

Re:I used to donate.

[ArsonSmith]

I would, but it was deleted.

Meh

[Haedrian]

I was just telling my friend the other day - a giant picture of Jimmy or 'random blogger' is pretty much the same as an advertisment.

If they put ads, they should do them themselves (no giving it out to other companies who will track me) - and they should instead sell spaces in articles. So you look up "mopping" and you get an ad of a mopping company.

No, wikipedia has to remain ad free

[circletimessquare]

There is information.

Then there is commerce.

Whenever commerce touches information, information has a way of getting warped.

It's really as simple as that.

Single advertiser / benefactor

[Dan East]

As much traffic as Wikipedia enjoys, it seems they could have a single large advertiser / benefactor that could be promoted in a subtle, unobtrusive manner because their "ad" would be visible on every page. To me that would be preferable to context sensitive ads (Google adwords type stuff) or rotating ads which have to scream for attention and thus are a constant distraction.
PBS and other non-profit entities have been able to do similar "advertising" in a very tasteful manner for many decades (between programming - "the following is made possible by donations from..."). That seems most fitting for Wikipedia as well, which is different than flat-out commercial advertising.

They've already got cash

[arshadk]

I thought about donating some money. I use wikipedia pretty regularly and I'd like to support it. The only problem is I don't think they need any money. Their financial statements are available and it looks like they've got enough cash on hand to run for the year without any more donations. I don't see the need to add to their cushion.

Re:They've already got cash

[Eil]

Care to link? Were you talking aout this?

I find it somewhat surprising that less than half of their money is spent on servers and infrastructure. (On the other hand, it could be a lot less if they were willing to set up a secure mirror system rather than try to serve everything themselves.) Also interesting is that 21% of their total budget ($4.2 million) is planned to be spent on Community Programs. I thought delivering the world's most comprehensive encyclopedia to the masses for free was already something of a community program?

I just get the impression from Wikipedia that they're trying to run this non-profit a little too much like a business. Sure, the company itself doesn't turn a profit in the traditional sense, but I'd be very interested to know how much the staff makes and how that had scaled over time in relation to their annual budget.

Re:They've already got cash

[Seumas]

Like most other large charities, they need to continue significant fund-raising to pay for the corporate-CEO level salaries they pay each other. The actual cost of running a bunch of cheap servers on open source software and feed some bandwidth to it can't compare to the expense surely involved in paying themselves ridiculous salaries and/or bonuses.

Front page ads only?

[ubergeek65536]

How about ads on the main page. Ads for free use and no ads if you donate. Ads shouldn't be related to the page you are viewing.

Re:User donation model

[God'sDuck]

Sell books.

No seriously -- have an Amazon referral account for Wikipedia. Let users link articles to books on Amazon with more information. Link every footnote to a book to a "buy now" button. It's value-added, not random advertising, and Wikipedia would get a cut. In return for all the traffic, have Amazon serve the site for free. Then the only money needed is for the salaries of the full-time staff, which the book sales would cover.
 
Since there aren't ads everywhere, you can even continue asking for donations with a straight face.

More TFA summary stupidity

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Another snippet from the summary:

> failed to meet the company's goal until

Until. So, they *did* meet their goals. What are you complaining about??

(This is just the stupidity from the summary. There's nothing there to suggest it would be worth clicking through to the actual articles.)

Re:User donation model

[TheCarp]

How about a hybrid? Sell ads, but offset with user donations. As the user donation pool grows, the amount of advertising available, goes down.

Similar to what WBUR does. They schedule a week long fundraiser with a goal. Then before the fundraiser they start telling people "the fund raiser ends when we reach our goal".... now they are starting to even let people donate towards that goal before the fundraiser starts!

Ever since they staryed doing this, maybe 2 years ago? The fundraisers have been... reaching their goals and getting shorter! I think, at this point, they have nearly cut them in half!

Could create paid subscriptions with a value add. Maybe some new features that are a bit server intensive or require storage... like letting you keep a set of private annotations on pages, or a real time chat feature.

Look at OKCupid. There are many "A-List" members, even though the majority, and indeed the most important basic functions of the site, are all available for free.

-Steve

Here's Your Cocktail Napkin Business Plan

[RobotRunAmok]

1. Take ads. Lots of ads.

2. Hire real experts, real writers, professional editors. Toss the agenda-driven wankers and college kids.

3. Regain Credibility.

4. Profit!

Re:Here's Your Cocktail Napkin Business Plan

[RDW]

Pepsi, the Choice of a New Generation! - CITATION NEEDED.

Re:Here's Your Cocktail Napkin Business Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Pepsi, the Choice of a New Generation[1]

[1] Certified Pepsiologists at the Pepsi Foundation determine scientifically that Pepsi is freaking awesome.

Re:User donation model

[mark72005]

But we use Wikipedia so we don't have to read books.

Obligatory jwz

[chebucto]

A personal appeal to Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales (Dear Jimmy: fuck off.)

Also, was I the only one to notice that Jimbo is calling himself the Founder (ie not Co-Founder) in his Personal / Urgent appeals?

Re:Obligatory jwz

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Uncyclopedia:How To Be Funny And Not Just Stupid - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia. Featuring various appeals of their own from founder "Jimbo Wales." I like the look of the suggestive one.

politics warp things more than ads; be open

[MacAndrew]

Wikipedia's bias issues are deeply rooted in its structure, as noted elsewhere. I find it very hard to believe that being ad-free makes Wikipedia neutral; in fact, it's not neutral, especially with regard to controversial issues, and these political issues dwarf the potential ad ones.

Surely the sort of oversight and openness needed to correct the editorial problems could target ad revenue as well. I'm afraid a donation model -- which I call a "tax on the nice" -- penalizes people of good intentions (over the 99% who grab freebies and run) and doesn't provide reliable revenue. Wikipedia has proven its point that it can be a critical resource -- if one is researching ball bearings and not some politician. Wikipedia deserves our investment.

Now if Wikipedia is going to start tracking which articles I read, screw them. :) Again: Transparency, accountability. I don't think they're there yet, funding or no.

Re:politics warp things more than ads; be open

[circletimessquare]

Anything written by human beings is biased. You can't scrub the bias out of Wikipedia, ever. All you can do is minimize it, and I think Wikipedia does a good job at that.

Look at the "discussion" tab: when it comes to politically charged issues, the concept of bias is simply bombed, stabbed, nuked, and otherwise blown to smithereens. Neutrality is simply impossible.

So when I see people like you, uncomfortable with Wikipedia's "bias," I have to think that you are expecting the impossible. That you don't understand what it means for an issue to be contentious and emotional, and therefore impossible to scrub of bias.

You are somehow expecting Wikipedia to solve a problem no one can solve. So do you not have a Wikipedia entry on something like abortion or palestine? No, you have a page on those issues. And you will never satisfy everyone, and someone will always be screaming bias. C'est la vie. Get used to it.

Basically, you have to stop talking about Wikipedia's bias, it has none. The truth is, on some subjects, everyone has a bias, including you. And this shows on the Wikipedia entry, in what is written, or your reaction to it. Some issues are just deeply charged. So say something in the dicussion tab, or edit a Wikipedia entry. You can't do any better than that. This applies to all of life, not just Wikipedia: go out there and let your voice be heard. You can't passively sit back and expect Wikipedia, let alone ANY media source, to somehow be magically unbiased on issues which are deeply emotional and contentious.

Have your bullshit meter on at all times, and don't hold Wikipedia to impossible standards. That's the best it can ever get, with Wikipedia, and in life.

Re:politics warp things more than ads; be open

[locallyunscene]

There's top down bias, and then there's bottom up bias.

The original bias of Wikipedia was mostly bottom up bias. Lots of users could edit Wikipedia, but only certain demographics are actually interested editing a given article.

Lots of people don't like the new editing system because it can introduce a top down bias. A small group of editors or even a single editor and effectively control the tone of an article. The goal of this is to be slanted towards encyclopedia-style objectivity, but it is a bias that didn't exist previously.

People fear that advertising could introduce another top-down bias as it has in other organizations. The higher ups at Wikipedia might be worried about an advertiser pulling income from the site if it disagreed with one of their articles.

Re:Trust

[clarkkent09]

The same problem exists with the donations model. How do you know that large donors are not affecting the content? For that matter how do you know that the money they are asking for is even needed? Maybe they received enough already to run the site for a while and now they are pocketing the rest. The trust issue doesn't magically appear only when there is a for-profit (gasp) company involved, in an actual commercial transaction, free from "we do it for the people" bullshit. It exists all the time as long as there are human beings involved.

Blame Jimbo

[billcopc]

I think a lot of people have grown annoyed with Jimbo Wales over the years, myself included, over his reactionary tendency toward censorship. All it takes is for one semi-famous person to criticize some aspect of Wikipedia, be it drugs, sex, or religion, and Jimbo would go in and radically truncate a bunch of pages. Nevermind that he was redacting factual information, he just wanted to "save face". Quality of information seemed to matter less than it's potential for scandal, which is a fantastic way to piss off the liberal-leaning intellectual elite (and by liberal I don't mean the imbecilic U.S. political label).

From day one, he's treated Wikipedia like his own politically-correct version of the truth, alienating countless key supporters in the process. Take him off those freakin ads and maybe, in a few years, people will forget that this megalomaniac took a big crap all over their masterfully crafted articles.

The information is already warped

[snowwrestler]

Commerce is not the only thing that can warp information. It can also be warped by individuals willing to spend their time pushing their own opinions, and excluding others.

Wikipedia editing has become increasingly bureaucratic and exclusive, which IMO is one reason that they are having trouble raising money. Personally, I'm not going to give to Wikipedia as it exists now: the personal playground of Jimmy Wales and his anointed administrative minions.

Wikipedia is already serving ads--they feature Jimmy's puppy-dog eyes begging for money. Broadening the ad base would do a lot to make the organization grow up and break out of the near-cult it has become.

about.com

[Dalroth]

You want to see what Wikipedia will look like if they start accepting advertising and basing their revenue model on that? Go to about.com. No Thanks,I like Wikipedia just the way it is.

I'll donate when Jimmy Wales ...

[GrantRobertson]

... honestly and completely reveals his salary, other compensations, and expenses. Non-profits are supposed to report expenses but his are hidden in vague, general categories.

P.S. I posted a similar message on Huffington Post and they deleted it.

I might be tempted to donate if it was anyone else

[sirwired]

Okay, I get that Wikipedia doesn't run for free. But plastering a big picture of "Jimbo" at the top of every page is precisely the wrong way to go about it. If I'm going to donate money, it won't be because Jimmy Whales himself asked, it'll be because Wikipedia is a mostly-reliable resource of knowledge.

This should have been a "We, Wikipedia, need money" campaign, not a "I, Jimmy Whales, want you to give money to Wikipedia" campaign. And showcasing the unpaid contributors doesn't make me want to give money either. Personal appeals for money work if the person is a celebrity, and they don't actually run, or work for, the charity they want you to support. Otherwise, stick to appealing to ideas, principles, and projects, and leave the individual out of it.

If there's no ad, it's more likely fair use

[tepples]

Wikipedia occasionally makes unlicensed use of copyrighted works under fair use (17 USC 107), such as using an image that identifies the subject of the article if the subject is a non-free work of authorship. A use is more likely to be considered a fair use if it is non-commercial, and if there's no ad, Wikipedia qualifies as "non-commercial".

Underwriting vs. standard advertising

[traindirector]

Look, PBS has ads now.

PBS uses underwriting, which is a rather limited form of advertising. Non-commercial television and radio stations are limited to giving sponsors underwriting spots in the U.S. You can call them "ads", but they really aren't as obnoxious (although some I've seen recently push the distinction to the limit), and they only appear at the beginning and end of a program.

Wikipedia's article on underwriting is okay, but not really good. The PBS information is clipped from elsewhere, and there is no mention of specific restrictions for non-commercial radio.

In any case, I just donated $35, seeing as how the plea is now urgent. Personally, I usually ignore the banners when I see them, as I assume a lot of people are donating to Wikipedia as something that is of interest to everyone. I generally make my donations to organizations that serve niche interests that don't see as much traffic. A lot of people probably take the same approach. If Wikipedia really needs the money, I hope they have a plan to make it quite clear to these people. This /. article did the trick for me.

Re:User donation model

[metrometro]

Link every footnote to a book to a "buy now" button.

This would have unfortunate consequences for citation spamming.

But overall I really like the idea. I think you have to charge for the links, as well as take a cut via Amazon. Wikipedia creates a paid placement box on every article, full disclosure, with a max of three books in it, and auction the locations at runtime, adwords style. Desirable articles (Argentina tourism) would have an arms race to keep Lonely Planet on top, while the rest will take smaller cuts across the VERY long tail of Wikipedia traffic.

Re:User donation model

[houghi]

We do not like what you wrote about us concerning the latest events. Edit it or we take away your site in 20 minutes.

Signed:
Amazon Management

(19 minutes and counting)

just add paid memberships already

[PJ6]

The donation system isn't working out because it's not INTEGRATED with the Wikipedia workflow. What is it with the pleading picture that pops up everyone once in a while? How stupid can you get? Just give users the opportunity to become "paying members" while they are going about their normal business. Put a link for "become a paying member (it's cheap!)" at the header of every edit page. Make the cost small, like $5/month, and automatically recurring. You wouldn't need to offer any privileges to being a paid member other than allowing users to show it in their status. I bet you nearly every single one of those 1%'ers that do most of the work would member up, and many more besides.

No, no, no

[Animats]

Terrible idea. If Wikipedia starts running ads, the better volunteers will quit. Who wants to work for someone else for free?

Look what happened to Wikia. It was supposed to be the commercial version of Wikipedia, with ads. So what's on Wikia? The Star [Trek|Wars|Gate|Craft] wikis. The "Cocktails" wiki. The travel wiki. The coffee wiki. Wikia does junk culture. Nobody serious goes there, and it doesn't make much money.

Wales thought he could take the Wikipedia concept and monetize it. He was very wrong. He thought he'd get a private jet out of the deal. He was wrong. He thought that Wikia Search would rival Google. That shut down in 2009.

Everybody else who's tried to monetize this idea has failed, too. Citizendium, Google Knol - all flops.

It takes an incredible amount of volunteer effort and organization to keep Wikipedia from turning into junk. Lose those volunteers and you're toast.

Re:User donation model

[Teancum]

Instead, Wikipedia is outsourcing the book selling. I don't know what financial arrangements are currently being made between PediaPress and the Wikimedia Foundation, but there has been some arrangement which has been made and it is at the moment an exclusive arrangement so far as publishing a "book" containing Wikipedia content in a book form (and they are also doing this with the other Wikimedia sister projects as well).

I do think that some kind of more formalized book preparing volunteer group could be organized to separate out the spam from the quality materials on Wikipedia and to prepare what I think would be a high quality book of Wikimedia material... where the results would be to have something of a "product" that people would be willing to buy. Publishing content is much more than simply throwing some random text on a web page and throwing on a picture or two. You may even need a professional coordinator or two for the effort, but the main end-task would be to set up something that would be of comparable quality to something like say the CRC handbook or some other non-fiction reference guide.

My largest problem with trying to get an effort like this going has been trying to find a proper forum to present my ideas. I've tried to propose this idea on the Wikimedia Meta website and the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list, but those who happen to be regular readers of those forums are not really interested in being involved at that level. The Wikipedia Village Pump has also similarly fallen flat with any sort of response to setting something like this up. I know that efforts like Distributed Proofreaders exist that are somewhat similar and seem to bring in people with talent and abilities to do the "post-editing" document preparation that would be needed to turn quality Wikipedia articles or featured Wikibooks into a finished book, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do that either.

Another issue is that there seems to be a group that wants to automate the process of creating books entirely. While I applaud that effort so far as something is better than nothing at all, I think something is missing when the whole process is automated. The books I see are certainly of inferior quality to books which are hand-made with a little extra TLC which has been put forward into its preparation... and I've seen some amazing quality books based upon Wikimedia project content which has been put together. The question is how to set that up, and for those parts that could use some assistance through automation perhaps could be used but also there should be the ability to "step in" and tweak that automation as well to refine the process and make it better.

On the whole, I do think this is a missed opportunity for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Re:User donation model

[Hazelfield]

Do you think Amazon would be happy about an article like this?

Problem is, when you get a big sponsor you lose some independency. You lose credibility. Random ads showing up on the pages? Fine. One big company that has the power to shut down the entire site? Maybe not a very good idea.

A conflict of interest is bad not only because what could happen, but because of what you suspect could happen. Maybe Amazon would tolerate the negative article, but let's say it got changed or removed for some reason. It could be perfectly legit, but everyone would suspect Amazon had something to do with it, so Wikipedia would lose credibility.

I think if Wikipedia decides to do ads, it needs to do it in a way that doesn't in any way compromise the integrity of the articles.

Multi Tiered System

[RudyHartmann]

Why not take ads that only appear to the freeloaders? If you get a paying subscription or donate, they can set it up so you won't see the ads.

Yup, go for the ads

[FridayBob]

There's a whole corner of Wikipedia, a science subject, that owes almost its entire existence to over 20,000 of my edits contributed over a 3-year period. I learned a lot during that time, which I think is reflected in the quality of the articles I worked on, but sadly Wikipedia did not. In the end I was spending way too much of my time defending the way those articles were written from complete debutantes who had less of an idea what they were doing than when I started. I felt like a blade of grass in somebody's lawn: wanting to grow higher, but regularly being cut back down to size.

I suppose one of my main problems was that there has always been considerable public interest in the subject I was writing about, but at the same time there has always existed a lot of fear and misunderstanding. Consequently, after I had carefully researched the subject of each page, filling it with facts and tagging every sentence and paragraph with one or more references, others would often come by and, totally unimpeded by any knowledge of the subject, just start making changes as they saw fit. I could argue with them, typically regarding the quality of their sources, but they were often stubborn and refused to understand. I could point out that they were not following Wikipedia's own guidelines, but they didn't see it that way. The administrators and arbitrators didn't have any knowledge of the subject either and figured we just had to remain civil and reach a consensus.

It's been almost two years since I stopped contributing and many of the articles I worked so hard on are now steadily decaying, reflecting less fact and more public ignorance. The admins should be looking for better ways to preserve good edits and prevent bad ones. However, not only does Wikipedia lack an effective mechanism to counter quality deterioration, they aren't even looking for one. The current approach was probably more correct five or six years ago, when any information was better than no information, but now they need a new strategy, or else they stand to lose as much as they gain.

Oh, I still visit the site often enough, as most of us probably do, but as a result of my experience I no longer have the respect for Wikipedia that I once did. If Jimbo thinks advertising on Wikipedia's pages would be degrading, I don't see how that would be worse than the way the project is currently being managed. So go ahead, rent out some banner space; it won't make a difference to me anyway.

Annual Report from 08-09

[arshadk]

I might've been looking at the 08-09 annual report, that's all they've got up: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report But saying they need $16M urgently, when their expenses were only $5.6M in 08-09 seems sketchy.

Companies love making themselves look charitable..

[gmarsh]

Sort of like the Maxwell House "brew some good" ads. Which don't really advertise coffee, they just show a can of coffee with a backdrop of some charitable work that the company donated to going on in the background. I'm sure the cost of airing the ad exceeds the cost of the charitable work by a huge amount, but at least they're doing something. There's plenty of other ads like that airing on TV right now with the same theme.

I'd say let companies do the same sort of thing with Wikipedia. If a company donates above a certain minimum amount, let them have an unobtrusive ad display every so often where they can brag about donating to the site. Let them show a cup of coffee, box of KD, a server rack or whatever the company's product is, let them make a small reference to their product, etc... but the main theme of the ad has to be "We donated to this place.". Clicking on their ad wouldn't bring them to their site, it'll bring them to a page within Wikipedia which has more information about the donation(s) they've made.

If I logged in and saw a small "Wikipedia runs on Dunkin' - Proud supporter of this site." image in the upper right corner of the screen, I'd honestly be pleased to see that - while I've never donated to Wikipedia, and feel somewhat ashamed about it because I do spend a fair bit of time on there, I've got huge respect for people and companies that do. And unlike the aforementioned Maxwell House ad, 100% of their advertising cost goes to Wikipedia. Can't knock that.

But if I saw a "Announcing the new MochaLatteChocoChino from Dunkin Donuts!" image in the middle of the screen, halfway through an article, I'd be seriously pissed off at that.

Re:Wikipedia already warped by bias and politics .

[perpenso]

Its unclear as to whether letting google or some other third party feed ads is more or less warping than politics or bias.

The question is irrelevant, since adding commercial bias through ad-dependence wouldn't eliminate personal bias unless it also involved eliminating community editing completely. So it doesn't matter if advertising is, on its own, more distorting than the existing sources of distortion, since advertising adds to, rather than replacing, those sources.

The problem with your argument is that politics, bias and advertising are not equivalents. Politics and bias can not save wikipedia but advertising may. If wikipedia fails no good is served. In its failure it would not even achieve a philosophical victory given that it is already tainted. Its a negative/negative decision. The lesser negative of an incremental and possibly inconsequential(*) tainting versus the far greater negative of complete failure.

(*) Ads are not negotiated or served directly by wikipedia. A third party aggregates and serves targeted ads. Google for example, an organization that already has an influence on wikipedia via its multi-million dollar donations.