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:

[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:

[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:

[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:

[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:

[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.

Wrong person on the banner

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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: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?

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: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: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.

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:Here's Your Cocktail Napkin Business Plan

[RDW]

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

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 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.

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.

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".

Re:Big Empty Space

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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

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.

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.