Should Wikipedia Sell Advertising? 317
The Narrative Fallacy writes "The LA Times has an interesting story on the state of Wikipedia's finances and how with 300 million page views a day, the organization could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if it sold advertising space. Without advertising the foundation has a tough time raising its annual budget of $4.6 million. The 45,000 or so individuals who contribute annually give an average of $33 each, so campaigns, which are conducted online, raise only about one-third of what's needed. As Wikimedia adds features to its pages, such as videos, costs will rise. 'Without financial stability and strong planning, the foundation runs the risk of needing to take drastic steps at some point in the next couple years,' said Nathan Awrich, a Wikipedia editor who supports advertising."
Maybe... (Score:-1, Interesting)
My sympathy is limited (Score:5, Interesting)
If it comes down to it (Score:4, Interesting)
If the video feature costs more than donations can support, I'm ok with no videos on wikpedia. Perhaps another seperate wikisite can have video with advertisements, while wikipedia itself could maintain its adfree status.
They should, begging for money is no business mode (Score:5, Interesting)
Go for advertising. Buy out books to the public domain, give back some money to wikepedia authors (e.g. give money to proven authors for writing additional articles),
But no money means no money for good ideas. And Wikipedia will stay vulnerable to attacks from someone with money (think Google Knol).
Yes yes, money changes people. Articles may get flawed to get more money. If you think, Wikipedia must stay independent, make it independent. Create a Wikipedia-Ad-foundation, that tries to get as much money as possible, but give them absolutly no control over Wikipedia-The-Content-Organisation. Both orgs should be absolutly independent.
And so you'd have a lot of money *and* complete seperation of concerns.
And there are *so* many unbelievably good ways to spend money.
Re:obviously they should sell advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit.
They can adopt distributed updates and such and ask universities to help with the bandwidth costs. Instead I guess they want to keep all the chips in hand so that they could one day turn into a billion dollar company.
Wikipedia is run by submitters and editors. If people feel that updating and maintaining wikipedia gives their habits away to advertisers, then it will also kill wikipedia. There will be startups that will focus on just music or movies or just on mathematics and provide a better experience per the negatives of advertising. Most people end up in Wikipedia through google searches and it won't take long for the wikipedia articles to go stale while the contributors move somewhere else.
Plus, those bandwidth heavy images, videos and sounds isn't updated frequently and can be asked to be cached in distributed storage across the internet in universities. Since article updates propagation might be hard in distributed file systems, at least the media should be straightforward.
There is a lot of stuff that can be done.
Well ..... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm already highly aggressive with blocking all advertising and user-tracking anyway, so it won't affect me personally. One of these days, I even plan to start reselling ADSL with a transparent proxy configured my own special way, so other people can also enjoy the same advertisement-free Internet experience (and I can make a few quid as a secondary consideration).
Links to commercial content. (Score:5, Interesting)
Something that adds to the value of the site would be good - paid-for "related" links to commercial sites.
Data recovery - link to services. Bridge construction - links to firms building these. Encryption - encryption software. Every single pharmaceutical - online pharmacy. Every single book or movie - amazon.com or other such. So if you're willing to pay for what you've just learned about, you know where to go to buy it or have it done, or learn more about it.
Is it just me... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not really going off-topic: my point is that ads really aren't a problem in these high-bandwidth times - at least they're somewhat targeted and they don't intrude.
The problem is, though, that they do. Sometimes the ads on
I have no problem with ads - but they should be tested to see if they work on the 'most-popular' (depending on point of view) browser. Otherwise, don't be bitchin' at me cos I flashblock your ass.
AdSense for logged-out users only? (Score:-1, Interesting)
Make sense?
Re:My sympathy is limited (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly because SFPD would be very hesitant about helping anybody raid their offices, there would be protests, the black mask group, etc.
Re:Google is good (Score:1, Interesting)
The "do no evil" Google died in 2004.
What about sponsers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe a single link on the front page to link to the top 1000 donations of all time and top 1000 donations in the last 12 months will be a nice compromise.
Re:obviously they should sell advertising (Score:4, Interesting)
The key is to do a good job on integrating the ads into the site design, so they don't feel intrusive nor are they confused with content.
If you provide the best possible service, people will use it. If you are clear about what is advertising and what is content, people won't distrust you. If you aren't so greedy about selling eyeballs that you abuse the user's time by making him cut through a thicket of advertisements to get to his stuff (like Yahoo), you end up selling a smaller amount of prime real estate than a acres and acres of dump.
Better Ways Without Crapping It Up (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the whole point of Wikipedia is that the content of every article is totally controlled by the crowd that's editing it. Implying the editorial voice of Wikipedia endorses those products in the ads will introduce distrust of the Wikipedia editorial voice when people don't like the advertised products (or just the ad itself, or just advertising). Or introduce unwarranted trust in those people who feel more comfortable when they're embedded in a sea of familiar logos, even if they content of the article should look suspicious.
Wikipedia should just raise money in other ways that don't muddy the line between editor and publisher, just like newspapers are believed to do properly (but don't, because they embed ads).
The foundation can sell paper volumes, or magazine subscriptions about the state of Wikipedia - which could contain ads.
It could charge schools whose campuses register above some high threshold of use. Those schools are reselling the content as education, either for school tax fees or private tuitions. They can afford to pay a fee for the resale of the content, and they're too much sitting ducks to try evasive actions (like IP spoofing) that can be caught.
It could sell T-shirts and other schwag.
It could charge its most active contributors small subscription fees. Charging those people who do the most work on the content might be counterintuitive: aren't they already giving more than others, in work if not in money? But those people are clearly getting a lot more use out of Wikipedia than the average person, and are probably addicted. They're the least likely to stop being part of the community if they have to pay, while scaring the others away will kill Wikipedia. And they're the ones most likely to care about the argument "but if you don't pay a little, Wikipedia will die", because they've got so much invested in it already. If the fee is like $10 a year for people who post over 100 edits in "recent edits" [wikipedia.org], that's $50,000. If it's $5 for those posting over 10 or 20 recent edits anytime in a year, that's probably several hundred thousand dollars. Those people aren't going to give up their habit. If they offer them a mandatory $5 for their name on a "page of fame", or sell them a $5 T-Shirt for $20 with their name and count on it, they could make $millions.
Wikipedia is a community. One with varying degrees, whose members get all kinds of benefit from it. There are plenty of ways to monetize the benefits, especially for those getting the most, and those with little alternative to quit it.
Why don't we do their advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)
Think this is uncommon? I certainly don't.
So. How do we "monetize" this resource? Let them run ads generating income for Wikipedia.
Someone(tm) in Wikipedia, or some trustworthy foundation, should set up an account somewhere, and then volunteers will make a few widgets to easily add ads to your site, a Wordpress plugin, banner rotation so you can donate a certain percentage of page impressions... I'm sure more things will come up.
Re:Oooh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:obviously they should sell advertising (Score:2, Interesting)
Ads are not the only model of economy to provide a free service on internet. That's google that wants to make us think that.
Re:Google is good (Score:3, Interesting)
As for hardware expenses. Wikipedia buys all of their own equipment rather than leasing it from any provider (which would save them quite a bit of money in the short term, especially since they keep buying hardware to replace old hardware.) Their rapid and aggressive growth would have made leasing servers much more effective.
If Mozilla is any indication, Wikipedia could be making quite a bit of cash just working out an agreement selling targeted advertising from these providers simply on the search pages. No ads on the content at all, simply the search pages. Hell, you could offer to have it turned off for registered users!
Re:obviously they should sell advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:obviously they should sell advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
LS
Re:If it comes down to it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:obviously they should sell advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
Make it distributed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've got a better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
While I had the same joke come to mind, I think the idea has serious merit.
Link to ads on separate page (Score:3, Interesting)
And then advertisers could pay for better placement etc. on the AD PAGE, if they felt the urge. Thus the Wiki content would remain unsullied, yet Wikipedia could bring in some cash.
Re:Prepare yourself (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a reason we don't and it's not that our visitors would object. IANAA and IANATL, but I do speak to them on occasion. Advertising revenues are what is known as "unrelated business taxable income". Notice the word taxable. It complicates life for a non-profit. Taxable income over a small threshold means that the organizations tax returns must be made public. If contributions and government support fall below 33% of total income, the organization no longer qualifies as "publicly supported." In essence, too much advertising income can jeopardize your status as a non-profit.
Re:obviously they should sell advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Prepare yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
I support AdWords type advertising, no absurd banners, and only across the top of the article, just above the tabs that say "Article, Discuss, Edit this Page, History".
Heck - if they can generate enough income, contributors to articles who receive a "rating" of some sort from, let's say
Now to just figure out how far back do you go to reward past contributors. If you edit anonymously you obviously lose the chance at getting paid.