Should Wikipedia Just Accept Ads Already? 608
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.'"
Big Empty Space (Score:4, Interesting)
Advertisers are a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Just be super-upfront (Score:5, Interesting)
They've already got cash (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:User donation model (Score:2, Interesting)
Well.....
The "ad model" doesn't work that great either according to NBC and FOX Broadcast executives. They've lost a lot of money these last two years, and now they are moving to a subscription fee model (~50 cents per cable home) instead of providing free programming.
Trivia: Most Viewed Networks (Sept2009-August2010):
#1 FOX
#2 CBS
#3 ABC
#4 NBC
#5 CW
#6 Univision
#7 MyNetTV / Ion (tie)
#8 Telmundo
Re:User donation model (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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
If there's no ad, it's more likely fair use (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea: (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
No, no, no (Score:5, Interesting)
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:They've already got cash (Score:5, Interesting)
Care to link? Were you talking aout this [wikimediafoundation.org]?
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.
Annual Report from 08-09 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yo, Jimmy, I've got an idea: (Score:2, Interesting)
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: (Score:5, Interesting)
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.