Wikipedia Meets $16M Budget Goal 255
netbuzz writes "Thanks to some 630,000 individual contributions that averaged $22 apiece, Wikipedia has reached its fundraising goal of $16 million, founder Jimmy Wales announced over the weekend. Writes Wales, '... this year is a little more incredible than most because this year we celebrate Wikipedia's tenth anniversary. It's so important that we kick the year off just like this: by fully funding the Wikimedia Foundation's budget to support Wikipedia and all the sister projects as we head into the next decade of our work together.' The online encyclopedia now boasts of being the Internet's fifth largest site, which renews questioning by some as to whether it can afford over the long haul to stand by its policy of refusing advertising."
Re:Begging (Score:5, Insightful)
First Address Targeted Advertising, Then We'll See (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't surprise me to see Wikipedia go this way.
This is fine reasoning, even the opinion article linked to advocates this. But there is an important issue that needs to be addressed first and that is how ads are handled for each particular page. Google's highest bidder model is what I am most afraid of. These don't even have to be selling advertisements. For example if I went to the page on Anti-lock Braking Systems I would suspect automakers would pay large amounts of money to be the ad banner for that page with the simple statement of '<highest bidding automaker> provides the #1 ABS with a safety rating surpassing all others.'
... if not for no one else than at least to a high degree for me.
And, though insanely lucrative, a part of me fears that this would really disrupt or even destroy the concept of a peer reviewed encyclopedia. When I edit a page and look at it, I don't want to see some banner ad with lies or half-truths at the top of it and you know as well as I that that is exactly what advertising degrades to. The problem is that online advertising has become so savvy that these pages would specifically be targeted en mass by manufacturers and bid on through whoever provides the advertising for Wikipedia. And I will make the statement that giving them the ability to put advertising would be severely detrimental to the integrity for Wikipedia
Re:Begging (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I feel like I prefer the ads than the constantly begging for money...
Re:Advertising is evil (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to assume your "biG" is a Google reference.
So you're saying that Google, a company that makes almost every penny of its income in the form of advertising revenue, should buy Wikipedia and offer it as a free service to everyone, denying themselves the only possible reason they'd ever want to buy it?
Don't get me wrong, having Google support Wikipedia is a great idea given their drive and desire to make information available to all (Google Maps/Earth, Google Books, etc), but there would have to be ads.
If Google did it, it would probably be AdWords, so it wouldn't be terribly intrusive and the ads would be useful, but there would be ads. And google-analytics, which wouldn't be even less desirable.
Re:Begging (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer to put my money where my mouth is and support public radio. After not watching any commercial news for probably the last few years and just relying on NPR and BBC for the most part, I happened to visit a relative when the TV news came on. I am not exaggerating when I say the news show had a jittery cartoon-like appearance in its speech and presentation style. And it was mostly commercials. That is the mindless garbage you get when you let someone else pay for your news.
Re:Begging (Score:5, Insightful)
>Sometimes I feel like I prefer the ads than the constantly begging for money...
Indeed ... until, I's warrant, you have reason to consider the power and influence the companies that adverise, then exert over the content broadcast.
Corporate censorship is pernicious as government censorship (esp. as we've seen recently where the two walk arm-in-arm).
Re:First Address Targeted Advertising, Then We'll (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought this was self-destructive behavior on Slashdot's part.
I can't speak for others but just the fact that I was given the option to block ads at the site level is enough for me to allow them. I feel that little checkbox is a sign of respect from this site and since I'm too cheap to pay to be a subscriber, I show my respect by leaving the ads in place.
Ads?? But the annual fund raiser was a success! (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't understand the mentality of the story summary.
The news is: the annual fund raiser was a success. It raised more money than ever before, in a shorter time than the previous fund raisers.
How does raising oodles of money without ads make someone wonder if ads will soon be required?
The news story answers this question: No, there is clearly no need for ads.
Ads could even ruin Wikipedia's funding model. Would so many people donate if there were ads and if Wikipedia had a conflict of interest (don't offend the advertisers)?
TFA misses the point (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA misses the point.
He's used to dealing with companies whose goal is to make money.
The goal of Wikipedia is not to make money.
The goal is to have reliable, objective information, and it's an ongoing effort to do that already.
Advertising will make it worse. If Pepsi-Cola is a major advertiser, will that affect the presence of unflattering material on Pepsi-Cola's page? The experience of advertiser influence on print and broadcasting media is that it will.
Financial analysts made similar recommendations for Craigslist. Craigslist could make more money if they took advertising. But the purpose of Craigslist wasn't to make money. Craig already had money. He wanted to do something cool.
It's like saying, "Your household is operating according to the wrong model. If your wife were to work as an escort, and if you were to sell your children for body parts, you could make a lot more money." But the purpose of your household isn't to maximize your income.
Re:Begging (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First Address Targeted Advertising, Then We'll (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia can make the ad section blatantly obvious, so to distinguish between ads and content.
I think you missed eldavojohn's point. The fear is that the ads will inevitably leak into the content -- that is, not only will you have the "blatantly obvious" ads on some separate section of the page, you'll also have content rewritten to push products. And this fear is quite justified. Any time you take money from someone, you have aligned your interests with theirs. We /.ers love to complain, with good reason, about the "Senator from Disney" and the blatant corporate spin in the mass media, and it's easy enough to see why this happens: campaign contributions and advertising money set the agenda. There's no particular reason to assume Wikipedia would be immune to this sort of corruption.