[WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

[Stan Shebs]

Peter Mackay wrote:

>>From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
>>[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs
>>
>>charles matthews wrote:
>>
>
>>>(i) If the market is really saying that there is a huge revenue 
>>>available since people 'in general' don't mind ads (the good French 
>>>verb is 'mithridatiser', I recall), why is no corporation not 
>>>sincerely chasing this money with a high-quality WP clone?
>>>
>>Since there are already mirrors with ads, yes, there are 
>>people chasing that money now. A high-quality clone that 
>>could compete with WP's name recognition would require 
>>significant investment up front, and take several years to 
>>establish itself in the public's mind;
>>
>
>Your idealism and loyalty is laudable, but remember that in terms of
>quality, a teenager with a bit of Linux knowledge can download the whole lot
>for free and get it operational in an afternoon.*
>
That would be the "low-quality" clone. One Linux box is easily
slashdotted; the current WP installation laughs at Slashdot,
or so I'm told. Our teenager would have to buy 100+ machines
and get them all working in concert before going live.

>
>And I rather suspect that our "name recognition" is due more to being up
>near the top of Google search results than any other single factor. If
>Google developed their own product, I can confidently predict that it would
>be way cooler than WP, and that they would bump their own results above WP's
>in Google searches.
>
Well, their motto is supposedly "don't be evil", but of course if
they *were* truly evil, they would lie about their motto. :-)

Stan