[WikiEN-l] Amazonified Wikipedia

[Magnus Manske]

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> We were not consulted, and are currently fully examining this. It is not
> official or endorsed by us.

Thanks for clarifying.


Now, here is an idea we might be able to turn this on its head to our
advantage (warning, radical notion ahead):
1. Get "buy-in" from companies for business collaboration
2. Leave Wikipedia as it is, but have a little "products" button somewhere
3. When (and only when) the user clicks that button, links to some
articles get an icon similar to the Amazon mouseover one
4. This would show (on mouseover) links/previews/etc. for related
products, pre-arranged with companies
5. These items would be very specific (a specific book, car etc.), so
no useless search-based spam list
6. Wikipedia gets money per product, or per mouseover, or per click,
or per order, or any combination thereof

Yes, I know we had "ads on Wikipedia" discussions before. I've
probably seen them all. This is not about ads, or even opt-in ads.
This is about the user deciding (on an ad-free Wikipedia) he wants to
buy some product mentioned on the page, and see precise offers for
these products, if and when he wants them, on demand.

I just thought it might be worth mentioning this idea. I won't be
offended if it doesn't fly :-)

Magnus