Peering at the Alexa graphs, it seems that WP has within the past day or so
gone ahead of bbc.co.uk, the BBC website, on all three standard measures.
This means that either we enter the Top 20 Websites very shortly - or the
servers China Syndrome on us (which considering that two of the three graphs
are for practical purpose going vertical in 2006, and the third shows page
hits doubling in December, they might well do).
WP Air - message from the flight crew - please fasten your seatbelts,
clear-air turbulence ahead - and the rest is in your hands, if not laps.
Charles
I thought this was topical given current discussions...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [HelpDesk-l] advertising on Wikipedia
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 19:51:48 -0500
From: admin <pscolnik(a)kensingtonga.com>
Reply-To: Help desk for questions about Wikimedia projects
<helpdesk-l(a)Wikimedia.org>
To: <helpdesk-l(a)wikimedia.org>
I thought that authors were not allowed to advertise on Wikipedia. In the
article on lanolin, the author mentions Lansiloh, a commercial brand of
lanolin.
Thank you.
Janny Hyman
-------- End forwarded message -----------
Ho hum...
--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
I'm absolutely opposed to ads appearing anywhere on Wikipedia or any
commercially-influenced content for that matter. Jimbo says that people will
question "why miss out on all that revenue?" To me this is a backwards way
of looking at the question of ads. I say "why risk introducing ads if they
are not really needed?" Some argue they are "needed" because the foundation
needs more money. If this is the case, then the question should be "how can
Wikimedia generate revenue?"
Given the large number of reasons why there should not be ads (I won't
repeat all of them), Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation should be funded
by donations or other sources which can have no special influence over the
content. The donors ought to including big corporations, again with no
special privileges to commercially influence Wikipedia. These corporations
would be ones which derive value from Wikipedia by the mere fact that it
exists and has thousands of editors worldwide; whose business model depends
on the existence of Wikipedia, and the Wikipedia community which encourages
many individual contributions. [Recently, Lisa Lynch blogged about why
Google and Yahoo commercially benefit from Wikipedia and this is a very
important perspective. Wikipedia is very useful for microscale data
mining/analysis (regardless of what value it might have for the individual
readership)<http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/12/why_google_and.html>].
Why shouldn't the companies making money from the Wikipedia data at the
microscale should be the primary funders of Wikipedia?
Lisa
Would adopting ads on Wikipedia.org change the situation around image licensing?
I'm mostly thinking of non-commercial only images, but I'd also like
to know whether it would weaken our fair use arguments.
BTW I wouldn't mind non-obtrusive ads (a'la gmail) if it means that
the servers are more responsive and the software is more featureful.
Several Mediawiki features are not developed or simply not enabled,
because the servers wouldn't be able to handle the load.
-- nyenyec
On 1 Jan 2006 at 16:17, Nyenyec N <nyenyec(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> BTW I wouldn't mind non-obtrusive ads (a'la gmail) if it means that
> the servers are more responsive and the software is more featureful.
But would the ads always stay "non-obtrusive"? Google has, so far,
been pretty good at keeping its ads from interfering with its
content, but they seem to be the rare exception. All too many sites
that have gone the "ad-supported" route, even ones that started out
in a solidly noncommercial way with no ads of any sort, have been
unable to resist going ever further down the path of intrusiveness,
including popups, popunders, flashy animations, and all sorts of
silly tricks with layers and scripts that make the ads jump all over
the place and get in the way. Furthermore, the entire design of the
site starts being made with the ads in mind rather than the users,
for instance breaking articles up artificially into bite-size chunks
where you have to keep following "Next" links, in order to serve more
ads, and using fixed-pixel-width layouts so they always know exactly
where the ads fit in, and the main content ends up in a narrow bacon-
strip column.
If you've got problems with unresponsive servers on Wikipedia, just
try using a site that gets ads from various remote servers, and when
they're running slowly (as happens often) the whole site stalls in
its loading and rendering until the ad manages to load. The ads'
scripting keeps getting more devious all the time in order to try to
force popups and animations on users with browsers that try to block
that stuff, and sometimes it even manages to totally crash or hang
some browsers.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Hi, a group of us have decided to found a micronation, formed of the
Wikipedia community. Currently we've only chosen our country's name, Tirben,
so if you want to get involved in the forming of our constitution (hopefully
it'll be easier than the founding fathers found it) then you're welcome to
drop by and help out. Our IRC channel is #tirben on Freenode, and our
website is at http://tirben.starglade.org/
Everyone's invited to drop by, and please spread this message. I hope this
will be a great community builder!
Chris
--
Chris Jenkinson
http://talrias.net/
Yes, perhaps I'm suggesting a bit of a radical approach to funding and
economics isn't my strong point, but just take a moment to really think
about how certain web-oriented companies would survive without Wikipedia...
From: "Peter Mackay" <peter.mackay(a)bigpond.com>
>
> Much as I appreciate and admire your principles, what you are proposing
> makes little sense if you go to the other side of the boardroom table. You
> might as well ask "Why don't individuals benefiting from Wikipedia
> contribute?", because a company is just a group of individuals, namely the
> shareholders. You are surely not suggesting that we have a log on screen
> so
> that anybody who might get a benefit from WP enter their credit card
> details
> before being granted access.
No I'm not suggesting that, Peter. I'm suggesting that, if Wikipedia was
genuinely threatened with collapse because of money issues, donations, both
corporate and personal would naturally flow in because they know how
important it is.
If, as you say, some large companies derive a commercial benefit from WP and
> should fund us, then what is to stop them from downloading MediaWiki,
> hiring
> some professionals, and building their own encyclopaedia, perhaps as a
> joint
> effort with Google along with toolbars and popups and so on? That way,
> they'd get the same benefits as well as control over the operation and a
> more focused product.
These companies have a vested interest in keeping the content in one format
and one space. While it's impractical to assume there will never be
special-interest web encyclopaedias, Wikipedia is clearly a very large and
well-read resource with possibly more contributors than any other
collaborative web space. As one of the "big players", Wikipedia, without any
commercial loyalties, will be favoured over other collaborative
encyclopaedias by both individual contributors and corporate donors.
Lisa
Further to my email about ads on Wikipedia, I want to point out some
concerns I have about the current Wikimedia fundraising drive too.
Why haven't tax professionals been consulted to specify exactly what the
tax-deductibility status donations to Wikipedia have in the top donor
countries? It should be found out and explictly specified on the home page.
I for one won't donate without knowing my donation is tax-deductible in
Australia. And if, for instance, it did say "tax deductible in Australia"
Aussies *would* notice it instantly seriously consider donating!
In fact, if the answer for Australia or Canada or Sweden or whatever is "not
deductible" then Wikipedia should make a request for Wikipedians in those
countries to form local chapters to obtain the NGO/charity status. This
wouldn't just help Wikimedia out by generating more revenue, but create a
stronger Wikipedian community outside US and central Europe.
Lisa
Lisa Thurston wrote:
>Further to my email about ads on Wikipedia, I want to point out some
>concerns I have about the current Wikimedia fundraising drive too.
>
>Why haven't tax professionals been consulted to specify exactly what the
>tax-deductibility status donations to Wikipedia have in the top donor
>countries? It should be found out and explictly specified on the home page.
>I for one won't donate without knowing my donation is tax-deductible in
>Australia. And if, for instance, it did say "tax deductible in Australia"
>Aussies *would* notice it instantly seriously consider donating!
>
>In fact, if the answer for Australia or Canada or Sweden or whatever is "not
>deductible" then Wikipedia should make a request for Wikipedians in those
>countries to form local chapters to obtain the NGO/charity status. This
>wouldn't just help Wikimedia out by generating more revenue, but create a
>stronger Wikipedian community outside US and central Europe.
>
>
While we're interested in having tax deductibility for as many donors as
possible, it is not the Wikimedia Foundation's business to provide tax
advice for anybody. We should stay far away from this. Even in the
obvious case, plugging tax deductibility in the US is somewhat
problematic because quite a few people will not realize that this is
only worth something to them if they itemize their deductions. That's
why the better approach is to simply say, "Donations may be tax
deductible, consult a professional for details."
Incidentally, regarding the specific case, I believe Tim Starling's
preliminary investigation suggested that tax deductibility in Australia
may not be all that likely.
--Michael Snow