--- Neil Harris neil@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
Note that the users of the real-time mirrors are _not_ being charged for use of the GFDL content, which remains freely available as before; they are being charged for real-time access to WP data, with no need to run a modified copy of MediaWiki in order to run their service.
Administration of the scheme could be made automatic, by allowing the existing credit-card interface to be used to for payment, and entering an IP address or addresses to be authorized, an E-mail address for contact, and getting an authorization key mailed back.
As a result:
- Wikipedia remains ad-free
- the WF gets revenue
- the advertisers still get to make (slightly less) money, but this time
without leeching unauthorized resources.
The feed could be provided from the existing software, only with a "null skin" that produced only the rendered page content, thus both slightly reducing the load of producing it (eg. no check for messages, greater possibility for caching), and, at the same time, making the page content easier to re-use, by removing the need to strip the user-interface from around the page contents.
With other changes, for example, not checking for red/blue links, serving costs could probably be reduced even further, and quote possibly WF could charge more than $ 2 x 10^-4 per hit. Given the number of mirrors around, setting up this scheme might pay for itself in a month or less.
Good idea, or bad idea?
Very good idea. We are already doing that somewhat via RSS feeds but we have not publicized the option and the few companies that have signed up did not use the service for long (or maybe we just forgot to send them invoices...). Either way, we really do need to maximize that revenue source and clamp down real tight on parasitic mirrors. Hiring another developer to manage the service and kill parasitic mirrors would likely get us a bunch of net revenue.
-- mav
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