On 1/1/06, BJörn Lindqvist bjourne@gmail.com wrote:
There is a very strong connection between adlessness and credibility. Adfree stuff appears to me as much more reputable and trustworthy than other media riddled with ads. I believe that that is one of the reasons for Wikipedia's success. If Wikipedia had ads, there would be absolutely no reason for me, as a reader, to use Wikipedia instead of any other random site.
I think this is false on a number of levels.
1. Adlessness and credibility have no real correlation. CNN has ads, BBC does not. This is not what determines their credibility, neutrality, or reliability. Most sites run by cranks and nuts do not have ads; most sites providing reliable content do have ads. Advertising generally indicates a need for commercial overhead, something most mainstream outlets require at some point. Exceptions on both points can be found, of course. At the very least there is no correlation between credibility and adlessness; at most one could make an argument that most internet sites deemed "credible" include advertising.
Now the more complicated correlation would be between things in the same "genre" as Wikipedia. Unfortunately for our case that is rather hard to do -- there are not many free encyclopedias out there with the sort of success of WP, and most non-free encyclopedia-like-resources are either provided as a pay service (and require no advertising), advertising, or both (i.e. http://m-w.com has both a free and premium area, the former has advertising).
2. What other "random site" would you use that did the same thing as Wikipedia? The pickings are pretty slim in my opinion. I think the emotion you mean to express is one more along the lines of "Without advertising, I feel I am contributing to a real common good," or, inversely, "A site with advertising does not contribute to the common good."
Now I don't think this sentiment is completely misplaced. Advertising has the whiff of big capitalism about it, usually on a model of individual profit. Why help someone profit if your work is volunteer? The instinct is sensible but in this case I think misplaced. The money would not be used to line Jimbo's pockets, it would be to buy servers and further the great collective experiment. The encyclopedia would still be "free" in the basic sense -- freely licensed -- and I don't think it would be much affected in the alternative sense -- users would be "charged" with some of their attention but that's about it.
Now I address this in particular not because I think it is some sort of error which needs to be snuffed out (and certainly not to be hostile to you Björn!) but more because I think it is the sentiment at the heart of this argument and it needs to be taken seriously, because it is what a large number of users who use Wikipedia are going to think if they see ads on the site (let's not deceive ourselves about who our primary editor demographics are -- computer literate, left-leaning, U.S. and European 20-40 somethings, likely middle class and with a bit too much higher education). I think their unconscious is going to say, "Hoo boy, somebody is trying to make a buck off of my labor here." And that's the sort of sentiment which COULD have major effects, because I do think the "working on humanity's greatest achievement" ethos is a major motivator to people on this sort of project.
Any advertising/sponsorship solution would have to take that very seriously and proceed very carefully, at the risk of alienating the user base, which is the real reason that Wikipedia succeeds and will succeed. Servers are important, but they wouldn't be necessary if we didn't have the support of thousands of people who could surely find other ways to spend their time if it came to it.
FF