Some food for thought:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
In an interview, Jimbo discusses the possibilities of ads eventually on the Wikipedia, due to the huge number of page views that we get.
Also mentioned is the large-scale rejection of ads by the "wikitopeans" [sic] in the community.
-- Ben Emmel Wikipedia - User:Bratsche bratsche1@gmail.com "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." -- William Blake
I can see us raising a few hundred thousand dollars by contributions. I can't see a few million.
I can see contributions supporting 100 servers. I can't see them supporting 2,000.
I can see a top 20 website supported by contributions. I can't see one of the top 5.
Fred
On Dec 30, 2005, at 3:02 PM, Ben Emmel wrote:
Some food for thought:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
In an interview, Jimbo discusses the possibilities of ads eventually on the Wikipedia, due to the huge number of page views that we get.
Also mentioned is the large-scale rejection of ads by the "wikitopeans" [sic] in the community.
-- Ben Emmel Wikipedia - User:Bratsche bratsche1@gmail.com "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." -- William Blake _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/30/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
I can see us raising a few hundred thousand dollars by contributions. I can't see a few million.
I can see contributions supporting 100 servers. I can't see them supporting 2,000.
I can see a top 20 website supported by contributions. I can't see one of the top 5.
Small, individual contributions - perhaps not. But there's no reason why large corporate donations, grants, or endowments couldn't keep us running indefinitely.
The question becomes whether we'd prefer ads on Wikipedia or "Wikipedia (sponsored by the Gates Foundation).
Kirill Lokshin
On 12/30/05, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
I can see us raising a few hundred thousand dollars by contributions. I can't see a few million.
I can see contributions supporting 100 servers. I can't see them supporting 2,000.
I can see a top 20 website supported by contributions. I can't see one of the top 5.
As Wikipedia gets larger we get more users. The more users, the more donations, so individual donations are more scalable than you think.
Mgm
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
On 12/30/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
I can see us raising a few hundred thousand dollars by contributions. I can't see a few million.
I can see contributions supporting 100 servers. I can't see them supporting 2,000.
I can see a top 20 website supported by contributions. I can't see one of the top 5.
Small, individual contributions - perhaps not. But there's no reason why large corporate donations, grants, or endowments couldn't keep us running indefinitely.
The question becomes whether we'd prefer ads on Wikipedia or "Wikipedia (sponsored by the Gates Foundation).
"Wikipedia (sponsored by UNESCO)" would be a much better alternative...
--- Ben Emmel bratsche1@gmail.com wrote:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
In an interview, Jimbo discusses the possibilities of ads eventually on the Wikipedia, due to the huge number of page views that we get.
Also mentioned is the large-scale rejection of ads by the "wikitopeans" [sic] in the community.
The use of that non-word should be a good indication of the quality of the reporting.
All Jimmy did was state the blindingly obvious; that we are literally giving up millions of dollars of potential revenue that could be used to further the foundation's goal of providing free knowledge to everybody.
But *nothing* will happen w/o community consent. The community just needs to be fully informed of all sides of the issue.
-- mav
__________________________________ Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year. http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/
Daniel Mayer wrote:
All Jimmy did was state the blindingly obvious; that we are literally giving up millions of dollars of potential revenue that could be used to further the foundation's goal of providing free knowledge to everybody.
It's not entirely that simple, though. Say Jimbo had decided in 2001 to put ads on Wikipedia. Since then, we've gotten enough pageviews to have made many millions of dollars from those ads. The site doesn't exist in a vacuum, though---had Jimbo decided in 2001 to put ads on Wikipedia, Wikipedia may well not have grown in the manner it actually has. It may have even found itself with a major fork, a la what happened with the Spanish-language Wikipedia. In which case there wouldn't have been the same pageviews and therefore ad revenue after all.
-Mark
"Ben Emmel" wrote
In an interview, Jimbo discusses the possibilities of ads eventually on the
Wikipedia, due to the huge number of page views that we get.
That is in the WP FAQ (or would be if we had one), like 'stable versions'. An old chestnut. It would all depend anyway on (a) the plateau level of traffic (relative to all WWW traffic, say), (b) the plateau level of donation and grant funding, (c) what the money was supposed to fund, (d) the probable impact of ads on (b).
Charles
Perhaps the best solution would be like the one Salon, Weather Underground, and many other sites use: pay a subscription fee (say, $29.95 a year) or see (and probably ignore) the ads. That way we'd have our choice of how to personally support Wikipedia.
jpgordon
I recall having made this comment on a talk page somewhere but anyway :)
Personally I find wikipedia 'strange' in not having ads. I'm not sure I can think of any other site on the web with a similar popularity without ads. Even microsoft.com has ads for Microsoft products. All newspaper sites do, slashdot does etc etc. So the precedent is certainly there.
I agree with the idea of the subscription fee if you can't stand even discreet Google Adsense type ads. But instead of $30 a year, why not $5? At the moment we charge nothing, so isn't charging *anything* better? And any relatively active user is probably going to generate $5 worth of Adsense ads anyway, isn't he? I don't know what percentage of users donate currently, but it's probably very low. Even assuming that all these people drastically reduce their contributions in reaction to the introduction of ads, you'd probably be a long way ahead.
I know that there are many ideologies at play in the Wikipedia world, like "free" information, unrestrained contribution (even by anonymous users), GFDL licensing etc - but I don't see a logical connection from there to the provision of an ad-free service. In any case, I as a user would be more than happy to put up with a few ads (or a low yearly fee) to be rid of server strain, and the feeling of using a service running on a shoestring.
Steve
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Josh Gordon Sent: Saturday, 31th December 2005 8:34 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Ads on Wikipedia?
Perhaps the best solution would be like the one Salon, Weather Underground, and many other sites use: pay a subscription fee (say, $29.95 a year) or see (and probably ignore) the ads. That way we'd have our choice of how to personally support Wikipedia.
jpgordon _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wik%3E ien-l
"Steve Bennett" wrote
At the moment we charge nothing, so isn't charging *anything* better?
For whom? For what purpose?
And any relatively active user is probably going to generate $5 worth of Adsense ads anyway, isn't he?
As soon as you start counting the eyeballs of users, rather than the edits of editors, you actually change the whole dynamic of the project.
I don't know what percentage of users donate currently, but it's probably very low. Even assuming that all these people drastically reduce their contributions in reaction to the introduction of ads, you'd probably be a long way ahead.
What if the best editors move to a clone that doesn't have ads?
I know that there are many ideologies at play in the Wikipedia world, like "free" information, unrestrained contribution (even by anonymous users), GFDL licensing etc - but I don't see a logical connection from there to the provision of an ad-free service.
Because there is a five-year history of those ideals getting the job done. You don't need a _logical_ connection, when you have a track record.
In any case, I as a user would be more than happy to put up with a few ads (or a low yearly fee) to be rid of server strain, and the feeling of using a service running on a shoestring.
If $750000 was spent in 2005, it's hardly a shoestring. A 'low' yearly fee - would be relative to the income of a developed-world person in work, or a villager in Asia or Africa in subsistence.agriculture?
The 'server strain' argument occurs only because exponential growth has been seen. WP _has not_ crumbled under the strain. Traffic seems to have risen 50% in December alone. We all know this can't continue for ever. But we can't possibly know enough and rationally discuss how much money WP needs, until we have a clearer idea of where it is headed. (It is the dotcom boom upside down, by the way - we have only an upside risk on the traffic, and apart from Jimbo's seed money we are not burning through the money in the bank, but visibly making it easier to get money, with no strings, simply by posting a notice on the sites.)
Charles
Hi,
It's nice to hear the other side of the ad argument. If anyone has some "further reading", I'd be grateful.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium
At the moment we charge nothing, so isn't charging
*anything* better?
For whom? For what purpose?
For the purpose of making WP better of course :)
As soon as you start counting the eyeballs of users, rather than the edits of editors, you actually change the whole dynamic of the project.
Good point.
What if the best editors move to a clone that doesn't have ads?
Do you think they would do that rather than, say, pay $5 not to see them? What if WP had a rule that said anyone with 1500 edits was exempt from ads?
If $750000 was spent in 2005, it's hardly a shoestring. A
IMHO it's a shoestring whenever income ~= expenses. If the income for a year only *just* covers server expenditure with no room for backups, future proofing, redundancy, taking risks etc, then it's a shoestring - the magnitude is irrelevant.
'low' yearly fee - would be relative to the income of a developed-world person in work, or a villager in Asia or Africa in subsistence.agriculture?
I wasn't suggesting denying access to anyone. Presumably a poor African would not object to seeing ads if they get a free encyclopaedia out of the deal. "Presumably".
The 'server strain' argument occurs only because exponential growth has been seen. WP _has not_ crumbled under the strain. Traffic seems
It's the only site I have regularly used in the last couple of years which as a normal part of usage puts up "Server experiencing difficulties, come back lately". I get that message on WP pretty much every day during certain hours. And that's not to mention some of the more esoteric messages like edits being disabled, the DB being out of sync etc. I would *much* rather have ads than put up with server unavailability.
(And yes, I'm a newbie, in case anyone was wondering :))
to have risen 50% in December alone. We all know this can't continue for ever. But we can't possibly know enough and rationally discuss how much money WP needs, until we have a clearer idea of where it is headed. (It is
True. Where is WP headed?
Steve
On 12/31/05, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
If $750000 was spent in 2005, it's hardly a shoestring. A
IMHO it's a shoestring whenever income ~= expenses. If the income for a year only *just* covers server expenditure with no room for backups, future proofing, redundancy, taking risks etc, then it's a shoestring - the magnitude is irrelevant.
I happen to have the 2004 (fiscal year) Form 990-EZ for the Wikimedia Foundation in front of me right now (if you'd like to follow along, I uploaded it to http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Wikimedia_990_2004.pdf). Revenue = $71,171. Expenses = $14,504. I'm sure 2005 was basically the same (only with bigger numbers). Cash flow is roughly zero, but this is fairly meaningless. For example, Microsoft had a negative cash flow in 2005, the same year their income - expenses was over $3 billion.
Anthony
On 12/31/05, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
The 'server strain' argument occurs only because exponential growth has been seen. WP _has not_ crumbled under the strain. Traffic seems
It's the only site I have regularly used in the last couple of years which as a normal part of usage puts up "Server experiencing difficulties, come back lately". I get that message on WP pretty much every day during certain hours. And that's not to mention some of the more esoteric messages like edits being disabled, the DB being out of sync etc. I would *much* rather have ads than put up with server unavailability.
That is a pretty good argument for ads yes. I still don't know myself, I do really like it that wp is ad free.
Perhaps we should use Google ads on Wikipedia. Daniel Brandt will have a field day with that one. :)
Garion
On 1/1/06, Garion1000 garion1000@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps we should use Google ads on Wikipedia. Daniel Brandt will have a field day with that one. :)
That's the best argument for having ads that I've seen so far.
-- Sam
The 'server strain' argument occurs only because
exponential growth has been
seen.
The main issue for opponents is that the revenue stream would likely far exceeds any server needs. Where will all the extra money go? Or more to the point, what right does the general quasi-nymous community of disembodied internet personae have to argue with whatever decision Jimbo makes? (He's done alright thus far, and the Siegenthaler thing couldn't have been planned/timed better). Opportunities to cash in on millions and millions of dollars dont come along every day, and most people in that position would be regarded as foolish to not do so.
From that baseline, all of the stated reasons can be
regarded as superficial, but its fair to say that its both a community decision and a business decision involving matters of: a) solvency b) upscaling c) compensating workers (ie. programmers) d) changing from an open model to an heirarchial one. e) jet fuel and shiatsu massages
Opponents may largely be satisfied if the (e) category is all but struck from the list --being the classic loophole of in the corporate business model. And (d) is debatable in 16 dimensions.
Whatever the decision if the community does not agree with how the decision is made or how ads are implemented, it will simply drift somewhere else. Wikipedia is just a name after all. I personally dont think its a bad idea, but only if the ads are all at the very bottom of the page.
Stevertigo
__________________________________ Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year. http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/
charles matthews wrote:
If $750000 was spent in 2005, it's hardly a shoestring. A 'low' yearly fee - would be relative to the income of a developed-world person in work, or a villager in Asia or Africa in subsistence.agriculture?
The other problem with $5 per annum fees is the cost of administration It takes just as long to enter $5.00 in the books as it does $5,000.00. Then one has to track who has paid and who has not, and when memberships expire notify them that the time has come to pay again. With enough members we may even need a full-time paid bookkeeper(s).
Ec
--- charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Because there is a five-year history of those ideals getting the job done. You don't need a _logical_ connection, when you have a track record.
We also had a track record of bringing in more money in each fund drive than in all previous drives combined. The current drive is not following that trend. Past performance is not a good indication of what to expect indefinitely in the future.
If $750000 was spent in 2005, it's hardly a shoestring.
Considering we are running a top 30 website it certainly is. That is also what was budgeted; we've been pretty good at underspending what we budget for by not being able to buy and deploy servers fast enough.
See: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Finance_report and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers/hardware_orders
The Q3 spending vs actual report is delayed until we sort out some outstanding undocumented transactions.
The 'server strain' argument occurs only because exponential growth has been seen. WP _has not_ crumbled under the strain. Traffic seems to have risen 50% in December alone. We all know this can't continue for ever.
We've been saying that for years now. And yet we continue to grow much faster than the rest of the Internet. :)
At some point our growth will match that of the rest of the Internet, but the Internet itself will continue to grow exponentially for years to come (still several billion people who aren't online at all yet). Heck, if we are really successful then we will significantly drive part of that growth.
can't possibly know enough and rationally discuss how much money WP needs, until we have a clearer idea of where it is headed.
We can project a few quarters out. The proposed draft budget for Q1 of 2006 already stands at about $500,000.
See: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget/2006/Q1 (needs to be updated with 3 new staff positions and Wikimania-related costs).
upside down, by the way - we have only an upside risk on the traffic, and apart from Jimbo's seed money we are not burning through the money in the bank, but visibly making it easier to get money, with no strings, simply by posting a notice on the sites.)
Our reserve fund was nearly depleted before the start of the current fundraiser. So we have burnt through the money in the bank. The money we raised so far in the fund drive will not last long either. Another drive will be needed in Q1 to cover the rest of that quarter's costs.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
"Daniel Mayer" wrote.
Another drive will be needed in Q1 to cover the rest of that quarter's costs.
I'm not going to argue on the numbers. The mission is _still_ to write the encyclopedia, rather than look at it from the finance director's point of view. Let's continue to bear that in mind.
Charles
--- charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" wrote.
Another drive will be needed in Q1 to cover the rest of that quarter's costs.
I'm not going to argue on the numbers. The mission is _still_ to write the encyclopedia, rather than look at it from the finance director's point of view. Let's continue to bear that in mind.
And to continue writing that encyclopedia we need to keep our financial house in order. Numbers are farily important in that regard. Let't not forget that. :)
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On 1/1/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
And to continue writing that encyclopedia we need to keep our financial house in order. Numbers are farily important in that regard. Let't not forget that. :)
-- mav
Do we have any idea of the income ads will produce? If so, how accurate is the projections? How about income projections for limited ads (prohibited from article namespace, for example).
Puddl Duk wrote:
On 1/1/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
And to continue writing that encyclopedia we need to keep our financial house in order. Numbers are farily important in that regard. Let't not forget that. :)
-- mav
Do we have any idea of the income ads will produce? If so, how accurate is the projections? How about income projections for limited ads (prohibited from article namespace, for example).
This is a good question. Next is to be realistic.
As soon as we begin collecting money from advertisement, the revenues from other sources will be plummeting. Typically, we can expect a drop of revenues from direct donations.
Consequently, we need not only to estimate how much advertisement will bring in, but how much will not get in anymore. It would be a total shift in business model.
The other point is this one : advertisement is likely to bring in a lot of money, much more than we currently have available (and which is unsufficient compared to our real needs). Aside from any consideration of the "source" of money, I do not think the organisation is ready to handle an amount of income of, say, 10 times what it is right now. We are working on that however.
Ant
"Daniel Mayer" wrote
And to continue writing that encyclopedia we need to keep our financial house in order. Numbers are farily important in that regard. Let't not forget that. :)
Actually we need to do cost-benefit analysis before making _any_ major change. Not just count the money.
It's the road-building argument all over again (familiar in the UK, doubtless less so in the USA). Traffic congestion: if you automatically fight it by building roads, you just get more cars. Since all the server bandwith gets used up over a timescale of a few months, there is no 'solution'. Until, as I say, some indication of saturation is there. Then one could indeed speak of a 'house in order'. The site is not mature, as of 2006 Jan 1.
I would argue that editors are _less_ deterred by the slowness than casual users. Don't get me wrong: when it's fast I can do large numbers of quick minor edits, when it's slow 'just' research stuff and get it posted somehow. So, slowness (I say) differentially discourages people who are coming to WP via a search engine, and who have no patience with a wait. They go and look at a mirror, maybe. Not such a bad solution. History shows they aren't lost forever.
Therefore ... be very careful about offending the editing community (a few thousand, Jimbo says). Geese and golden eggs.
Charles
charles matthews wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" wrote
And to continue writing that encyclopedia we need to keep our financial house in order. Numbers are farily important in that regard. Let't not forget that. :)
Actually we need to do cost-benefit analysis before making _any_ major change. Not just count the money.
It's the road-building argument all over again (familiar in the UK, doubtless less so in the USA). Traffic congestion: if you automatically fight it by building roads, you just get more cars. Since all the server bandwith gets used up over a timescale of a few months, there is no 'solution'. Until, as I say, some indication of saturation is there. Then one could indeed speak of a 'house in order'. The site is not mature, as of 2006 Jan 1.
I would argue that editors are _less_ deterred by the slowness than casual users. Don't get me wrong: when it's fast I can do large numbers of quick minor edits, when it's slow 'just' research stuff and get it posted somehow. So, slowness (I say) differentially discourages people who are coming to WP via a search engine, and who have no patience with a wait. They go and look at a mirror, maybe. Not such a bad solution. History shows they aren't lost forever.
Therefore ... be very careful about offending the editing community (a few thousand, Jimbo says). Geese and golden eggs.
Charles
Might another solution in the future be to really have two websites. One "stable", for readers only (a mirror we would run ourselves) with light advertisement. And the editable one with no ads (and much less traffic) ?
Ant
"Anthere" wrote
Might another solution in the future be to really have two websites. One "stable", for readers only (a mirror we would run ourselves) with light advertisement. And the editable one with no ads (and much less traffic) ?
Questions:
(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? (ii) If WP added advertisements, what would its attitude be to GFDL licencees of WP material who would be 'diverting' income? Would it be _absolutely unchanged_, i.e. 'go ahead, we give this stuff away'?
Charles
On 1/2/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Anthere" wrote
Might another solution in the future be to really have two websites. One "stable", for readers only (a mirror we would run ourselves) with light advertisement. And the editable one with no ads (and much less traffic) ?
Questions:
(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?
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, but Answers Corporation (http://www.answers.com/) is an $80 million public company. Of course if Wikipedia ran its own mirror it would likely be much more popular than answers.com, because people would know that all the net profits go back to the WMF (also because of the synergies such as being able to hook up an ethernet cable directly between the two sites for a live feed). The costs would probably be lower, too, because at least some Wikipedians would likely be willing to work on the mirror site (even though it has advertisements) and there would be no need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the top executive salaries.
Anthony
charles matthews wrote:
"Anthere" wrote
Might another solution in the future be to really have two websites. One "stable", for readers only (a mirror we would run ourselves) with light advertisement. And the editable one with no ads (and much less traffic) ?
Questions:
(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; there are a hundred easier ways for entrepreneurs to make money with the net. Even so, venture capitalists are probably getting WP-related proposals every week.
(ii) If WP added advertisements, what would its attitude be to GFDL licencees of WP material who would be 'diverting' income? Would it be _absolutely unchanged_, i.e. 'go ahead, we give this stuff away'?
It would have to be. WP's copyright is jointly held by thousands of individuals, all of whom would have standing to take the Foundation to court. Need more plaintiffs? Just have them edit for a day... :-)
Stan
On 1/2/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
charles matthews wrote:
(ii) If WP added advertisements, what would its attitude be to GFDL licencees of WP material who would be 'diverting' income? Would it be _absolutely unchanged_, i.e. 'go ahead, we give this stuff away'?
It would have to be. WP's copyright is jointly held by thousands of individuals, all of whom would have standing to take the Foundation to court. Need more plaintiffs? Just have them edit for a day... :-)
Stan
I suspect Wikipedia's attitude toward commercial GFDL licensees would actually improve if Wikipedia has to "eat its own dog food", so to speak. Of course the majority of Wikipedians are already committed to creating a product which can be used for both non-commercial and commercial uses.
Anthony
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@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.*
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.
Peter (Skyring)
*dealing with success and bandwidth might be a problem, however
Peter Mackay wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@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
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs
Peter Mackay wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs
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.
Although they are similar words, "quality" and "quantity" have different meanings. MediaWiki is robust high quality software and that's not going to change whether it's running on a laptop or a server farm. As I noted for this not so hypothetical teenager "*dealing with success and bandwidth might be a problem, however".
Getting back to the original point, charging Google enough to keep WP running isn't going to do much beyond providing an incentive for Google to put up their own online encyclopaedia. I would imagine that if they were pressed, Google could get the MediaWiki software and Wikipedia content loaded and tested in a matter of days, if not hours, and alter their search results to give their "Googlopedia" a higher precedence than Wikipedia. We don't have any sort of "big stick" to threaten Google with.
Peter (Skyring)
Peter Mackay wrote: <snip>
Getting back to the original point, charging Google enough to keep WP running isn't going to do much beyond providing an incentive for Google to put up their own online encyclopaedia. I would imagine that if they were pressed, Google could get the MediaWiki software and Wikipedia content loaded and tested in a matter of days, if not hours, and alter their search results to give their "Googlopedia" a higher precedence than Wikipedia. We don't have any sort of "big stick" to threaten Google with.
Actually, we do. We withold editors. What will they do when they are vandalised? They won't have WP's 650+ admins (and 2000+ others) to help deal with it.
Googlopedia on Wheels, here we come...
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Alphax (Wikipedia email) Sent: Tuesday, 3 January 2006 13:23 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?
Peter Mackay wrote:
<snip> > Getting back to the original point, charging Google enough to keep WP > running isn't going to do much beyond providing an incentive for > Google to put up their own online encyclopaedia. I would imagine that > if they were pressed, Google could get the MediaWiki software and > Wikipedia content loaded and tested in a matter of days, if not hours, > and alter their search results to give their "Googlopedia" a higher > precedence than Wikipedia. We don't have any sort of "big stick" to threaten Google with. >
Actually, we do. We withold editors. What will they do when they are vandalised? They won't have WP's 650+ admins (and 2000+ others) to help deal with it.
Why not? You think Google would have problems attracting editors?
Peter
Stan Shebs wrote:
Peter Mackay wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@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. :-)
Now you're sounding like Daniel Brandt... ;-)
Steve Bennett wrote:
Sounds good. Contribute or suffer the ads. :)
Nah, you have to tie editcountitis and deletionism into it /somehow/...
Steve Bennett wrote:
Personally I find wikipedia 'strange' in not having ads. I'm not sure I can think of any other site on the web with a similar popularity without ads. Even microsoft.com has ads for Microsoft products. All newspaper sites do, slashdot does etc etc. So the precedent is certainly there.
Wikipedia is *supposed* to be strange compared to the rest, though. In addition to being strange in having no ads, we're also strange in licensing our content under the GFDL, rather than the more standard "All Rights Reserved" that Microsoft, Slashdot, CNN, et al use.
In any case, Jimbo already explicitly promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia as long as he has a say in it, so I don't see why this is an issue.
-Mark
In any case, Jimbo already explicitly promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia as long as he has a say in it, so I don't see why this is an issue.
Has he? I thought it was just "There won't be ads as long as the community doesn't want them". I'd like to read more of the history of this topic, if anyone has a link.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
In any case, Jimbo already explicitly promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia as long as he has a say in it, so I don't see why this is an issue.
Has he? I thought it was just "There won't be ads as long as the community doesn't want them". I'd like to read more of the history of this topic, if anyone has a link.
I'm having trouble finding the original mailing list post, but there was a pretty explicit post to that effect. I was able to find a 2002 letter by Mav that paraphrases Jimbo as having said that: "Jimbo has also promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia. I will personally advocate that this is written in the preamble for the non-profit's constitution or in some other way to make it permanent." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric49/The_Wikipedia_Family].
-Mark
On 12/31/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
In any case, Jimbo already explicitly promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia as long as he has a say in it, so I don't see why this is an issue.
Has he? I thought it was just "There won't be ads as long as the community doesn't want them". I'd like to read more of the history of this topic, if anyone has a link.
I'm having trouble finding the original mailing list post, but there was a pretty explicit post to that effect. I was able to find a 2002 letter by Mav that paraphrases Jimbo as having said that: "Jimbo has also promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia. I will personally advocate that this is written in the preamble for the non-profit's constitution or in some other way to make it permanent." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric49/The_Wikipedia_Family].
-Mark
He's claimed that his statement was only that any decision regarding advertising on Wikipedia would come from the community, not from him (and looking at the history of posts this seems to be true). See this post (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-October/004517.html):
This is _not_ to say that we will go down any path towards advertising on the site. I have always said, and continue to say, that decision will come from the community, not from me.
Just earlier this year he said on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bomis:
This is very POV. The Wikipedia community has never "ruled out" advertising, and this article makes it seem like the reason I went the non profit route and no-advertising is in response to resistance from the community. This is not accurate. I have consistently been opposed to advertising on Wikipedia, although in the early days I thought advertising was going to eventually be necessary. Now I think advertising will never be necessary, but I wonder if someday we (the community) might decide that we could do so much good in the world with a small amount of advertising that we might choose to accept it. --Jimbo Wales 19:04, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Here's a quote from those "early days" (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Advertising_on_Wikipedia):
Note: This is a preliminary essay, intended to give you food for thought. Comments are welcome, but at this time, please make your comments to me privately, or if you must be public about it, do it on the wikipedia-l mailing list. Everything discussed here is so preliminary at this point that public debate isn't really warranted. I seek feedback here primarily to refine my own thinking about the issues raised.
Someday, there will be advertising on Wikipedia. Either that, or we will have to find some other way to raise money, but I can't think of any.
This is not coming soon. As of today, November 9, 2001, I would say that this is at least 6 months to (more likely) 1 year away. Why then, and not now? Because despite encouraging growth in traffic, the amount of money that could be made from having sponsorship of Wikipedia is not enough to worry about.
I imagine that there will be some resistance to advertising from adamant anti-capitalists, and from those who think that any association with money is necessarily corrupting. I can't really help that, and I can only state for the record that I think such people are seriously mistaken in many aspects of their world view.
But there may be other resistance to advertising from people with legitimate concerns! And I hope to address those concerns now, long before this becomes an "instant issue".
First, I know from long experience at Bomis (which currently has more than 100 million monthly pageviews throughout our entire network, which makes us a big site, but not exactly Yahoo!), that advertisers don't ever attempt to dictate content. So it strikes me as extremely unlikely that any advertiser will ever care what Wikipedia's content is. Certainly, I have never seen it at Bomis.
Second, despite the fact that such a thing would be extremely unlikely, if an advertiser ever did ask for changes to the content to flatter them, I would simply respond: go to hell. The independence of the community is essential to the longterm success of this project.
Third, advertising should be done in a tasteful way. To me this means at least these things, and a lot more besides: (a) no popup ads, (b) advertising clearly marked as such, so that visitors do not mistake it for content, (c) keyword-based advertising to whatever extent possible, so that the user is presented with _relevant_ advertising, (d) text-link based advertising preferable to banners or other high-bandwidth advertising, to preserve the beautiful simplicity of our interface.
At the top of that page, some time before September 2002, a note was added:
There are currently no plans for Advertising on Wikipedia. Instead, I had to let Larry go as an employee. This reduced my costs to maintain wikipedia to a level that I can carry for a long long time to come. To achieve my long term goals for wikipedia (including distribution to everyone on the planet!), funds will likely be required. We'll figure that out in the future, but donations to the nonprofit organization is my preference. Jimbo Wales
FWIW, I can't find any evidence that any promise was ever made. Here's a mailing list post from March 2002 (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-March/019238.html):
With the resignation of Larry, there is a much less pressing need for funds. Therefore, all plans to put advertising of any kind on the wikipedia is called off for now.
In 2004, in a Slashdot interview (http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1351230), Wales said:
The question of advertising is discussed sometimes, but not really in the context of "will we need to accept ads to survive". The answer to that is clearly "no".
The discussion about advertising is really more a question that asks: with this kind of traffic, and the kind of growth we are seeing, how much good could we do as a charitable institution if we decided to accept advertising. It would be very lucrative for the Wikimedia Foundation if the community decided to do it, because our cost structure is extremely extremely low compared to any traditional website.
That money could be used to fund books and media centers in the developing world. Some of it could be used to purchase additional hardware, some could be used to support the development of free software that we use in our mission. The question that we may have to ask ourselves, from the comfort of our relatively wealthy Internet-connected world, is whether our discomfort and distaste for advertising intruding on the purity of Wikipedia is more important than that mission.
But it's more complex than that, even, because in large part, our success so far is due to the purity of what we're doing. We might find that accepting ad money would cut us off from possible grant money. It's a complex question.
But it is not a question that has to be answered for our continuing survival. We can keep going as we are now, with your help of course. :-)
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I'm having trouble finding the original mailing list post, but there was a pretty explicit post to that effect. I was able to find a 2002 letter by Mav that paraphrases Jimbo as having said that: "Jimbo has also promised that there will never be ads on Wikipedia. I will personally advocate that this is written in the preamble for the non-profit's constitution or in some other way to make it permanent." [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Maveric49/The_Wikipedia_Family].
Everyting from "I" on was me talking for myself. That was also written a long time ago (over three years), so I don't recall what exactly I based the paraphrase on either.
A historical note: That post was part of my effort to reunify the Enciclopedia Libre and the Spanish Wikipedia. What I was doing was pointing out each of the reasons EL stated prompted them to start a fork and what has been done since the split to correct their grievances. Interesting read for anybody who wasn't around at that time.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On 12/31/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Wikipedia is *supposed* to be strange compared to the rest, though. In addition to being strange in having no ads, we're also strange in licensing our content under the GFDL, rather than the more standard "All Rights Reserved" that Microsoft, Slashdot, CNN, et al use.
That and that "you can edit this page" nonsense...
-- Sam
On 12/31/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Wikipedia is *supposed* to be strange compared to the rest,
though.
In addition to being strange in having no ads, we're also
strange in
licensing our content under the GFDL, rather than the more standard "All Rights Reserved" that Microsoft, Slashdot, CNN, et al use.
That and that "you can edit this page" nonsense...
With respect, this is a fairly strange line of argument. Objectively, there is nothing particularly bizarre or strange about Wikipedia as an online community. There are other wikis, there are other collaborative projects, there are other online forums etc etc. So all of that is not in itself a reason to say "Wikipedia is so different that it makes sense for it to continue being different by having no ads".
Or maybe there's an ideological connection between GFDL and adlessness that I (and slashdot, linux.org and others...) don't (yet) see.
Steve
-- Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
With respect, this is a fairly strange line of
argument. Objectively,
there is nothing particularly bizarre or strange
about Wikipedia as an online community. There are other wikis, there are >other collaborative projects, there are >other online forums etc etc. So all of that
is not in itself a reason to say "Wikipedia >is so
different that it makes sense
for it to continue being different by having no
ads".
I generally tend to agree with you, but 1) the issue isnt really as fancy as that, and 2) <sarcasm>Wikipedia is not a community/democracy/etc./etc./<sarcasm>
Im guessing that growth projections would show that if Wikipedia didnt have any server problems whatsoever, it would now rank about 10 (instead of 30). So once the server situation gets up to its optimal capacity (theres a market cap for everything: maybe at 2x current capacity) there will be other costs. Legal fees, paid server techs, backpay for work (to keep people happy), limousines, etc. With success comes its costs. Does WP's continued success depend more on those princples or on its financial and commercial competitiveness with commercialist or academic/elitist upstarts/restarts. Arent there degrees in-between?
WP's huge demand makes it not just needing to keep up, but it puts it in a position to make egalitarian demands and not merely bend to commercialist ones. Open model success might have limits, but a high enough degree of success makes the very notion of ads at least [[edit]]able, and therefore feasibly compatible with the open culture. Fastfission did a good job of breaking down the basic 'compromise' about how ads could work.
Stevertigo "You have just won {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} dollars!"
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
Im guessing that growth projections would show that if Wikipedia didnt have any server problems whatsoever, it would now rank about 10 (instead of 30). So once the server
Just out of curiosity, has it ever been stated that one of WP's goals is to become a top X website? I thought the goal was to build an encyclopaedia - so does it matter how many people are reading it? Perhaps it would be more valuable to look at how active membership has increased over time? Rather than looking at page views, which are more detrimental to the project than beneficial.
Steve
On 1/1/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I thought the goal was to build an encyclopaedia - so does it matter how many people are reading it?
What's the point of an encyclopedia that no one uses?
We're not constructing a Platonic ideal of an encyclopedia, we're building something that people use around the world every day. I find that an essential component of what we're doing here and we really should be doing things with that in mind.
Rob wrote:
On 1/1/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I thought the goal was to build an encyclopaedia - so does it matter how many people are reading it?
What's the point of an encyclopedia that no one uses?
It's not necessary for people to get it from *us*. Our goal is to write an encyclopedia. Once an encyclopedia starts emerging, the distribution task can be done by anyone, by the nature of open/free content licensing. And it's a valuable enough resource that that is virtually guaranteed to happen---we've already started seeing high-quality 3rd-party redistribution, such as the German paper version.
-Mark
Rob wrote:
On 1/1/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I thought the goal was to build an encyclopaedia - so does it matter how many people are reading it?
What's the point of an encyclopedia that no one uses?
We're not constructing a Platonic ideal of an encyclopedia, we're building something that people use around the world every day. I find that an essential component of what we're doing here and we really should be doing things with that in mind.
True, but is the goal for the content only to be used on the internet through our website.
Or is that goal for the content to spread, be used, reused, through thousands of supports (cd, dvd, newspaper, other websites, books...) ?
ant
With respect, this is a fairly strange line of argument. Objectively, there is nothing particularly bizarre or strange about Wikipedia as an online community. There are other wikis, there are other collaborative projects, there are other online forums etc etc. So all of that is not in itself a reason to say "Wikipedia is so different that it makes sense for it to continue being different by having no ads".
Or maybe there's an ideological connection between GFDL and adlessness that I (and slashdot, linux.org and others...) don't (yet) see.
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. As for the monetary problem, Jimbo definitely is a hero and a saint for funding Wikipedia which probably has costed him a fortune. But he can't be the only philantropical millionare out there who would love to fund Wikipedia.... right?
-- mvh Björn
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
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
Would ads be a way of correcting that systemic bias then? Speaking as your model demographic...
Steve
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
With respect, this is a fairly strange line of argument. Objectively, there is nothing particularly bizarre or strange about Wikipedia as an online community. There are other wikis, there are other collaborative projects, there are other online forums etc etc. So all of that is not in itself a reason to say "Wikipedia is so different that it makes sense for it to continue being different by having no ads".
Or maybe there's an ideological connection between GFDL and adlessness that I (and slashdot, linux.org and others...) don't (yet) see.
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. As for the monetary problem, Jimbo definitely is a hero and a saint for funding Wikipedia which probably has costed him a fortune. But he can't be the only philantropical millionare out there who would love to fund Wikipedia.... right?
-- mvh Björn
Right... this said, while Jimbo had made it possible for the project to born and has funded it on his own money for a long time, for which we should all be greatly thankful, I hope you are aware that we are no more using Jimbo's money *at all* to run the site, yes ?
Money right now comes from individual donations in large part, sponsors such as Yahoo, selling DVD's (such as the german one) and tee-shirts.
Q1 income
CafePress Commissions $1,207.71 Credit Card Service $0.00 MoneyBookers Donations $914.19 Other Donations $57,440.14 PayPal Donations $100,853.00 Foreign Exchange Gain $243.93 Interest Income $37.71 TOTAL $160,696.68
Q2 income Wikimania tickets $6,320.95 CafePress Commissions $510.09 Credit Card Service $1.00 MoneyBookers Donations $201.56 Other Donations $64,938.52 PayPal Donations $19,842.96 Foreign Exchange Gain -$2,826.69 Interest Income $77.33 TOTAL $89,065.72
No philanthropical millionaire is helping us right now.
Ant
Perhaps the best solution would be like the one Salon, Weather Underground, and many other sites use: pay a subscription fee (say, $29.95 a year) or see (and probably ignore) the ads. That way we'd have our choice of how to personally support Wikipedia.
jpgordon
I agree with the idea of the subscription fee if you can't stand even discreet Google Adsense type ads. But instead of $30 a year, why not $5?
All the reasonable advertising proposals I've seen have suggested $0/year. IOW, if you want to turn off the ads, you click a button which says "turn off the ads". If you're logged in, this turns off whenever you're logged in. Either way, a cookie is set to turn off the ads as long as you still have the cookie set.
And any relatively active user is probably going to generate $5 worth of Adsense ads anyway, isn't he?
The standard adsense program only generates revenue when an ad is clicked, so there would be lots of active users that would generate $0.
I don't know what percentage of users donate currently, but it's probably very low. Even assuming that all these people drastically reduce their contributions in reaction to the introduction of ads, you'd probably be a long way ahead.
Steve
Almost all users donate/contribute, they just don't do so monetarily.
I think the only proposal right now which has any chance of reaching something nearing a consensus is to put ads on a separate site, such as nupedia.org. The WMF could create a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary corporation, give it the nupedia domain name, and give it a live feed to the database. This plan wouldn't make nearly as much money as putting the ads on wikipedia.org though, at least not at first.
Anthony
On 12/31/05, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
I recall having made this comment on a talk page somewhere but anyway :)
Personally I find wikipedia 'strange' in not having ads. I'm not sure I can think of any other site on the web with a similar popularity without ads. Even microsoft.com has ads for Microsoft products. All newspaper sites do, slashdot does etc etc. So the precedent is certainly there.
www.bbc.co.uk/news
Now you can. Very simular popularity in fact. Ok poor example.
How about:
-- geni
Just a few thoughts on advertising:
* It wouldn't have to be banner ads in the obnoxious sense. Surely there could be some sort of quality control and discreteness about it. I'm sure we could find someone willing to shell out a lot of funding for a small ad on the lower left hand corner of each page. If every set of advertisements had to be approved by some small board of thoughtful people, it would probably keep out the "You may be a winner!" and "Mortgage your house online!" ads.
* What if ad content could be controlled through user CSS pages? Those who are 'in the know' could outright disable them without difficulty. People without accounts could never disable them. What's the ratio of logged-in to non-logged in page hits?
* I think that "targetted" schemes along the lines of Google Adsense are a bad idea. If we have ads, they should be as little connected to the content being viewed as possible, as a matter of integrity. Article content and article titles should have NO relation to advertising content. If it does, we are not only inviting some raised eyebrows about content validity, but we're inviting people to try and game the system by modifying articles in oh-so-clever and minor ways to get their specific advertisements listed first.
* Perhaps there are other revenue models we should consider first before advertising. At the moment the only ones on the table seem to be 1. selling hard-copies, 2. begging, and 3. advertising. I have the business acumen of a pigeon but surely there must be alternatives to these three.
FF
Fastfission wrote:
Just a few thoughts on advertising:
- It wouldn't have to be banner ads in the obnoxious sense. Surely
there could be some sort of quality control and discreteness about it. I'm sure we could find someone willing to shell out a lot of funding for a small ad on the lower left hand corner of each page. If every set of advertisements had to be approved by some small board of thoughtful people, it would probably keep out the "You may be a winner!" and "Mortgage your house online!" ads.
Agreed
- What if ad content could be controlled through user CSS pages? Those
who are 'in the know' could outright disable them without difficulty. People without accounts could never disable them. What's the ratio of logged-in to non-logged in page hits?
- I think that "targetted" schemes along the lines of Google Adsense
are a bad idea. If we have ads, they should be as little connected to the content being viewed as possible, as a matter of integrity. Article content and article titles should have NO relation to advertising content. If it does, we are not only inviting some raised eyebrows about content validity, but we're inviting people to try and game the system by modifying articles in oh-so-clever and minor ways to get their specific advertisements listed first.
Good point. However, current advertisement models show that the best revenues are gathered from targetted advertisement.
- Perhaps there are other revenue models we should consider first
before advertising. At the moment the only ones on the table seem to be 1. selling hard-copies, 2. begging, and 3. advertising. I have the business acumen of a pigeon but surely there must be alternatives to these three.
Agreed. Well, current appeal could be called "begging". As Mav explained already, we are far from having enough right now to fulfill our first trimester needs. And we finished the year on our reserves. So, "begging" makes sense.
The problems associated with "selling hard copies" are * making a partnership with a firm or organisation to "produce the hard copy" and then to "distribute" the content. Or should we set up another organisation to do that ourselves ? * filtering content to put on the hard copy (removing copyvios... we need many editors to get involved here) * assuming all legal possible consequences (copyvios again), which implies having financial reserves to assume this.
Other models may involve * finding more sponsors (but, who will take care of this ?) * writing grants (which is also a job in itself, with few people motivated and experienced to do it)
We might have employees to do these two tasks, but again, we need to "invest" to get these guys.
Ant
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Anthere wrote:
However, current advertisement models show that the best revenues are gathered from targetted advertisement.
To be honest, it's this aspect and its various implications that worries me the most.
Let's say McDonald's pays us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]]. Is that compliant with [[WP:NPOV]]?
What happens if McDonald's will pay us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]], but only if we nix the 'Nutritional value' section?
Cheers,
N.
Nick Boalch wrote:
Anthere wrote:
However, current advertisement models show that the best revenues are gathered from targetted advertisement.
To be honest, it's this aspect and its various implications that worries me the most.
Let's say McDonald's pays us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]]. Is that compliant with [[WP:NPOV]]?
What happens if McDonald's will pay us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]], but only if we nix the 'Nutritional value' section?
Cheers,
N.
I agree. This is the most worrying situation.
Putting on the ads ONLY in exchange of removing Nutritional Value of the CheeseBurger in the article is a total NONO. It is absolutely not negociable.
Imho, even putting an ad for the CheeseBurger on FastFood would be a very bad idea.
ant
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthere
Nick Boalch wrote:
What happens if McDonald's will pay us $500,000 to put an
ad on [[Fast
food]], but only if we nix the 'Nutritional value' section?
Cheers,
N.
I agree. This is the most worrying situation.
Putting on the ads ONLY in exchange of removing Nutritional Value of the CheeseBurger in the article is a total NONO. It is absolutely not negociable.
Why on earth would they pay half a million for something that's a freebie?
Just quietly, but anyone with an internet connection can delete a whole section of an article.
If McDonalds got everybody at "Hamburger U" to spend five minutes of their day massaging the article the way they wanted, they would quickly 3RR any opponents into the ground and then devote themselves to stressing out the more dedicated defenders at admin and ArbCom level.
If they wanted to.
Pete, no fan of McDonalds
On 1/2/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
If McDonalds got everybody at "Hamburger U" to spend five minutes of their day massaging the article the way they wanted, they would quickly 3RR any opponents into the ground and then devote themselves to stressing out the more dedicated defenders at admin and ArbCom level.
Very true, but McD's would open themselves up to potentially a whole lot of negative publicity that would make McLibel look trivial in comparison.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob
On 1/2/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
If McDonalds got everybody at "Hamburger U" to spend five
minutes of
their day massaging the article the way they wanted, they would quickly 3RR any opponents into the ground and then devote
themselves
to stressing out the more dedicated defenders at admin and
ArbCom level.
Very true, but McD's would open themselves up to potentially a whole lot of negative publicity that would make McLibel look trivial in comparison.
Only if they went about it in a hamfisted way.
Let's say McDonald's pays us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]]. Is that compliant with [[WP:NPOV]]?
Yes.
What happens if McDonald's will pay us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]], but only if we nix the 'Nutritional value' section?
Then we say, "See [[WP:NPOV]]". Or perhaps "we" nix that section and someone else puts it back. This is a bit of a strange argument that has been made a few times. WP is WP. I don't think anyone is proposing changing its core principles simply because we start taking ads. And again, I don't see how placing ads on WP is compromising any of WP's principles in any way.
I'm not especially in favour of ads, but let's at least be sensible in discussing the possibility. :)
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
Let's say McDonald's pays us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]]. Is that compliant with [[WP:NPOV]]?
Yes.
I think it probably isn't, but there we are. :)
What happens if McDonald's will pay us $500,000 to put an ad on [[Fast food]], but only if we nix the 'Nutritional value' section?
Then we say, "See [[WP:NPOV]]". Or perhaps "we" nix that section and someone else puts it back. This is a bit of a strange argument that has been made a few times. WP is WP. I don't think anyone is proposing changing its core principles simply because we start taking ads. And again, I don't see how placing ads on WP is compromising any of WP's principles in any way.
It isn't per se, but it does raise the possibility (particularly if ads are linked in to a 'frozen', 'stable' version of the encyclopaedia).
The argument in favour of ads appears to be 'if we don't use them, we're throwing away a big potential revenue stream'. How long before the idea of allowing advertisers 'final approval' of articles on which their ads appear appears on the basis that 'by not doing it, we're throwing away a big potential revenue stream'?
I'm not especially in favour of ads, but let's at least be sensible in discussing the possibility. :)
I appreciate that my example is (intentionally) extreme, but I think it's something we would do well to consider.
You might argue that this is someting of a logical fallacy (see, for instance, [[Slippery slope]]), but I am very concerned about the idea of opening up the principles of the project to anything other than 'making an encyclopaedia'. 'Making an encyclopaedia while keeping our advertisers happy' isn't in the mission statement as far as I'm concerned.
Cheers,
N.
Every two to three years Jimbo flips his opinion on the advertising issue, which I suppose is good, as long as we never have ads.*
I think there are better revenue streams for the Wikimedia Foundation to be pursuing, in particular CD/DVD dead-tree versions of Wikipedia/Wikibooks, although those will corrupt the nature of the project too, perhaps in worse ways, so who really knows.
But then I like the idea of free public libraries, which makes me something of a Communist in the eyes of free-market techno-capitalist libertarians these days.
Note:
In 2001 Jimbo wrote this: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_on_Wikipedia
Someday, there will be advertising on Wikipedia. Either that, or we will have to find some other way to raise money, but I can't think of any.
In 2003 Jimbo wrote in this thread: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-June/thread.html#3975
Toby Bartels wrote:
I interpreted that page as very old, only historical.
*Very* historical. I'm now of the opinion that advertising is not likely to ever be a viable or sensible revenue source for wikipedia.
One frame of reference -- at the time that was written, I was paying $100k a year for ongoing expenses (programming, editor-in-chiefing, etc.) for Nupedia. Wikipedia has no similar expenses.
Bandwidth and hardware are cheap, and so we have no particular need of money for what we're doing right now.
--Jimbo
* But then, I guess we probably will in a few years, which is when the Inevitable Fork will happen.
The argument in favour of ads appears to be 'if we don't use them, we're throwing away a big potential revenue stream'. How long before the idea of allowing advertisers 'final approval' of articles on which their ads appear appears on the basis that 'by not doing it, we're throwing away a big potential revenue stream'?
Ah, the old slippery slope idea. IMHO, that particular slope is not particularly slippery. Wikipedia would *not* be Wikipedia if NPOV was sacrificed for advertising $$$. There are clear guidelines that would clearly be breached by doing that. Wikipedia with ads doesn't cross any lines, other than a somewhat ambiguous promise from Jimbo some years back that it wouldn't happen without community support.
You might argue that this is someting of a logical fallacy (see, for instance, [[Slippery slope]]), but I am very
Whoops, I just did that :)
concerned about the idea of opening up the principles of the project to anything other than 'making an encyclopaedia'. 'Making an encyclopaedia while keeping our advertisers happy' isn't in the mission statement as far as I'm concerned.
"Making an ad-free encyclopaedia" is also not the mission statement, as far as I can see. In fact, if you look at the whole reasoning for using the GFDL, the goal seemed to be making whatever concessions were necessary and removing all restrictions to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the work. Refusing ads seems to go against that particular goal.
Steve
"Steve Bennett" wrote
. In fact, if you look at the whole reasoning for using the GFDL, the goal seemed to be making whatever concessions were necessary and removing all restrictions to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the work. Refusing ads seems to go against that particular goal.
The problems with goal-directedness: it might actually matter how you get 'there'; and 'there' might not mean the same thing to everyone. In fact my wikimeet experience convinces me that the 'there' is not a large factor in people's motivation. They want the process to be fun, as in lively, making light of hassles, rewarding, that kind of thing. They want 'can do' as an attitude, but certainly not 'suits' and too much business talk. And these are the folk who actually write for hours, for nothing, to post the pages and turn the red links blue.
Charles
The problems with goal-directedness: it might actually matter how you get 'there'; and 'there' might not mean the same thing to everyone. In fact my wikimeet experience convinces me that the 'there' is not a large factor in people's motivation. They want the process to be fun, as in lively, making light of hassles, rewarding, that kind of thing. They want 'can do' as an attitude, but certainly not 'suits' and too much business talk. And these are the folk who actually write for hours, for nothing, to post the pages and turn the red links blue.
Interesting, you have somehow linked the discussion about ads with the discussion about userboxes. Are ads and userboxes the two extremes of a "the end" vs "the means" dichotomy?
Steve
- I think that "targetted" schemes along the lines of
Google Adsense
are a bad idea. If we have ads, they should be as little
connected to
the content being viewed as possible, as a matter of integrity. Article content and article titles should have NO relation to advertising content. If it does, we are not only inviting
some raised
eyebrows about content validity, but we're inviting people
to try and
game the system by modifying articles in oh-so-clever and
minor ways
to get their specific advertisements listed first.
I'm not sure I agree. A user visits [[Skiing]]. Ads for Rossignol, Oakley and The North Face are shown. Where's the crime? The user obviously has some interest in skiing - wouldn't he rather see ads for big skiing brands, rather than ads for say, Volkswagen, ING and "Save the bears from exploitation"?
Well, current appeal could be called "begging". As Mav explained already, we are far from having enough right now to fulfill our first trimester needs. And we finished the year on our reserves. So, "begging" makes sense.
Sensible, but tacky. (IMVHO).
The problems associated with "selling hard copies" are
- making a partnership with a firm or organisation to
"produce the hard copy" and then to "distribute" the content. Or should we set up another organisation to do that ourselves ?
Surely online publishers would lap it up if someone did the hard work of filtering and cleaning up first.
Steve
Fastfission wrote:
Just a few thoughts on advertising:
- It wouldn't have to be banner ads in the obnoxious sense. Surely
there could be some sort of quality control and discreteness about it. I'm sure we could find someone willing to shell out a lot of funding for a small ad on the lower left hand corner of each page. If every set of advertisements had to be approved by some small board of thoughtful people, it would probably keep out the "You may be a winner!" and "Mortgage your house online!" ads.
Will NPOV apply to ads? :)
- What if ad content could be controlled through user CSS pages? Those
who are 'in the know' could outright disable them without difficulty. People without accounts could never disable them. What's the ratio of logged-in to non-logged in page hits?
Already doable on Wikicities etc. Someone complained to Angela that I was doing this, and was told that it was OK so long as I didn't do it to an entire Wikicity or anything :)
- I think that "targetted" schemes along the lines of Google Adsense
are a bad idea. If we have ads, they should be as little connected to the content being viewed as possible, as a matter of integrity. Article content and article titles should have NO relation to advertising content. If it does, we are not only inviting some raised eyebrows about content validity, but we're inviting people to try and game the system by modifying articles in oh-so-clever and minor ways to get their specific advertisements listed first.
I wonder, is there anything that community consensus (shudder) would determine would be a "good cause" to run ads for?
- Perhaps there are other revenue models we should consider first
before advertising. At the moment the only ones on the table seem to be 1. selling hard-copies, 2. begging, and 3. advertising. I have the business acumen of a pigeon but surely there must be alternatives to these three.
Given that Jimbo et. al. chose the GFDL to put everything under Way Back When, hard copies seems like the perfect choice - it even tells you how to do it! :)
PS. Is WikiProject No Ads still running? Or have things changed a whole heap since the Answers.com proposal?
Josh Gordon wrote:
Perhaps the best solution would be like the one Salon, Weather Underground, and many other sites use: pay a subscription fee (say, $29.95 a year) or see (and probably ignore) the ads. That way we'd have our choice of how to personally support Wikipedia.
To tell the truth, ads strung along the side of the screen wouldn't stop me from editing, but if the servers get unresponsive, I kill all my WP windows and go do something else.
(Of course, that "something else" may be prepping another batch of photos for upload to WP later. :-) )
Stan
As soon as we introduce ads, then policy will be dictated by the companies, not us (we all know how it works)
If Wikipedia stops being as it is then I will strongly consider leaving the project
On 12/30/05, Ben Emmel bratsche1@gmail.com wrote:
Some food for thought:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
In an interview, Jimbo discusses the possibilities of ads eventually on the Wikipedia, due to the huge number of page views that we get.
Also mentioned is the large-scale rejection of ads by the "wikitopeans" [sic] in the community.
-- Ben Emmel Wikipedia - User:Bratsche bratsche1@gmail.com "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." -- William Blake _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
I'm not opposed to ads on Wikipedia per se. I am, however, vehemently opposed to those damn flashing red-and-white banners that scream at me from some websites. As long as any hypothetical ads to be put on Wikipedia are unobtrusive, I'm not going to scream too loudly.
-Hermione1980
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, Hermione1980 wrote:
I'm not opposed to ads on Wikipedia per se. I am, however, vehemently opposed to those damn flashing red-and-white banners that scream at me from some websites. As long as any hypothetical ads to be put on Wikipedia are unobtrusive, I'm not going to scream too loudly.
This is one of the reasons I am opposed to advertising on Wikipedia: far too many web ads are designed with the intent of drawing attention to themselves, which distracts from the content of Wikipedia. I doubt many people would find it easy to work their way thru an article on mathematics or rewrite the tortured syntax of a syntax while from the corner of the browser an ad for a dating service flashes the cleavage of some attractive woman -- one of my recent annoyances with the Userfriendly website. (I also despise internet dating services for other reasons, which are not relevant here.)
Insuring that any Wikipedia ads adhere to some standard only increases the overhead that accompanies advertisements. As Eclectology noted in another post, if you have ads, then you need to pay someone to track (& collect) the revenues. Then there is the cost of marketing Wikipedia ads . . . which leads to a group of people with a vested interest in monitoring article content (for example, adding pressure to remove or rewrite articles about sexuality so that Wikipedia isn't blocked by potential eyeballs).
One important thing about not having ads is that it is a return to the older Internet, a place where explicit commercial use was forbidden. Maybe I've improved my memories of that environment, but I remember that there a certain sense of community there whee everyone was more willing to share -- even the porn, believe it or not, was free.
Ads on websites have helped to erode that sense of community. Whenever ads appear on a website, this cannot help but create a sense of us vs. them: the users who are subjected to ads, & the people behind the website who presumably are getting rich off of the ads. Thus this would send a message contrary to the official one that Wikipedia is as accessible as possible to all; & I suspect that advertising on Wikipedia would be soon followed by an increase in vandalism, & a decline in new members.
These are just a few immediate thoughts I have on the matter. It might be more informative to study just how the community around the Internet Movie Database changed when Amazon bought it.
Geoff
On 1/1/06, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Then there is the cost of marketing Wikipedia ads . . . which leads to a group of people with a vested interest in monitoring article content (for example, adding pressure to remove or rewrite articles about sexuality so that Wikipedia isn't blocked by potential eyeballs).
This is I think the only serious criticism in your list (the others can be mitigated without too much difficulty, I think, with the exception of the "older Internet" which I'm not sure is intended to be a convincing argument and the "community" one which seems rather dependent on the type of advertising path chosen). It would be of the utmost imperative that any potential advertiser know that their advertisement would be displayed on all pages -- good and bad, long-termed and short-lived, featured articles and vandalisms -- unless there were some way to disable that which I'm not seeing. Of course they would be without liability but nevertheless I think the idea would probably cull out quite a lot of advertisers, given the extremes of content which exist around here.
FF
"Fastfission" wrote
I think the
idea would probably cull out quite a lot of advertisers, given the extremes of content which exist around here.
I'd like to be a fly on the wall - in a meeting where ad placement on one of the most popular pages on WP-English is discussed, and the executive of the multinational corporation realises half-way through that it's all about some four-letter word. (Not that I call the inclusion of such pages extreme.)
Charles