Michael Becker wrote: sounds like the thin edge of the wedge to me. For anything like this to be considered seriously we would first need a responsible discussion of Wikipedia finances, and the development of a business plan. All ( :-) !) our present sources of funding are opposed to advertising. Co-incidentally, I happen to agree with that position, so I'm not about to complain against my own interests. Ec

I've read a lot in this mailing list about Wikipedia eventually needing to find a source of revenue, but I'm a little hazy on exactly what the cost of maintaining Wikipedia & the related sites actually is. Jimbo, can you offer an idea of what this costs your company? How has this been trending over, say, the last 6 to 12 months? (Is the cost steady growing, growing arthimatically, staying the same?) Once we have an idea what the cost of Wikipedia actually is, then we can start talking intelligently about how to raise the money. For example, if it costs $500.-- a month to run Wikipedia, & we have 50 people willing to pay a subscription to keep it afloat, then the most effective plan would be donations thru Paypal. If it's, say $2000.-- a month, & we only have 30 people willing to pay a subscription, then obviously we need to looks for alternative source of revenue. Frankly, I don't think advertising would be a cost-effective source of revenue. Ignore for the moment the general dislike of advertising by the Wikipedia regulars: to get any sort of steady income from advertising, we would need to HIRE someone & PAY THEM MONEY to get advertising. (That is, unless Jimbo has a long line of folks pounding on his door, wanting to buy ad space on Wikipedia.) And any decent salesperson will eventually want things like health insurance, benefits, maybe an expense account to wine & dine potential advertisers, support staff who will also want stuff . . . If I have to wonder about Wikipedia staying afloat, I would like some kind of guesstimate about when Jimbo is going to have to give up his hobby. Are we talking (1) within a year; (2) sometime between 2 & 5 years; or (3) someday? An answer from Jimbo about what Wikipedia is costing him, & whether its bound to get to a point sometime where he has to stop helping us would then let us know whether just how serious we have to be when we talk about needing other sources of revenue. Geoff