With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
1. Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers.
More here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabili...
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Best j --------------------- Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis My admin: admin@calacanis.com
We need an open and sensible discussion about adverts, but I suspect this won't be happening. It's not upto the users now, it's solely upto the board and if they want to try and run Wikipedia on donations, it's their prerogative.
How long people will continue to donate to Wikipedia, I don't know, people are seeing free search, free e-mail and now free office applications from people like Google, I think it's only a matter of time before people start thinking why should I donate to keep Wikipedia going, I don't need to donate to Google to get free services.
I think, however, that if it was clear content advertisers can't actually influence the content in anyway, there would be generally little resistance amongst the community to the idea of adverts.
On 23/10/2007, Jason Calacanis jason@calacanis.com wrote:
With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
- Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers.
More here:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabili...
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Best j
Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis My admin: admin@calacanis.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/23/07, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We need an open and sensible discussion about adverts, but I suspect this won't be happening. It's not upto the users now, it's solely upto the board and if they want to try and run Wikipedia on donations, it's their prerogative.
<snip>
Actually, there is another option. Some corporation could decide that $100M in advertising potential is a great incentive to try and build a better mousetrap.
A corporation willing to invest $10M could very credibly seek to fork Wikipedia, develop an advertising supported model, and introduce changes in the community structure that might attact new volunteers. It is not a sure thing by any means, but a large stable bankroll from advertising would go a long way. There is no guarantee that the most important internet encyclopedia in 2015 will be the one run by the WMF.
-Robert Rohde
On 10/24/07, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
A corporation willing to invest $10M could very credibly seek to fork Wikipedia, develop an advertising supported model, and introduce changes in the community structure that might attact new volunteers.
Some things are more likely to happen in theory than in practice. :-) Few corporations even begin to grasp the dynamics of a community like ours. Wikia is a notable exception; they actually seem to genuinely care about building real communities, respect free licensing, etc. But look who started that company.
I though Wikipedia was about building an encyclopedia, not a community? It doesn't matter how the community works in the slightest, provided it yields the desired product.
I agree with this, though: "Few corporations even begin to grasp the dynamics of a community like ours". This is quite correct. Few corporations even begin to grasp the concept of letting the lunatics take over the asylum. Few corporations tolerate flagrant incompetence, either. Adverts would give us the cash to hire professionals, sweep out the current clutter, and get on with building the interface, presentation, and reliability that we deserve from our position as a top-ten website and world's Number One encyclopaedia. At the moment, we do not merit our elevated status. Some of this is due to lack of cash, plenty more to inability to govern from those who currently do.
Moreschi
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 01:15:34 +0200 From: erik@wikimedia.org To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia struggles, Mozilla set for life?
On 10/24/07, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
A corporation willing to invest $10M could very credibly seek to fork Wikipedia, develop an advertising supported model, and introduce changes in the community structure that might attact new volunteers.
Some things are more likely to happen in theory than in practice. :-) Few corporations even begin to grasp the dynamics of a community like ours. Wikia is a notable exception; they actually seem to genuinely care about building real communities, respect free licensing, etc. But look who started that company.
-- Toward Peace, Love & Progress: Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
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On 10/24/07, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
I though Wikipedia was about building an encyclopedia, not a community? It doesn't matter how the community works in the slightest, provided it yields the desired product.
There are many different possible encyclopedias that we can build. The hypothesis for also building and maintaining a healthy community is that it leads to a higher quality, more diverse, more inclusive, more sustainable encyclopedic work.
I agree with this, though: "Few corporations even begin to grasp the dynamics of a community like ours". This is quite correct. Few corporations even begin to grasp the concept of letting the lunatics take over the asylum.
And that's why there can only be one Wikipedia. :-)
When you are done griping, perhaps you have some useful suggestions -- preferably not in the usual uncreative "zero tolerance, shoot on sight" category that only tends to make matters worse. Surely ArbCom is not the best and only decision making process for contentious cases we can come up with.
On 10/24/07, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
At the moment, we do not merit our elevated status.
Of course we do, people aren't being coerced into using the site. :) That's not to say that improvements couldn't be made. I'd rather see a ransom system for bugs and software enhancements than some hierarchical command structure that would be completely dissonant with the current community.
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
At the moment, we do not merit our elevated status.
This just leaves me scratching my head.
The elevated status we have is popularity, popularity that comes from utility. We deserve our status in a way that's almost tautological. To say that we don't because we don't have the trappings that people associate with success is like saying that Mother Teresa doesn't deserve her popularity because she didn't wear nice clothes.
I agree that with more money, we could find ways to serve our readers better. And even with the funding we have, we can still find ways to improve. But I'd hate for people to confuse improvement with having a slick presentation or conforming to what a corporate executive would consider ordered.
Most of the web is built because people want something from you. Your money, your attention, your agreement, your adulation. It looks slick because you subconsciously like pretty things better, and therefore give up more of what people want from you. Wikipedia is different: our mission is to serve those hungry for knowledge. We aren't trying to manipulate people into anything, and have the freedom to be different. We should continue to do so.
William
On 24/10/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 10/24/07, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
A corporation willing to invest $10M could very credibly seek to fork Wikipedia, develop an advertising supported model, and introduce changes in the community structure that might attact new volunteers.
Some things are more likely to happen in theory than in practice. :-) Few corporations even begin to grasp the dynamics of a community like ours. Wikia is a notable exception; they actually seem to genuinely care about building real communities, respect free licensing, etc. But look who started that company.
Wikia has picked up how much funding?
And digital universe certainly started off with $10 million
On 10/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/10/2007, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 10/24/07, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
A corporation willing to invest $10M could very credibly seek to fork Wikipedia, develop an advertising supported model, and introduce
changes in
the community structure that might attact new volunteers.
Some things are more likely to happen in theory than in practice. :-) Few corporations even begin to grasp the dynamics of a community like ours. Wikia is a notable exception; they actually seem to genuinely care about building real communities, respect free licensing, etc. But look who started that company.
Wikia has picked up how much funding?
Well, according to Wikipedia's article on Wikia, they have 35 employees and have picked up ~$14 million in venture capital. According to Alexa they are currently in the mid 500s for rank among all web destinations. A CNN article from March suggested they have ~2.5 million page views per day, which would probably put them between $1 and $10 million in ad revenue per year.
And why are we wasting our time working on Wikipedia? ;-)
-Robert Rohde
On 27/10/2007, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
And why are we wasting our time working on Wikipedia? ;-)
Because we would rather write about thinks other than MMORPGs and Star Wars Fanon (More than 15,000 pages of Star Wars fan fiction)
geni wrote:
On 27/10/2007, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
And why are we wasting our time working on Wikipedia? ;-)
Because we would rather write about thinks other than MMORPGs and Star Wars Fanon (More than 15,000 pages of Star Wars fan fiction)
"We" don't have a single set of values regarding what sorts of articles we would rather write.
Why should it be? Why should we expect progress to stop with us? Why should we assume that nobody will devise an even better medium of collaboration than a wiki? Why should we even assume that the concept of internet encyclopedia will be relevant 8 years from now? As usenet went, so shall we.
On 10/23/07, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/23/07, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We need an open and sensible discussion about adverts, but I suspect this won't be happening. It's not upto the users now, it's solely upto the board and if they want to try and run Wikipedia on donations, it's their prerogative.
<snip>
Actually, there is another option. Some corporation could decide that $100M in advertising potential is a great incentive to try and build a better mousetrap.
A corporation willing to invest $10M could very credibly seek to fork Wikipedia, develop an advertising supported model, and introduce changes in the community structure that might attact new volunteers. It is not a sure thing by any means, but a large stable bankroll from advertising would go a long way. There is no guarantee that the most important internet encyclopedia in 2015 will be the one run by the WMF.
-Robert Rohde _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
David Goodman wrote:
Why should it be? Why should we expect progress to stop with us? Why should we assume that nobody will devise an even better medium of collaboration than a wiki? Why should we even assume that the concept of internet encyclopedia will be relevant 8 years from now? As usenet went, so shall we.
If you keep making comments like that I'll need to start accusing you of realism. ;-)
Ec
On 23/10/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We need an open and sensible discussion about adverts, but I suspect this won't be happening. It's not upto the users now, it's solely upto the board and if they want to try and run Wikipedia on donations, it's their prerogative.
Nothing is solely up to the foundation. Plenty of people have made it clear they would leave/fork if adverts were added to Wikipedia. If the foundation wants to continue to have projects to host, they need to listen to what their users want. They understand this, I think it very odd that so many users seem not to.
On 25/10/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/10/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We need an open and sensible discussion about adverts, but I suspect this won't be happening. It's not upto the users now, it's solely upto the board and if they want to try and run Wikipedia on donations, it's their prerogative.
Nothing is solely up to the foundation. Plenty of people have made it clear they would leave/fork if adverts were added to Wikipedia. If the foundation wants to continue to have projects to host, they need to listen to what their users want. They understand this, I think it very odd that so many users seem not to.
By users you mean more than just the handful of active users? If the active users who are freedom fanatics forked, their place would be filled by the many contributors who don't contribute now due to the amount of bureaucracy and philosophy that gets thrown around. Users won't abandon Wikipedia because of ads, they never abandoned anyone else because of it, why start with the single most handy resource on the web.
Peter
Nothing is solely up to the foundation. Plenty of people have made it clear they would leave/fork if adverts were added to Wikipedia. If the foundation wants to continue to have projects to host, they need to listen to what their users want. They understand this, I think it very odd that so many users seem not to.
By users you mean more than just the handful of active users? If the active users who are freedom fanatics forked, their place would be filled by the many contributors who don't contribute now due to the amount of bureaucracy and philosophy that gets thrown around. Users won't abandon Wikipedia because of ads, they never abandoned anyone else because of it, why start with the single most handy resource on the web.
If there were two Wikipedias, one with ads, one without, which do you think readers would go to? The only thing the original Wikipedia would have going for it is brand recognition. It would take time for people to learn about the ad-free version, but people would learn (possibly quite quickly, since I can see the media jumping on the story).
If there were two Wikipedias, one with ads, one without, which do you think readers would go to? The only thing the original Wikipedia would have going for it is brand recognition. It would take time for people to learn about the ad-free version, but people would learn (possibly quite quickly, since I can see the media jumping on the story).
With enough brand recognition for both, the one that's higher up in the search result.
On 25/10/2007, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
If there were two Wikipedias, one with ads, one without, which do you think readers would go to? The only thing the original Wikipedia would have going for it is brand recognition. It would take time for people to learn about the ad-free version, but people would learn (possibly quite quickly, since I can see the media jumping on the story).
With enough brand recognition for both, the one that's higher up in the search result.
The one that's higher up in the search results will be the one most used, since search rankings (at least on Google) depend on incoming links, which are, of course, correlated with use.
On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Nothing is solely up to the foundation. Plenty of people have made it clear they would leave/fork if adverts were added to Wikipedia. If the foundation wants to continue to have projects to host, they need to listen to what their users want. They understand this, I think it very odd that so many users seem not to.
By users you mean more than just the handful of active users? If the active users who are freedom fanatics forked, their place would be filled by the many contributors who don't contribute now due to the amount of bureaucracy and philosophy that gets thrown around. Users won't abandon Wikipedia because of ads, they never abandoned anyone else because of it, why start with the single most handy resource on the web.
If there were two Wikipedias, one with ads, one without, which do you think readers would go to?
Depends on a lot of factors, like how annoying or useful are the ads, how up-to-date are the varying sites, which one shows up higher in the search results, what features do the different sites offer, etc.
Google has ads, and Scroogle Scraper doesn't, but most people still go to Google to search. Actually I consider Google ads to be a benefit more than a detriment. They'd be even better if they'd screen their advertisers more, though.
The only thing the original Wikipedia would have going for it is brand recognition.
Brand recognition is everything, though. Brand recognition is the reason Wikipedia gets all the traffic it gets. Everything else can be easily and legally copied, and there are plenty of people who would like to take over all that traffic, even if they wouldn't make any money doing so.
This doesn't mean Wikipedia is untouchable. A fork could come along and take it down, and I think eventually it's bound to happen. But it's going to take a really big reason to compete with the synergies of being *the place* to go to collaborate on writing a free encyclopedia. I seriously doubt ads alone would be a big enough reason to defeat that. Especially if all the money coming in from ad revenue was used in a remotely useful way. An ad-supported site would presumably be much faster, much better looking, and have many more features. It'd be like the difference between http://www.google.com/ and https://ssl.scroogle.org/
Thomas Dalton wrote:
By users you mean more than just the handful of active users? If the active users who are freedom fanatics forked, their place would be filled by the many contributors who don't contribute now due to the amount of bureaucracy and philosophy that gets thrown around. Users won't abandon Wikipedia because of ads, they never abandoned anyone else because of it, why start with the single most handy resource on the web.
If there were two Wikipedias, one with ads, one without, which do you think readers would go to? The only thing the original Wikipedia would have going for it is brand recognition. It would take time for people to learn about the ad-free version, but people would learn (possibly quite quickly, since I can see the media jumping on the story).
But if the Foundation has to resort to ads because there just isn't enough money coming in from donations and other sources to keep running otherwise, how is the ad-free fork going to manage any better?
I don't support ads in general, but if the choice is between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia at all I say stash a backup of the database somewhere safe and then go for it.
On 10/25/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
By users you mean more than just the handful of active users? If the active users who are freedom fanatics forked, their place would be filled by the many contributors who don't contribute now due to the amount of bureaucracy and philosophy that gets thrown around. Users won't abandon Wikipedia because of ads, they never abandoned anyone else because of it, why start with the single most handy resource on the web.
If there were two Wikipedias, one with ads, one without, which do you think readers would go to? The only thing the original Wikipedia would have going for it is brand recognition. It would take time for people to learn about the ad-free version, but people would learn (possibly quite quickly, since I can see the media jumping on the story).
But if the Foundation has to resort to ads because there just isn't enough money coming in from donations and other sources to keep running otherwise, how is the ad-free fork going to manage any better?
I don't support ads in general, but if the choice is between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia at all I say stash a backup of the database somewhere safe and then go for it.
The choice is almost never that black and white, though. Other than the bandwidth, pretty much all the portions of the budget could be cut without having "no Wikipedia at all". It'd be slower, or less effective, or less transparent, or less fun, or less accurate, or less featureful, or whatever, but by the time you reach the point of "we need money tomorrow or else the hosting company is going to turn off power to our servers" the rest of the parts are so far destroyed that it's already too late.
But if the Foundation has to resort to ads because there just isn't enough money coming in from donations and other sources to keep running otherwise, how is the ad-free fork going to manage any better?
I don't support ads in general, but if the choice is between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia at all I say stash a backup of the database somewhere safe and then go for it.
If it ever gets to that point, then you're absolutely right. Wikipedia with ads is certainly far better than no Wikipedia at all. We are nowhere near that point at the moment, though.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
But if the Foundation has to resort to ads because there just isn't enough money coming in from donations and other sources to keep running otherwise, how is the ad-free fork going to manage any better?
I don't support ads in general, but if the choice is between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia at all I say stash a backup of the database somewhere safe and then go for it.
If it ever gets to that point, then you're absolutely right. Wikipedia with ads is certainly far better than no Wikipedia at all. We are nowhere near that point at the moment, though.
For the record, I don't think so either. I was just responding to a hypothetical situation where Wikipedia _did_ have to resort to ad-based revenue to support itself and an ad-free fork was attempted, not addressing the likelihood of getting into that situation in the first place.
On 24/10/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/10/2007, Nick heligolandwp@googlemail.com wrote:
We need an open and sensible discussion about adverts, but I suspect this won't be happening. It's not upto the users now, it's solely upto the
board
and if they want to try and run Wikipedia on donations, it's their prerogative.
Nothing is solely up to the foundation. Plenty of people have made it clear they would leave/fork if adverts were added to Wikipedia. If the foundation wants to continue to have projects to host, they need to listen to what their users want. They understand this, I think it very odd that so many users seem not to.
It is also worth noting that this has happened already - a few years ago pretty much the whole Spanish Wikipedia just got up and left because the notion of ads was even floated (though this may have been just a last straw) - so caution is well advised.
- d.
See [[WP:PEREN#Advertising]] and links.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jason Calacanis wrote:
With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
- Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers.
More here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabili...
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Wikipedia is not and has never been about making money.
Wikipedia is an icon of the free media -- commercial ads remove us from the free media, and make us quite the hypocrites.
Corporate subservience -- be it to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other such organization -- calls into question every action of the foundation. Strong criticism, and indeed justified criticism, will be levied against Wikimedia for acting in its advertisers' interests.
This is not to say that Google is evil (although many would likely assert that), but rather that their interests are not aligned with Wikimedia's.
My five cents,
- -- Daniel Cannon (AmiDaniel)
http://amidaniel.com cannon.danielc@gmail.com
On 24/10/2007, Daniel Cannon cannon.danielc@gmail.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jason Calacanis wrote:
With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
- Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers.
More here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabili...
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Wikipedia is not and has never been about making money.
Wikipedia is an icon of the free media -- commercial ads remove us from the free media, and make us quite the hypocrites.
Having a donation drive with constant banners once a year demonstrates that it does cost money to run wikipedia, how free is it really? You use free (money) and commercial (money) together instead of the overall goal of freedom of information. Just one more reason why I don't like the focus on the word free by FSF.
Corporate subservience -- be it to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other such organization -- calls into question every action of the foundation. Strong criticism, and indeed justified criticism, will be levied against Wikimedia for acting in its advertisers' interests.
Why is it classed as subservience to allow advertisers to pay for something. Non-profit organisations have to make a living somehow, and it would be much worse for a corporation to be seen to boss around a non-profit organisation than the other way around.
This is not to say that Google is evil (although many would likely assert that), but rather that their interests are not aligned with Wikimedia's.
My five cents,
Daniel Cannon (AmiDaniel)
On 10/25/07, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/10/2007, Daniel Cannon cannon.danielc@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is not and has never been about making money.
Wikipedia is an icon of the free media -- commercial ads remove us from the free media, and make us quite the hypocrites.
Having a donation drive with constant banners once a year demonstrates that it does cost money to run wikipedia, how free is it really?
I think that's the key. Personally, I'd rather have opt-out targetted advertising for two weeks out of the year than have untargetted forced banner advertising for two months out of the year.
Eventually I don't think begging for donations is going to be sustainable. The banner ads asking for donations will continue to get more and more annoying, and the desire for funds will continue to rise. But for now, it works.
I think that's the key. Personally, I'd rather have opt-out targetted advertising for two weeks out of the year than have untargetted forced banner advertising for two months out of the year.
It's not untargetted. It targets users of Wikimedia projects, which are the people most likely to donate to Wikimedia projects.
I think that's the key. Personally, I'd rather have opt-out targetted advertising for two weeks out of the year than have untargetted forced banner advertising for two months out of the year.
It's not untargetted. It targets users of Wikimedia projects, which are the people most likely to donate to Wikimedia projects.
Nitpicks aside, I think you know what I mean.
On 25/10/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I think that's the key. Personally, I'd rather have opt-out targetted advertising for two weeks out of the year than have untargetted forced banner advertising for two months out of the year.
It's not untargetted. It targets users of Wikimedia projects, which are the people most likely to donate to Wikimedia projects.
Nitpicks aside, I think you know what I mean.
It's not a nitpick. Your key point was that ads are more targeted than donation banners, and I disagree. When I look something up on Wikipedia, I'm rarely interested in buying anything related to it, I'm interested in finding out about it - ie. having access to free knowledge, which is exactly what the donation banner is about.
On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/10/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I think that's the key. Personally, I'd rather have opt-out targetted advertising for two weeks out of the year than have untargetted forced banner advertising for two months out of the year.
It's not untargetted. It targets users of Wikimedia projects, which are the people most likely to donate to Wikimedia projects.
Nitpicks aside, I think you know what I mean.
It's not a nitpick. Your key point was that ads are more targeted than donation banners, and I disagree. When I look something up on Wikipedia, I'm rarely interested in buying anything related to it, I'm interested in finding out about it - ie. having access to free knowledge, which is exactly what the donation banner is about.
My key point was that I'd personally prefer opt-out targeted advertising for two weeks out of the year to what Wikipedia has right now.
My key point was that I'd personally prefer opt-out targeted advertising for two weeks out of the year to what Wikipedia has right now.
I doubt it would make as much money, though, so it's irrelevant. Advertising can make a lot of money, but if it's opt-out and only lasts two weeks, I can't see it rivalling a fundraiser. The results of our fundraisers are measured in the millions, could we really get millions from two weeks of ads?
On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
My key point was that I'd personally prefer opt-out targeted advertising for two weeks out of the year to what Wikipedia has right now.
I doubt it would make as much money, though, so it's irrelevant. Advertising can make a lot of money, but if it's opt-out and only lasts two weeks, I can't see it rivalling a fundraiser. The results of our fundraisers are measured in the millions, could we really get millions from two weeks of ads?
First of all, I don't think opt-out is going to make significantly less than forced-in. Opt-in advertisements would be significantly less effective, but I don't think many people would choose to opt-out and I think the ones that chose to do so would be the least likely to click on the ads anyway. But feel free to double my amount of time if you'd like, I'd still feel the same way. Secondly, the last time I calculated it I estimated that it'd only take 2 weeks of Google Adsense ads to make enough money to fulfill the WMF's budget. If you want to make some updated calculations, feel free.
Oh hell, I'll do it. Let's say $2 CPM (that's low according to http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-google-adsense), on 7 billion page views per month (http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/06/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-traffic). That's $14 million a month, which would mean roughly $7 million from two weeks of ads.
Triple my numbers if you want, and Wikipedia could make $4.6 million in a month. And I'd still personally prefer a month of opt-out targetted text ads to the current fundraising messages.
And that's all I'm talking about in this message. My personal preference - which would be less annoying to me personally.
Oh hell, I'll do it. Let's say $2 CPM (that's low according to http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-google-adsense), on 7 billion page views per month (http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/06/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-traffic). That's $14 million a month, which would mean roughly $7 million from two weeks of ads.
That website is 4 years old. Are returns from ads still that good? I thought they had dropped significantly over the last few years.
On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Oh hell, I'll do it. Let's say $2 CPM (that's low according to http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-google-adsense), on 7 billion page views per month (http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/06/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-traffic). That's $14 million a month, which would mean roughly $7 million from two weeks of ads.
That website is 4 years old. Are returns from ads still that good? I thought they had dropped significantly over the last few years.
I don't see why I'm in any better position than you to answer that question. In fact, apparently you're more familiar with it than I am.
I also gave myself a factor of three in possible mistakes, and actually I halved the low end of what that site said was the average CPM ($4-5). So I really have a fudge factor of 6x+.
I'm not going to spend tons of time coming up with really accurate estimates, because I think it's so blindingly obvious that you could make as much as you do in fundraising for the year in less than a month using targeted text ads.
Anthony's numbers (w/ $2 CPM) are almost identical to the numbers that I came up with some time ago, although he used an entirely different approach.
But I'm not so confident that you can get income like that from the moment you switch it on...
On 10/25/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Oh hell, I'll do it. Let's say $2 CPM (that's low according to http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-google-adsense), on 7 billion page views per month
(http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/06/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-traffic).
That's $14 million a month, which would mean roughly $7 million from two weeks of ads.
That website is 4 years old. Are returns from ads still that good? I thought they had dropped significantly over the last few years.
I don't see why I'm in any better position than you to answer that question. In fact, apparently you're more familiar with it than I am.
I also gave myself a factor of three in possible mistakes, and actually I halved the low end of what that site said was the average CPM ($4-5). So I really have a fudge factor of 6x+.
I'm not going to spend tons of time coming up with really accurate estimates, because I think it's so blindingly obvious that you could make as much as you do in fundraising for the year in less than a month using targeted text ads.
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Ad returns have risen since 2003. (Maybe dropped since 2001.)
On 10/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Oh hell, I'll do it. Let's say $2 CPM (that's low according to http://www.sitepoint.com/article/introducing-google-adsense), on 7 billion page views per month (http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/06/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-traffic). That's $14 million a month, which would mean roughly $7 million from two weeks of ads.
That website is 4 years old. Are returns from ads still that good? I thought they had dropped significantly over the last few years.
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Peter Ansell wrote:
Daniel Cannon cannon.danielc@gmail.com wrote:
Corporate subservience -- be it to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other such organization -- calls into question every action of the foundation. Strong criticism, and indeed justified criticism, will be levied against Wikimedia for acting in its advertisers' interests.
Why is it classed as subservience to allow advertisers to pay for something. Non-profit organisations have to make a living somehow, and it would be much worse for a corporation to be seen to boss around a non-profit organisation than the other way around.
Hi, Peter. I confess that "subservience" is a little strong for my tastes. But having worked for and with advertising-supported businesses, I feel the influence is pervasive. Hopefully it's subtle, but it's always there. See [[Chinese Wall#Journalism]] for an example of an attempted defense against it, one that has mixed success.
Modern ad networks like Google are a little different in that you don't have a direct tie to any particular advertiser. But still, advertising-supported businesses aren't really in the business of delivering content. They are in the business of selling your attention to people with money. It's sort of the same way that cattle ranchers aren't really in the business of feeding cows, however much the cows might think so. Since currently we only focus on serving users, becoming ad-supported at least gives us a strong incentive for divided loyalties.
Even if you can resist that influence, getting a lot of your money from one source inevitably forces people to at least think a little harder about any action that might disrupt the flow. Accepting Jason's $100m/year number for the sake of argument, that means a rogue or clumsy admin who breaks the ads would cost us $11k per hour. If we end up violating Google's Terms of Service somehow, they could suspend us, costing us $273,927 per day. And deciding to shut off ads permanently would presumably mean firing a lot of people.
But suppose we could keep that from becoming a sort of subservience. Suppose we believe in our hearts that we'll quit the money (and fire the people) at the first hint of us compromising an article. Those kinds of numbers still create a pretty big conflict of interest. And a conflict of interest isn't a problem just because of what you do, but because people now have to be more suspicious of you.
William
On 10/25/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Even if you can resist that influence, getting a lot of your money from one source inevitably forces people to at least think a little harder about any action that might disrupt the flow. Accepting Jason's $100m/year number for the sake of argument, that means a rogue or clumsy admin who breaks the ads would cost us $11k per hour. If we end up violating Google's Terms of Service somehow, they could suspend us, costing us $273,927 per day. And deciding to shut off ads permanently would presumably mean firing a lot of people.
Well, there is so much money that could be generated as we've seen with Mozilla (i.e. $50-150M a year) you would have so much money in the bank that you would be subservient to NO ONE. If Google gives Mozilla a hard time they can walk away and never raise money again... they could simply live off the interest.
So, while I agree with you in concept, the reality is that this level of funding would be akin to an endowment that would make Wikipedia sustainable and independent FOR ALL TIME!
Wouldn't that be an amazing thing?
But suppose we could keep that from becoming a sort of subservience. Suppose we believe in our hearts that we'll quit the money (and fire the people) at the first hint of us compromising an article. Those kinds of numbers still create a pretty big conflict of interest. And a conflict of interest isn't a problem just because of what you do, but because people now have to be more suspicious of you.
In terms of the COI I can't see that happening as the advertising in Google is assigned by... well... machines. Those people buying the ads don't even know what sites the ads are going on! So, the COI would only exist in the eyes of the users and I think it would be a stretch to think that some randomized/rotating Google ads--the same ones they see all over the web--would make folks think there is a conflict.
Now, if they did see it as a conflict you could make all advertising displayed on Wikipedia 100% optin. If someone turns the ads on themselves they made the decision and the COI can't really exist can it?
Also, you could rotate the advertising between Yahoo, Google, and MSN and that would place another layer of distance.
All this being said, I respect people who want to protect the project so much. It's that relentless obsession with the issues that makes Wikipedia great. However, I might point out that the Wikipedia has a bigger conflict of interest right now if it is funded by a small number of donors--especially ones that are anonymous except to the insiders--
That's a COI of epic, star chamber proportions I think.... what if it comes out that Jimbo got Bono to put in $1M and Bono works for a VC firm that is funding wikia... :-)
I mean, you could really go X-Files level conspiracy level on this stuff.
best j --------------------- Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
On 10/24/07, Daniel Cannon cannon.danielc@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is an icon of the free media -- commercial ads remove us from the free media, and make us quite the hypocrites.
What rubbish. Free doesn't mean "non-commercial", it means "free to use, modify and copy."
As a longtime free software and free content advocate, I'm really fed up of this illiterate opposition to use of advertising to fund Wikimedia's servers
On 27/10/2007, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/24/07, Daniel Cannon cannon.danielc@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is an icon of the free media -- commercial ads remove us from the free media, and make us quite the hypocrites.
What rubbish. Free doesn't mean "non-commercial", it means "free to use, modify and copy."
As a longtime free software and free content advocate, I'm really fed up of this illiterate opposition to use of advertising to fund Wikimedia's servers
Some people must think servers maintain themselves, and that bandwidth is a costless commodity, and that people answer phones on a volunteer basis... That is a joke right, especially in the US!
Peter
Wikimedia could also not maintain 501(c)3 status that way.
Food for thought.
On 10/23/07, Jason Calacanis jason@calacanis.com wrote:
With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
- Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers.
More here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabili...
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Best j
Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis My admin: admin@calacanis.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 2007.10.23 19:12:56 -0400, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com scribbled 0 lines:
Wikimedia could also not maintain 501(c)3 status that way.
Food for thought.
Last I heard, the Mozilla Foundation was still a 501(c)3 charity despite their Google deal. Has it since been removed?
-- gwern MKSEARCH LABLINK 3P-HV Lebed NAWAS MIT Posse credit forces Anonymous
On 10/23/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2007.10.23 19:12:56 -0400, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com scribbled 0 lines:
Wikimedia could also not maintain 501(c)3 status that way.
Food for thought.
Last I heard, the Mozilla Foundation was still a 501(c)3 charity despite their Google deal. Has it since been removed?
The Mozilla Foundation set up a wholly-owned taxable subsidiary corporation, the Mozilla Corporation, in order to remain a 501(c)(3).
Anthony wrote:
On 10/23/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2007.10.23 19:12:56 -0400, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com scribbled 0 lines:
Wikimedia could also not maintain 501(c)3 status that way.
Food for thought.
Last I heard, the Mozilla Foundation was still a 501(c)3 charity despite their Google deal. Has it since been removed?
The Mozilla Foundation set up a wholly-owned taxable subsidiary corporation, the Mozilla Corporation, in order to remain a 501(c)(3).
Fair enough. If we are ever in the unfortunate position of making too much commercial money, this would be one possible solution.
Ec
On 10/24/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 10/23/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2007.10.23 19:12:56 -0400, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com
scribbled 0 lines:
Wikimedia could also not maintain 501(c)3 status that way.
Food for thought.
Last I heard, the Mozilla Foundation was still a 501(c)3 charity despite
their Google deal. Has it since been removed?
The Mozilla Foundation set up a wholly-owned taxable subsidiary corporation, the Mozilla Corporation, in order to remain a 501(c)(3).
What about a Wikimedia Corporation? That'd work
Phoenix 15
Forgot to ad that the wikimedia corporation would have to donate most of its profits to the foundation
Phoenix 15
On 10/24/07, Phoenix wiki phoenix.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Forgot to ad that the wikimedia corporation would have to donate most of its profits to the foundation
That doesn't work either.
Wikimedia Foundation could not run widespread ads and maitain charatable non-profit status because of the public support test. Adding a layer of money laundering would not resolve this issue. ;)
The short explination of the public support test:
The public support test requires that we derrive at least 1/3 of our income from "the public". This isn't *so* bad, until you find out how "the public" is defined. The public support is defined as the portion of donations from persons or groups which do not exceed 2% of the total income.
For example:
An ORG's income is $1,000,000. $100,000 comes from regular business income (ads or t-shirts for example). $150,000 comes from one large donor. Eleven donors donate $60k. then there are ~5000 ~$20 donors making up the rest.
2% of $1m is 20k, so the portion income from any donor over 20k is not counted as public support.
In this case the amount of non-public support (donation income over 20k + business income) is 670k.
Because 670k is over 2/3rds of the income, this hypothetical org fails the public support test.
On 24/10/2007, Phoenix wiki phoenix.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/24/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On 10/23/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2007.10.23 19:12:56 -0400, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com
scribbled 0 lines:
Wikimedia could also not maintain 501(c)3 status that way.
Last I heard, the Mozilla Foundation was still a 501(c)3 charity despite their Google deal. Has it since been removed?
The Mozilla Foundation set up a wholly-owned taxable subsidiary corporation, the Mozilla Corporation, in order to remain a 501(c)(3).
What about a Wikimedia Corporation? That'd work
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, St. Petersburg, Florida (UNN) — The Wikimedia Foundation(R), the nonprofit behind Wikipedia(R), the Free Cheap Encyclopedia™, will be introducing paid editing to all projects through the new Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation joint venture with Richard Branson.
A standard paid account will start at US$25 (€20 or £0.05) per month per user, with a discount of US$5 (€16 or £0.04) per month for users with over 2000 edits. The paid editing initiative was announced during the Foundation's Winter 2006/Q4 funding drive.
Wikipedia(R) is the number 10 website in the world, and the only website in the Alexa Top 20 run by a nonprofit. Despite its low overheads, with only six paid staff, the Foundation has had tremendous difficulty in keeping up with the ever-increasing demand for server hardware, not to mention the bandwidth bill for serving an average 150 megabytes per second, doubling every six months. Slow page loading and frequent downtime remain perennial problems.
"Advertising on Wikimedia(R) has been roundly rejected by the community," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikimedia(R), "even though we're missing out on about *sixty thousand goddamn dollars each and every frickin' day* by not having two Google text ads. But we got away with proving mathematically that the Virgin Unite logo in the fundraising banner was technically sponsorship and not 'advertising' per se, and as a bonus it shook off a couple of the most troublesome whiners from the Dutch and Italian Wikipedias(R). And hey, we outlasted Enciclopedia Libre nicely. *We got the brand name*, suckas.
"We were so desperate for cash that we'd initially considered a rental scheme for volunteers, but Rob Church is still under twenty-one so can't legally work any street corner other than Piccadilly Circus, and Greg Maxwell got a little too excitable with his first rough trade customer once the ketamine wore off. Brion had to resort to the cattle prod. Very enthusiastic volunteer, though, Greg. Totally dedicated. But rest assured, we still hold out hope of finding a Wikipedian™ who's actually attractive to anyone anywhere. Danny already bought the wide-brimmed purple fedora and the cane."
The new account levels are:
* WikiFree™: You can get a free account by completing offers or reffering freinds to do the same. For an initial setup fee of five dollars (€4 or £0.01), you get ten article edits a month, six picture userboxes and one vanity article. * Sponsored Plus™: The new Sponsored Plus™ level gives free users more options, paid for by "PUNCH THE MONKEY!" adverti sponsorship messages on pages, images and the 'Save page' button. After your five dollar setup fee, you get 100 edits a month, twelve picture userboxes and two vanity articles, one for yourself and one for your garage band. * WikiPaid™: The WikiPaid™ account, at twenty dollars a month, offers unlimited monthly edits, thirty picture userboxes, twenty edits per month in the Wikipedia(R): page space, a vanity article each month and sponsorship messages only in the sitenotice banner. * WikiAdministrator™: WikiAdministrator™ powers are given to the most highly respected editors on Wikipedia(R). For one hundred dollars a month (€80 or £0.20), you get all the paid user benefits, unlimited edits in the Wikipedia(R): page space, smaller sponsorship messages in the sitenotice banner, immunity to CheckUser and droit de banstick in any edit war with a lesser editor.
Sponsored Plus™, WikiPaid™ and WikiAdministrator™ users can also create their own Wikistress meters and move adversaries' articles to Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense.
The new Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation is a for-profit joint venture between the Wikimedia Foundation(R) and Richard Branson's Virgin Group. The Foundation owns the trademarks and licenses them to the Corporation, and Virgin engineers run the server network and sell adverti market sponsorship. Wikipedia(R) remains free content under the GNU Free Documentation License, but use of the logo, the puzzle globe, the font or the word "Wikipedia"(R) attracts a 25¢ per use license fee. (Please deposit coin in CD drive before continuing reading.)
The Wikimedia(R) Foundation's profits go to furthering their charitable goals, which remain "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." The Foundation's new financial muscle is used to facilitate the hard work of its dedicated employees and independent consultants, most of the latter being recruited from the most experienced Foundation volunteers. "We feel we have a duty — a duty to all of humanity, really — to use the Foundation's new resources wisely and effectively," said James Forrester from on board the Arbitration Committee™ yacht.
Richard Stallman surprised many with his enthusiastic support for the creation of Wikimedia(R)'s for-profit arm. "In particular, I strongly hope the Foundation sticks it to Debian the way Mozilla did over Firefox. Call my GFDL 'non-free,' will they. Assholes."
"We think there's tremendous scope for synergy here. Jimmy and I have been discussing this deal since we met on Bono's private Caribbean island last year," said Sir Richard. "We think Wikimedia(R) will fit right in with the way our other recent Internet acquisition, NTL-Telewest, works. Particularly their excellence in customer service."
"We work well together," said Wales. "It's a beard thing."
The Virgin Wikimedia(R) Corporation has been listed on NASDAQ (VWMC 0.000002↓). The initial public offering raised almost seventy dollars by the close of trading yesterday.
- d.
- If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to
block certain advertisers.
If we block some advertisers, we are implicitly approving others. While that's not the same as endorsing them, it's pretty close, and I, for one, am not keen to tred that line.
On 24/10/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
- If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to
block certain advertisers.
If we block some advertisers, we are implicitly approving others. While that's not the same as endorsing them, it's pretty close, and I, for one, am not keen to tred that line.
Mmm. Which side do we sell advertising to on [[Abortion]]? If you don't blacklist you'll get screams; if you do you'll get screams, whoever you pick on.
In an attempt to maintain (appearances of) neutrality, we'd have to spend quite a lot of effort controlling who gets these advertising slots on contested topics; that's going to eat into the profits quite quickly. It's not a simple matter of "and now, open the money pipe"
On 10/24/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. Which side do we sell advertising to on [[Abortion]]? If you don't blacklist you'll get screams; if you do you'll get screams, whoever you pick on.
Actually, you can easily turn off ads on a per page basis. At Mahalo we turn off ads on controversial pages on a regular basis (think: school shootings). Also, Google turns them off as well as best they can.
So, really a non issue.
In an attempt to maintain (appearances of) neutrality, we'd have to spend quite a lot of effort controlling who gets these advertising slots on contested topics; that's going to eat into the profits quite quickly. It's not a simple matter of "and now, open the money pipe"
Actually, it just might be that easy. What if we opened it up in stages and get feedback along the way:
Step one: 100% optin advertising where the user has to turn it on. Step two: put ads on search results, or give folks the option to "Use Google to search wikipedia" with the ads going to Wikipedia--so again, opt in. Step three: if steps one and two do well, PERHAPS put ads on pages by default. In fact, Wikipedia could run ads up until the point it raised $50M and then turn them off and live off the 3-5M that would turn over in interest!
Step one is a total no brainer... i can't think of one reason to be against OPTin advertising.... can anyone?
best j --------------------- Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com
I had an interesting discussion this evening with a senior sales executive for a major commercial publisher, who was totally amazed that we did not accept advertisements, as in his view everyone wanted to maximize income and financial support and the money the staff could be paid--as his company did.
that of course is why he is there, and i am here.
consider the
On 10/24/07, Jason Calacanis jason@calacanis.com wrote:
On 10/24/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. Which side do we sell advertising to on [[Abortion]]? If you don't blacklist you'll get screams; if you do you'll get screams, whoever you pick on.
Actually, you can easily turn off ads on a per page basis. At Mahalo we turn off ads on controversial pages on a regular basis (think: school shootings). Also, Google turns them off as well as best they can.
So, really a non issue.
In an attempt to maintain (appearances of) neutrality, we'd have to spend quite a lot of effort controlling who gets these advertising slots on contested topics; that's going to eat into the profits quite quickly. It's not a simple matter of "and now, open the money pipe"
Actually, it just might be that easy. What if we opened it up in stages and get feedback along the way:
Step one: 100% optin advertising where the user has to turn it on. Step two: put ads on search results, or give folks the option to "Use Google to search wikipedia" with the ads going to Wikipedia--so again, opt in. Step three: if steps one and two do well, PERHAPS put ads on pages by default. In fact, Wikipedia could run ads up until the point it raised $50M and then turn them off and live off the 3-5M that would turn over in interest!
Step one is a total no brainer... i can't think of one reason to be against OPTin advertising.... can anyone?
best j
Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/25/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
I had an interesting discussion this evening with a senior sales executive for a major commercial publisher, who was totally amazed that we did not accept advertisements, as in his view everyone wanted to maximize income and financial support and the money the staff could be paid--as his company did.
That's sort of the point, even with regard to the subject of this thread.
Wikipedia is fundamentally an altruistic venture, more so than Mozilla is. Mozilla doesn't state amongst its goals bringing a browser to poor kids in Africa. It's just a free browser because people want a free browser for themselves. Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia because people thought *other people* should have a free encyclopaedia.
This clarifies for me why it's ok that Wikipedia is struggling along without advertising. OTOH, it would be a good thing in my view if MediaWiki could be separated from Wikipedia, so that MediaWiki could get serious dollars for serious development. The altruistic imperative is much less strong for the software than it is for the content.
Steve
Jason Calacanis wrote:
Step one: 100% optin advertising where the user has to turn it on. Step two: put ads on search results [...] Step three: [...] PERHAPS put ads on pages by default [...]
Step one is a total no brainer... i can't think of one reason to be against OPTin advertising.... can anyone?
You've given the reason yourself: it's a slippery slope to putting ads everywhere.
Refusing ads entirely may or may not be optimal, but the clarity is unmatched.
William
William Pietri wrote:
Jason Calacanis wrote:
Step one: 100% optin advertising where the user has to turn it on. Step two: put ads on search results [...] Step three: [...] PERHAPS put ads on pages by default [...]
Step one is a total no brainer... i can't think of one reason to be against OPTin advertising.... can anyone?
You've given the reason yourself: it's a slippery slope to putting ads everywhere.
Refusing ads entirely may or may not be optimal, but the clarity is unmatched.
William
I think you've hit on the important point here. If we say "No ads, no way, at no time, for no reason", it's clear that there is absolutely no string to tie us to any corporate interest. If Large Company Inc. comes to us and says "Hey, we really believe the article on us should include a nice segment on the new product we're trying to push, don't you think we could work something...", we as it stands now have no reason to respond with anything but a (more polite version of) "No, and fuck off." If they're paying half our server bills, that becomes a lot harder to refuse. Best to stay out of corporate entanglements. With the pending move to San Francisco, I don't think the Foundation is exactly struggling to keep its head above water right now.
In an attempt to maintain (appearances of) neutrality, we'd have to spend quite a lot of effort controlling who gets these advertising slots on contested topics; that's going to eat into the profits quite quickly. It's not a simple matter of "and now, open the money pipe"
Actually, it just might be that easy. What if we opened it up in stages and get feedback along the way:
Step one: 100% optin advertising where the user has to turn it on. Step two: put ads on search results, or give folks the option to "Use Google to search wikipedia" with the ads going to Wikipedia--so again, opt in. Step three: if steps one and two do well, PERHAPS put ads on pages by default. In fact, Wikipedia could run ads up until the point it raised $50M and then turn them off and live off the 3-5M that would turn over in interest!
Step one is a total no brainer... i can't think of one reason to be against OPTin advertising.... can anyone?
You haven't actually addressed the issue to email you replied to was talking about. We're not saying users won't like ads (although that's probably true as well), we're saying that inappropriate ads could cause serious problems, so we would have to control what ads we show, which causes even more problems.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
You haven't actually addressed the issue to email you replied to was talking about. We're not saying users won't like ads (although that's probably true as well), we're saying that inappropriate ads could cause serious problems, so we would have to control what ads we show, which causes even more problems.
You know what else gets me? We have an entire WikiProject worth of people who spend lots of time just patrolling articles for inappropriate, unencyclopedic spam links and removing them. If we were really desperate for the money, why wouldn't we just say "Hey spammer, pay us $X and we'll let your link stay there." Because it ruins NPOV and creates COI.
Why do people think revenue-generating ads served by a vendor are any different?
--Darkwind
Why do people think revenue-generating ads served by a vendor are any different?
I guess it's because they're clearly separate from the encyclopedia. Of course, I can't be sure it's clear to everyone... there are plenty of idiots in the world, I'm sure some of them read Wikipedia.
RLS wrote:
[...] If we were really desperate for the money, why wouldn't we just say "Hey spammer, pay us $X and we'll let your link stay there." Because it ruins NPOV and creates COI.
Why do people think revenue-generating ads served by a vendor are any different?
Again, I'm not advocating anything here; just discussing. Well, perhaps I'm advocating great caution. Anyhow.
Revenue-generating ads served by a vendor like Google are different because they come with a built in Chinese Wall. With individual advertisers, there is a lot of negotiation and therefore opportunity for pressure. Ads served through some sort of disinterested network like Google keep Jimmy Wales from getting a call where, say, Larry Ellison threatens to pull a $1m campaign because he doesn't like our article on Oracle's latest acquisition.
I mentioned a couple of other ways we could reduce NPOV and COI issues, too.
However, the difference is in degree rather than in kind. No matter how we do it, accepting money other than from our readers means we have an interest beyond serving our readers.
William
P.S. Technically, of course, we have two interests: our readers and ourselves. I think that's why the BADSITES drama causes so much heat: normally pulling together, the two interests conflict there.
On this subject, here is something to think about.
Which is worse in terms of COI risks?
Funded 100% by donations by 50% of the donation money comes from only 1-3 people/groups.
Funded 90% through ads but with no advertiser accounting for more than 1% of the income.
It's a serious and important question.
On 10/25/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
RLS wrote:
[...] If we were really desperate for the money, why wouldn't we just say "Hey spammer, pay us $X and we'll let your link stay there." Because it ruins NPOV and creates COI.
Why do people think revenue-generating ads served by a vendor are any different?
Again, I'm not advocating anything here; just discussing. Well, perhaps I'm advocating great caution. Anyhow.
Revenue-generating ads served by a vendor like Google are different because they come with a built in Chinese Wall. With individual advertisers, there is a lot of negotiation and therefore opportunity for pressure. Ads served through some sort of disinterested network like Google keep Jimmy Wales from getting a call where, say, Larry Ellison threatens to pull a $1m campaign because he doesn't like our article on Oracle's latest acquisition.
I mentioned a couple of other ways we could reduce NPOV and COI issues, too.
However, the difference is in degree rather than in kind. No matter how we do it, accepting money other than from our readers means we have an interest beyond serving our readers.
William
P.S. Technically, of course, we have two interests: our readers and ourselves. I think that's why the BADSITES drama causes so much heat: normally pulling together, the two interests conflict there.
-- William Pietri william@scissor.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
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On 25/10/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On this subject, here is something to think about.
Which is worse in terms of COI risks?
Funded 100% by donations by 50% of the donation money comes from only 1-3 people/groups.
Funded 90% through ads but with no advertiser accounting for more than 1% of the income.
It's a serious and important question.
Neither is a good situation to be in. Are we in the first situation? I thought small donations made up a very large proportion of our income. I know we got a fair bit through matching schemes during the last fundraiser, but I think it was 1:1 matching, so it can't have been more than 50% (and not all donations were matched, so surely much less).
On 10/25/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On this subject, here is something to think about.
Which is worse in terms of COI risks?
Funded 100% by donations by 50% of the donation money comes from only 1-3 people/groups.
Funded 90% through ads but with no advertiser accounting for more than 1% of the income.
It's a serious and important question.
I would say the former is a more serious COI risk in terms of incentive to compromise our content (though on a very narrow range of content, related to the big-money people/groups), while the latter is a much more serious risk in terms of public perception of COI (with all the negatives that come with that).
I don't think there is significant risk of editors actually tailoring content to drive ad revenue (especially since the per-page revenue numbers would never be made public), but ads are a constant reminder to every reader that there is something commercial going on, even if Wikimedia itself is a non-profit. Most readers would never have any inkling of COI concerns from individual high-value donations.
But I also think that switching to Google search (with ads) would be much less likely to raise red flags with users, compared to article ads. After all, they are used to seeing ads in the context of search; it would all seems part and parcel of using faster and more relevant Google search (and/or MSN or Yahoo! or Ask). Most users sophisicated enough to worry about ads and revenue streams can also appreciate the functional difference between Wikipedia's current search and what an integrated commercial engine could do.
-Sage
On 10/26/07, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
But I also think that switching to Google search (with ads) would be much less likely to raise red flags with users, compared to article ads. After all, they are used to seeing ads in the context of search; it would all seems part and parcel of using faster and more relevant Google search (and/or MSN or Yahoo! or Ask). Most users sophisicated enough to worry about ads and revenue streams can also appreciate the functional difference between Wikipedia's current search and what an integrated commercial engine could do.
Some quick arguments against:
* Google doesn't exactly have the greatest privacy track record. Right now it's possible to do any kind of full-text search without fear of contributing to some eternal profile about yourself that will be (directly or indirectly) fed to advertisers. And surely Wikipedia searches are among the most interesting data for commercial tracking, trends analysis and profile building.
* While our search is far from great, right now we at least have the potential and the incentive to innovate. If the current fundraising drive is successful, we'll be hiring more developers soon -- and that will allow us to think in the direction of Semantic MediaWiki / Structured Data support, to build all kinds of interesting query tools. See dbpedia.org for a glimpse at things to come.
The likelihood that we'd be investing significant resources in any of these projects if we swap out the default search is very small, meaning that a very interesting slice of innovation & research in search and data mining would essentially be handed over to commercial interests. I think that'd be a shame.
* The same argument that applies to any advertising applies to search-based advertising: it could reduce the incentive to donate (both on a small and large scale), could complicate our relationship with other non-profits and private foundations, could reduce users' feeling of equity in the site, could endanger our tax-exempt status, and so on and so forth.
I find it interesting that this discussion is coming up in the context of a fundraising drive which, so far, seems quite successful, even though the execution is still leaving quite a bit to be desired.
On 25/10/2007, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
(As I write this, incidentally, I have #wikimedia-donations open in an IRC window on the same screen; each donation notification picked up from the server and dropped into an IRC channel. It's a really heartwarming thing to have ticking slowly by as you work; a note every minute or two telling you how happy people are with what we're doing here. The most recent is "It's an honor to be a part of the worldwide Wikipedia community!" - from someone who was *giving us money* to say that. Just thought I'd share that thought...)
On this subject, here is something to think about.
Which is worse in terms of COI risks?
Funded 100% by donations by 50% of the donation money comes from only 1-3 people/groups.
Funded 90% through ads but with no advertiser accounting for more than 1% of the income.
It's a serious and important question.
It strikes me that it's a tradeoff.
a) you have a COI issue on half a dozen pages - those relating to the big donors - and this issue is *very* prominent. (Half our money comes from, say, Google? Hell yes, we'd all be worried about the neutrality of [[Google]]).
b) you have a COI issue spread across several hundred or thousand pages - those relating directly to the advertisers for those specific pages - but to a smaller degree for each one because we're less beholden to each. (If you give us 30% of our income we can't tell you to go boil your head; if you give us 3%, we can grit our teeth and start kicking)
As Jason notes below, the first case becomes much worse in cases where the donor is anonymous - it's very much a matter of external perception, since the *community* doesn't know who that big donor is and so can't really pander to them, but that's still just as bad.
From a purely pragmatic point of view, the former is probably the
lesser of the evils - it means we can say with reasonable confidence that 99.9% of the encyclopedia is completely untouched by any possible COI, and we can even - perhaps - think about proactive measures like a discreet disclaimer on articles related to our donor. Unpleasant but manageable.
For a model with only a small number of advertisers, you're looking at much the same thing - there is a major worry about COI for each, *but* the limited number means that we can get a reasonable idea of "these articles are to worry about, the rest are completely irrelevant to the adverts and so fine".
The latter case, I presume you're thinking of an adsense model. This makes it even worse than simply "having a hundred advertisers", because it gets more and more diffuse. As a result, at any given time we can't easily say which pages are and aren't "tainted" - *or* how much money we get from any given advertiser. In effect, we have to worry about the appearance of potential COI on a large fraction of our pages, albeit not at a very great level.
The advertising world probably has some complex reputation metric for this...
On 10/25/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The latter case, I presume you're thinking of an adsense model. This makes it even worse than simply "having a hundred advertisers", because it gets more and more diffuse. As a result, at any given time we can't easily say which pages are and aren't "tainted" - *or* how much money we get from any given advertiser. In effect, we have to worry about the appearance of potential COI on a large fraction of our pages, albeit not at a very great level.
The advertising world probably has some complex reputation metric for this...
One possibility, which hadn't occurred to me until now, is that having ads appear with articles will create incentive for ad-buying companies to edit pages specifically to influence the ads that appear (or don't appear) on relevant pages--for example, adding obscure words to an article, and buying ads connected to that word. I'm sure there would be a number of strategies for manipulating ads based on article content.
Regarding Erik's earlier arguments against search ads: I mostly agree. I think big-donor COI problems are much preferably to the problems that would come with ads, even just search ads. Of course, retaining control over as much of the operation as possible is a good thing. But is it really too early to start talking about this? The budget is USD 4.6m. In about two days, donations are at USD 100,000. Of course, as Sue pointed out, we can't expect constant donation rates, but if past fundraisers are anything to go by, donations will trend down from the initial rate except when matching funds are available. So just for fun: a sustained USD 50,000 per day rate means 3m for the whole thing, a considerable shortfall.
What level of donation will it take to hire new developers? Is that built in to the 4.6m budget? What level of shortfall would it take before Wikimedia would have to cut back from current staff levels?
-Sage
On 10/25/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On this subject, here is something to think about.
Which is worse in terms of COI risks?
Funded 100% by donations by 50% of the donation money comes from only 1-3 people/groups.
Funded 90% through ads but with no advertiser accounting for more than 1% of the income.
It's a serious and important question.
You must have a dictionary with novel and exclusive definitions of both the words "serious" and "important".
If 50% of donations were (in the serious world) coming from geeks; I have a genuinely hard time seeing how anyone other than academics with traffic cones up their asses would complain.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
for what it's worth, I excerpt from : http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/04/trouble-with-wiki.html
"Up to 9 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own at that time - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. "
Dr. David Hill Chief Executive World Innovation Foundation Charity
For the AfD, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/World_Innovatio...
Keep in mind who this is talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin (and now pardon me while I NPOV that article a bit)
Quoting David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com:
for what it's worth, I excerpt from : http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/04/trouble-with-wiki.html
"Up to 9 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own at that time - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. "
Dr. David Hill Chief Executive World Innovation Foundation Charity
For the AfD, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/World_Innovatio...
-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
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On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Keep in mind who this is talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin (and now pardon me while I NPOV that article a bit)
The quote itself was from David Hill.
This part of his quote is more troubling: "The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is ultimately at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not."
The perception that Wikipedia is controlled by "the few" is painful, and relatively common. In my experience, individual articles or sometimes subject areas are indeed sometimes controlled by a "few", but certainly not the whole thing. The vast majority of my edits never run into any kind of problem editors. So why does this perception linger so long?
Steve
On 27/10/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
This part of his quote is more troubling: "The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is ultimately at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not." The perception that Wikipedia is controlled by "the few" is painful, and relatively common. In my experience, individual articles or sometimes subject areas are indeed sometimes controlled by a "few", but certainly not the whole thing. The vast majority of my edits never run into any kind of problem editors. So why does this perception linger so long?
Because people would rather believe there is a conspiracy to suppress the truth than that they are wrong.
- d.
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 27/10/2007, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
This part of his quote is more troubling: "The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is ultimately at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not." The perception that Wikipedia is controlled by "the few" is painful, and relatively common. In my experience, individual articles or sometimes subject areas are indeed sometimes controlled by a "few", but certainly not the whole thing. The vast majority of my edits never run into any kind of problem editors. So why does this perception linger so long?
Because people would rather believe there is a conspiracy to suppress the truth than that they are wrong.
To some extent that's the case. But it doesn't help matters that we often aren't nearly diplomatic enough with people with little or no prior experience with editing Wikipedia. And I think there are occasions with cabalism does actually occur or enough discussion occurs off Wikipedia that it could easily look like cabalism to a bystander.
On 27/10/2007, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Because people would rather believe there is a conspiracy to suppress the truth than that they are wrong.
To some extent that's the case. But it doesn't help matters that we often aren't nearly diplomatic enough with people with little or no prior experience with editing Wikipedia. And I think there are occasions with cabalism does actually occur or enough discussion occurs off Wikipedia that it could easily look like cabalism to a bystander.
Oh, certainly. But the case which was posted as an example (everyone should read that blog entry, it's wonderful and proves AFD can do its job well) is a good example of theorists who work by finding three coincidences, assuming bad faith and seeing what they get from there.
- d.
On 2007.10.27 10:34:30 +1000, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com scribbled 0 lines:
On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Keep in mind who this is talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin (and now pardon me while I NPOV that article a bit)
The quote itself was from David Hill.
This part of his quote is more troubling: "The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is ultimately at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not."
The perception that Wikipedia is controlled by "the few" is painful, and relatively common. In my experience, individual articles or sometimes subject areas are indeed sometimes controlled by a "few", but certainly not the whole thing. The vast majority of my edits never run into any kind of problem editors. So why does this perception linger so long?
Steve
I think it's a fair perception. For articles that people really care about, they often are controlled by a few. An example: would there really have been any outcry about the perceived unfairness and elitism of the mass webcomic deletions if non-editors didn't care about them? It's an uncomfortable fact for a lot of deletionists, but the reason people keep writing 'Poke-cruft' or 'Star Wars fanon' (incidentally, to whoever recently smeared Wookieepedia as 15000 pages of fanon - they delete that sort of thing and always have), is because, well, people care about that sort of thing. You rarely get edit wars over Encyclopedic-with-the-capital-E because people just don't care as much about them.
And obviously there are issues of confirmation bias and that sort of thing - if you agree with "the few" who are editing articles you care about, they merely look like conscientious energetic contributors. But I think it's more the former. However, things like disabling page creation, oversighting stuff, and other things certainly don't help the perception that many of the people at the top are being capricious.
-- gwern SACS IW 5.53 Sayeret NRO Tower cybercash delay Rome bet
David Goodman wrote:
for what it's worth, I excerpt from : http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/04/trouble-with-wiki.html
"Up to 9 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own at that time - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. "
Dr. David Hill Chief Executive World Innovation Foundation Charity
For the AfD, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/World_Innovatio...
I have no basis for commenting on the specific facts of the case where the deletion took place over a year ago. Nevertheless, it is a great example of how the religious zealots bring the project into disrepute.
Ec
On 26/10/2007, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
for what it's worth, I excerpt from : http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2007/04/trouble-with-wiki.html
"Up to 9 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own at that time - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. "
Dr. David Hill Chief Executive World Innovation Foundation Charity
For the AfD, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/World_Innovatio...
Its a rough and tough world and Wikipedia doesn't make friends with anyone. Friends aren't where you get support from are they?
Peter
Its a rough and tough world and Wikipedia doesn't make friends with anyone. Friends aren't where you get support from are they?
Friends would be nice, but we can't sacrifice editorial quality to get them. If people are only going to be our friend if we have a nice article on them, then they aren't the kind of friend we want.
On 25/10/2007, Jason Calacanis jason@calacanis.com wrote:
Step one: 100% optin advertising where the user has to turn it on. Step two: put ads on search results, or give folks the option to "Use Google to search wikipedia" with the ads going to Wikipedia--so again, opt in. Step three: if steps one and two do well, PERHAPS put ads on pages by default. In fact, Wikipedia could run ads up until the point it raised $50M and then turn them off and live off the 3-5M that would turn over in interest!
Step one is a total no brainer... i can't think of one reason to be against OPTin advertising.... can anyone?
Here's the simplest possible objection I can think of: as yet, we don't need to. We *can* survive successfully without it. Not as well as we'd like, but we can. Taking advertising - on whatever level - is icing on the cake, financially speaking, for the immediate future.
So taking advertising gives us a bonus, but not an essential one. Are there detriments to advertising, to counteract this bonus? Yes.
I personally can live with advertising. I have nothing in particular against it beyond a vague distaste for the industry.
But it's a stark fact that our community, as a whole, are really, really, really, really touchy about anything that even *looks* faintly like advertising. Partly this is a deep worry over exactly where the money goes, I suspect; the Foundation is a confusing and shadowy body a lot of the time, and we regularly get people asking when we plan to go public or how many of our admins are paid, and so on. We spend a lot of time during the fundraisers -and out of them! - dealing with just these queries...
And this sort of unease won't go away with it being opt-in advertising; there will be a strong feeling that Someone, Somewhere Is Making Money Off This. This is not a good thing for our general level of support, especially given the trouble the Foundation has making itself look transparent and efficient. (The corollary to that is And It Isn't Me, which has interesting implications for our contributors' enthusiasm! People are much less willing to give work for free if they think someone else is getting paid for doing exactly the same thing...)
This is the problem. There *will* be negative effects from opening up the money tap, however discreetly you do it - and once we've done it, it's very hard to go back. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of waving hypothetically large sums of money around and saying "lets do it!", whoever it is doing the waving.
If we were up against the wall, sure, advertising would be a much more immediate option - the detrimental effects would be secondary to survival. But - to use what seems an appropriate analogy - we're not starving in the mountains yet, and it's a bit soon to be thinking which of our fellow travellers would make the best stew.
Jason Calacanis wrote:
Step two: put ads on search results, or give folks the option to "Use Google to search wikipedia" with the ads going to Wikipedia--so again, opt in.
Wouldn't mind having that option anyway, ad revenue or no. Wikipedia's internal search function can suck sometimes. :)
Jason Calacanis wrote:
With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
- Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers.
More here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabili...
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Best j
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
GDonato
GDonato wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
I'm not advocating here; I'd just like to probe this view a little. It's one I mainly agree with, but I'm wondering if there's some way we could increase revenue without risking NPOV or COI.
Two ideas:
1: On our search results page, we put a little sidebar. It says, "Didn't find what you're looking for? Try your search on Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Ask, or PowerSet." Each one of those is a link, and we work out a revenue share deal with each search engine for the traffic we send them.
2: On the first page that a user visits from a search engine result, we run that search engine's text-only ads on the side of that one page. If they continue on with Wikipedia, they see no more ads. This is only for traffic arriving from commercial search engines.
The reason these might be different is that a) we don't interrupt the normal flow of use, and b) the user is in complete control of what vendor is serving them the ads.
Would approaches like this be safer in your view?
William
William Pietri wrote:
GDonato wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
I'm not advocating here; I'd just like to probe this view a little. It's one I mainly agree with, but I'm wondering if there's some way we could increase revenue without risking NPOV or COI.
Two ideas:
1: On our search results page, we put a little sidebar. It says, "Didn't find what you're looking for? Try your search on Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Ask, or PowerSet." Each one of those is a link, and we work out a revenue share deal with each search engine for the traffic we send them.
2: On the first page that a user visits from a search engine result, we run that search engine's text-only ads on the side of that one page. If they continue on with Wikipedia, they see no more ads. This is only for traffic arriving from commercial search engines.
The reason these might be different is that a) we don't interrupt the normal flow of use, and b) the user is in complete control of what vendor is serving them the ads.
Would approaches like this be safer in your view?
William
Well, yes and no. Point number one is one which could be considered, certainly, not an ideal situation but frankly is not one far from what we do now by highlighting certain search engines from the point of view of the user. I could not agree with point number two as this could easily be seen as COI and detracts from the quality of the site, as I mentioned. But, generally, yes, these would be safer approaches and more tolerable at least.
GDonato
On 10/24/07, GDonato gdonato@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate.
Some, like Andrew Keen, have argued exactly the opposite - that unpaid editors are inevitably bound to create content which serves their own purposes, so what you end up with when you don't have explicit advertising is hidden advertising. I think it's a reasonable point of view, and something we're starting to see quite a bit of in Wikipedia.
The problem is there's no real way to fix it without throwing away so many of the basic concepts of Wikipedia. So while it might be the best way to go, it's probably best saved for another project. Maybe Citizendium could try it, it fits in much better with their model.
On 10/24/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Some, like Andrew Keen, have argued exactly the opposite - that unpaid editors are inevitably bound to create content which serves their own purposes, so what you end up with when you don't have explicit advertising is hidden advertising. I think it's a reasonable point of view, and something we're starting to see quite a bit of in Wikipedia.
The fact is that people who are paid and who are unpaid can both create great work. There are bloggers out there who are unpaid and do an amazing job, and there are bloggers out there who are paid (boingboing, Engadget, etc) and do an amazing job.
So, Andrew is probably wrong about that. He does have some valid points about anonymity and the fact that experts-- or folks with a lot of knowledge -- can have a hard time having their voice heard above the wisdom of the crowds. Of course, that's another thread. :-)
The problem is there's no real way to fix it without throwing away so many of the basic concepts of Wikipedia. So while it might be the best way to go, it's probably best saved for another project. Maybe Citizendium could try it, it fits in much better with their model.
The part about the Wikipedia's anti-advertising contingent that confuses me is that they seem opposed to even OPT-in advertising. Is my perception of this correct? If Wikipedia gave users the option to turn on advertising "to support the foundation" would folks be opposed to that?
I know if there was a blank leaderboard up top and it said "Ads on/off" a significant # of folks would turn them on.
Seems to me 100% opt-in advertising would be a nice middle ground.
Thoughts?
j --------------------- Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
Jason Calacanis wrote:
On 10/24/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Some, like Andrew Keen, have argued exactly the opposite - that unpaid editors are inevitably bound to create content which serves their own purposes, so what you end up with when you don't have explicit advertising is hidden advertising. I think it's a reasonable point of view, and something we're starting to see quite a bit of in Wikipedia.
The fact is that people who are paid and who are unpaid can both create great work. There are bloggers out there who are unpaid and do an amazing job, and there are bloggers out there who are paid (boingboing, Engadget, etc) and do an amazing job.
So, Andrew is probably wrong about that. He does have some valid points about anonymity and the fact that experts-- or folks with a lot of knowledge -- can have a hard time having their voice heard above the wisdom of the crowds. Of course, that's another thread. :-)
The problem is there's no real way to fix it without throwing away so many of the basic concepts of Wikipedia. So while it might be the best way to go, it's probably best saved for another project. Maybe Citizendium could try it, it fits in much better with their model.
The part about the Wikipedia's anti-advertising contingent that confuses me is that they seem opposed to even OPT-in advertising. Is my perception of this correct? If Wikipedia gave users the option to turn on advertising "to support the foundation" would folks be opposed to that?
I know if there was a blank leaderboard up top and it said "Ads on/off" a significant # of folks would turn them on.
Seems to me 100% opt-in advertising would be a nice middle ground.
Thoughts?
j
Jason McCabe Calacanis CEO, http://www.Mahalo.com Mobile: 310-456-4900 My blog: http://www.calacanis.com AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Same issue here. Accepting money from a corporate interest ties a string from us to them, one they gain leverage by the ability to threaten to cut it. It doesn't matter if people have to turn something on for that money to flow or not.
GDonato wrote:
Jason Calacanis wrote:
With the risk of sounding like a broken record... :-) Mozilla announced (confirmed) they are making over $50M a year from their search box while Wikipedia struggles over fund raising on a regular basis.
Some thoughts:
- Wikipedia would make $100M+ if they put on Google Adsense on every
page--easily. 2. Wikipedia could let users choose to turn ads on or off. 3. Wikipedia would make at least 20M if Wikipedia used Google Adsense for just search (which, ironically is what many wikipedia folks do anyway... search google for site:wikipedia.com). 4. If Wikipedia folks were concerned about being beholden to just Google we could setup a system to rotate ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. randomly (text ads of course). 5. If folks are concerned about the content of ads it is easy enough to block certain advertisers.
More here: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainabili...
Anyway, if folks from the foundation ever want help on these things I'm available to consult for free and have setup deals like these (i.e. between Netscape/AOL/Weblogs, Inc. and Google)
Thoughts?
Best j
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
GDonato
100% in agreement with you. Ant
On 10/24/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
100% in agreement with you. Ant
My agreement is tempered only by curiousity about what Wikimedia will do now that there is a nearly 5 million dollar budget for next year when the public will not donate more than 2 million during this fundraiser.
Would selling Davis' seat on the board to the highest bidder be more wise than ads?
On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/24/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
100% in agreement with you. Ant
My agreement is tempered only by curiousity about what Wikimedia will do now that there is a nearly 5 million dollar budget for next year when the public will not donate more than 2 million during this fundraiser.
Would selling Davis' seat on the board to the highest bidder be more wise than ads?
Given the job description and requirements currently attached to Davis' seat, you'll be lucky enough if you get any bidders at $0.
On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/24/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
100% in agreement with you. Ant
My agreement is tempered only by curiousity about what Wikimedia will do now that there is a nearly 5 million dollar budget for next year when the public will not donate more than 2 million during this fundraiser.
I personally don't think it's a COI etc to have adsense or something similar, but it seems like a lot of *readers* do. I read a lot of sentiments that say, "stay ad free", "thanks for the free and ad-free info" etc. I don't really agree that this is as important as it seems to the people writing it, but there you go.
A good solution, I think, would be to just use google for search. It wouldn't make the huge profits we could make with adsense, but I don't think we need those kind of profits. It also has the benefit of not covering pages with ads, sort of in the same style Firefox makes money without anyone knowing about it.
I know people love lucene because it's open source etc, but honestly, I think most people use google to search anyway.
I personally don't think it's a COI etc to have adsense or something similar, but it seems like a lot of *readers* do. I read a lot of
One can argue that there no COI if one assume say the advert is completely random and the advertiser have no control exactly when or where it appears. Ask Facebook (and YouTube) how that went (see [[Criticism of Facebook#Removal of advertising]]).
KTC
On 10/24/07, Kwan Ting Chan ktc@ktchan.info wrote:
One can argue that there no COI if one assume say the advert is completely random and the advertiser have no control exactly when or where it appears. Ask Facebook (and YouTube) how that went (see [[Criticism of Facebook#Removal of advertising]]).
The ad is not all that valuable to advertisers or readers if it is *completely random*. (Yes I said readers, some readers would consider ads useful if they were relevant... ::shrugs::)
Google adwords allows advertisers to specify keywords (and negative keywords). And a price they are willing to pay per-click-through.
Every search or page view results in an auction among the ads with matching keywords. The ads bid they keyword price * their (google measured) click through rate i.e. their expected profit to google. This also results in poorly targeted ads costing large amounts of money per click and ultimately not displaying at all. (There is also a click through rate floor, and other factors that come into play..)
The bid results determine who shows and in what order.
Do you think a scheme like this produces COI problems?
On 10/24/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I think most people use google to search anyway.
This is amazingly unlikely.
In the log sample I have access:
Out of 106,813 accesses to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ loads of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search? account for 9674 of them.
Page loads with a http://(www.)?google.*/ referer account for 12726 page loads. (yes, the claims by spammers that 75% of Wikipedia page views are from google are BS :) )
Of the 12726 google referers, 442 include the word "wikipedia" in the google URL.
It's possible that the Wikipedia search numbers are pumped by broken bots or the like, but the gap is so big.
As such we should accept the theory that the overwhelming majority people searching Wikipedia use our own search.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/24/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I think most people use google to search anyway.
This is amazingly unlikely.
In the log sample I have access: Out of 106,813 accesses to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ loads of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search? account for 9674 of them...
Nice analysis. Thanks.
The devil's-statistical-advocate in me has to ask, though: 106,813 hits is, like, 2 and 2/3 seconds' worth, right? Is that a valid sample?
On 10/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
The devil's-statistical-advocate in me has to ask, though: 106,813 hits is, like, 2 and 2/3 seconds' worth, right? Is that a valid sample?
1:1000 sample covering 65 minutes, it's short but it's what I've got. ;)
So it's not the final word but should set our expectations in a particular direction in the absence of better information.
I feel that it's enough to establish that it's very unlikely that most searching uses google. ;)
On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/24/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
The devil's-statistical-advocate in me has to ask, though: 106,813 hits is, like, 2 and 2/3 seconds' worth, right? Is that a valid sample?
1:1000 sample covering 65 minutes, it's short but it's what I've got. ;)
Out of curiosity, what time of the day/week?
On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Out of 106,813 accesses to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ loads of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search? account for 9674 of them.
Can you separate out the ones that have go=Go and the ones that have fulltext=Search?
I'm not sure I'd consider the former "searching".
On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/24/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
I think most people use google to search anyway.
This is amazingly unlikely.
Ah, yeah. I was being an elitist without fully realizing it. What I was thinking is that people who are comfortable with both probably use google. When people ask about search in the help pages it seems like they are directed to google a lot, and before the search was working as well as it is now I know a lot of people directed people that way. I wonder if that has changed with the recent search improvements?
Of course most people will use the one that is easier, and definitely ours is easier since the placement is so good. I don't think it's better though. :)
On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Out of 106,813 accesses to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ loads of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search? account for 9674 of them.
Veering off-topic, as always, are you able to determine how many of these are intentional and how many are a case where the user probably expected to get an article rather than the search page (cf. "search" and "go" buttons, "&go=Go" in the url, etc.)
Of course this makes the inappropriate assumption that more than a small fraction of site *readers* are familiar enough with the mw software to know the difference.
But the point I was trying to make is that our built-in search sucks and if anybody who knows what they're doing is looking for something specific on Wikipedia they'll skip that step and go straight to google anyway.
—C.W.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 10/24/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate. The advert-free site is refreshing and welcoming and that is something we should strive to keep, pretty much at all costs.
100% in agreement with you. Ant
My agreement is tempered only by curiousity about what Wikimedia will do now that there is a nearly 5 million dollar budget for next year when the public will not donate more than 2 million during this fundraiser.
Would selling Davis' seat on the board to the highest bidder be more wise than ads?
Which gives me the opportunity to further relay our search for a treasurer (board member).
Please see below
Regarding your question... I do not expect we'll bring the entire money needed during this fundraising. But we should not under estimate the money that could be brought by a couple of rich friends. There are other venues interesting to test as well. For example, if was several times mentionned that it might be interesting to organise these fancy dinners with rich potential donors, maybe in SF or in London, with Jimbo as featured guest. Also, I do not know for Jimbo, but I have spent quite a bit of time during the year, hanging around with people related to Unesco et al. And compared to a year ago, we have a much better image toward these people. We are now considered a charity, rather than a corporation ready to sell Wikipedia hundred of millions of dollars. I hope that this will start paying dividends soon. I presume business (at least to a certain extent), bringing in royalties from logo use might also bring fresh money, though it is tricky in many respects. I also expect our future treasurer to start working a strategy to set up endowment...
Speaking of which, here is the treasurer search announcement. Please forward this announcement to relevant forums, mailing lists and individuals.
Anthere
The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, is looking to appoint a new Treasurer to its Board of Trustees, effective December 2007. The term for the current Treasurer has ended.
The Wikimedia Board of Trustees manages the Foundation and supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate corporate authority in the Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Board members are unpaid volunteers who are excited about supporting the international charitable mission of the Wikimedia Foundation: to bring free knowledge to the entire planet.
=== ROLE SUMMARY ===
Required duties include, but are not limited to the following:
* Manage, with the finance committee to be created, the board's review of and action related to the board's financial responsibilities; * Work with the chief executive to ensure that appropriate financial reports are made available to the board. Regularly reviews reports to board on key financial events, trends, concerns, and assessment of fiscal health; * May work directly with the bookkeeper or other staff in developing and implementing financial procedures and systems; * Serves as support to the financial officer of the organization and as chairperson of the finance committee; * Serves on the audit committee; * Review the annual budget that is presented to the balance of the board for approval; * Review the annual audit and answers board members' questions about the audit; * Provides financial and operational advice and guidance to the board as required.
===REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS===
* Maintains knowledge of the organization and has a personal commitment to its goals and objectives; * Understands financial accounting for American nonprofit organizations; * Must be comfortable in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment; * Accounting and financial background - an accounting or other financial designation (i.e. CPA, CA, CFA, or other International equivalent), with a thorough understanding of American GAAP. * MBA or business degree would be helpful, although not required; * Some experience with legal frameworks and contracts would be helpful; * Background or familiarity with fundraising would be an asset; * Has previously served as a treasurer on another non-profit board (at least five years); * Willing to commit time for board meetings, committee meetings and special events; * Works well in a group, is able to work with a decentralized international team, using electronic communication tools.
=== EXPECTED TIME COMMITMENT ===
It is expected that the Treasurer will be able to attend four meetings per year, which may possibly be held outside of the USA. In addition, participation in the Foundation's annual conference would be preferred. Cost of attending these meetings will be reimbursed. Other time expectations would be reviewing quarterly reports, budgets, and policies and helping to oversee the audit process.
=== CONTACT ===
Please contact us at <treasurer-search AT wikimedia DOT org> if you are interested in this position.
=== ABOUT THE WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION ===
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a US-registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most visited websites, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews and the Wikimedia Commons media repository.
The Wikimedia Foundation relies primarily on donations and other contributions in order to run its operations.
The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of existing projects and is currently based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Foundation will relocate to San Francisco, California in the near future. Wikimedia has local chapters in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Serbia, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Poland.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost."
You know those meltdowns we've had on this mailing list about userboxes? And fair-use images? And linking to harassment sites? And any other of the little issues that good Wikipedians everywhere are ready to drop everything and take a huge, noisy, principled stand on? Take those all, multiply them all together, square the result for good measure, and you'd have some vague shadow of the amount of outrage that would be generated if Wikipedia went and started running advertising at this point.