Yes, perhaps I'm suggesting a bit of a radical approach to funding and economics isn't my strong point, but just take a moment to really think about how certain web-oriented companies would survive without Wikipedia...
From: "Peter Mackay" peter.mackay@bigpond.com
Much as I appreciate and admire your principles, what you are proposing makes little sense if you go to the other side of the boardroom table. You might as well ask "Why don't individuals benefiting from Wikipedia contribute?", because a company is just a group of individuals, namely the shareholders. You are surely not suggesting that we have a log on screen so that anybody who might get a benefit from WP enter their credit card details before being granted access.
No I'm not suggesting that, Peter. I'm suggesting that, if Wikipedia was genuinely threatened with collapse because of money issues, donations, both corporate and personal would naturally flow in because they know how important it is.
If, as you say, some large companies derive a commercial benefit from WP and
should fund us, then what is to stop them from downloading MediaWiki, hiring some professionals, and building their own encyclopaedia, perhaps as a joint effort with Google along with toolbars and popups and so on? That way, they'd get the same benefits as well as control over the operation and a more focused product.
These companies have a vested interest in keeping the content in one format and one space. While it's impractical to assume there will never be special-interest web encyclopaedias, Wikipedia is clearly a very large and well-read resource with possibly more contributors than any other collaborative web space. As one of the "big players", Wikipedia, without any commercial loyalties, will be favoured over other collaborative encyclopaedias by both individual contributors and corporate donors.
Lisa
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Lisa Thurston Sent: Monday, 2 January 2006 18:09 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia
Yes, perhaps I'm suggesting a bit of a radical approach to funding and economics isn't my strong point, but just take a moment to really think about how certain web-oriented companies would survive without Wikipedia...
I have really thought about it: 1. If commercial enterprises can get it for free, they will. 2. If they have to pay a lot of money, enough to fund WP, then they might as well start up their own similar operation and have control.
Perhaps what you are really suggesting is some form of sponsorship or partnership deal.
What I like is your idea of making it easy to donate, by giving Australians (and others) the ability to deduct donations from their tax. That would help.
Another possibility is to go the route that BookCrossing.com and NaNoWriMo.org go, namely to provide some sort of on-screen recognition. In the case of BookCrossers, little golden wings appear each side of their screen-name for a month. NaNoWriMos get golden halos.
Peter, fluttering his wings and flashing his halo
On 1/2/06, Lisa Thurston lisathurston@gmail.com wrote:
No I'm not suggesting that, Peter. I'm suggesting that, if Wikipedia was genuinely threatened with collapse because of money issues, donations, both corporate and personal would naturally flow in because they know how important it is.
The collapse of Wikipedia would hurt the companies reusing its product. But that's not how it's likely to play out. First Wikipedia will slow down and become less reliable, and that slowdown will only *help* the reusers because it'll shift traffic to their sites. It's also somewhat of a self-correcting problem, because the shift of readers off Wikipedia and onto the mirrors will lighten the load.
Anthony