Well, since the list is being overrun by people's comments on the
Answers.com agreement, I may as well dive in with some thoughts of my
own. I think I am pretty qualified to speak-after all, I actually saw
the agreement, which is more than I can say for many of the people
commenting on it.
But first, I want to tell you a little story about my former place of
employment, a museum in Manhattan. Said Museum is now $17 million
dollars in debt. It has used up its emergency fund. It has been forced
to let people go (I was not let go, and was immediately replaced, but a
few of my colleagues, including many more qualified than me, were).
It's part of a problem faced by most not-for-profits today. Lots of
great ideas, and not enough money to go around. In fact, the little
donations ($10-$500), or in the case of museums, admissions are never
enough to cover basic operating costs.
We are now among the top 30 websites in the world. I believe that we
are the only one that is a not-for-profit (haven't checked it recently,
but it is a fairly safe assumption). How can we cover our operating
costs?
Grants are one possibility, but there are plenty of people competing
for those same grants. Besides, grants have to be sexy. And they have
to be something we can really carry through with. And NO ONE will give
us a substantial sum to just do whatever we want with it. The CFO of my
old place of employment used to tell me that it was easy to find people
to pay for some crap sculpture that no one else liked, or for marble in
the elevators, but when it came to basic operating costs like a monthly
cleaning bill of $40,000-forget it.
Nor are we in the position to put up a plaque, have a cocktail
reception, and dedicate the "Stanley and Edith Rosenthal Server in
honor of their grandson Milton's bar mitzvah." Nor do we want to.
We don't want pop up ads on our site. We don't want ad sense or Google
ads, though I find it rather odd that one of the vocal opponents to the
Answers.com deal admits to running a mirror of Wikipedia with Google
ads. Along comes someone who wants to use our information, which we are
giving away for free, and to pay us for it in the name of fair play.
Rather than asking for ads on every page, they simply suggested a
modest link on a single page, a tools page which most people don't go
to. They did this out of respect for our mission and our ideals.
How are people responding? Well, someone suggested that it would be
better to shut down Wikipedia for editing except for one hour a day.
People are talking about drastically cutting the budget, though I can
only wonder if they can point to anything significant in the budget
that can be cut, or if they have even seen the budget at all. Of
course, everyone wants the site to run faster. I would just like
someone to tell us how we can do just that without getting significant
funding. I would like someone to explain to me how we can realize our
goal of providing every person in the world with an encyclopedia in a
language that they can understand without paying for it in some way.
Danny