[Foundation-l] Benefits of advertising (was Re: Our exponentially increasing costs)

Neil Harris wrote: We don't have 2500 hits/sec, we have 2500 requests/sec, i.e. including images, stylesheets, etc. The difference is roughly a factor of 3. The income would thus be closer to $26M. By these figures, we could cover our current operating costs by putting ads on the site for two weeks per year. I'm not sure if it's a good idea though. Like Jimbo, I think distribution of Wikipedia around the world, especially offline distribution to poorer countries, should be our top priority. But Wikimedia lacks the infrastructure for such hands-on work. It also lacks the moral high ground in the eyes of funding agencies, because its focus to date has been to provide a service for relatively wealthy Internet users. Our donors give money out of reciprocity, not out of compassion for those less well-off. There are other organisations who have been distributing information and technology to developing countries for many years, and these organisations are often well-funded and have a well-established HR infrastructure. For my part, I've been working with WiderNet, which is entirely capable of delivering Wikipedia to African universities in the next 6 months, without funding from us. Andy Rabagliati periodically updates installations of Wikipedia in secondary schools in South Africa. All we have to do is provide a free encyclopedia for these people to distribute, and they will distribute it. It's true that they could probably distribute it to more places in less time if we gave them millions of dollars, and we could probably raise that sort of money by advertising. But we would have to make it *very* clear to readers and editors that the ads are to support such activities. It's possible to display advertising and keep the moral high ground, thehungersite.com is a good example of that. But the connection between the advertising and the charitable goal has to be eminently clear. Editors who are thinking of leaving in a huff have to know that it is the poor children in Africa who will suffer if they do. The Board would have to have a well-documented plan for the immediate distribution of the funds that are collected, and that plan would need to be advertised relentlessly. The Answers.com deal, on the other hand, is just a recipe for offence. The benefit is unknown and will probably be small. The Board has agreed to it in secret, apparently to repay favours such as the Wikimania sponsorship. They've given a single organisation preferential treatment, which brings their motives into question: are they doing this to help Wikipedia or Answers.com? That's why I join the chorus of editors in asking the Board to withdraw from this deal. If we are going to have advertising, it needs to be done with extreme sensitivity to the sensibilities of the community. Claiming that it's not advertising most certainly doesn't help -- even if the Board believes that line, the community certainly doesn't. I don't believe that we need to have advertising to keep the site running. We can still go a long way by pressing our readers to donate more money, and by making better use of strings-free hardware donation offers such as the Google deal. Some people have expressed reservations against "begging", but it's generally seen as a more acceptable activity than advertising. If the Board wants to perform "special projects" such as offline distribution, these projects first have to be rigorously justified to the community. Supporting them by advertising can only be considered after the community has been convinced of their benefit. -- Tim Starling