Tim Starling wrote:
Neil Harris wrote:
Hmm. 2500 hits/sec * 86400 secs/day * $1 CPM = $216,000 / _day_, or $78,000,000+/year. Have you considered that the Wikimedia foundation board might be aware of this, and that its decision not to put up advertising might be a principled decision, rather than motivated by "fear of money"?
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.
I think recent discussion on en: re the Answers.com deal has established that if we put ads on en: Wikipedia, a significant proportion of contributors will feel sufficiently betrayed and ripped off to get up and *leave*. Certainly enough to start a viable fork. For no good reason of operating policy, and to the detriment of both forks.
Whether this is foolish or not is debatable, but it is the case. I'm not sure which sizable Wikipedia this *wouldn't* happen on. Gloriously tempting buckets of money or no.
- d.
On 27/10/05, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I think recent discussion on en: re the Answers.com deal has established that if we put ads on en: Wikipedia, a significant proportion of contributors will feel sufficiently betrayed and ripped off to get up and *leave*. Certainly enough to start a viable fork. For no good reason of operating policy, and to the detriment of both forks.
I wonder how they'd pay for their fork...
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if the choice is between a website with ads and no site at all, I'll take ads.
The relatively small number of editors who will throw a hissy-fit off won't be missed - new editors arrive all the time, and many eventually crawl back after a public foot-stomping session anyway.
Dan
On 10/27/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/10/05, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I think recent discussion on en: re the Answers.com http://Answers.comdeal has established that if we put ads on en: Wikipedia, a significant proportion of contributors will feel sufficiently betrayed and ripped off to get up and *leave*. Certainly enough to start a viable fork. For no good reason of operating policy, and to the detriment of both forks.
I wonder how they'd pay for their fork...
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if the choice is between a website with ads and no site at all, I'll take ads.
The thing is, when (and if) it gets to that point, there will be ads. If one quarter the budget target is missed, and the hardware needed to run the site well is gone, and the quality of the site starts to seriously decline (down 50% of the time or something), there are only really two possibilities:
1) Ads come, and some people leave, trying to make an ad-free fork.
2) Ads don't come, and some people leave, trying to make ad-full fork.
At the point, if it ever comes, that it becomes clear that the site can't run solely on donations, the argument for ads will be much stronger, there probably will be few people who would leave, and probably the majority would be in favor of turning on the ads.
It'd be nice if we could switch before then, because there are a lot of better things we can do with the donation money than run a website, but it isn't absolutely necessary.
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