It's purely speculation to imagine the income would be that high. From my experience with Wikicities, $26m seems an exaggeration. Also, would the number of people visiting stay as high if we had ads? Would there still be the same level of motivation to use Wikipedia.org as opposed to a much faster loading mirror? The threats of forking and boycotts over the last day highlight one of the biggest reasons for not doing this, or certainly for not rushing into it - Wikipedia.org would be nothing without the community behind it. Would they still be behind it if AdSense was used on the site? Even if for just two weeks a year? Would we be jeopardising our non-profit status? What effect would turning Wikimedia into something commercial have on the project? Would it make people less likely to donate / less likely to use Wikipedia / less likely to edit? We also need to bear in mind that covering the basic costs is only the beginning. Our goal, of providing free knowledge to every person on the planet, is a much larger aim than buying servers for Wikipedia, and 2 weeks AdSense isn't going to cover it. Would those 2 weeks prevent us getting the grants, donations, corporate sponsorship, and volunteer effort, needed to attain those wider goals? These are more questions than reasons at this stage, but the fact that so many questions exist is a reason in itself not to even consider this until they can be answered. Angela.

Gah, I'm finding all this really weird. 1. We need money for servers and bandwidth 2. Currently, it comes from donations but people seem to be saying that's not sustainable 3. We've had a few big donations, but they could be time-limited (will Yahoo want their servers back?) and they don't happen often 4. One proposal is a small link to a small tool which probably won't generate much money, so is no solution by itself 5. There's a few other ideas which show promise, but not a lot in terms of delivering hard cash 6. Adsense could give us stacks of cash Surely there's only a handful of logical conclusions here: 1. We stay with just donations (small private and few large coporate ones) and the site slowly bogs down as traffic demand outstrips server supply 2. We try more small stuff like the Amazon and the forthcoming 1-Click experiments, but let's be honest unless WP is plastered in them they'll never make much of a difference 3. We eventually accept a small amount of Adsense (or Adsense-syle) advertising on the site, which will most likely pay for what we need. Dan

On 10/24/05, Dan Grey <dangrey(a)gmail.com> wrote: Obviously you're highlighting 3 there, and the obvious corollary to all three is that a bunch of editors and readers will pack their bags and leave. If the stacks of money is better than editors and readers, then the foundations should go for it. And don't for a second think that it will be one or two, many people are opposed to this, and a tidy sum have already left just because of the *possibility*. -- Dori

On 10/24/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: There wouldn't be a Wikipedia without editors either. Yes, and for the life of me I can't understand why you don't have a successful fork and community. Advertising - check, Not afraid to get rid of whiny editors - check -- Dori

Anthony DiPierro wrote: No, we are not claiming that having advertising is going to cause all editors to leave, but it will be the creative ones who stick their necks out, are bold, and make things happen. In any project, company, or community for that matter, the creative ones are only about 1%, and it is often very difficult to tell just who those very creative ones are. They are the ones that make a group grow and propser instead of die and fall apart. An effort to do advertising like this is going to drive away that precious 1%, and you won't even notice that they are gone because for a short time edits will actually go up and it will appear as though everything is just fine. But the creative ones will be gone and Wikipedia will be a dying project afterward. You don't even have to believe me on this point, but it is a warning to not take the general opinions of the community for granted. It is a hard task to try and balance the wants and needs of a community of volunteers in particular, and aristiocratic governace of such communities just lead to their eventual demise. Having been driven away from other communities for other silly reasons, I don't see any reason why Wikipedia or the Wikimedia group of projects is going to be any different in this respect. Wikipedia is currently on a "bubble" of growth, but eventually that is going to burst because there are only so many people in the world who are capable of adding encyclopedic article entries and have the drive to do some basic research to put the information in. When this limit is reached, Wikipedia will mature and either collapse or turn into a stable project. Leadership principles right now are going to determine just how that is going to happen. As far as the cost of the servers is concerned, that will also be an interesting thing to see. At what point does this exponential growth on the part of adding servers to the database level out? As far as fundraising is concerned, usage growth is your friend in that as well. Wikipedia in particular has become a very valuable resource for a great many things, and if there is demand that means there are also people willing to pay for it. The trick is to find out how to get those people to chip in a couple of bucks to keep these projects going. By going the route of advertising, the few bucks will instead come from corporate sponsors rather than from readers/editors directly, but the participants will eventually be paying anyway in one way or another. I honestly don't know the solution to this, but I think we can be creative. I also fail to see why seeking advertising is an issue right now as each time we go on a fund raising drive we tend to exceed the fundraising goal very quickly, indeed with a strong tendancy to cut the fundraising drive once the monetary goal has been reached. This last fundraising drive sputtered in the end with seeming fits of starting and stopping going all over the place, and frankly confusion as to even if the Foundation needed the money at all. Consistancy on the part of the fundraising activities, and good P.R. campaigns for an "annual" fundraiser that could be announced through more conventional media outlets may also be useful. I'm just suggesting that we can be creative on how the money can be obtained for a project like this, and resorting to advertising is not necessary. It won't necessarily be easy to come up with the ideas, however. -- Robert Scott Horning

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Well, if the Foundation really wanted to find out, they could issue an ultimatum---we're starting GoogleAds tomorrow, and anyone opposed to advertising on Wikipedia can get out (and good riddance!). Of course, they are unlikely to do so. =] -Mark

Delirium wrote: Attitudes like this are going to destroy the project entirely. I guess you don't care about the fact that your actions are encouraging large scale emmigration from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and forking of contents. It doesn't matter if this action with Answer.com was good or bad, an attitude like this where you can good riddance to people who don't agree with you is contrary to what this community has been about. This whole episode and debate is unfortunately going to leave a lot of embittered people on all sides of the issue, primarily due to the way it was presented in the first place. At this point, that doesn't matter, and all we got now is controversy that perhaps will never go away. Rubbing salt in the wounds and telling people to go away is not going to help. While the initial presentation may have been flawed, and the "community" feeling like it was ignored (with the huge numbers of e-mails on this list, plus a slashdot story and the rest of the public airing of this issue) this can either be a divisive issue or we can try to come together with compromise solutions to get this to work. The underlying issue for this whole exchange is that the Foundation needs money in order to operate. In addtion, being one of the top 50 websites on the internet makes advertising revenue something very attractive, particularly given the current commercial climate with most internet websites. What needs to happen is some creative thoughts about how some sort of revenue can help pay for the basic needs of this project, particularly for bandwidth and server costs. Could other organizational aspects be done? What about P2P distributed models for dealing with content? Other software models for organizing the content? More effecient software algorithms for MediaWiki? As for financial resources available to the Wikimedia Foundaion, what else could be done. More direct fundraising? A "telethon" or similar media campaign? Foundation grants or other philenthropic charities that could donate for specific projects (like Wikijunior and the Beck Foundation)? A "bookstore" that would sell CD-ROMs and printed books based on contents of Wikimedia projects? All of these and more can be done. In this case there are many individuals who feel that they have labored hard to create an interesting public resource, only to see a few individuals seemingly make some money off of their volunteer labors, particularly with the cooperation of the "leaders" of this community. That is what is sticking in the craw of those who don't like what is going on here. And a darker side is that if somebody else is making money, why can't I? If Answers.com is going to get that benefit from Wikipedia readers and make a little bit of money, what is going to stop each and every other editor/contributor to Wikipedia to do the same thing with a link on the tools page that would copy what Answers.com is doing? Would that need Foundation approval (getting into cronyism) or can any editor simply put a link in the same place at any time? Do you need to be an admin to make changes there? (more resentment of the "heirarchy" of community leaders by ordinary users.) What about other products/services? What is the "end result" of all this commercial activity with Wikipedia? I don't have any answers this these questions for the most part, but I have seen them all raised on this mailing list in many different forums. Rather than telling people to "get lost and never come back, we don't need you", it is far better the make the people having complaints to become part of the solution. The decision to have ads on Wikipedia or not is just a small part of much larger issues here, and it never does any good to drive people away... especially people who are genuinely trying to make this a bettter place in the first place. We are not talking about driving away vandals and trolls here, but rather people who have made some significant contributions to this community. -- Robert Scott Horning

GerardM wrote: Read what I was replying to. Telling editors to leave and never come back was precisely the intent of the message, unless there is something here I don't understand. I am suggesting that if this is handled in the wrong way that people will leave, and it will create wounds that will take a long time to heal here. Clearly this whole episode was mishandled, and I'm trying to find a solution to the problem that can heal all of the hurt feelings. Some people will take offense at just about any action, and I understand that too. This will be an "excuse" for them to leave although if you really cornered those editors who will leave as to why they stopped contributing, this whole ad controversy will only be a very minor part of other issues they are dealing with. -- Robert Scott Horning

GerardM wrote: To be clear, I was actually responding to Anthony's message by taking the opposite view---I'm quite anti-advertisements. He suggested that only a few people would leave if we put ads on, and we'd be better off without them anyway. I was saying that there's an easy way to find out, but I doubt the board will do it---perhaps what I should have added explicitly is that they won't do that because they're smart enough not to (even if they thought it was a good idea, which they almost certainly don't). I do think quite a lot of good editors would leave if GoogleAds were put on Wikipedia, and not just a few extremists that we'd be better off without. -Mark

On 24/10/05, Dori <slowpoke(a)gmail.com> wrote: There are hundreds - probably thousands - of editors active every day. If a few choose to flounce off - as is so fashionable on WP - then sod them! Most of them will slowly crawl back anyway. If the choice is between a site with (Adsense) adverts, and no site at all (which is the choice it *WILL* come down to), then I'd rather have a site! Plus with a few mill coming in a year, we'd actually be able to get a lot closer to the goal of distributing knowledge to everyone, not least as Wikimedia would be able to afford to PAY people to make these dreams happen . Dan

On 10/24/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: I can't actually think of a situation where that would be a bad thing, even if I add in the types of ads which Google isn't going to allow anyway (like a pro-Nazi page being advertised on a Wikipedia page on Nazism). But maybe that's just because I believe the best way to fight speech is with speech, a position which not everyone agrees with. If Nazis (or any POV pushers) want to give us money to help spread factual neutral information, that's fine with me. I did just think of another potential problem with Google Adsense in particular, though. It may provide incentive for certain people to insert certain keywords into random articles to draw competitors away from the pages they want to advertise on (and thus lower the cost to appear on those articles). I'm not sure if it'd work or not, though. Anthony