Oliver Pereira wrote:
I think it is very likely that more people will buy from Amazon if they think they will be helping Wikipedia by doing so. And so Amazon will quite likely make more profits.
Well, I think all the booksellers offer some kind of commissions program. Nearly all do, anyway, I guess we'd have to check each one of them to be sure about the exact details.
--Jimbo
True. However, since all of these programs require a minimum amount earned in your account before they send you a cheque, it doesn't make much sense to have a page full of commissions links. People generally make very little money on these programs; in our case we would have to spread our tiny commission over a half a dozen or more booksellers, thus ensuring that we never meet the minimum payment amount for any one of them.
It looks to me that we really only have two choices:
1. Join a single program, or 2. Don't join any at all (which would have the same finacial effect as joining all of them, while avoiding the problems).
Option one is unacceptable to me (and many others, I think) because it takes away our neutrality, at least in appearance.
- Stephen G. ------- Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.org
An interesting point, but the way most program works is that there's a minimum needed before the send a check, but it accumalates as long as is necessary. So, eventually, some years from now, perhaps, we'd get a check.
I do think you raise a very important point, though -- the amount of money that the Wikimedia Foundation would make from such programs is not likely to be huge, anyway.
By way of comparison, I conservatively estimate that if we put paid listings from Overture or Google into the search results page, we would make $1000-$2000 a month. I'd be very opposed to doing that.
--Jimbo
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