Adam Hunt wrote on Wikitech-l:
I don't suppose that there is a history graph of the donations to Wikimedia.
I was thinking about creating something like that with Gnumeric (maybe I'll try OpenOffice Calc...). The trouble is with finding tabular data that do not have personal information in them (such as names).
But I'll explore around PayPal to see what options they have. Ah, I just figured it out; there is a 'Download account history to comma-delimited text' function. That makes it very easy to delete unpublishable columns. But that leaves the issue of different currencies which makes graphing grand totals a bit more complicated... Argh! :)
I was currious how much of the US$31k was raised as a result of Jimmy Wales' December 28 letter and the associated Slashdot coverage.
Well when he wrote the letter we had US$4,200 total (bank account + PayPal; not sure if the petty cash was included in that figure). You do the math. :) Oh and from the 28th to the 31st there were 1483 PayPal donations. Most of which were less that US$20 or the equivalent but there were a few large donations. There were only 3 donations between the 24th and the 27th. But our servers were having a great deal of trouble at that point and I'm not sure if Jimbo transferred any money to the foundation's bank account during that time (I don't think he did).
I was also wondering if Wikimedia's accounting ledegers are open to the public.
Not really right now. We still have to figure out what is legal to show given our set-up. But account totals should be fine (charities very often publicize totals during donation drives). And of course any expenditures need to be logged and deducted from the totals (as well as transfers - I plan to track all of that and make it public on the foundation's website). All that requires time to set-up though. Hopefully I'll have something substantial to show in late January.
BTW, I've been updating the totals at http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising
If not, why (this isn't a flame, I'm sure that there is a good enough reason)?
I just got access to the foundation's PayPal account on New Year's Eve and don't yet have a way to view the bank account statements. And Jimbo simply isn't superman. :) That's why I volunteered to help with this type of stuff.
Thanks for the great site. In my opinion Wikimedia deserves at least another US$30k in 2004.
I'm sure that the foundation will receive much more than that. I plan to start figuring out the dos and don't of grant writing later in January. This may be an area where it would make sense to hire a professional grant writer but I still want to do some research on the subject anyway. At the very least it will inform us better about what we should tell the grant writer.
However I am confident that a majority of the money we get through donations will be from individual donors, not charitable foundations. All the better as far as I am concerned (foundation money often comes with at least implied strings attached to do certain things).
--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
Hi mav,
[...]
But I'll explore around PayPal to see what options they have. Ah, I just figured it out; there is a 'Download account history to comma-delimited text' function. That makes it very easy to delete unpublishable columns. But that leaves the issue of different currencies which makes graphing grand totals a bit more complicated... Argh! :)
Why not just create a chart with several graphs for the different currencies? A "grand total" chart may be more marketable, but this would certainly be more accurate and informative.
Daniel Mayer wrote:
But that leaves the issue of different currencies which makes graphing grand totals a bit more complicated... Argh! :)
In the report you could show three columns for each currency: 1) total in that currency, 2) current exchange rate, and 3) US$ equivalent
I was also wondering if Wikimedia's accounting ledegers are open to the public.
Not really right now. We still have to figure out what is legal to show given our set-up. But account totals should be fine (charities very often publicize totals during donation drives). And of course any expenditures need to be logged and deducted from the totals (as well as transfers - I plan to track all of that and make it public on the foundation's website). All that requires time to set-up though. Hopefully I'll have something substantial to show in late January.
This should be easy. :-) Set up a table with a column for "Date", "Description" and each account.
On that you could show: 1) Daily total donations with relevant amounts in the appropriate columns in that currency, 2) Expenditures as negative amounts from the account used for payment, and 3) Transfers as negatives in the source account, and currency equivalent positives in the target account.
Column totals can be done after each entry, or (to look less cluttered) periodically as required. This will give a quickly set up overview that can be easily understood by readers. Other accounting features can be developed later to cope with reporting and other legal demands.
I plan to start figuring out the dos and don't of grant writing later in January. This may be an area where it would make sense to hire a professional grant writer but I still want to do some research on the subject anyway. At the very least it will inform us better about what we should tell the grant writer.
I think that it is much too early to think of a professional grant writer, or even if we will take that route at all. If it gets to the point where seeking grants is the way to go we should begin by looking to see if we already have those skills available. We should also examine possible grant application forms to see if they are so complicated that we can't do them ourselves, and if making such applications will need any kind of structural madifications to the orgsanization. Financial statements are often required, but we should be developing those anyway.
Ec
At 2004-01-01 07:05, Daniel Mayer wrote:
I'm sure that the foundation will receive much more than that. I plan to start figuring out the dos and don't of grant writing later in January. This may be an area where it would make sense to hire a professional grant writer but I still want to do some research on the subject anyway. At the very least it will inform us better about what we should tell the grant writer.
However I am confident that a majority of the money we get through donations will be from individual donors, not charitable foundations. All the better as far as I am concerned (foundation money often comes with at least implied strings attached to do certain things).
I don't think Wikipedia should be build on grants and subsidies etc.
It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should. The readers should pay for it, either directly or by having to lookat/ignore advertisements.
I also donated $20 to Wikipedia some days ago, but when I thought some more about it later, I started to see a strange irony:
I make my money with a 'Wikipedia kind-of' free information site about chips and other electronics:
And I make that money by selling ad-space on the site.
It's quite ironic (or even 'hypocrital'?) to keep Wikipedia free of advertisements by having it sponsored by a site that makes it's money from selling advertising space itself.
I think that Wikipedia should reconsider putting advertising on it's pages. (Perhaps only on pages about popular subjects for example.)
I make $180..$250 per month from Google's Adwords and those ad's are half-way pages on spots that I otherwise would have trouble to sell to individual advertisers, so Wikipedia should be able to do much better.
For the time being Wikipedia should have enough money but I think that this anti-advertising attitude should be reconsidered, because there is nothing against modest, on-topic advertising. I never got a complaint (but in my information-intensive field on-topic ad's are usually considered to be extra information).
Why not at least set up a test, for example on all the Britney Spears and Lord of the Rings pages and such?
Greetings, Jaap
Jaap-
It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should. The readers should pay for it, either directly or by having to lookat/ignore advertisements.
Fundraising is perfectly fine. People will just have to get used to it. We'll do it once a year and cover our operating costs that way. Sure, Google text-ads aren't too bad, but if we can easily do without them, why bother? Maybe I can even convince Jimbo to drop his silly "government money is evil" stance. Our project is so international that it should be possible to get EU funds.
Nobody should feel compelled to donate, and certainly no contributor. I didn't donate a single cent and I have a perfectly clean conscience. :-) This model of voluntary giving will become much more wide-spread. It's called the [[gift economy]].
Regards,
Erik
On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 01:47:00AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
Jaap-
It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should. The readers should pay for it, either directly or by having to lookat/ignore advertisements.
Fundraising is perfectly fine. People will just have to get used to it. We'll do it once a year and cover our operating costs that way. Sure, Google text-ads aren't too bad, but if we can easily do without them, why bother?
One could test the ads on a inofficial mirror, every money that's not need to operate the mirror could be given to Wikimedia. That would be a good and semi-official method.
ciao, tom
At 2004-01-02 02:22, Thomas R. Koll wrote:
On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 01:47:00AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
Jaap-
It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should. The readers should pay for it, either directly or by having to lookat/ignore advertisements.
Fundraising is perfectly fine. People will just have to get used to it. We'll do it once a year and cover our operating costs that way. Sure, Google text-ads aren't too bad, but if we can easily do without them, why bother?
One could test the ads on a inofficial mirror, every money that's not need to operate the mirror could be given to Wikimedia. That would be a good and semi-official method.
For the average visitor the difference between an official and unofficial site is very unclear, because (if I may transpose the statistics of my own site here) about 50% of the people come in via search engines and they will regard whatever of the mirror sites they found first, as the original site.
My own site is being mirrored about 25 times all over the world, so I know a lot about what mirroring entails.
Just try advertising using Google Adsense on certain categories of (perhaps statistically relevant) pages. If it wasn't so easy to do I'd offer to help... ;-)
Greetings, Jaap
At 2004-01-02 01:47, Erik Moeller wrote:
Jaap-
It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should. The readers should pay for it, either directly or by having to lookat/ignore advertisements.
Fundraising is perfectly fine.
I have nothing against fundraising amongst individuals.
People will just have to get used to it.
It's not new.
We'll do it once a year and cover our operating costs that way.
Why not raise much more using advertising and pay the authors some?
As I said, I have a site with free information myself and everyday I have to choose between writing for Wikipedia for free and anonymously or on my own site 'nonymously' and getting paid for it.
There still seem to be enough people willing to be amateur writers for a couple of hours a day, but you can't expect professional writers to write for money all day and then write for free in their spare time.
Sure, Google text-ads aren't too bad, but if we can easily do without them, why bother?
It's probably less bother than having to raise money through charity drives etc.
Maybe I can even convince Jimbo to drop his silly "government money is evil" stance.
I'm against the government subsidizing anything that should be able to gain it's own money. Wikipedia is clearly something that should be able to make it's own money. People using a free encyclopedia should be willing to pay for it by ignoring ad's.
It's not that hard. On TV or radio it's much harder, because they are broadcast during a certain space in time and there is nothing other to watch or listen too. When it's just a part of your screen, you can look at another part.
What is your fundamental problem with advertising, since you seem to have one?
Advertising when applied properly is also additional information. People or companies find products or services via advertising that they otherwise might not have found. Some advertisers on my site (including myself) promote services that a lot of visitors didn't know existed and that I didn't existed before I started my site and that now provide most of my income.
(It's providing chips that aren't produced anymore or are scarce for another reason.)
Even when I answer messages in newsgroups, telling people that they can ask us to search for scarce chips for them I get thank-you letters.
You shouldn't let the excess of advertising that's on TV and radio (especially in the USA) blur your mind about this issue.
There is nothing wrong with a modest use of on-topic, non-screaming and non-misleading ads. Of course on a serious site like mine I never allowed too excessive advertising. (Which is a changing notion of course.)
Our project is so international that it should be possible to get EU funds.
But why? In heaven's name? Please consider that every euro that you would get, will have gone through several layers and eacah layer will have taken his part of the loot. First the tax-collector, then the country, then the EU, then the civil servants and their third-party adviser friends that allot the money. Also consider the centimeter thick applications you'll have to write or rather will have to have written (and those guys probably don't work on a no-cure-no-pay basis) and your project will only get money as long as it's hip and that can change anytime.
What when the big regular encyclopedia publishers find out and send their flock of lobbyists to Brussels?
This model of voluntary giving will become much more wide-spread. It's called the [[gift economy]].
Like in shareware, which never really worked on a big scale? ;-)
Greetings, Jaap
Jaap-
People will just have to get used to it.
It's not new.
True, but it's now more ubiquitous than ever.
Why not raise much more using advertising and pay the authors some?
But which authors do you want to pay? The guy who writes 200 Star Trek episode summaries? The one who collects bird photos? The one who spends 6 months researching a single subject and then writes a 500 word article about it? It would end up being unfair one way or the other.
Authors can eventually be paid using a "Free Software Bazaar" like model, where people can describe specific projects and individuals supply (pooled) funding. Basically WikiMoney without the Wiki.
There still seem to be enough people willing to be amateur writers for a couple of hours a day, but you can't expect professional writers to write for money all day and then write for free in their spare time.
Oh, but I am a professional writer, and I do write for free in my spare time. I'm working on a book and simulatenously checking RC to look for stuff to edit. We've beaten Britannica in terms of quantity in less than 3 years, and we'll beat them in terms of quality as well, without payment if necessary.
It's probably less bother than having to raise money through charity drives etc.
It's no bother at all. We just need to automate it to some degree, which is also true for ads.
I'm against the government subsidizing anything that should be able to gain it's own money.
I'm against silly philosophical justifications for not accepting good hard cash ;-). The money would likely go to some arms manufacturer, or some poorly conceived EU initiative otherwise. I agree that it's not hard to raise money. I also think that it's always a good idea to tap additional sources.
What is your fundamental problem with advertising, since you seem to have one?
I won't rehearse all the arguments that have been posted a billion times. But if you nag me again, maybe I'll put it into an FAQ somewhere. For starters, see the K5 discussion: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/12/29/55411/573
Advertising when applied properly is also additional information.
Sure, but it's also propaganda.
But why? In heaven's name? Please consider that every euro that you would get, will have gone through several layers and eacah layer will have taken his part of the loot.
Damn lawyers! Kill them, kill them all!
Oh, you said layer. That's OK then.
your project will only get money as long as it's hip and that can change anytime.
Exactly. So let's get it while we're hot!
What when the big regular encyclopedia publishers find out and send their flock of lobbyists to Brussels?
None of them is as international as we are, none of them is non-profit and open content. And the only company that we should be worried about is Microsoft, the others do not have the resources to fight us.
This model of voluntary giving will become much more wide-spread. It's called the [[gift economy]].
Like in shareware, which never really worked on a big scale? ;-)
It didn't? I know shareware authors who've made 100K or more only on the basis of more or less voluntary donations, and that was before the web and PayPal. The key are ease of transaction, reputation mechanisms and some kind of feedback. The Dean campaign just made >$1.5 million in one week. We can learn a lot from them.
I find it rather funny when people point to the examples of donation campaigns that didn't work to prove that gift economies can't work. That's like pointing to a failed company to argue that capitalism can't succeed.
Regards,
Erik
At 2004-01-02 03:17, Erik Moeller wrote:
Jaap-
People will just have to get used to it.
It's not new.
True, but it's now more ubiquitous than ever.
That's relative.
Why not raise much more using advertising and pay the authors some?
But which authors do you want to pay? The guy who writes 200 Star Trek episode summaries? The one who collects bird photos? The one who spends 6 months researching a single subject and then writes a 500 word article about it?
Use your imagination. Oops you already did... ;-)
It would end up being unfair one way or the other.
So because it's never perfect you think no one should be paid?
Authors can eventually be paid using a "Free Software Bazaar" like model, where people can describe specific projects and individuals supply (pooled) funding. Basically WikiMoney without the Wiki.
Huh, I never found that within Wikipedia, could you explain this in terms of money/time spend and what it gives in return?
There still seem to be enough people willing to be amateur writers for a couple of hours a day, but you can't expect professional writers to write for money all day and then write for free in their spare time.
Oh, but I am a professional writer, and I do write for free in my spare time.
Why?
I'm working on a book
Also a book?
and simulatenously checking RC to look for stuff to edit.
What is RC?
(Probably I should know, but I don't...)
You're a writer and use abbrevs that your audience doesn't understand?
What Wikipedia needs is more professionalism, not more semi- profs.
I got interested again through our Dutch 'director' who mentioned the money drive, which made me look at this Wikipedia folder again and made me remember old sentiments.
We've beaten Britannica in terms of quantity in less than 3 years, and we'll beat them in terms of quality as well, without payment if necessary.
And what does that proof?
It's probably less bother than having to raise money through charity drives etc.
It's no bother at all. We just need to automate it to some degree, which is also true for ads.
So money coming in via charity drives is easy and will be easy?
You have something coming to you... But okay I give Wikipedia upto 5 years of smooth sailing...
Jimmy is very capable of expressing the right amount of Bambi-like innosense.
By the way, I haven't the time to read all the messsages on this mailing list, but I'd propose to have the servers hosted at a professional hoster, against a certain SLA (service level agreament).
I think that it should be possible to have some big organisation like IBM to host it, but any organisation like that will ask for some contra-prestation and I wouldn't blame them, so just get a good hoster and be prepared to pay for it. It should be cheaper than having to bother with the hardware yourself.
Or be prepared to accept sponsoring and negociate with the likes of IBM etc. but never negociate yourself, like in legal cases, always let others do it.
I'm against the government subsidizing anything that should be able to gain it's own money.
I'm against silly philosophical justifications for not accepting good hard cash ;-).
So you're for accepting any cash whatever it comes from?
Nice. That's something to build a society on.
The money would likely go to some arms manufacturer, or some poorly conceived EU initiative otherwise.
Huh, so you see the ammount of money that whatever government has is a given fact and it's good to syphon as much as possible of because otherwise it's used for issues that you don't understand yet?
I agree that it's not hard to raise money. I also think that it's always a good idea to tap additional sources.
The more the better, right?
What is your fundamental problem with advertising, since you seem to have one?
I won't rehearse all the arguments that have been posted a billion times. But if you nag me again, maybe I'll put it into an FAQ somewhere. For starters, see the K5 discussion: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/12/29/55411/573
Within a discussion it's bad form to refer to external sources without at least summorizing them, sorry.
Advertising when applied properly is also additional information.
Sure, but it's also propaganda.
So what?
your project will only get money as long as it's hip and that can change anytime.
Exactly. So let's get it while we're hot!
You're so young...
What when the big regular encyclopedia publishers find out and send their flock of lobbyists to Brussels?
None of them is as international as we are, none of them is non-profit and open content. And the only company that we should be worried about is Microsoft, the others do not have the resources to fight us.
You're so young...
This model of voluntary giving will become much more wide-spread. It's called the [[gift economy]].
Like in shareware, which never really worked on a big scale? ;-)
It didn't? I know shareware authors who've made 100K or more only on the basis of more or less voluntary donations,
More or less voluntary? Was it voluntary or not?
and that was before the web and PayPal.
Yes I also heard of one of those cases.
The key are ease of transaction, reputation mechanisms and some kind of feedback. The Dean campaign just made >$1.5 million in one week. We can learn a lot from them.
What is the Dean campaign?
I find it rather funny when people point to the examples of donation campaigns that didn't work to prove that gift economies can't work. That's like pointing to a failed company to argue that capitalism can't succeed.
Of course gift economies can work as long as people have enough left over from the real economie to give away. It's a luxery however to give your surplus away. You're not likely to give anything away when you're suffering from cold, hunger, shealter, lack of cloths etc.
And seeing how the Americans keep spending although the dollar keeps soaring compared to the euro and the USA's trade deficit keeps raising and we europeans keep buying up parts of the USA.
Sooner or later we'll have to come over in low boats and claim the country the we in the mean time bought (and that was ours anyway (remember Nieuw Amsterdam)...
But I digress...
Greetings, Jaap
Jaap-
Authors can eventually be paid using a "Free Software Bazaar" like model, where people can describe specific projects and individuals supply (pooled) funding. Basically WikiMoney without the Wiki.
Huh, I never found that within Wikipedia, could you explain this in terms of money/time spend and what it gives in return?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiMoney
Oh, but I am a professional writer, and I do write for free in my spare time.
Why?
Because I enjoy providing useful information to others. It's also good not to have to explain the same issues over and over again, and instead be able to just point to certain links.
What is RC?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_changes
So you're for accepting any cash whatever it comes from?
Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon
The money would likely go to some arms manufacturer, or some poorly conceived EU initiative otherwise.
Huh, so you see the ammount of money that whatever government has is a given fact and it's good to syphon as much as possible of because otherwise it's used for issues that you don't understand yet?
Which part of "would likely go to" do you not understand?
Advertising when applied properly is also additional information.
Sure, but it's also propaganda.
So what?
Propaganda and encyclopedias don't mix well. Look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia
Of course gift economies can work as long as people have enough left over from the real economie to give away.
The gift economies are just as real, and the more pervasive they become, the more self-reliant they can be.
Erik
Jaap van Ganswijk ganswijk@xs4all.nl writes:
What is your fundamental problem with advertising, since you seem to have one?
In the end, it is me and you who will have to pay for the advertisments and they will destroy everything: first, authors like me will stop working on contents and then article will be written to make them more suitable to carry ads. And the ads will distract the readers from contents.
Of course, one can base a business or a culture of a country on an advertising economy - some like it, some do not. I already said good by to TV and most of our broadcasting stations.
And look at our cities: Graffiti isn't the problem, the problem are the ads. Walk thru your city and try to take photograph of famous monument - you will quickly see what I mean.
Okay, there are some cities, where public advertising isn't allowed ;)
What is your fundamental problem with advertising, since you seem to have one?
For me advertising will destroy the concept of NPOV. Even if all the contributors respect it the reader will always have a doubt as wikipedia will be dependent of this money income. And we will lose the trust of many. For me the only independent press is the one without ads.
Arnaud G (greatpatton)
Just an idea to see what people's views on it would be: I know many people are opposed to ads on Wikipedia, but would those of you opposed to ads in general be more receptive to sponsored bandwidth and/or hardware? For example, a box somewhere that says "bandwidth kindly donated by [donating company]". Yeah, it's an ad of sorts, but it's a little more neutral and matter-of-fact than most ads: it's simply informing people that the bandwidth of the site they're viewing is being provided free of charge by someone. More like the "powered by Apache" logos at the bottom of some sites than like a typical ad, I think.
-Mark
On Thursday, January 1, 2004, at 09:55 PM, Delirium wrote:
Just an idea to see what people's views on it would be: I know many people are opposed to ads on Wikipedia, but would those of you opposed to ads in general be more receptive to sponsored bandwidth and/or hardware? For example, a box somewhere that says "bandwidth kindly donated by [donating company]". Yeah, it's an ad of sorts, but it's a little more neutral and matter-of-fact than most ads: it's simply informing people that the bandwidth of the site they're viewing is being provided free of charge by someone. More like the "powered by Apache" logos at the bottom of some sites than like a typical ad, I think.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I've been reading the list for a few days and I've been hanging out in the irc channel for a while (handles: seanchil, flamingantichimp). I don't know if this makes my opinion worth more or less, but I feel strongly about this, so I want to let my opinion be known. I'm sorry if I'm making enemies here but I hold no grudge against anyone on this issue, no matter the opinion.
I think a lot of people support this project, at least partly, because of the ideals it contains. It's something free, done by the community, upheld by the community and knowledge-driven. I think the server trouble and fundraising emphasizes the second point: upheld by the community.
An Ad-free status gives the authors and wikipedia more power. Maybe nothing would change within the first week, maybe not within the first month, maybe not within in the first year, but is that what this project is about? We need to be planning for the future, just like we are in the purchase of the new equipment. I don't know if the wikipedia will be around when I'm 40 but this is a project that is growing and growing, so who knows?
How might selling ads remove power from authors? Let's say ford decided to purchase an ad on the wikipedia. Now they may have vested interest in making their ford entry more opinionated. Does anyone remember the nasty issue of tires and Ford Explorers a few years back (also; correct me where my facts are wrong, but keep in mind this is just a random example)? When an article is created about that recall, maybe Ford will ask the article to be removed. Of course, we can say now that we will promise tell them to buzz off and remove their ads if they persisted, and I'm sure we probably would. Still, we might become depended upon the income, and, honestly, what is one article in comparison to a few thousand a month in revenue?
Here's another example: on ESPN there was a show called "Playmakers". "Playmakers" was design to show the 'real' side of football, it made some very obvious allusions to the NFL and drew both praise from T.V. critics and sports fans as well as criticism from the NFL. The show's ratings were more then high enough to warrant more seasons. But ESPN (and more so, ESPN's parent company, ABC) has a contract with the NFL to show games. It is being rumored that there won't be a second season because the NFL doesn't want it.
I think the best point, though, in favor of not adopting advertisements, is Why? If there comes a point in time in which we need this money, and donations and the community can no longer uphold us, then we resort to ads. No sooner.
Thanks for those who read it all; just my two cents.
~seanchilders Shut down inhuman boot camps for kids: http://www.petitiononline.com/130662/ (House: iMac DV 400mhz 384 MB (Mac OSX), Titanium Powerbook 800 MHZ (Mac OS X), Titanium Powerbook 500MHZ (Mac OS 9), IBM PL 300 (Linux: Redhat 9), Powermac 9500 (Debian), Powermac 6100 (Mac OS 8.5)
What's about the amazon.com Honor System as an alternative for a more modest fund raising policy? (not sure if the link functions http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/home.html/ref=zm_pb_h_09/058-46741 05-1865461 ) Mark
-----Ursprungliche Nachricht----- Von: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org]Im Auftrag von Jaap van Ganswijk Gesendet: Freitag, 2. Januar 2004 01:14 An: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Donation History
At 2004-01-01 07:05, Daniel Mayer wrote:
I'm sure that the foundation will receive much more than that. I plan to start figuring out the dos and don't of grant writing later in January. This may be an area where it would make sense to hire a professional grant writer but I still want to do some research on the subject anyway. At the very least it will inform us better about what we should tell the grant writer.
However I am confident that a majority of the money we get through donations will be from individual donors, not charitable foundations. All the better as far as I am concerned (foundation money often comes with at least implied strings attached to do certain things).
I don't think Wikipedia should be build on grants and subsidies etc.
It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should. The readers should pay for it, either directly or by having to lookat/ignore advertisements.
I also donated $20 to Wikipedia some days ago, but when I thought some more about it later, I started to see a strange irony:
I make my money with a 'Wikipedia kind-of' free information site about chips and other electronics:
And I make that money by selling ad-space on the site.
It's quite ironic (or even 'hypocrital'?) to keep Wikipedia free of advertisements by having it sponsored by a site that makes it's money from selling advertising space itself.
I think that Wikipedia should reconsider putting advertising on it's pages. (Perhaps only on pages about popular subjects for example.)
I make $180..$250 per month from Google's Adwords and those ad's are half-way pages on spots that I otherwise would have trouble to sell to individual advertisers, so Wikipedia should be able to do much better.
For the time being Wikipedia should have enough money but I think that this anti-advertising attitude should be reconsidered, because there is nothing against modest, on-topic advertising. I never got a complaint (but in my information-intensive field on-topic ad's are usually considered to be extra information).
Why not at least set up a test, for example on all the Britney Spears and Lord of the Rings pages and such?
Greetings, Jaap
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Jaap van Ganswijk a écrit:
It seems that paying for the hardware and bandwidth can be done by the authors, but I don't think it should. The readers should pay for it, either directly or by having to lookat/ignore advertisements.
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Free content is an important word. I think it precisely define the project. With its two meanings :-)
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