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