[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to FormNewPartnership

[Poe, Marshall]

Anthony Wrote:

"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."

I don't really follow.  WP contributors would not gain anything by
trying to increase traffic/click-throughs on articles with bogus key
words, would they?  Contributors wouldn't profit from AdSense at all,
would they? All the money from AdSense would flow to the Foundation,
right? 

MP


Marshall Poe, Ph.D.
The Atlantic Monthly
600 New Hampshire Ave. NW 
Washington, DC 20037
202-266-6511
mpoe at theatlantic.com
-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony
DiPierro
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 5:08 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to
FormNewPartnership

On 10/24/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> Angela wrote:
>
> >In a scenario which is hard to imagine ever occurring on Wikipedia, 
> >the influence could come from the fact that AdSense relies on 
> >context, and particular keywords on a page will lead to 
> >higher-revenue-generating ads. So, attempts to drop phrases like 
> >"credit repair" into articles could lead to greater revenues and 
> >might encourage some to insert an odd sort of influence on the 
> >content for this purpose. It would, of course, be violating Google's 
> >terms of service and not something I would recommend doing. :)
> >
> >
> AdSense-style ads would also lead to the potentially undesirable 
> scenario where companies (or individuals) would be able to buy text on

> a particular Wikipedia article's page, for example to refute it or 
> point to an advocacy page attacking the viewpoints the article
summarizes.
> There's no way to do this directly, but some trial-and-error playing 
> with keywords could allow an advertiser to,. with high probability, 
> get their ads to appear on specific Wikipedia pages in that manner.
>
> -Mark

 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
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