[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form NewPartnership

[Robert Scott Horning]

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 10/24/05, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 10/24/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>"If the stacks of money is better than editors and readers, then the
>>>foundations should go for it."
>>>
>>>Without stacks of money, there will be no editors or readers. Without
>>>      
>>>
>>the
>>    
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>>>generous donations of Jimbo and Bomis (who made their money off of - get
>>>this - advertising), there would be no Wikipedia.
>>>      
>>>
>>There wouldn't be a Wikipedia without editors either.
>>    
>>
>
>
>You're not claiming that having advertising is going to cause *all* editors
>to leave, are you?
>  
>
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