[Foundation-l] Benefits of advertising (was Our exponentially increasing costs)

[David Gerard]

Tim Starling wrote:
>Neil Harris wrote:

>> Hmm. 2500 hits/sec * 86400 secs/day * $1 CPM = $216,000 / _day_, or
>> $78,000,000+/year. Have you considered that the Wikimedia foundation
>> board might be aware of this, and that its decision not to put up
>> advertising might be a principled decision, rather than motivated by
>> "fear of money"?

>We don't have 2500 hits/sec, we have 2500 requests/sec, i.e. including
>images, stylesheets, etc. The difference is roughly a factor of 3. The
>income would thus be closer to $26M.
>By these figures, we could cover our current operating costs by putting
>ads on the site for two weeks per year. I'm not sure if it's a good idea
>though.


I think recent discussion on en: re the Answers.com deal has
established that if we put ads on en: Wikipedia, a significant
proportion of contributors will feel sufficiently betrayed and ripped
off to get up and *leave*. Certainly enough to start a viable fork.
For no good reason of operating policy, and to the detriment of both
forks.

Whether this is foolish or not is debatable, but it is the case. I'm
not sure which sizable Wikipedia this *wouldn't* happen on. Gloriously
tempting buckets of money or no.


- d.