[Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in business development

[Yonatan Horan]

A while ago I was brainstorming a bit and came up with a few ideas, some may
be good and some may not (or not be feasible). I didn't read this whole
thread so I might be repeating some ideas that have previously been
mentioned as I came up with this stuff a long time ago. This is just some
stuff I thought up in 10-15 minutes so they're not necessarily well thought
out ideas but there might be some good ones lurking in there somewhere:

MediaWiki – platinum support? Support? Hosting service? Help corporations
install mediawiki installations and help customize it to their needs (since
they don't wanna do it themselves) meaning a hired dev (ie. Brion + someone
else who could be hired as business expands, this is of course post-SUL as I
suppose that's the most pressing issue at the moment) can develop (or
modify) an extension\the mediawiki code specifically for that third party's
use. The extension wouldn't be exclusively owned by the third party but
rather released under a free license like the mediawiki code (at least I'm
pretty sure that's under a free license).

·          Amazon referral links – there are over 15,000 links on the
English Wikipedia to amazon.com. Since they are already there, there's no
reason not to append a referral to the link so the WMF gets some money every
time someone buys something through that link. It's not extra advertising or
anything of the sort as the amazon links are *already present*, this would
just be better utilization of them for revenue purposes.

·          Content – charge people and in return help them get copies of the
databases, etc. the content is free but the bandwidth costs Wikimedia money
and it should therefore be compensated for it (if not extra). Wikimedia
could also possibly load the databases onto a new server for the other
company that wants the content from wikipedia and have it all ready for
actual use by that company.

·          Help sites like answers.com outsource the whole mirroring
Wikipedia business and leave it to Wikimedia (for a fee) – could be done
much more efficiently and the articles on places like answers.com wouldn't
get outdated so quickly.

·          Start enforcing WMF's rights, see this search at
walla.co.il<http://search.walla.co.il/?e=hew&q=%E2%27%E5%F8%E2%27%20%E1%E5%F9>,
walla show the Wikipedia logo (at least one of them which I believe is
protected under trademark laws) and then redirect to wallapedia instead of
redirecting to Wikipedia. They mislead people into thinking they're going to
Wikipedia but instead the people are going to wallapedia where walla makes
money off the ads (and in a way diverts potential donors away from
Wikipedia)

-Yonatan

On 5/18/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> <snip>

I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash.
> Which ones would you suggest ?
>
> Each of these systems has advantage and drawbacks. I above mentionned
> the advertisement system, but there are others which might be
> controversial. For example, if we have wikipedia logo printed on a game
> of trivial pursuit, will you be happy, or not ? If Microsoft is
> Wikimania sponsor, will you be happy, or not ?
>
> Community can very largely provide input here.
> <snip>
>
> Ant
>
>
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