[WikiEN-l] Re: Google ads

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> I think we're talking about more than "a few cents from Google ads." 

Indeed.  Just to set the context, it seems that we are currently
publishing around 360 million pageviews per month.  At a conservative
estimate of $1 per thousand (that's about half what I think is
actually likely), we are currently implicitly turning down $360,000
per month.

See:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesUsagePageRequest.htm
(12.0M * 30 = 360M)

>From October 2003 through June 2004, our traffic grew by a factor of
10.  By my rough calculation, if we continue to grow at that rate, we
will be pushing 1 billion pageviews per month in just over 100 days
from now.  

We are not actually likely to keep growing at that rate for a few
reasons.

First, our growth has to level off at some point.  Has to, dammit! :-)
Maybe we're already maxed out; there's not really any way to know.

Second, our ability with a volunteer staff and donations for hardware
to *quickly* increase capacity is limited.  We will likely remain
hardware-bound for some time to come.

Nonetheless, at the present time, I remain opposed to having
advertisements on Wikipedia.

--Jimbo