[WikiEN-l] Dollar Value of Wikipedia articles (was: Being Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma asfar as communications)

[Poor, Edmund W]

> > Alphax wrote:
> >
> > Well, as of July 2005, all of the different language editions of 
> > Wikipedia came to 491 M words: it must be _considerably_ 
> greater than 
> > that now. At a journalist's rate of $1/word, that would 
> make Wikipedia 
> > worth in excess of $500,000,000.
> >
> > -- Neil
> 
> 
> They get about 50 billion hits a year, right? So at $2 CPM 
> that's $100 million a year, and at a P/E of 20 that's $2 
> billion. Of course, that's more than just the value of the 
> content, and it ignores the expenses to run the site, which 
> isn't much compared to $100 million a year.
> 
> It's too bad non-profits can't IPO. :)

I think you've over-rated the value of Wikipedia articles. Our 
article on the [[Atom]] (you know, what chemical elements are 
made of?) is a case in point.

I would pay a writer $1.00 per word for Britannica's 60-word 
intro ($60) sooner than I'd pay the same rate for Wikipedia's 
2,000 word article. Ours is not worth $2,000.

If I had to hire a professional writer to fix up [[atom]], I 
would have to pay between $100 and $200. That would amount to 
5 cents to 10 cents per word.

We like to boast of our quality, but in this case our boast 
would be false.

Uncle Ed Poor
Self-proclaimed Quality Czar
Wikipedia Research Team