[WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

[The Cunctator]

Every two to three years Jimbo flips his opinion on the advertising
issue, which I suppose is good, as long as we never have ads.*

I think there are better revenue streams for the Wikimedia Foundation
to be pursuing, in particular CD/DVD dead-tree versions of
Wikipedia/Wikibooks, although those will corrupt the nature of the
project too, perhaps in worse ways, so who really knows.

But then I like the idea of free public libraries, which makes me
something of a Communist in the eyes of free-market techno-capitalist
libertarians these days.

Note:

In 2001 Jimbo wrote this:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_on_Wikipedia

Someday, there will be advertising on Wikipedia. Either that, or we
will have to find some other way to raise money, but I can't think of
any.

In 2003 Jimbo wrote in this thread:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-June/thread.html#3975

Toby Bartels wrote:
> I interpreted that page as very old, only historical.

*Very* historical.  I'm now of the opinion that advertising is not
likely to ever be a viable or sensible revenue source for wikipedia.

One frame of reference -- at the time that was written, I was paying
$100k a year for ongoing expenses (programming, editor-in-chiefing,
etc.) for Nupedia.  Wikipedia has no similar expenses.

Bandwidth and hardware are cheap, and so we have no particular need of
money for what we're doing right now.

--Jimbo










* But then, I guess we probably will in a few years, which is when the
Inevitable Fork will happen.