[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia struggles, Mozilla set for life?

[Sage Ross]

On 10/25/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On this subject, here is something to think about.
>
> Which is worse in terms of COI risks?
>
> Funded 100% by donations by 50% of the donation money comes from only
> 1-3 people/groups.
>
> Funded 90% through ads but with no advertiser accounting for more than
> 1% of the income.
>
> It's a serious and important question.

I would say the former is a more serious COI risk in terms of
incentive to compromise our content (though on a very narrow range of
content, related to the big-money people/groups), while the latter is
a much more serious risk in terms of public perception of COI (with
all the negatives that come with that).

I don't think there is significant risk of editors actually tailoring
content to drive ad revenue (especially since the per-page revenue
numbers would never be made public), but ads are a constant reminder
to every reader that there is something commercial going on, even if
Wikimedia itself is a non-profit.  Most readers would never have any
inkling of COI concerns from individual high-value donations.

But I also think that switching to Google search (with ads) would be
much less likely to raise red flags with users, compared to article
ads.  After all, they are used to seeing ads in the context of search;
it would all seems part and parcel of using faster and more relevant
Google search (and/or MSN or Yahoo! or Ask).  Most users sophisicated
enough to worry about ads and revenue streams can also appreciate the
functional difference between Wikipedia's current search and what an
integrated commercial engine could do.

-Sage