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

[Andrew Gray]

On 25/10/2007, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

(As I write this, incidentally, I have #wikimedia-donations open in an
IRC window on the same screen; each donation notification picked up
from the server and dropped into an IRC channel. It's a really
heartwarming thing to have ticking slowly by as you work; a note every
minute or two telling you how happy people are with what we're doing
here. The most recent is "It's an honor to be a part of the worldwide
Wikipedia community!" - from someone who was *giving us money* to say
that. Just thought I'd share that thought...)

> 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.

It strikes me that it's a tradeoff.

a) you have a COI issue on half a dozen pages - those relating to the
big donors - and this issue is *very* prominent. (Half our money comes
from, say, Google? Hell yes, we'd all be worried about the neutrality
of [[Google]]).

b) you have a COI issue spread across several hundred or thousand
pages - those relating directly to the advertisers for those specific
pages - but to a smaller degree for each one because we're less
beholden to each. (If you give us 30% of our income we can't tell you
to go boil your head; if you give us 3%, we can grit our teeth and
start kicking)

As Jason notes below, the first case becomes much worse in cases where
the donor is anonymous - it's very much a matter of external
perception, since the *community* doesn't know who that big donor is
and so can't really pander to them, but that's still just as bad.