[WikiEN-l] Advertising on Wikipedia

[Nathan]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 11:26 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
2008/8/19 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> Let's assume the ads are limited and tasteful, and that the "customers"
> don't mind them.

Approximate earning power of such ads appears to be minimal.

--
geni


Minimal according to who? All these arguments are made in the absence of
evidence.

What we know:

* The Foundation always needs money to continue operating
* Any new initiatives to expand the community base or extend the impact of
Wikimedia in other ways cost money
* Most of this money comes from donations, and there are no plans to
generate truly significant revenue in other ways
* Donations are at the mercy of the global economy and the public image
of the Wikimedia Foundation
* Advertising is a way for the Foundation to generate revenue that is not
dependent on the donor climate
* There is opposition within the Wikimedia community to advertising


What we don't know:

* The level of community opposition to advertising is unknown, surveys on
this
subject have been unscientific and poorly structured in the past
* The opinion of the intended audience is completely unknown, no surveys of
this population have been undertaken
* No estimate of the potential income from various types of advertising
plans has
been generated


So what stops us from truly investigating the options here? A number of
folks seem to
have a visceral negative reaction to just the mention of the words "revenue"

and "advertising" - such that they dismiss the possibility that additional
income
could even be useful. I'm not sure how to respond to that sort of
irrationality.

Perhaps the disconnect is that we view the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation

on different planes of significance. I think the idea of accumulating and
distributing
the sum of human knowledge to everyone or nearly everyone on the planet is
the most
seductive charitable goal I've ever encountered. I don't think we're
anywhere even close
to achieving that goal. Information and knowledge is isolated and contained
in academia,
and most academics still regard Wikipedia as the unserious domain of
crackpots and
hoaxers. Other people seem to think that we're getting along just fine, that
we just need
to wait for readers to get the Internet and for academics and others to
"catch on."

There area a thousand different ways that money could be spend to attract
new
content and new contributors, to publicize the Wikimedia Foundation (most
people
seem to have no idea it exists) and its goals, to fund initiatives in other
mediums and
languages with a limited online community, etc. There are similarly a
thousand different
ways advertising on the site could be structured to address concerns of the
community.

What I continue to fail to understand is why the rejection of advertising is
so blanket and
abrupt - some people insist on making this a black and white, Good vs. Evil
issue. You're
framing the discussion in such a way as to make the complete and utter
denial of advertising
and its potential benefits the only moral position.

Does that mean that I and the others who advocate taking a more substantial
look at
advertising form the new Wikimedia Axis of Evil?

Nathan