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If Wikipedia paid authors

news.ycombinator.com

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If Wikipedia paid authors

#1
Scenario: Wikipedia is an ad supported site, where authors were paid a % of total ad revenue,

depending on how popular the page they authored was.

Do you think this would promote higher quality content ?

Re: If Wikipedia paid authors

#3
In my spare time I tinker with content-recreation using wikipedia dumps.

Imagine software that could find and generate content as good or better than the quality on Wikipedia.

I guess skys the limit on how much you could make in ad revenue.

Re: If Wikipedia paid authors

#4
Probably not.

In a recent thread[1], the consensus seemed to be that introducing monetary rewards for community participation was a bad idea, that would largely cause people to game the system. I should think that your idea would encounter similar obstacles.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986681

Re: If Wikipedia paid authors

#5
post #4

Probably not. In a recent thread[1], the consensus seemed to be that introducing monetary rewards for community participation was a bad idea, that would largely cause people to game the system. I should think that your idea would encounter similar obstacles. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986681

If 10 authors wrote 10 versions of the page called /Bill_Gates

it would still be upto a group/committee/public to decide which version is the most relevant/highest quality.

The chosen author would then be entitled to whatever percent of the total ad revenue the site generated.

Re: If Wikipedia paid authors

#6
post #5
post #4

Probably not. In a recent thread[1], the consensus seemed to be that introducing monetary rewards for community participation was a bad idea, that would largely cause people to game the system. I should think that your idea would encounter similar obstacles. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986681

If 10 authors wrote 10 versions of the page called /Bill_Gates it would still be upto a group/committee/public to decide which version is the most relevant/highest quality. The chosen author would then be entitled to whatever percent of the total ad revenue the site generated.

This sounds largely like Google Knol. (http://knol.google.com/k)

I don't think that is generally thought of as a very successful undertaking.

Re: If Wikipedia paid authors

#8
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 10 authors wrote 10 versions of the page called /Bill_Gates it would still be upto a group/committee/public to decide which version is the most relevant/highest quality. The chosen author would then be entitled to whatever percent of the total ad revenue the site generated.

This sounds largely like Google Knol. ( http://knol.google.com/k ) I don't think that is generally thought of as a very successful undertaking.

thanks for that..