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I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

wikimediafoundation.org

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Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#41

Post by roel_v »

markmccraw wrote: post #13

Given that it costs less than $20 million to run Wikipedia (cite: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/ac/FINAL_... ), that seems completely attainable without needing to change the nature of Wikipedia by introducing advertising. A lone rich donor could cover the budget for an entire year, and many people who could afford that wouldn't even be mentioned in Wikipedia, so there would be little opportunity…

Back when I was a young lad, there used to be these things that had sort of the same issues. They were a stack of 'paper' (pressed wood pulp) sheets that content was 'printed' on (a black substance called 'ink' was sprayed on them). People used to write for them during the day, they were produced ('printed') at night and teenagers would deliver them in the morning so that people back then could still read news reasonably fast after it had happened.

Anyway, they had the same issues about ads and editorial independence, yet somehow they seemed to be able to continue to be trusted despite having ads. And get this, even though they had ads, you still had to pay for them, too! Those were some strange days...

Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#42

Post by VMG »

yread wrote: post #39

I don't understand people moaning about "why don't they show us ads already". I am using wikipedia a lot and I think I got a lot of value from it. Admittedly I was using it more as a student, but now I can afford to give something back for that. I have no problem with donating. We have ads everywhere, some are scammy some are annoying, advertising companies track us with them. Why would you want to put them on wikipe…

I think those who actively engage in these kinds of discussions already have an ad blocker

Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#43

Post by dodo53 »

gojomo wrote: post #34
devs1010 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for companies where one client has an inordinate amount of influence over the company, why... because they are the biggest client, they represent a significant percentage of the company's revenue. Market forces inevitably can create situations where a particular client is "really good" for a company, they may pay more than other companies would, etc and, if this client is lost (or even just reduces the bu…

Except: editing is done by an unruly hive. There is no organizational nexus on which to place "comply or we'll withdraw our advertising" pressure. And, any attempt to apply such pressure would quickly trigger its own self-nullification via editor outrage (as with the 'Streisand Effect'). In order for an advertiser to have sinister influence, you'd need to assume a bunch of other changes which weaken Wikipedia's resil…

But wikipedia have previously frozen controversial pages that are having edit wars. They could choose the last revision that is reasonable favourable to advertiser and then freeze the page

Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#45

Post by kachnuv_ocasek »

aresant wrote: post #25

Brilliant headline. But man, I would love to help Wikipedia optimize their campaign. I know they work on CRO internally but on this page, for instance, I see 30%+ sitting on the table with: a) Fix the headline - Wikimedia's headline is "From Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris". The OP in this thread fixed by taking the very compelling first line "I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary." Still needs an…

You might want to bring this up on the IRC (freenode/#mediawiki or #wikimedia) or on the mailing lists (https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l or https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l).

Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#47

Post by mseebach »

devs1010 wrote: post #17
CharlieA wrote: post #2

"We don’t run ads because doing so would sacrifice our independence. The site is not and should never be a propaganda tool." I really don't understand wikipedia's continued hesitation to accept advertising--nor the argument that it would sacrifice their independence--anyone can edit it already, so I question whether sponsorship needs to have any impact on article content whatsoever. What's the problem with having a b…

so, this is just hypothetical, but lets say McDonald's ends up having some major scandal (say, like Enron, but not so bad that they go out of business), this scandal ends up being well known and there's a Wikipedia article written about it, as there is for the Enron scandal (Google "Enron Scandal wiki" to check for yourself). So, don't you think maybe McDonald's would put a little pressure on Wikipedia to censor or r…

Let's say I donate money to Wikipedia, and then I end up having some major scandal that has a Wikipedia article written about it. So, I put some pressure on Wikipedia to censor or remove that page. Why is everyone so sure that Wikipedia is so much better equipped for resisting pressure from individuals than from businesses - especially considering that individuals are much better suited for crafting personal relations than a corporation would be, and the damage to a person is much easier to empathise with than damage to a corporation.

Wikipedias force in this regard is that their operating budget is small potatoes: they can easily afford to shun any one donor - commercial or personal.

Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#48

Post by obtu »

roel_v wrote: post #41
markmccraw wrote: post #13

Given that it costs less than $20 million to run Wikipedia (cite: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/ac/FINAL_... ), that seems completely attainable without needing to change the nature of Wikipedia by introducing advertising. A lone rich donor could cover the budget for an entire year, and many people who could afford that wouldn't even be mentioned in Wikipedia, so there would be little opportunity…

Back when I was a young lad, there used to be these things that had sort of the same issues. They were a stack of 'paper' (pressed wood pulp) sheets that content was 'printed' on (a black substance called 'ink' was sprayed on them). People used to write for them during the day, they were produced ('printed') at night and teenagers would deliver them in the morning so that people back then could still read news reason…

Today's news is almost entirely ad-funded, with a lot of the story work done ahead of time by PR agencies. It's not a shining example of editorial independence.

Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#49

Post by danssig »

gojomo wrote: post #34
devs1010 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for companies where one client has an inordinate amount of influence over the company, why... because they are the biggest client, they represent a significant percentage of the company's revenue. Market forces inevitably can create situations where a particular client is "really good" for a company, they may pay more than other companies would, etc and, if this client is lost (or even just reduces the bu…

Except: editing is done by an unruly hive. There is no organizational nexus on which to place "comply or we'll withdraw our advertising" pressure. And, any attempt to apply such pressure would quickly trigger its own self-nullification via editor outrage (as with the 'Streisand Effect'). In order for an advertiser to have sinister influence, you'd need to assume a bunch of other changes which weaken Wikipedia's resil…

Your posts on the subject seem far and away too utopian when we're talking about wikipedia. They've already had a lot of scandals about censorship/bias/etc. now. That would only get worse when money was on the line.

Re: I feel like I’m living the first line of my obituary.

#50

Post by namdnay »

_ea1k wrote: post #15

Fortunately, they don't accept advertisements from corporations, and are thus uncorrupted by the donations from said corporations.

In fact, there was a dodgy moment a few years ago when Wikipedia pages would display an advert for Virgin Unite. The argument was that since it's a charity, it doesn't count as advertising, but for me there's a big difference between the charitable arm of a corporation and a "true" charity. The main one being that Unite is obviously at least partly an attempt to improve the Virgin brand. He didn't call it The Branson Foundation or just Unite.
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