21–30 of 115 posts
I've always wondered if Wikipedia could come up with alternate revenue streams because of the huge amounts of people they touch, the mammoth cross section of content they have. And the kinds of traffic analysis they could do... Targeted ads? Analytics for companies (a medical, tech or other company could learn what their stakeholders are interested in), recommendation engines, content classification engines for media…
I've always wondered if Wikipedia could come up with alternate revenue streams because of the huge amounts of people they touch, the mammoth cross section of content they have. And the kinds of traffic analysis they could do... Targeted ads? Analytics for companies (a medical, tech or other company could learn what their stakeholders are interested in), recommendation engines, content classification engines for media…
Which doesn't mean that there aren't any alternative revenue streams for the Wikimedia Foundation. But it's a very touchy topic here. Ideas I've heard is finding/accepting more large grants (rather rare now, since it affects the independence of the organization), collaborating with companies wishing to crawl the content (like search engines; nothing that isn't public, just easier access) or hosting MediaWiki wiki instances (many people want to run "their own Wikipedia" and there aren't very many good providers now).
Not that anyone is planning to switch to one of these models, as far as I know. But it's an alternative in case people stop donating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they will be more than fine once we figure out micropayments.
I don't think so. The problem micropayments face is that they're too close to free to represent value - if something is $0.05 then your brain sees that it isn't free but its value is so close to zero that it feels like it ought to be free. There'a a cognitive dissonance between "This is something I need so I should pay for it" and "This is so cheap it can't be worth anything, so I shouldn't pay for it." You need to p…
Wikipedia is a proof of a utopian vision that infused the early web - ensuring public rights wins public contribution.
Humanities collective knowledge is better distributed because of Wikipedia, a true wonder of the modern world.
IMHO, we must treasure wikipedia as it is not clear it could happen again and it embiggens us all.
Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…
Lately, I see individuals, and companies carefully crafting pages to further their agenda. It could be PR, name recognition, or inaccurate information reguarding their cause.
It could be as subtle as changing the definition of a neologism to singular, rather than plural. I ran across this recently. Someone wanted to promote their technospeck.whatever domain, but the plural was taken, so they deleted all the wiki information on the original neologism, and in turn just put, "for plural see the singular page.". Bringing in overnight credibility to their domain name.
What bothers me is the changes, or complete rewrite of certain pages are obviously done for monetary reasons, and the Editors don't seem to notice the motives behind the obvious manipulation.
I don't want to be one of those people who claims a service was better in the past, but once people realized they could use Wikipedia to as indirect/free advertising; that's when I lost interest.
I would miss Wikipedia if it collapsed. Do I have a feeling someone else might be able to do a better job? Yes! In this case, I feel the federal government could do a better job with Wikipedia? I would rather see four billion going to unemployed paid/trained Editors--instead of self-driving technology. Editors trained mainly in sniffing out manipulation of history/facts for personal/corporate gain.
Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…
Jimmy Wales was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning (15th Jan 2016) and said they do absolutely everything they can to minimise the length of the banner campaigns. They set a budget and keep the campaign open until they hit the target. According to him they have gotten less agressive over the years. edit date correction :)
I was thinking just yesterday whether wikipedia will ever change its design or if it is timeless (unless devices change radically). I don't remember any major changes, I guess there were gradual that I didn't notice?
Congratulations, Wikipedia! I found it tremendously useful over the years. I have one suggestion for them. I wouldn't mind making micro-donations for articles of particular quality and relevance to me. Say I find something useful and click on a '2c' donation button. The system doesn't trigger an immediate payment transaction because I would not have time to do it but instead waits until I accumulate $1+ in 'spend' an…
Whoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/…
I used to think it was the best thing humanity created. Lately, I see individuals, and companies carefully crafting pages to further their agenda. It could be PR, name recognition, or inaccurate information reguarding their cause. It could be as subtle as changing the definition of a neologism to singular, rather than plural. I ran across this recently. Someone wanted to promote their technospeck.whatever domain, but…