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Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

aaronklein.com

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Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#41

Post by gojomo »

Imagine Google made a live read-only Wikipedia mirror, with AdSense advertisements. Then, donated all resulting revenues to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Would that action be lawful evil or chaotic good?

What if it multiplied the WMF budget by 20X or more while reducing server expenses?

What if Bing did it? Blekko? DuckDuckGo?

Does it help at all that by the CC-SA license, the preferences of the Foundation or community really shouldn't matter: this is a completely legal tactic? (Could that help solve the potential financial-motivation-crowding issues: the fact that such a bonanza occurred "against the community's wishes"?)

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#42

Post by jballanc »

Why is it that people automatically equate "Capitalism" with "doing whatever it takes to get your dollar", instead of "producing a better product than the competitor"?

If competition is essential to capitalism, and if "capitalism won", then why doesn't the author create a competing service? Certainly, if Wikipedia is doing something so obviously wrong, then it should be trivial to out compete them in the marketplace, no?

Ok, maybe the author doesn't have the time to put in the effort that would be required to create a competing service. In that case, maybe we can ask the nice people at the Encyclopedia Britannica to help? Oh, or maybe the people that work on Google Knol? I think maybe they could shed some light on how "capitalism won"...

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#43

Post by charliesome »

JonnieCache wrote: post #9

One of the best things about wikipedia, some might argue the best thing, is that it is free from all the conflicts of interest invited in by money changing hands in exchange for services. This applies to all free culture, including the OSS world. It would be a tragedy to change it. (Obviously in the OSS world, people do pay for services, but the important thing is you can always choose not to. Just as you can choose…

The OSS world isn't free from conflict of interest either - just look at the Merb vs. Rails thing a couple of years ago.

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#44

Post by danneu »

charliesome wrote: post #43
JonnieCache wrote: post #9

One of the best things about wikipedia, some might argue the best thing, is that it is free from all the conflicts of interest invited in by money changing hands in exchange for services. This applies to all free culture, including the OSS world. It would be a tragedy to change it. (Obviously in the OSS world, people do pay for services, but the important thing is you can always choose not to. Just as you can choose…

The OSS world isn't free from conflict of interest either - just look at the Merb vs. Rails thing a couple of years ago.

Can you explain? Wiki just explains that Rails pretty much slurped up Merb's featureset/advantage in Rails 3.

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#45

Post by moe »

I've said it before, I think they should just get one sponsor per year and be done with it.

Just stick a permanent "Powered by Coca Cola|Microsoft|Whatever" banner in the footer; Coca Cola and friends surely won't mind to cover the operational costs of Wikipedia (and then some) in return.

In order to prevent a sponsor from becoming too influential they can simply make it a rule that the sponsor must be cycled annually. They could even have the community vote on the sponsor for the next year.

Sponsors would certainly wait in line for this ad-spot and personally I'd prefer it over the constant begging on every page.

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#46

Post by baddox »

jaylevitt wrote: post #18
JonnieCache wrote: post #9

One of the best things about wikipedia, some might argue the best thing, is that it is free from all the conflicts of interest invited in by money changing hands in exchange for services. This applies to all free culture, including the OSS world. It would be a tragedy to change it. (Obviously in the OSS world, people do pay for services, but the important thing is you can always choose not to. Just as you can choose…

I don't know Wikipedia's donor requirements; how do they avoid that same conflict of interest via donations? Is there some maximum donation per individual, reporting requirement, etc. that prevents corruption any more than using an automated ad network like AdSense would?

As far as I know, donators don't get any special treatment, and there aren't any conditional donations (e.g. I'll donate if you delete this article), so why would donations cause a conflict of interests?

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#47

Post by baddox »

jballanc wrote: post #42

Why is it that people automatically equate "Capitalism" with "doing whatever it takes to get your dollar", instead of "producing a better product than the competitor"? If competition is essential to capitalism, and if "capitalism won", then why doesn't the author create a competing service? Certainly, if Wikipedia is doing something so obviously wrong, then it should be trivial to out compete them in the marketplace,…

This was obviously an abuse of the term, but I think I know what the author means. Presumably, the author is just talking about free enterprise and voluntary exchange, which tend to be important in a capitalist economy.

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#49

Post by executive »

neilk wrote: post #29

This FAQ is linked in the comments of the OP, but I thought it bears rereading. It's not just conflict of interest, it's also privacy, and the fact that the community just plain doesn't want advertising. In fact, Spanish Wikipedia already forked once, out of concerns that Wikipedia would become too commercial. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#Why_doesn.27t_Wik... It's true that other projects manage to comb…

except they are running ads right now.. of an ugly guy's face

Re: Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money?

#50

Post by wycats »

charliesome wrote: post #43
JonnieCache wrote: post #9

One of the best things about wikipedia, some might argue the best thing, is that it is free from all the conflicts of interest invited in by money changing hands in exchange for services. This applies to all free culture, including the OSS world. It would be a tragedy to change it. (Obviously in the OSS world, people do pay for services, but the important thing is you can always choose not to. Just as you can choose…

The OSS world isn't free from conflict of interest either - just look at the Merb vs. Rails thing a couple of years ago.

As someone who was involved in that, I'm genuinely interested in what you mean.
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