Should Wikipedia run ads that ask for money, or ads that make money? • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by cyrus_ » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 5:54 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #58

cyrus_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may substitute "commercial ad" every time you see the word "ad" in discussion about this, if you'd like to be picky.

I HATE non-commercialism. It's like saying that a charitable hospital can ask for money, but can't run a cake-stall to raise it. Charities end up spending a huge amount of money soliciting donations. Wikipedia's lucky, because they can nag everyone on the internet for essentially no fee, and even partly deny service (by offering a gimped service). The Red Cross can't give disaster victims a nag message before helping…

There are a lot of issues with putting advertising on a site dedicated to providing unbiased information to the public. Advertising is, I think you'll agree, very unbiased information.

You can argue that users will be able to distinguish between the ads and the content, but Wikipedia serves a very diverse community -- children, the elderly, people who can't read very well, people who are more-or-less computer illiterate. If even a small percentage of them are confused by the ads, Wikipedia will have failed in a small way.

(FWIW, I've seen technically-literate peers get confused by the current banner too, thinking the person pictured was the person the article was about.)

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

#62

Post by wpietri » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 5:56 AM UTC

wisty wrote: post #58

cyrus_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may substitute "commercial ad" every time you see the word "ad" in discussion about this, if you'd like to be picky.

I HATE non-commercialism. It's like saying that a charitable hospital can ask for money, but can't run a cake-stall to raise it. Charities end up spending a huge amount of money soliciting donations. Wikipedia's lucky, because they can nag everyone on the internet for essentially no fee, and even partly deny service (by offering a gimped service). The Red Cross can't give disaster victims a nag message before helping…

There are plenty of non-profits that have some commercial-ish operations. E.g. hospital gift shop profits often go to the hospital, and plenty of museums sell related stuff. But generally it's a terrible idea.

Business is hard, and it's a different kind of hard than charities normally deal with. Being good at 2 things is more than twice as hard at being good at one thing, so I think charities are wise to generally stick with being non-commercial.

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

#63

Post by wpietri » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 5:59 AM UTC

jarin wrote: post #19

orthecreedence wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In essence, my argument is this: because at their core, they are an unbiased source of information, the less controlling interests involved, the better. To generate revenue from ads is to "sell" a piece of themselves. Equate it somewhat to raising money from investors. They now have much more revenue, but at the cost of some of the control of their company. Ads certainly don't take away control in the sense investors…

How about only showing the ads until each month's (or the year's) costs are met? That way there's no temptation to try to derive a profit from it, and at worst you end up with ads on Wikipedia for a couple of months out of the year (kind of like you get now).

Costs aren't a fixed thing. Organizations can always use more resources, and people can always thing up more great things to do.

I think their fixed fundraising period is a better way to do things. Although I'd really like to see them build up an endowment and live off that.

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

#64

Post by gerggerg » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 6:06 AM UTC

larrys wrote: post #54

There is another issue here as well that isn't being considered. If you look at the 2010 Financial Report that lists contributors there are a few foundations that give wikimedia more than 1 million. And there are 6 that give between 100,000 and 999,999. And then even more that give other varying amounts. As well as obviously individuals. That's money that isn't going to other non-profits and potentially non-profits t…

Wow, so Wikipedia is being greedy by not putting ads on their pages?

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

#65

Post by gerggerg » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 6:17 AM UTC

Do we really need an explanation about why a public reference resource should be free from potential conflict of interest?

Capitalism isn't even involved. It's not about making money, it's about keeping the resource available and valuable. There are all kinds of "just do this and you'll make tons of money and no one will get hurt" ideas. But they truly don't matter. They all devalue the service. And frankly, it's kind of embarrassing for humanity that we can't modestly fund our most valuable information resource and that there are many complaints of wikipedia nagging its users.

Servers ain't free, developers ain't free, freedom ain't free. You use wikipedia? Buck up and spend $10. Think about how the free market isn't about companies finding money faucets. It's about voting with your dollars. So go out and fucking vote.

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

#66

Post by angus77 » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 6:20 AM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #56

mc32 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find Wikipedia to be an assortment of western media biases. That you find that I won't contest. I'd point out that one might also see local biases in non-western language wikipedia articles. So to me, that point is kind of tangential. I'd rather say that everything has some inherent bias, rather than couching it as wikipedia having an especially (western) bias, as if other sources could be bias-free.

I agree, that everything has some inherent bias, the problem I see is that Wikipedia is often taken as the "gospel", from both western and a lot of non-western residents, and because of it's status as a "world-wide, collaborative, encyclopedia" it's assumed that it is unbiased --while people treat other sources with more caution.

Funny, I seem to run into people everywhere saying you can't trust Wikipedia. Where are all these people who take it as Gospel?

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

#67

Post by foxit » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 6:28 AM UTC

cyrus_ wrote: post #61

wisty wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I HATE non-commercialism. It's like saying that a charitable hospital can ask for money, but can't run a cake-stall to raise it. Charities end up spending a huge amount of money soliciting donations. Wikipedia's lucky, because they can nag everyone on the internet for essentially no fee, and even partly deny service (by offering a gimped service). The Red Cross can't give disaster victims a nag message before helping…

There are a lot of issues with putting advertising on a site dedicated to providing unbiased information to the public. Advertising is, I think you'll agree, very unbiased information. You can argue that users will be able to distinguish between the ads and the content, but Wikipedia serves a very diverse community -- children, the elderly, people who can't read very well, people who are more-or-less computer illiter…

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales

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

#68

Post by tuppy » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 6:42 AM UTC

spodek wrote: post #28

tuppy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument doesn't make sense since Craigslist is already a vehicle for advertisement. People pay for advertisements placed on Craigslist. They don't pay their operating costs through donations, they pay by having people give them money to provide a service (in this case, advertising).

Argument? I said it reminded me of something and described it. Anyway, try looking for similarities. Anyone can find differences between things, but what do we learn from that? We already know no two things are perfectly identical. I find we learn more from similarities in things we expect to be different.

Perhaps argument was the wrong word.

As a personal note, disagree about what you think we learn more from. I find differences far more interesting. If the universe was all the same it would be immensely boring. It's the differences that make us question everything else that has been the same before.

Metaphysics and all, and quite useless practically. But it's fun to discuss :)

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

#69

Post by rd108 » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 6:44 AM UTC

antimora wrote: post #32

I used to donate to the fund, but ever since I saw their budget that doubles every year (now it's around $20 Million), I started having reservation on giving. I don't mind supporting Wikipedia service, but I feel the money is now being spent on some other initiatives.

This is actually what I was thinking too. The fundraising pitch they're currently running says something like "We have 6000 servers and only 95 paid staff". I'm not sure 95 paid positions + servers cost 20 million a year, but then again, Wikipedia does deserve to be well-funded and not have to worry about making budget year-to-year. I'd like to see a more open transparent accounting of the funds right there on the fundraising page.

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

#70

Post by po » Wed, Dec 28, 2011, 8:01 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #8

Ads that ask for money: the readers are wikipedia's customers. Ads that make money: the readers are wikipedia's product. Incentives matter.

I was going to say exactly this. Who you take the money from is the most important part of this. Even if the site ends up looking exactly the same, it aligns your interests with the reader's.