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

aaronklein.com

71–80 of 83 posts

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

#71
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

The objection to something big and obnoxious that interrupts your use of the site is only one of the objections to ads. Yes, the pledge drive is annoying. But it only happens for a month or so a year, and it doesn't have all of the other problems associated with ads.

Other objections are that the advertisers would be the ones paying Wikipedia, and thus have the ultimate control; they can threaten to reduce advertising revenue in order to get objectionable material removed, they would incentivize people to put more advertising-friendly content that would draw people to lucrative pages and entice them to click on ads.

Ads are also a security and privacy risk. Advertisers who can inject content into pages can do varios nasty things. And advertisers tend to track what you do; tracking your Wikipedia browsing habits would likely be quite lucrative.

One of the worst things about the internet today is that so much of it is funded by advertising. This gives companies no incentive to act in my best interest; their only incentive as far as I am concerned is to get me to look at their page, so I can look at and click on ads. They are beholden to their advertisers, not their users.

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

#72
post #55
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Say if Facebook donates a million dollars a year, Wikipedia would be incentivized to treat Facebook favorably. Obviously this doesn't happen, but that is one of their arguments against advertising.

Right, and one of the reasons this doesn't happen is that Facebook doesn't get any benefit out of donating all that money, other than the (potential) control they could get by threatening to stop funding Wikipedia.

Businesses have an incentive to buy ads, and users have less incentive to donate to an ad-supported site, which means that the funding would be skewed drastically in favor of advertisers. With donations, yes, you can have large donors using their clout, but you don't automatically skew the pool of money towards a few particular interests.

Ads also have problems in that they are juxtaposed with the content of the site. That can create an implicit sense of endorsement of the ad by Wikipedia, and vice versa. People manipulate content providers all the time, by mentioning to advertisers that their ads are juxtaposed with some objectionable content, and even threatening to boycott those advertisers if they don't remove their ads. By only accepting donations, you are supported by people who are much more likely to be dedicated to the free exchange of information that is your mission, and you aren't putting their name up next to content that they might object to.

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

#73
post #33

Both, ads that make money while asking for money. This plea brought to you by Encyclopedia Britannica, please support Wikipedia with a donation.

This would actually be one of the better ways to do it. The link would only lead to Wikipedia donations, and the business would be essentially paying for public goodwill, a hefty sum of it.

Just imagine Coca Cola making a big donation to Wikipedia just to have its name figure on the donation ad for the "Soda" category. I'm not sure how the community would react to this, though.

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

#74
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""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.""" As an organization, maybe, as an encyclopedia, not so true. For one, we have a lot of examples of people working within companies to add content that they like. A lot where exposed, but others surely are not. Especially in non…

>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.

Wikipedia has an extremely left-leaning bias (not extreme, but certainly not balanced) to be precise. To say that it voices the average western opinion is moronic.

E.g. the article on communism has an extensive "history" section that mentions all real-world accomplishments of theory, but you will not find anything even remotely objectionable in there ... despite the fact that they were running extermination camps at the time.

To say that this is typical of pages on political theory is dishonest. The article on nazism, for example, does seem to find the need to mention what happened in the real world in the second paragraph. Something not found, at all, in the communism article. Well, to be fair, if in the edit history of the page, you will find that a reference to "mass killings under communist regimes" gets added, then removed again, then added again ...

... on page 37 of the printed page.

... page 37 ...

no bias there ...

There are other extreme leftist biases in wikipedia : you'd think all religions are duplicates of christianity with jesus replaced by someone else and a slightly different backstory. The reality, that all religions represent fundamentally different moral systems, and thus have radically different views on basically all sensitive topics, is nowhere to be found on wikipedia.

Take an example, the fact that slavery ("indentured servitude", and other assorted forms of forced labour) is present in all religions, and only condemned by christian religion (and even then only in the sense that christians should not have slaves, bearing in mind that large subcults like protestants found it necessary to literally skirt the edge, claiming for example that companies like the east india trading company technically did not count as christians and thus could own slaves, with protestant guards enforcing the system, a practice explicitly forbidden by the pope, who tried, and failed, to militarily enforce it) ... you will not learn this on wikipedia.

But all religions have all sorts of opinions on all sensitive topics, but reading wikipedia you'd think islam advocates equality between men and women. Obviously any muslim, and anyone with basic knowledge of religions, knows better (no religion has true equality between the sexes. Even Christianity's position of theoretical ("legal") equality with the man as the tie-breaker, not allowed to override a woman's wants but nevertheless the ultimate decision-maker, is extremely progressive for a religion, again even such a basic position, only mildly controversial, yet it is shunned like the plague from wikipedia). You would never know that equality between the sexes is such a difficult thing in practice, to the point that literally even communism badly failed at it by today's standards.

Topics like islam's basic doctrine of eternal war ... good luck finding those, despite the fact you'll find them on the second page of books muslim children receive in kindergarten ... "strange"

I find wikipedia to be biased to the point where revisionism accusations are justified in most historical articles. The encyclopedia Britannica is much less biased. And that means it's not for children, it for example speaks in extremely cold and detached language about the nazi's actions. It does not hide socialist massacres on the xxth page, and you will readily find them starting from the word "socialism", as it should be.

Likewise, Britannica is much more respectful of religions and ideologies. Speaking in equally cold language about principles like protecting the weak and the commandment for women to set themselves on fire if their man dies within a week after the funeral.

Wikipedia has serious troubles processing reality, and lets any sufficiently large mob enforce it's sensitivities on pretty much any article.

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

#75

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?

There isn't a maximum donation that I'm aware of. In some cases, individuals have given a lot of money, publicly and anonymously. I believe the WMF has turned down some large donations when there were too many strings attached.

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

#76
post #61
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…

I have a hard time believing that kids or old people have never seen ads online before, and would be so easily confused. Even so, it is a problem that could be well addressed by the design of the ad space.

It's much more difficult to detect and evaluate bias within the text of an article. There is plenty of this on Wikipedia now, usually because of partisan or ideological edit wars on lightly read articles. And it's getting worse as more and more barriers are erected to casual or first-time editors.

It is almost impossible right now for someone viewing an article for the first time to improve it, even with cited sources. Regardless of quality, the changes are frequently reverted quickly by a bot or someone squatting the article. To get a significant addition or change to "stick" requires a large time investment and knowledge of the arcane rules of appeal within the growing Wikipedia bureaucracy. Result: most people don't bother.

This, to me, is a much larger problem of bias than what you describe. I actually think ads could help this problem by decoupling the content from the money. Right now a relatively small group of people are the most powerful editors AND the largest donors. Wikipedia is at risk of becoming captive to a set of people who think it is "theirs."

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

#77

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…

It is naive to think that money is the only conflict of interest. Wikipedia is rife with ideological conflicts of interest now, and much of the growing edit bureaucracy is designed to protect these conflicts of interest.

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

#78
post #34

Capitalism won, try it. I don't think this is true here at all. The obvious real-world analogy is news. I would much rather listen to NPR or the BBC than watch CNN or a local broadcast station -- I don't care if the latter has "won" by making money, I care about the quality and editorial independence of the content.

NPR makes most of its money from private foundations and corporate sponsors, both of whom it acknowledges by name on the air. That is a type of ad. Wikimedia Foundation could raise a ton of money if they just did something like this.

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

#80
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The objection to something big and obnoxious that interrupts your use of the site is only one of the objections to ads. Yes, the pledge drive is annoying. But it only happens for a month or so a year, and it doesn't have all of the other problems associated with ads. Other objections are that the advertisers would be the ones paying Wikipedia, and thus have the ultimate control; they can threaten to reduce advertisin…

> Other objections are that the advertisers would be the ones paying Wikipedia, and thus have the ultimate control; they can threaten to reduce advertising revenue in order to get objectionable material removed, they would incentivize people to put more advertising-friendly content that would draw people to lucrative pages and entice them to click on ads.

The same is true of contributors as is the response - get different contributors/advertisers.

> They are beholden to their advertisers, not their users.

They lose advertisers as soon as they lose users, so users control their advertising revenue.

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