2 ms·
When a site as big as Wikipedia has to spend a large chunk of each year begging for handouts, I have trouble buying your suggestion that alternative business mo
by chc 10y ago
When a site as big as Wikipedia has to spend a large chunk of each year begging for handouts, I have trouble buying your suggestion that alternative business models are generally viable.
- bigbugbag 10y agoThis counter argument would be valid if wikipedia model had failed but it actually manage to fund the project for 10+ years. The day the usual website will receive 12 to 20Billions views a month and occupy 10TB of disk space, then we could use wikipedia as a representative example. Until then wikipedia should not be used as an example of how well the usual ad-supported website would fare with an alternative revenue model. IINM wikipedia has chosen a business model not based on ads which successfully funds the project for about 10+ years.
- chc 10y ago> The day the usual website will receive 12 to 20Billions views a month and occupy 10TB of disk space, then we could use wikipedia as a representative example. Until then wikipedia should not be used as an example of how well the usual ad-supported website would fare with an alternative revenue model. Yes, that was my point — Wikipedia is probably the absolute best-case scenario for a free website that isn't supported by ads, and they're still panhandling. The usual ad-supported website would fare much, much worse, and would probably just stop providing its service to the world.
- hulahoof 10y agoWikipedia most definitely does NOT require the donations they ask for every december to continue day-to-day operations. In fact, they can survive quite comfortably on the standard donation rate they receive each month outside the December drive[1]. [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_reports#Fundraising_fiscal_year_2015-2016 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_reports#Fun...