5 ms·
> After we burn through our reserves, it seems likely that the next step for the WMF will be going into debt to support continued runaway spending, followed by
by nathan_f77 9y ago
> After we burn through our reserves, it seems likely that the next step for the WMF will be going into debt to support continued runaway spending, followed by bankruptcy. At that point there are several large corporations (Google and Facebook come to mind) that will be more than happy to pay off the debts, take over the encyclopedia, fire the WMF staff, and start running Wikipedia as a profit-making platform. There are a lot of ways to monetize Wikipedia, all undesirable. The new owners could sell banner advertising, allow uneditable "sponsored articles" for those willing to pay for the privilege, or even sell information about editors and users.
I honestly wouldn't complain if Wikipedia was owned and monetized by Google. I think they would recognize the importance of Wikipedia and handle it very carefully. I also think there is a small and very vocal minority on Hacker News who would be outraged, but most of the world wouldn't think twice.
- funkyy 9y agoWikipedia would become even more sided by going this route. But Google or any other corp will not do that I think, as Wikipedia is website hated by many powerful people.
- angry-hacker 9y agoOut of interest, who are the powerful who hate Wikipedia?
- teamhappy 9y agoTurkey started blocking Wikipedia last week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_block_of_Wikipedia_in_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_block_of_Wikipedia_in_Tur...
- arachnids 9y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia
- angry-hacker 9y agoI see. I was thinking the parent referred to specific people. Nation-wide blocks we're all well aware of.
- angry-hacker 9y agoI think majority here would disagree, including me :) And for Google it's fine as it is, they make billions using the free data people provide through Wikipedia. They just spill out the facts (often wrong) and people never leave Google.
- sparkzilla 9y agoThen you will probably be interested in my article: Google and Wikipedia: Best Friends Forever. http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-forever/ http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-...
- wbc 9y agoI think it's been faster to search on google, scroll to wiki link and click than to search on wikipedia anyways
- systematical 9y agoI generally just search "<search phrase> wiki" when I know the answer I want is in wikipedia.
- vq 9y agoI have a 'w' search keyword in Firefox for Wikipedia. "w <search phrase>" + enter takes you directly to the Wikipedia page.
- davidgerard 9y ago> I honestly wouldn't complain if Wikipedia was owned and monetized by Google. Just look what good care they took of Usenet!