The main barrier for this are Wikipedia’s authors and editors. Many would feel that Wikimedia is trying to make money off their work – no matter whether that’s

The main barrier for this are Wikipedia’s authors and editors. Many would feel that Wikimedia is trying to make money off their work – no matter whether that’s a justified view or not. Wikipedia risks alienating large numbers of their authors and editors if they introduce ads. The Wikipedia authors and editors I have heard speak about this topic seem to be strongly opposed to any kind of commercialization and ads. Writing for Wikipedia is not always fun and sometimes tedious and annoying work. I don’t think Wikipedia can afford to ignore their authors and editors or risk losing them. It’s not like they have to do any work for Wikipedia and it seems like many are doing it for idealistic reasons. For that reason alone I don’t think it’s very likely that there will ever be ads on Wikipedia. Wikimedia would have to try very hard to win over as many authors and editors as possible beforehand and would probably also have to give them a lot of say in how ads are implemented and how Wikimedia is run (I think many would demand absolute transparency from Wikimedia and that they justify any and all spending in detail). Another way to bring ads to Wikipedia might be some sort of grass roots movement from the community. I, however, don’t see anyone who would be willing to start such a movement and I also don’t see how such a movement could win over large numbers. Wikipedia’s relatively federal structure would certainly allow for interesting experiments. It would be nice to test ads in some smaller Wiki, maybe the Russian or Spanish Wikipedia. That would be a lot more responsible than just introducing ads everywhere. But political pressures inside Wikipedia would require a political genius when it comes to actually implementing that.