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

60 points by aaronklein 15y ago

jarin 15y ago
They should place one ad in the sidebar, with a "request for comments" link right above it. Run that for a week, post the results, and let the community decide.
- aaronklein 15y ago
  That's a great idea.
- gwillen 15y ago
  If you follow the history of Wikipedia, ads have been discussed many times. The consensus has always been "no, absolutely not." If the WMF put even a single ad on Wikipedia as an experiment, there would be a community uproar and probably at least one fork (much as the Spanish Wikipedia forked years ago under threat of ads, and didn't rejoin for years, even though the ads themselves did not persist.) Personally, I think that's as it should be.
Yahivin 15y ago
Wikipedia should absolutely not run ads that make money. Even if they put the strictest protections in place to prevent advertisers interfering with the content it would still cast doubt in the eyes of those using the service. If Wikipedia were to become dependent on a revenue stream generated from advertisements for products then over time they would become beholden to those interests.
- aaronklein 15y ago
  Agreed if they are selling the ads directly. They could throw Google AdWords up there and have the ads algorithmically placed. They won't make as much money but they wouldn't have to beg.
orthecreedence 15y ago
Ask for money. If this model works for them (it seems to), then there's no reason to change it. Also, by having "sponsors" you open yourself up to "change this article to be like this, or we'll pull our support from Wikipedia." This may seem like a far-fetched scenario, but unless you only use the ad revenue for extra income and don't depend on it at all, you are vulnerable (no matter how many levels removed you are from the advertiser). It's also extremely difficult to have a steady source of income and not become dependent on it (like ads). My point being that even if they did run ads, they would have to still depend only on community donations if they didn't want to be held on the puppet strings of the capitalist dollar, which is a hard thing to do. Note that I'm not against capitalism, but once you depend on it for your income, you and your free speech are at its mercy. I completely agree with Wikipedia for not running ads. It would open a door that once opened is very difficult to close.
- aaronklein 15y ago
  Agreed if they are selling the ads directly. They could throw Google AdWords up there and have the ads algorithmically placed. They won't make as much money but they wouldn't have to beg.
  - blurbytree 15y ago
    They would undoubtedly make a lot more. FWIW I find the current begging really offputting and irritating. More so than small relevant text adverts would be. Online news sites run ads without worrying about impartiality etc. I don't see why wikipedia worries so much about it.
  - orthecreedence 15y ago
    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 do, but depending on the revenue from ads in any way is an extremely slippery slope.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
Ads that ask for money: the readers are wikipedia's customers. Ads that make money: the readers are wikipedia's product. Incentives matter.
- matthewj 15y ago
  A good reminder to always pay attention to who/what is actually the product.
- po 15y ago
  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.
JonnieCache 15y ago
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 not to send money to wikipedia.)
- jaylevitt 15y ago
  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?
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    I suppose you're right, but the psychology of donations versus purchases is very powerful. Plus there's the issue of customer vs. product that someone else mentioned.
  - baddox 15y ago
    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?
    - naz 15y ago
      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.
      - lambda 15y ago
        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.
Craiggybear 15y ago
Well, they could do both. Adverts imply a non-impartial editorial stance so I totally get why they see that as the thin end of the wedge I respect that totally, which is why I'm happy to donate now and then. Why not?
johnkchow 15y ago
These ads serve a secondary purpose of reminding people that Wikipedia's wealth of information originates by public knowledge. A lot of people tend to take knowledge for granted, and I personally feel humbled and grateful for Wikipedia from their ads.
aorshan 15y ago
You can't run ads that make money while at the same time expect people to believe you are completely impartial.
- phamilton 15y ago
  Google did it. Aside fom the normal skeptics, your average person trusts the organic results to be truly organic.
  - wpietri 15y ago
    Google is very unusual as ad-supported businesses go. Most ads are distractions from content. At Google, because you are actively looking for something, people are much happier to get ads. Especially relevant ones, which Google has invested a zillion dollars in being able to do well. Google also has incredible power to shape the market, so they can get away with forcing ads to be in a form that users like, rather than one that advertisers love. Google has a further advantage: people generally trust them, even thought they don't know how things work. The general public is much more skeptical of Wikipedia, partly because it's so open.
spodek 15y ago
Reminds me of a time I saw Craig of Craig's List on a forum in the mid 2000s. People asked him why he didn't put ads on the Craigs List. With negligible effort his company could profit hugely. He politely pointed out that most of the companies that tried to maximize profit that way went bankrupt in the recession. Meanwhile his company was chugging along, free to do what it wanted, delivering a product its customers loved to a global audience with minimal staff, costs, or conflicts of interest. People don't give you money for nothing. Note to the original blogger, statements like "Capitalism won, try it," when referring to one of the most successful projects on the net, don't make them look bad. They make you look like you missed something. But that's just my perspective.
- tuppy 15y ago
  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).
  - spodek 15y ago
    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.
    - tuppy 15y ago
      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 :)
- gojomo 15y ago
austenallred 15y ago
I disagree with others making the conflict of interest argument. I don't see how it would create a conflict of interest if they applied a hands-off, self-serve (call it laissez-faire if you must) advertising strategy -- in fact this would create much less of a conflict of interest than accepting direct donors. But that point is moot. The true risk you run is alienating contributors. The beautiy of Wikipedia is that they have (almost) completely eliminated the influence that Wikipedia itself has on the content. It set up the rules and lets the crowd do the work, and lets the crowd be incentivized by the contribution it is making to society, like most other crowd sourced projects. It has created (or is striving to create) an autonomous encyclopedia. If Wikipedia were to have ads, even if it weren't a for-profit company, it feels like contributors should receive something in return, a la BleacherReport. Bottom line: It's not about conflict of interest, if Wikipedia accepts advertising it starts to feel like a business, and the incentive of contributors to keep contributing is greatly lessened.
JustinSeriously 15y ago
I've always wondered why Wikipedia doesn't include affiliate links to Amazon on all their book and movie articles. I think their current logic is that affiliate links force them to choose which online store they want to support, which is something they appear loath to do. Look at the page they send you too when you do try to buy a book in an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0802130984 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0802130984 . It's so large and completist that it has two tables of contents, and it's so obsessively non-preferential that it does a good job of hiding the one amazon.com link that most people are probably looking for. Personally, I've bought 100s of books and DVDs after reading their Wikipedia articles, and I'd be happy to let the WikiMedia Foundation get my affiliate dollars.
- Geee 15y ago
  The point is that the information about the book might not be completely objective when money is involved. It's that tiny bit of bias that might get injected in the article, by someone who is affiliated, be it Amazon employee or someone from Wikimedia. When this might not be a real issue, no one can be sure, and the trust in absolute objectivity is lost.
  - JustinSeriously 15y ago
    You're right, but money already is involved in these articles. Authors and actors (and agents, I've suspected in a few cases) are keeping a biased eye on their articles. I think it would be difficult for Wikipedia to be corrupted by money. There's too much transparency, and there's too large of a community. The admins have already discovered with dealt with large-scale attempts to game the system. What's actually at stake here is the appearance of objectivity. Affiliate links, which are nearly universal across the web, should be minimally objectionable.
neilk 15y ago
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_Wikipedia_use_ads_for_revenue.3F http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#Why_doesn.27t_Wik... It's true that other projects manage to combine collaboration with some traditional revenue sources such as advertising. But, rightly or wrongly, this is the community's choice, and it seems to be how the general public feels about the site too. There's something about a mission to promote knowledge that people want to keep mentally, physically apart from commerce. A friend of mine (non-techie, non-wikipedian) describes Wikipedia as a "sacred space". Finally, and this is my own take on it, I think there's something valuable about having the reader community take ownership in something, rather than just be eyeballs to be packaged. Disclaimer, I work for the WMF, although not on fundraising.
- executive 15y ago
  except they are running ads right now.. of an ugly guy's face
  - cyrus_ 15y ago
    You may substitute "commercial ad" every time you see the word "ad" in discussion about this, if you'd like to be picky.
    - wisty 15y ago
      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 and hope to make any more money, nor can they do it with a good conscience; so they have to spend all their money asking for donations from rich people who don't currently need their help. It can go too far the other way, though. I heard that some of the "Pink" products gave a fixed fee to breast cancer, so buying their stuff wouldn't give any money. Others gave a tiny portion. I'll concede that it's a good model for wikipedia - spend nothing, and nag users for donations. But it's not a great model in general. But it only works as a replacement for micropayments, and that's where unobtrusive advertising works better.
johnohara 15y ago
I don't know what the answer is for wikipedia. But I do know that I use dictionary.com less frequently because of the ads. An extreme example of how far this goes was the Apple iPad ad that ran on yahoo.com a week or so ago. It WAS the upper fold of the front page. Fixed in place at 974px by 500px just below the search bar and logo. Bam. Here I am. Buy me now. No doubt paid some bills but made me think "this organization has a price." My impression is wikipedia values the way users interact with its content and would rather not introduce distractions.
antimora 15y ago
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.
- rd108 15y ago
  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.
shingen 15y ago
Both, ads that make money while asking for money. This plea brought to you by Encyclopedia Britannica, please support Wikipedia with a donation.
- babebridou 15y ago
  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.
decklin 15y ago
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.
- dextorious 15y ago
  Also, "won", how? Because of the failed soviet states? How about the much winning near socialist Norway/Sweden/Denmark and Finland? How about China? And what does it mean, "it won"? Does it mean it's better? We had kings and despots for 1000s of years. Yet we still progressed towards something different (and/or better). The same could happen with capitalism or everything.
- snowwrestler 15y ago
  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.
coffeeaddicted 15y ago
Wikipedia competes with other companies not just on market share and money, but even more on attention from people actively supporting it by editing the information. I see no immediate gain they could get in market share by making money with ads as they are already having the biggest share of any encyclopedia with their current way of working. But I'm rather certain they would lose a lot of editors and would even give a competitor a chance to gain those people. As little as many people might care about seeing Google-ads, no one helps Google for free. Swarm driven websites have to care about attention from people far more than about money as long as they are able to cover their costs (and they are able to do that as long as they have the swarm behind them).
webfuel 15y ago
I wish they had an opt-in ad program so people who don't want to donate can still help.
gwillen 15y ago
This question is a litmus test. Anybody who is unable to correctly answer this question, and articulate the reasoning for the answer, is not equipped to operate successfully in the age of free culture.
gojomo 15y ago
Imagine Google made a live read-only Wikipedia mirror, with AdSense advertisements. Then, donated all resulting revenues to the Wikimedia Foundation. Would that action be lawful evil or chaotic good? What if it multiplied the WMF budget by 20X or more while reducing server expenses? What if Bing did it? Blekko? DuckDuckGo? Does it help at all that by the CC-SA license, the preferences of the Foundation or community really shouldn't matter: this is a completely legal tactic? (Could that help solve the potential financial-motivation-crowding issues: the fact that such a bonanza occurred "against the community's wishes"?)
jballanc 15y ago
Why is it that people automatically equate "Capitalism" with "doing whatever it takes to get your dollar", instead of "producing a better product than the competitor"? If competition is essential to capitalism, and if "capitalism won", then why doesn't the author create a competing service? Certainly, if Wikipedia is doing something so obviously wrong, then it should be trivial to out compete them in the marketplace, no? Ok, maybe the author doesn't have the time to put in the effort that would be required to create a competing service. In that case, maybe we can ask the nice people at the Encyclopedia Britannica to help? Oh, or maybe the people that work on Google Knol? I think maybe they could shed some light on how "capitalism won"...
- baddox 15y ago
  This was obviously an abuse of the term, but I think I know what the author means. Presumably, the author is just talking about free enterprise and voluntary exchange, which tend to be important in a capitalist economy.
moe 15y ago
I've said it before, I think they should just get one sponsor per year and be done with it. Just stick a permanent "Powered by Coca Cola|Microsoft|Whatever" banner in the footer; Coca Cola and friends surely won't mind to cover the operational costs of Wikipedia (and then some) in return. In order to prevent a sponsor from becoming too influential they can simply make it a rule that the sponsor must be cycled annually. They could even have the community vote on the sponsor for the next year. Sponsors would certainly wait in line for this ad-spot and personally I'd prefer it over the constant begging on every page.
vacri 15y ago
This article reminds me of the developer who simply couldn't understand why open-source people "willingly work for free".
larrys 15y ago
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 that wouldn't be able to sell advertising and raise money that way. They can only rely on donations and foundation money to support their cause. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2011.E2.80.932012_fiscal_year https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2011.... (pdf:) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common/4/48/WMF_AR11_SHIP_spreads_15dec11_72dpi.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common/4/48/WMF_AR11_...
- gerggerg 15y ago
  Wow, so Wikipedia is being greedy by not putting ads on their pages?
  - larrys 15y ago
    I wouldn't say greedy is the right word. But they are disadvantaging another charity simply because they like the look and feel of their community being free from advertising. Maybe selfish is a better way to put it.
gerggerg 15y ago
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.
jellicle 15y ago
The question is pretty simple. The question is whether you want Wikipedia to be beholden to its users or to corporate interests.

60 points by aaronklein 15y ago

jarin 15y ago

They should place one ad in the sidebar, with a "request for comments" link right above it. Run that for a week, post the results, and let the community decide.

aaronklein 15y ago
That's a great idea.
gwillen 15y ago
If you follow the history of Wikipedia, ads have been discussed many times. The consensus has always been "no, absolutely not." If the WMF put even a single ad on Wikipedia as an experiment, there would be a community uproar and probably at least one fork (much as the Spanish Wikipedia forked years ago under threat of ads, and didn't rejoin for years, even though the ads themselves did not persist.) Personally, I think that's as it should be.

Yahivin 15y ago

Wikipedia should absolutely not run ads that make money. Even if they put the strictest protections in place to prevent advertisers interfering with the content it would still cast doubt in the eyes of those using the service. If Wikipedia were to become dependent on a revenue stream generated from advertisements for products then over time they would become beholden to those interests.

aaronklein 15y ago
Agreed if they are selling the ads directly. They could throw Google AdWords up there and have the ads algorithmically placed. They won't make as much money but they wouldn't have to beg.

orthecreedence 15y ago

Ask for money. If this model works for them (it seems to), then there's no reason to change it. Also, by having "sponsors" you open yourself up to "change this article to be like this, or we'll pull our support from Wikipedia." This may seem like a far-fetched scenario, but unless you only use the ad revenue for extra income and don't depend on it at all, you are vulnerable (no matter how many levels removed you are from the advertiser). It's also extremely difficult to have a steady source of income and not become dependent on it (like ads). My point being that even if they did run ads, they would have to still depend only on community donations if they didn't want to be held on the puppet strings of the capitalist dollar, which is a hard thing to do. Note that I'm not against capitalism, but once you depend on it for your income, you and your free speech are at its mercy. I completely agree with Wikipedia for not running ads. It would open a door that once opened is very difficult to close.

aaronklein 15y ago
Agreed if they are selling the ads directly. They could throw Google AdWords up there and have the ads algorithmically placed. They won't make as much money but they wouldn't have to beg.
- blurbytree 15y ago
  They would undoubtedly make a lot more. FWIW I find the current begging really offputting and irritating. More so than small relevant text adverts would be. Online news sites run ads without worrying about impartiality etc. I don't see why wikipedia worries so much about it.
- orthecreedence 15y ago
  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 do, but depending on the revenue from ads in any way is an extremely slippery slope.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

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

matthewj 15y ago
A good reminder to always pay attention to who/what is actually the product.
po 15y ago
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.

JonnieCache 15y ago

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 not to send money to wikipedia.)

jaylevitt 15y ago
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?
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  I suppose you're right, but the psychology of donations versus purchases is very powerful. Plus there's the issue of customer vs. product that someone else mentioned.
- baddox 15y ago
  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?
  - naz 15y ago
    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.
    - lambda 15y ago
      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.

Craiggybear 15y ago

Well, they could do both. Adverts imply a non-impartial editorial stance so I totally get why they see that as the thin end of the wedge I respect that totally, which is why I'm happy to donate now and then. Why not?

johnkchow 15y ago

These ads serve a secondary purpose of reminding people that Wikipedia's wealth of information originates by public knowledge. A lot of people tend to take knowledge for granted, and I personally feel humbled and grateful for Wikipedia from their ads.

aorshan 15y ago

You can't run ads that make money while at the same time expect people to believe you are completely impartial.

phamilton 15y ago
Google did it. Aside fom the normal skeptics, your average person trusts the organic results to be truly organic.
- wpietri 15y ago
  Google is very unusual as ad-supported businesses go. Most ads are distractions from content. At Google, because you are actively looking for something, people are much happier to get ads. Especially relevant ones, which Google has invested a zillion dollars in being able to do well. Google also has incredible power to shape the market, so they can get away with forcing ads to be in a form that users like, rather than one that advertisers love. Google has a further advantage: people generally trust them, even thought they don't know how things work. The general public is much more skeptical of Wikipedia, partly because it's so open.

spodek 15y ago

Reminds me of a time I saw Craig of Craig's List on a forum in the mid 2000s. People asked him why he didn't put ads on the Craigs List. With negligible effort his company could profit hugely. He politely pointed out that most of the companies that tried to maximize profit that way went bankrupt in the recession. Meanwhile his company was chugging along, free to do what it wanted, delivering a product its customers loved to a global audience with minimal staff, costs, or conflicts of interest. People don't give you money for nothing. Note to the original blogger, statements like "Capitalism won, try it," when referring to one of the most successful projects on the net, don't make them look bad. They make you look like you missed something. But that's just my perspective.

tuppy 15y ago
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).
- spodek 15y ago
  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.
  - tuppy 15y ago
    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 :)
gojomo 15y ago

austenallred 15y ago

I disagree with others making the conflict of interest argument. I don't see how it would create a conflict of interest if they applied a hands-off, self-serve (call it laissez-faire if you must) advertising strategy -- in fact this would create much less of a conflict of interest than accepting direct donors. But that point is moot. The true risk you run is alienating contributors. The beautiy of Wikipedia is that they have (almost) completely eliminated the influence that Wikipedia itself has on the content. It set up the rules and lets the crowd do the work, and lets the crowd be incentivized by the contribution it is making to society, like most other crowd sourced projects. It has created (or is striving to create) an autonomous encyclopedia. If Wikipedia were to have ads, even if it weren't a for-profit company, it feels like contributors should receive something in return, a la BleacherReport. Bottom line: It's not about conflict of interest, if Wikipedia accepts advertising it starts to feel like a business, and the incentive of contributors to keep contributing is greatly lessened.

JustinSeriously 15y ago

I've always wondered why Wikipedia doesn't include affiliate links to Amazon on all their book and movie articles. I think their current logic is that affiliate links force them to choose which online store they want to support, which is something they appear loath to do. Look at the page they send you too when you do try to buy a book in an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0802130984 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0802130984 . It's so large and completist that it has two tables of contents, and it's so obsessively non-preferential that it does a good job of hiding the one amazon.com link that most people are probably looking for. Personally, I've bought 100s of books and DVDs after reading their Wikipedia articles, and I'd be happy to let the WikiMedia Foundation get my affiliate dollars.

Geee 15y ago
The point is that the information about the book might not be completely objective when money is involved. It's that tiny bit of bias that might get injected in the article, by someone who is affiliated, be it Amazon employee or someone from Wikimedia. When this might not be a real issue, no one can be sure, and the trust in absolute objectivity is lost.
- JustinSeriously 15y ago
  You're right, but money already is involved in these articles. Authors and actors (and agents, I've suspected in a few cases) are keeping a biased eye on their articles. I think it would be difficult for Wikipedia to be corrupted by money. There's too much transparency, and there's too large of a community. The admins have already discovered with dealt with large-scale attempts to game the system. What's actually at stake here is the appearance of objectivity. Affiliate links, which are nearly universal across the web, should be minimally objectionable.

neilk 15y ago

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_Wikipedia_use_ads_for_revenue.3F http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#Why_doesn.27t_Wik... It's true that other projects manage to combine collaboration with some traditional revenue sources such as advertising. But, rightly or wrongly, this is the community's choice, and it seems to be how the general public feels about the site too. There's something about a mission to promote knowledge that people want to keep mentally, physically apart from commerce. A friend of mine (non-techie, non-wikipedian) describes Wikipedia as a "sacred space". Finally, and this is my own take on it, I think there's something valuable about having the reader community take ownership in something, rather than just be eyeballs to be packaged. Disclaimer, I work for the WMF, although not on fundraising.

executive 15y ago
except they are running ads right now.. of an ugly guy's face
- cyrus_ 15y ago
  You may substitute "commercial ad" every time you see the word "ad" in discussion about this, if you'd like to be picky.
  - wisty 15y ago
    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 and hope to make any more money, nor can they do it with a good conscience; so they have to spend all their money asking for donations from rich people who don't currently need their help. It can go too far the other way, though. I heard that some of the "Pink" products gave a fixed fee to breast cancer, so buying their stuff wouldn't give any money. Others gave a tiny portion. I'll concede that it's a good model for wikipedia - spend nothing, and nag users for donations. But it's not a great model in general. But it only works as a replacement for micropayments, and that's where unobtrusive advertising works better.

johnohara 15y ago

I don't know what the answer is for wikipedia. But I do know that I use dictionary.com less frequently because of the ads. An extreme example of how far this goes was the Apple iPad ad that ran on yahoo.com a week or so ago. It WAS the upper fold of the front page. Fixed in place at 974px by 500px just below the search bar and logo. Bam. Here I am. Buy me now. No doubt paid some bills but made me think "this organization has a price." My impression is wikipedia values the way users interact with its content and would rather not introduce distractions.

antimora 15y ago

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.

rd108 15y ago
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.

shingen 15y ago

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

babebridou 15y ago
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.

decklin 15y ago

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.

dextorious 15y ago
Also, "won", how? Because of the failed soviet states? How about the much winning near socialist Norway/Sweden/Denmark and Finland? How about China? And what does it mean, "it won"? Does it mean it's better? We had kings and despots for 1000s of years. Yet we still progressed towards something different (and/or better). The same could happen with capitalism or everything.
snowwrestler 15y ago
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.

coffeeaddicted 15y ago

Wikipedia competes with other companies not just on market share and money, but even more on attention from people actively supporting it by editing the information. I see no immediate gain they could get in market share by making money with ads as they are already having the biggest share of any encyclopedia with their current way of working. But I'm rather certain they would lose a lot of editors and would even give a competitor a chance to gain those people. As little as many people might care about seeing Google-ads, no one helps Google for free. Swarm driven websites have to care about attention from people far more than about money as long as they are able to cover their costs (and they are able to do that as long as they have the swarm behind them).

webfuel 15y ago

I wish they had an opt-in ad program so people who don't want to donate can still help.

gwillen 15y ago

This question is a litmus test. Anybody who is unable to correctly answer this question, and articulate the reasoning for the answer, is not equipped to operate successfully in the age of free culture.

gojomo 15y ago

Imagine Google made a live read-only Wikipedia mirror, with AdSense advertisements. Then, donated all resulting revenues to the Wikimedia Foundation. Would that action be lawful evil or chaotic good? What if it multiplied the WMF budget by 20X or more while reducing server expenses? What if Bing did it? Blekko? DuckDuckGo? Does it help at all that by the CC-SA license, the preferences of the Foundation or community really shouldn't matter: this is a completely legal tactic? (Could that help solve the potential financial-motivation-crowding issues: the fact that such a bonanza occurred "against the community's wishes"?)

jballanc 15y ago

Why is it that people automatically equate "Capitalism" with "doing whatever it takes to get your dollar", instead of "producing a better product than the competitor"? If competition is essential to capitalism, and if "capitalism won", then why doesn't the author create a competing service? Certainly, if Wikipedia is doing something so obviously wrong, then it should be trivial to out compete them in the marketplace, no? Ok, maybe the author doesn't have the time to put in the effort that would be required to create a competing service. In that case, maybe we can ask the nice people at the Encyclopedia Britannica to help? Oh, or maybe the people that work on Google Knol? I think maybe they could shed some light on how "capitalism won"...

baddox 15y ago
This was obviously an abuse of the term, but I think I know what the author means. Presumably, the author is just talking about free enterprise and voluntary exchange, which tend to be important in a capitalist economy.

moe 15y ago

I've said it before, I think they should just get one sponsor per year and be done with it. Just stick a permanent "Powered by Coca Cola|Microsoft|Whatever" banner in the footer; Coca Cola and friends surely won't mind to cover the operational costs of Wikipedia (and then some) in return. In order to prevent a sponsor from becoming too influential they can simply make it a rule that the sponsor must be cycled annually. They could even have the community vote on the sponsor for the next year. Sponsors would certainly wait in line for this ad-spot and personally I'd prefer it over the constant begging on every page.

vacri 15y ago

This article reminds me of the developer who simply couldn't understand why open-source people "willingly work for free".

larrys 15y ago

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 that wouldn't be able to sell advertising and raise money that way. They can only rely on donations and foundation money to support their cause. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2011.E2.80.932012_fiscal_year https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2011.... (pdf:) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common/4/48/WMF_AR11_SHIP_spreads_15dec11_72dpi.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common/4/48/WMF_AR11_...

gerggerg 15y ago
Wow, so Wikipedia is being greedy by not putting ads on their pages?
- larrys 15y ago
  I wouldn't say greedy is the right word. But they are disadvantaging another charity simply because they like the look and feel of their community being free from advertising. Maybe selfish is a better way to put it.

gerggerg 15y ago

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.

jellicle 15y ago

The question is pretty simple. The question is whether you want Wikipedia to be beholden to its users or to corporate interests.