3 ms·

Provocative proposition: what about search engine that bans everything with ads and affiliate links? Wikipedia won over competitors because it has an anti-busi

Provocative proposition: what about search engine that bans everything with ads and affiliate links? Wikipedia won over competitors because it has an anti-business-model. Only the passionate write for it, which paradoxically ensures quality. My favorite content on the internet is always non-profit, sincere stuff. Like this comment thread :) That's a scary prospect for creators that live off the internet, but if the ecosystem is already doomed it may be the last option.

p3rls 2y ago
Yeah, okay, this sounds great until the point where I have a company with people that must eat, APIs that aren't free etc. and I look around and I see wikipedia is doing more than fine financially, has ads, morphed itself into three distinct properties in my niche (wikipedia, fandom, subdomain.fandom.com/inmyniche.html) that all take up precious google slots with almost the exact same content, and now you are asking for additional handouts to be given to this ex-pornographer Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia won over competitors because Jimmy Wales honed his marketing tactics from years of being a pornographer. Not because of any inherent strength of the wikipedia platform. In fact those first articles on wikipedia were all horrible and far worse than the other online encyclopedias if you remember. Wikipedia's success was mostly due to good timing, good governance and great SEO. And btw it is hysterical some think HN is non-profit. Sure, perhaps technically. But this is exactly why I think we are doomed. If even the self-proclaimed guardians of the internet (ala the IT Crowd) cannot grasp the simple concept that HN is as astroturfed (if not more) than reddit there is simply no hope for the internet as a whole to understand these concepts. So long and thanks for all the phishing attempts.

3 ms·

Provocative proposition: what about search engine that bans everything with ads and affiliate links? Wikipedia won over competitors because it has an anti-busi

by arnaudsm 2y ago

p3rls 2y ago
Yeah, okay, this sounds great until the point where I have a company with people that must eat, APIs that aren't free etc. and I look around and I see wikipedia is doing more than fine financially, has ads, morphed itself into three distinct properties in my niche (wikipedia, fandom, subdomain.fandom.com/inmyniche.html) that all take up precious google slots with almost the exact same content, and now you are asking for additional handouts to be given to this ex-pornographer Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia won over competitors because Jimmy Wales honed his marketing tactics from years of being a pornographer. Not because of any inherent strength of the wikipedia platform. In fact those first articles on wikipedia were all horrible and far worse than the other online encyclopedias if you remember. Wikipedia's success was mostly due to good timing, good governance and great SEO. And btw it is hysterical some think HN is non-profit. Sure, perhaps technically. But this is exactly why I think we are doomed. If even the self-proclaimed guardians of the internet (ala the IT Crowd) cannot grasp the simple concept that HN is as astroturfed (if not more) than reddit there is simply no hope for the internet as a whole to understand these concepts. So long and thanks for all the phishing attempts.