Wikipedia's got 3-4 months to live?!?! (and Wikipedia's technological blocking of consensus)

Very strange stuff going on in the Wikipedia world... first I get beat down by all kinds of Wikipedia folks for suggesting that Wikipedia place an OPT-OUT advertisement on the Wikipedia (i.e. you could turn it off if you wanted), and now comes this nugget:

"At this point, Wikipedia has the financial resources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear". The warning by Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation was certainly dire, and Lift07 was as good a venue to make an appeal. But it is another illustration of how difficult it is to find the proper business model in the digital age, and more precisely in this case in what Florence called the "gift economy".

So, I guess the question is would you rather have a Wikipedia with one text advertisement you could turn off, or would you rather not have the Wikipedia?!

Slashdot reports that a spokesperson for Devouard has basked away from the dire comments.

Anyway, at the end of the day Wikipedia should do what Mozzilla/Firefox did and just have a modest amount of text-based advertising form Google/Yahoo and give users the ability to opt out.

I find it really ironic that a certain percentage (and I'm not gonna give percentages anymore :-) of the Wikipedia core team feel that they should decide for the entire Wikipedia audience the advertising policy.

What happen to consensus people?!?!?! The truth is much of the consensus at Wikipedia occurs on mailing lists, IRC chat and discussion pages that the public a) doesn't even know about and b) are hidden behind technological walls that normal folks can't get past (i.e. IRC, discussion pages).

If the Wikipedia wants real consensus on the issue of advertising why don't we place a poll on the top level of the Wikipedia that asks people how they would like to fund the Wikipedia: a) by looking at one advertisement or b) by donating money. The reason they won't ever put that survey up!? Because 80% of people would opt to see an advertisement and the vocal minority that controls Wikipedia with an iron fist/IRC channel will block it.

Feb 10th 2007 2:56AM
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1. If Wikipedia goes under, I can promise you that some other startup will run with the idea and place a few non-disruptive ads on the site. If Wikipedia would rather kill their service than place an ad on their site, then they truly don't deserve to run it.

Posted at 3:23PM on Feb 10th 2007 by Robert Dewey

2. This is ludicrous. They'd rather fall on their sword? WTF? Listen, Wikipedia "elite", take a breath, go outside and walk around. Remove head from butt, and put some frickin' ads up... 20 years from now no one will care, yeesh.

Jason, if what you're saying is true, well, my family has a saying: "stupidity is self-correcting." If Wikipedia goes away someone else will take their place and won't make this mistake again.

Posted at 5:19PM on Feb 10th 2007 by Victor Agreda Jr

3. Put up the damn ads already, Wikipedia.

Posted at 7:06PM on Feb 10th 2007 by TDavid

4. I find Wikipedia very useful in general and want to see it survive. If they are unwilling to monetize their property, however, so be it. I agree with those who believe that others could replicate the effort, albeit with a delay in catching up.

I'm not so sure that Wikipedia is as democratic as its image. And the community at large still can't sort out what sort of editing is appropriate and which isn't.

These are not the signs of an organization in trouble, but one which is growing and still trying to sort things out. Hopefully they can do so, because I believe they provide a great resource to Internet users generally, but they also help provide a model for other Internet efforts, if not businesses.

Posted at 10:12PM on Feb 10th 2007 by Chip Griffin

5. C'mon, if Wikipedia goes down, Google will take it -- that simple.

Posted at 10:37PM on Feb 10th 2007 by Romulo

6. It's wikipedia after all and there should be a power of content creator and viewer.
Allow content creators to put a tag which enable text based ads on the pages they edit. It will be a vote of people who bring content in. The money stream should go to wikipedia maintanance, not to creator, but the creators will be a decision makers.
Then allow every viewer to opt out from ads - this decision should override creators decision to put ads in.
This decision will be in a real spirit of Wiki.

Posted at 11:20PM on Feb 10th 2007 by Alex Tarasul

7. Perhaps Wikia will come to their "rescue"? (I smell a conspiracy here... Remember where you heard it first)

Posted at 12:11AM on Feb 11th 2007 by Michael

8. Wikipedia will live maximum year. After they set all links with nofollow tags the are much more hated.

Posted at 12:43AM on Feb 11th 2007 by bgwebmast

9. Hey Jason

I thought you said you were done given percentages. And then one paragraph later there you go again. Gues you just cant help your self... LOL

Anyway I completely agree. Wikipedia should just put up the damn add. In fact I think they should put up many add, make as much money as they can and turn wikipedia into a charity fundation. Not only will they be educating the world via wikipedia but also they can help those who need it most.

I think it is a complete no brainer.

Posted at 2:32AM on Feb 11th 2007 by Kasper Retvig

10. I don't buy that Wikimedia is that short of money - here's my analysis http://dan100.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-short-of-money-no.html .

Posted at 3:27AM on Feb 11th 2007 by Dan G

11. Now it is of utmost interest to read Jimmy Wales's blogpost from November, 2006 on Wikipedia advertising and "his dinner with J.Calacanais":
http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/archives/2006/10/31/advertising-and-wikipedia/#comments
"I advise the world to relax a notch or two. :-) We are not considering advertising on Wikipedia.
As seems to be his special gift, Jason Calacanis has set off a bit of a blog storm with his report of having dinner with me a few months ago...
But regarding this dinner with Jason, well, I am told that I did have dinner with him. This was at Wikimania this past summer, and I barely even remember him? we were at a large table and there were some very much more interesting people at the dinner. :-)
My position on ads in Wikipedia was and is the same as it has ever been. The decision needs to come from the community, and not from me. I am personally opposed to advertising in Wikipedia, but we need to make the decision to turn down ads in a responsible and serious manner. The amount of money that could be made is significant and growing all the time, and the money could be used to do significant good in the world. No question about that."

Posted at 8:45AM on Feb 11th 2007 by Attila Csordas

12. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/What_we_need_the_money_for

12,000 a year for domain registrations? 1.2M in payroll? I don't see exactly what they need 1,200 new domains a year for, and if they're going to burn that much donated money to pay themselves while the community does all the work, they deserve to die.

Posted at 6:18PM on Feb 11th 2007 by -gary

13. b) are hidden behind technological walls that normal folks can't get past (i.e. IRC, discussion pages).

Discusssion pages are "technological" walls? They are simply links. Get your facts straight

Posted at 8:37AM on Feb 12th 2007 by Mason11987

14. If they stick to their guns, and the site runs out of money, forcing a sale... how much would someone have to pay for Wikipedia?

Posted at 11:12AM on Feb 12th 2007 by Simon Heseltine

15. "C'mon, if Wikipedia goes down, Google will take it -- that simple."

And they would rightly pop some ads on the site. Jeeze W-Pedia, just do it already!

Posted at 1:11PM on Feb 12th 2007 by Mike

16. Many sources are now saying that quote was taken out of context. Wikipedia isn't going anywhere. Their SE presence alone is worth millions, if not billions. They might get bought out, yes, but they won't just disappear... and I think them getting bought out is even a long-shot.

Posted at 10:00PM on Feb 12th 2007 by Harry Maugans

17. Wikipedia will be around a LONG time. If they ran out of money tomorrow, they could throw AdSense or YPN ads on the bottom of every page, and I doubt many people would care. The small percentage of random clicks picked up would surely bring in enough money to support operations. To answer your question, though, I'd MUCH rather have wikipedia with ads than not at all. As long as there's no pop-up ads, I'm fine with it. I find myself using wikipedia daily and don't know what I'd do without it.

Posted at 5:43PM on Feb 13th 2007 by JoeTech.com

18. How long before it winds up in Google's hands?

Posted at 3:36PM on Jun 4th 2007 by Ad Design - Web Design

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