I just did this interview and I couldn't hold my tongue any more....
> 1) Can you summarize your strongest argument in favor of allowing advertising on
> Wikipedia? Is it simply about giving users the choice of how they want to support the site,
> or is there something more?
a) You can set it an forget it (i.e. put Google Adsense, Yahoo, etc. on the page and just let them run).
b) You can let people turn the ads off if they want to
c) You can let people select the number of ads they want to see: 1, 2, or 3 per page.
d) Firefox makes $50M + a year from Google Adsense... is there anything wrong with Firefox?! Have they been corrupted? NPR and PBS have sponsors and have theirs services been corrupted??!
> 2) Do you see -any- value in keeping such a resource totally free from corporate influence,
> or is this not something users should worry about?
Jimbo Wales has a fringe, anti-corporate bent to him, and it's holding Wikipedia back.
If Jimbo doesn't like advertising then the 100 key people at Wikipedia don't like advertising. The *majority* of the leadership and core 100 members of the Wikipedia community don't seem to think for themselves, but rather follow Jimbo's wacky anti-corporate stance blindly.
This is highly ironic since Jimbo is doing a highly commercial Wiki project backed by VCs.
Oh wait, Jimbo is doing a highly profitable, advertising-based Wiki project for personal gain while pitching that Wikipedia not have advertising. Hmmmm.... perhaps Jimbo doesn't want advertising on the Wikipedia because he knows that his for-profit Wikia would suffer if it did.
The Wikipedia community needs to leave Jimbo's amazing leadership behind and realize that they would have $50M in the bank right now like Mozilla if they put up one advertisement on Wikipedia. Jimbo's stance is killing the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia could have 50 full-time people and a huge endowment if they would follow Firefox's example and stop listening to Jimmy Wales and his hypocritical anti-advertising stance.
Why Wikipedia doesn't have advertising? Hint: follow the money (to Wikia)
Reader Comments
(Page 1 of 2)2. TDH: Excellent question.
It's not the advertising but what the revenue from it would do. If Wikipedia had $50M in cash a year they could:
a) hire the most talented folks in the wiki space for excellent salaries. That would make Wikia compete for the top folks with Wikipedia
b) Wikipedia could fund more Wiki projects and certainly many of those projects would compete with Wikia
Those would be the main two reasons.
3. Guys, that's just business! Firefox makes a lot of money (you can't even imagine how much, not just $50M)...
Posted at 1:58PM on Feb 15th 2007 by Tim
4. Jason, you may be getting ahead of yourself, even though I believe your motives are well intentioned.
It's not at all clear to me that if Wikipedia had $50M in the bank it would be any better off than it is today. In fact, it might be worse off. I'll come back to that point in a minute.
Wikipdia has a scaling problem, as you pointed out in your last podcast. The problem at it's core is at the intersection of social ideals and institution-creation. The open principles which make Wikipedia powerful as a content-creation platform with standard-setting credibility are coming into conflict with the limits of certain "community" activities to scale. If a governance model is successfully worked out to get past the current threshold problems it has huge implications for all manner of other organizational undertakings. If they fail and either completely implode or merely become incompetent and thus irrelevant the implications are no less far reaching.
Their plate is clearly full with trying to confront these problems, and I've heard Wales speak candidly about where they are having problems (e.g. Long Now Foundation website audio). I give them the benefit of the doubt about being earnest in trying to figure out how to adapt.
The critique you made about obfuscation is reasonable, and it's something that they should respond to. Being intellectually honest as you demand doesn't require that they become more open if it will kill the organization though. It may instead require that something formally less open, but more honestly democratic within whatever structure they adopt be put in place.
Back to your call for advertising. Initially I was in agreement with you. Need to keep the lights on...easy to create lots of flow...Mozilla already a model...no brainer.
Then I thought about what might ensue if, in addition to having to work through their human institution-building problems they were also having to deal with the kind of attention they would draw as a money-making machine. I wonder if an organization at such a vulnerable point in it's existence would really be well served by having a cash cow to fight over.
Do I think Wales is a fringe anti-corporate fanatic? Not yet. I think he's trying to work out a subtle and complicated philosophical experiment about community and value-creation. It's a first cousin to the issues around open-source, but in several respects it's in it's own branch of development. I'm in no hurry to see the experiment scrapped in favor of an off-the-shelf solution.
Do I think he's interested in personal enrichment? Probably as much as most of us, and after years of doing the non-profit thing he's pursuing that as a separate venture. That looks clean to me, and he's certainly earned the right to try.
But I absolutely do not believe he's making decisions at Wikipedia's expense. No more than I think you intend to embezzle the money you are raising for the school in Brooklyn.
The calculation for both of you is the same in the sense that the value and therefore motivation for those activities are rooted in what give your lives meaning, and personal enrichment is simply not a consideration, and wouldn't work if you were short-sighted enough to try.
If you are intellectually honest I think you'd have to agree, in which case you owe Wales as public an apology as you used to call him out.
Last point: Like you, I'm a kid from Brooklyn who made good all out of proportion to my background or expectations (in my case, it was telecom). I know what it is to be the brashest guy in the room (so I'm not offended on Wales' behalf), and I also know what it's like to judge what other people are doing through the filter of what looks obvious to me. The problem is that anytime the truth has shades of subtleness its easily lost in the glare of all that brashness.
I think you are capable of getting enough attention for your opinions without having to push the confrontation into the area of personal attack.
Money is only their second biggest problem. If you really want to save WP, apply some of that formidable creativity of yours into generating some constructive ideas on how they can solve their organizational challenges first, without hurting the product of that community which constitutes the reason for it's existence.
Posted at 2:05PM on Feb 15th 2007 by steve gelmis
6. I was saying something similar about Wikipedia and ads earlier in the week: http://scottwater.com/blog/archive/no-cash-for-wikipedia/
If they do not want the money/corporate/etc, just donate it to charity. Imagine the good they could do if they took their most of their user contributions + ad revenue (minus operation expenses) and donated it all to charity.
8. I won't care to see some advertisement on Wikipedia, because it's great itself.
But I think that all talks about it now are to make Wikipedia's profit bigger...
Posted at 12:27AM on Feb 16th 2007 by Shimon
9. I've only had one extended conversation with Mr. Wales, but I certainly didn't get the impression that he himself was anti advertising; he had a distinct look of regret in his eyes as he acknowledged how much was being passed up. He did, however, state that his perception was that the community was adamantly against it, and that was that.
Is there a pointer to Mr. Wales expressing the views you attribute to him?
10. There is a easy ad-free way for wikipedia to make money, just put a adsense google search box...According to hitwise approximately 10% of wikipedia's downstream traffic goes to google, so why not just make it easy for the users and make some dough in the process?
11. Admittedly, I don?t keep up with such things, but the last time I knew anything about it, Wikimedia had about 5 employees and they all drove VW vans. I gave $50 thinking I was buying them a years worth of Ramen Noodles, so imagine my surprise...
http://thinkorthwim.com/2007/02/17/wikipedia-is-strapped-for-cash-and-needs-our-help-again/
Posted at 11:39PM on Feb 16th 2007 by Jeff Buscher
12. Jason.. Just let Jimmy do his not-for-profit fund raising the way he wants. The challenge with Advertising in Wikipedia is the perception that ads intermingled with an online encyclopedia create. Wikipedia is quickly gaining the credibility close to that of Britannica. Ads intermingled with the content (even on the same page), to many, make the content somewhat jaded--even if it infact is completely accurate.
Ads are not the only way to freedom.. and for that matter.. Firefox couldn't possibly create credibility issues with ads intermingled in its pages--Wikipedia may have trouble with that.
Posted at 12:30AM on Feb 17th 2007 by Michael Wilde
13. Sorry for the thread-jack here....
Firefox makes $50M in Adsense revenue?? From where? I don't ever remember seeing an ad on firefox.com or mozilla.org -- just checked again, no ads.
The $50M number is very interesting. I'm not doubting you here, I'm curious about where this revenue is coming from.
Thanks!
Greg
Posted at 2:44PM on Feb 17th 2007 by Wise Bread
14. Maybe the reason for Wikipedia not accepting ads isn't Jimbo's anti-corporate attitude, but rather his justifiable belief that Wikipedia is a better resource without ads. Some things are better left un-commercialized, and such a world-changing resource as Wikipedia might be one of those things. Just a thought..
Posted at 5:26AM on Feb 18th 2007 by Rob Goodlatte
15. So what do you think the whole huge effort of wikipedia is about
Posted at 1:18PM on Feb 20th 2007 by Advertising services
16. Tim Bray asks a fine question Jason - when did Jimmy Wales make this statement about being opposed to advertising?
Posted at 10:11AM on Apr 10th 2007 by Chris Langlands
17. It was talk once the possibility of having ads on Wikipedia. *Only talked*. You can see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Advertising_on_Wikipedia
People thought Wikipedia was becoming a for profit organization, didn't like having ads (which in case of being added, would probably could have been disabled) and started forking the wikipedias.
Jimbo had to came out and promise Wikipedia would never have ads.
It's not a paranoic chief. It's that having ads breaks the openness philosophy of Wikipedia.
Posted at 11:28AM on Apr 18th 2007 by Platonides
19. I think instead of advertisers if they find sponsers then they easily get that also , why they need to put ADS
Posted at 12:59AM on Oct 25th 2007 by SEO Expert
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1. Do you really think that Wikia's ad sales would suffer from a Wikipedia with ads? I'd like to hear your reasoning there, especially since you're talking Google Adsense and stuff for Wikipedia which would run just as well on both of them at the same time without the other losing contracts and whatnot.
Posted at 1:02PM on Feb 15th 2007 by TDH