The Debate Over Advertising on Wikipedia

An anonymous reader writes "Some Wikipedians have objected to Virgin Unite's participation in the Wikimedia Foundation's fund drive, calling it adverising. But there's a strong case that Wikipedia should run advertising. The funds raised could support dozens of Firefox-scale free knowledge and free software projects, outspending all but the wealthiest foundations."

End justifies the means

Perhaps this is a good thing - if it generates enough revenue to fund many small open info sharing projects.

Re:End justifies the means

The means might be sacrificing the purported objectivity of Wikipedia.

I'm not saying this will happen, but will Wikipedia cave to the presure of sponsors wanting to keep harmful information from Wikipedia?

For instance; if Microsoft became a sponsor, would the articles about XBox hacking remain intact? I'm sure the media companies wouldn't like advertising on a site that happily explains DeCSS, and just wait until hacks for Blu-ray and HD-DVD are being documented. And the numerous scandals involving companies that still exist today; would they like those articles? Not to mention politicians, who have already proven not to be trusted when it comes to Wikipedia content.

I'm not saying this will happen, nor that it cannot be defended against. Just to define what "means" may be in this case.

Means the end.

If Wikipedia's maintaining corporate objectivity means its ultimate failure or stagnation, I will go down with the ship in a heartbeat.

Re:End justifies the means

Once a few big advertising contracts are hammered out, then the funds available to Wikipedia will grow, and so the needs of Wikipedia will grow to fill the available funds. They will lay on more servers, better bandwidth deals, maybe hire some people, and then suddenly Wikipedia is dependent on that cash to continue operating. Thus, the advertisers can start to assert influence, knowing full well what would happen if they pulled the cash. Suddenly you'll see exactly the kind of censorship parent alludes to.

Re:End justifies the means

I was a journalist for about a year quite some time ago. I never personally witnessed an, "if you print something positive, we'll advertise with you," offer. However, I did witness, and participate in conversations in the newsroom where we debated whether a story was important enough to risk angering our advertising clients. I can not recall a single case where we didn't run a story, but the fact that we discussed it always concerned me.

Since then, very often when I pick up a magazine and read a glowing review of a product, I'll look further in the magazine for an advertisement from the company who sells it. Most often I'll find, at minimum, full page ads and often several of them. In fact, you'll probably notice that horrible reviews are rare in magazines. If you look even harder, you'll notice that the company involved almost never has an advertisement in the same issue.

But wait, you say, isn't Wikipedia is edited by the readership? Certainly they won't be influenced by the ads? Sadly, this is not true. The reason this is not true is that advertisers are readers as well. If they were putting money into the publication, they'd read that publication on a much more regular basis and they'd have a much larger motivation to influence the articles published. Since it's so easy to have direct influence over Wikipedia, I would find it hard to believe that advertisers would sit on their hands if they saw an opportunity to make their company or products look better.

TW

Re:End justifies the means

The vast majority of Internet advertising is done through a broker in tiny increments of pennies per transaction. The advertiser does not know what site the advertisment will go on and the site does not know in advance which advertisments will appear.

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I used to layout a semi-major golf magazine, and I can confirm that Advertorial is common practise now. It used to not be in the pre-baby boomer days, but every since the 80s ad salespeople have been using their dollars and leverage to take control of maga

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>>The means might be sacrificing the purported objectivity of Wikipedia.

>>I'm not saying this will happen, but will Wikipedia cave to the presure of sponsors wanting to keep harmful information from Wikipedia?

Remember that "the Wikipedia" is re

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Jimbo gets donations from a bunch of groups like CAIR, suddenly facts that are "not so complimentary" to Islam vanish from the Islam-related pages and editors who try to put them back start getting attacked.

There have ALWAYS been edit wars back-and-forth o

Sure, why not?

It just seems like every web presence has to have some source of income to pay for their hosting and bandwidth. If they aren't very intrusive (GoogleAds), then it shouldn't harm anything.

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I concur with this sentiment. If having real live revenue makes wikipedia better then let them have revenue. There is nothing inherently evil about making money.

They could easily do something non-intrusive, such as AdWords that correspond to the topic(s)

Are AdWords unobtrusive?

I personally find AdWords to be very obtrusive. AdWords commonly hijack your searches on the thinnest possible pretence of relevance. Does anyone remember Buy Steve Irwin dead on eBay" [theregister.co.uk]?

I'm still concerned by Google's monopoly and its ability to advertise

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I think you mean Google's AdSense [google.com] technology, which is aimed at web publishers. The AdWords [google.com] you mention are the ads that appear next to the Google search to search results. We should keep in mind that Google's AdSense lists are dynamically generated on t

Advertising No Problem

I see no problem with adverts on Wikipedia so long as its obvious they're advertisments and corporate sponsorship does not affect the content.

Even very small and unobtrusive adverts would earn them an awful lot of revenue which can really only be a good thing.

Re:Advertising No Problem

I see no problem with adverts on Wikipedia so long as its obvious they're advertisments and corporate sponsorship does not affect the content.

Even very small and unobtrusive adverts would earn them an awful lot of revenue which can really only be a good thing.

This is a very slippery slope. Once WikiMedia outgrows the generosity of the community, there is no easy way back. If the foundation has hundreds of paid officiers, in the long term their primary interest will not be to make the best possible encyclopedia, but to safe their own jobs. If Wikipedia funds a lot of other projects, there is even more reason for them to keep up the revenue by following the interest of the advertisers as opposed to just creating the best possible free encyclopedia.

From another point of view, I assume I spend maybe 100 hours per year working on Wikipedia. Even at my salary level (as opposed to my consulting rate), paying for this would be quite a chunk of money. Multiply it by 3 million of editors, and the "huge" advertising revenue suddenly is not that huge anymore. Even losing a small fraction of good editors over advertising would be a net loss.

Re:Advertising No Problem

One thing that gives me doubts about advertising on WP is that the free information projects people have suggested using the money for sound pretty goofy. WP already has a history of continuing to throw resources at failed projects, the biggest example being WikiBooks. If you look at the original press releases, they had grandiose plans for WikiBooks: making a college education free to everyone, producing better textbooks than the commercial ones, etc. But the truth is that its only killer app seems to be books about video games. It just never reached critical mass. If they had hundreds of millions of dollars of ad revenue, I can imagine them squandering it on a lot of other projects that won't work.

Another question worth asking is what's really broken about WP right now, and needs to be fixed? WP is a massive success in many ways, but it does have some problems, and I don't think ads have anything to do with solving those problems. One big problem is that a typical article reaches a certain level of quality, and then stagnates or deteriorates because of random, disorganized edits, and the maximum level of quality is way below the level you see in a print encyclopedia. Another problem is inefficiency: hard-core WP editors have long watch lists, and waste an incredible amount of time checking them, fixing vandalism, getting in flamewars, etc.

And finally, it seems really clear that there is a huge body of WP users who are against ads. That means that if ads happen, the consequences are pretty predictable: they would fork WP.

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google seem to manage the only adverst on the internet that don't bother me, if Wikipedia went that way I see no problem either.

To beleive that projects like Wikipedia should not advertise is definatelly nieve, why should there not be extra pots of money f

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I could support your position, in a perfect world.

Advertising in Wikipedia could provide a lot of dollars, and with those dollars comes a few concerns:

1. What safeguards are there going to be when considering how the content clashes with the interests of t

Re:Advertising No Problem

The solution to this is simple. Take a page from NPR. I'm in advertising and we recently did some radio scripts for ads on NPR and they have some of the TOUGHEST copy standards out there. They do not allow their ads to have a call to action, which is one of the key parts of any successful ad. There are other strict rules as well. So what you end up with is a very basic, bare bones information ad with little to no spin. At first I was annoyed with them because they made my project more difficult, but I really do appreciate them for approaching advertising in a very correct way for the type of content and audience they have.

Wikipedia should be fine with ads as long as they draw the line DEEP in the sand and give similar guidelines as NPR and make it crystal clear to potential advertisers that there is nothing that can or will be done to alter entries on their product or company, nor is there anything that can be done to prevent their ad from showing up on a competitors entry or something like a DeBeers ad showing up in an article on blood diamonds. If advertisers are willing to take the gamble and follow those guidelines, then the advertisers can reach a large ripe audience, and the content on Wikipedia shouldn't suffer.

public broadcasting

"And if you call in with your pledge of support right now, your money will be matched, dollar for dollar, by the generous contribution of ACME Inc. You will also receive a cuddly ACME logoed teddy bear and an assortment of ACME tea bags. Public broadcasting needs you to pick up that phone, and call in, to keep the airwaves free of the usual commercial breaks that other stations need to use to fund the valuable programming you hear."

Too many editors?

If Wikipedia ever finds itself with too many editors, this would be a way to get rid of a bunch.

Scary Words

"The Advertising department thinks we should..."
"We have an idea to get more hits..."
Concentrate Wikipedia, you have a long way to go.

Does it have to be all or nothing?

PBS manages to do pledge drives without completely losing their identity. Granted, they're also running commercials, but certainly less than regular broadcast TV. Could Wikipedia run ads maybe two weeks a quarter, or something similar? The question really is, what would they do with it if they had (theoretically) unlimited funds?

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Exactly. For example, Google sponsors Nova, probably the best non-kids-oriented show on PBS. They get an ad at the top of every show, just after the teaser and Nova title card and before the actual episode starts. The ad isn't garish or obnoxious, and i

Advertising profanes

I'm against.

Advertising inherently trivialises its surroundings.

If the Wiki is bare, it stands alone as a mass of knowledge.

If it is adorned by adverts for books and DVDs and so on, it becomes profane; it loses its sanctity.

People I think see these words and dismiss them, I suspect because of their somewhat religious association; but they represent human feelings and impressions of the world around them. They represent real states of mind and impressions.

Re:Advertising profanes

I seriously wished there were more people thinking like you do. Advertisements turns the attitude of the supporters of such a huge database of information away from knowledge and into a money-driven (and short-term investment) ideal. Again, people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Isn't the value of such a body of knowledge enough? Should we not try to pursue science and other fundaments of our society in a more monk-like way? I myself think we should. The fundaments of our society have been built upon ideals like that, it would be a shame to throw it all away.

Yes, all of this might sound a bit religious, but forget not that religion has had a firm basis in philosophy. Many of the monk scriptures were not rooted in religious affairs at all, but contained basics of knowledge. What we should do now is built up a new fort of knowledge and let that knowledge value itself (instead of revenue dollars from ads).

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I'm glad more people don't think like him. Certainly monks and other such selfless people have contributed alot to science but I would say the vast majority of science has come about through the work of people who are deeply rooted in the real world for th

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The Wikipedia is not merely a collection of web-pages and a server. It is an ethos, a belief, an emotional experience.

You are right to say in the pure technical sense advertising will make no difference. The web-pages will still be editable, etc.

But in the

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I'm just amazed at your lack of perspective. Wikipedia is just a database with an interesting editable front-end running on a bunch of servers somewhere. That's all. There's no more reason to have an emotional attachment to Wikipedia than there is to have

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Yes, THIS! Mod parent up, for he's absolutely correct AND giving an argument that none of the advertisement supporters have ever dared to touch in the debate. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that aims to discuss each notable topic in a neutral way. We've

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While I wouldn't put wikipedia in some kind of holy light, if wikipedia decides to take in advertising it soon enters the realm of the the dollar being mightier than the knowledge it is designed to support.

What I'm really afraid of is when advertising do

Sounds good

Sounds like a good idea. Just have a small, text link called "view associated advertisements" on the lower-right corner of every page in Wikipedia that leads to a page with the ads. That way, people who want to see the ads can easily view them and the people who don't want to see the ads just have to ignore a small, out-of-the-way text link. It's win-win!

great idea

But there's a strong case that Wikipedia should run advertising. The funds raised could support dozens of Firefox-scale free knowledge and free software projects, outspending all but the wealthiest foundations.

That's a great idea. Because according to wikipedia, the number of free knowledge and free software projects has tripled in the last six months.

It's a Trap!

What happens when big funding starts to demand what can and can't be placed into articles? "We're sorry, Wikipedia, but I'm going to need you to remove this, that and the other fact from the article because it might turn away our potential customers."

will make for some interesting "Talk:" pages

This advert is CLEARLY not NPOV. Can we get a citation on the shampoo making hair "glossy and full of bounce"? 84.28.125.19

WTF I USE IT AND IT MAKES MY HAIR GLOSSY 61.101.19.42

Hey no original research you nub 69.120.51.20

Do we having anything on "glossy and full of bounce" as opposed to just glossy? 84.28.125.19

OK HAVE REWRITTEN ARTICLE TO CLEAN UP, NOW "SHINY AND NATURALLY SOFT", NOT "GLOSSY AND FULL OF BOUNCE" 61.101.19.42

nominated for deletion, 01/02/07, not noteworthy enough 83.102.48.18

Adblock

If Wikipedia starts carrying advertising, then I, for one, will probably block it. I doubt I'm the only person thinking this, and for this I think it a factor worth considering.

Personally, I would prefer to see Wikipedia trimmed down in size to a level w

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The only real way to "trim down" the requirements of wikipedia would be by cutting pageviews.

So why dont you just set a good example by stopping to use it?

Thats the thing with wikipedia

Some Wikipedians have objected to Virgin Unite's participation in the Wikimedia Foundation's fund drive, calling it adverising.

Thats the thing with Wikipedia, no matter what you do, some Wikipedians are going to disagree with it.

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And that has little to do with Wikipedia and Wikipedians, but more to do with an organization with a large following. :-)

Wikiproject No Ads

The debate about ads on Wikipedia has gone on for quite such time. (The first major dispute involved a deal with answers.com) As a result of this, many Wikipedia contributers have formed a Wikiproject (a semi-organized group of Wikipedia editors) against them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiproject _no_ads [wikipedia.org] To summarize this page, these editors think:

1. Wikipedia's philosophy is non-commercial
2. Ads put at risk Wikipedia's principle of Neutral Point of View (NPOV)
3. The information that constitutes Wikipedia is wealth for the community

There are fully three Wikipedians that state their support for advertising. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_ who_think_that_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_should_use _advertising [wikipedia.org]

The real problem: the volunteers hate it

The real problem with advertising on Wikipedia is that a nontrivial number of people would be extremely upset and stop editing it. What sort of people? Top contributors, editors, administrators. The Wikimedia foundation is wise to realize that despite the potential of earning tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from advertising, the sort of input they obtain from their volunteers is worth more than that.

At one point, the Spanish-language Wikipedia suffered a max exodus over what essentially boiled down to "the rumour of coming advertising" (poor translation in the dialog may have been a factor as well). It set that wiki's development back quite a ways.

Against ads on wp. Here's why.

- Running ads makes you dependent. Once wikipedia writes something bad against an advertiser, this company might threaten to pull its ads, therefore putting editors in a dilemma: support the project or support the truth?
- Ads ad new privacy-problems (somebody else tracks what you have visited)
- Ads fight for your eyeballs. Beeing a distraction-free zone is a big plus for wikipedia, because it made it so enjoyable for the authors.
- Some ads try to dupe people into thinking they are seeing error-messages etc. Others blink and distract. Many many ads try to manipulate you. We should not give in to this.
- Hosting costs have come down a lot. The project can very much sustain itself by just relying on fund drives.

Just my opinion on it.

All Jimbo's horses and all Jimbo's men...

The very fact that this idea is being discussed leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

In Wikipedia's early days there was a good deal of discussion about this very point, with some conspiracy-minded contributors fearing that Jimbo Wales would talk freedom, neutrality, and noncommercialism at the start and change the rules later in the game.

There are a number of precedents for this sort of bad-faith maneuver, one of the most notorious being CDDB, which happily accepted contributions of CD track names from thousands of volunteers who believed they were contributing to an open-source project; sneakily changed their software so that it add "stealth" copyright notices giving the rights to the information to the organization; then took it private and sold people's generous volunteer work and lined their own pockets with the money.

One of Wikipedia's cornerstones is the "neutral point of view" policy. This policy is a fragile and precious thing. Innumerable people are constantly leaning on it and chipping away at it in an effort to use Wikipedia for promotion. The only reason why NPOV works is that the core of Wikipedians truly accept that WIkipedia really is neutral, and are willing to enforce the policy.

If Wikipedia ever accepts paid advertising, I believe it will destabilize the fragile balance. Advertisements will most likely be targeted to appear on the same pages as relevant article. Many WIkipedia articles about commercial products contain substantial amounts of both praise and criticism. In its nature, this material is frequently in a somewhat dynamic state of flux, with competing editors wordsmithing things back and forth; at its best, a stable state is reached in which the editors on one side of an issue grudgingly acknowledge that the wording of the material on the other side is acceptable to them.

What happens when an advertiser notices that the related article contains material that has a different spin from its marketing communications? I think the delicate house of cards comes tumbling down, that's what. I don't see how anyone can ever build a "Chinese wall" between advertising and editorial when any advertiser can be an editor.

And once it becomes generally accepted that Wikipedia is no longer neutral, WIkipedia is dead. That will unleash a flood of self-promoting crap which old-time WIkipedians will be unable to hold back.

It will also piss off everyone who, like me, has made voluntary monetary contributions to Wikimedia almost every time they've launched one of their frequent pledge drives, in the belief, which will have been shown to be naïve, that Wikipedia was promised to be noncommercial.

Wikipedia can survive a reputation for occasional inaccuracy and for "fancruft." But if it is ever seen that Wikipedia articles are a practical avenue for promotion and advertising, or that they reflect the interests of advertisors, all Jimbo's horses and all Jimbo's men will never be able to put WIkipedia together again.

And all the old-time Wikipedians will say "We told you this was going to happen." And they'll be right.

set up some business deals

I'd bet Amazon or some other online bookstore would really love it if all the books and artists pages were linked to them so you can buy the books and/or music. I use it like that sometimes anyway, reading an article, see sources list, find the ISBN of the book, and head over to a book website like alibris or amazon. This could generate revenue for wikipedia. I just would hate if they had 'recommended' books or whatever as an advertisement, just simply link ISBN numbers to amazon or another website willing to pay wikipedia to be their sole source. Sort of how like Google pays Mozilla if we use the built-in search box, but google doesnt advertise it, it's just there for your convienience. Obviously not everything on wikipedia is a product or goods, but for the articles that are talking about products/good/books, wikipedia should try to create a business deal with them, a link to amazon if they have the product available. Probably need some new code but its not hard to implement.

Non-issue

If I'm reading an article about the peleponesiam war, I sure would like some other books that are about the war or related articles. There's no reason to fear adverts....just yet. Maybe it'll work like amazon's recommendations: based on what you searched

Why not let Google do searching?

From what I'm aware, Google pay FireFox for linking to their search engine. Why don't Google (or one of their rivals) contribute some cash to Wikipedia in order for it to become the semi-official replacement for the god-awful Wikipedia search engine? They'd get Adwords stuff, positive publicity and they wouldn't lose much cash at all.

No blatant advertising, improve cashflow and company would get more ad revenue. Win/win.

A plague of spammers shall descend on ye

If ads appear on Wikipedia, you can bet that spamm^H^H^H^Hadvertisers will start making changes to pages, from subtle changes to attract their ads to a page to careful changes in a article's wording to put their ad in more favorable light. This already happens now by astroturfers of various sorts, such as those who add "External Links" that are really commercials, but you can be sure the problem will become far worse. It will become harder to detect and correct as advertisers become more sophisticated in order to protect and nourish their advertising investment, just as spammers continually innovate in getting email through spam blockers or bumping up their Google rating. The volunteer editors will be so overwhelmed with spam that "Articles for deletion" will become a joke, and the better editors - who want to see their labor directed towards producing new and better content, not fighting a losing battle against spam - may just give up in disgust and go on to more productive things in their lives. I wish it weren't so, but on the internet it seems that money attracts scum.

Idea for ad spec for Wikipedia

Rather than putting up ads on the pages like google adwords or worse yet, banners, etc. Provide sponsorship options for companies for certain entries... and be discreet about whom you let sponsor what.

The form of sponsorship would go something like this... "This entry supported by the good people at " Where the name is a link to a special page that company can create which would highlight their interest in the given topic and allow them to wax poetic about the virtues of the topic and how important it is for all people to understand given topic. More of a PSA than an advertisement.

The company would get a great PR campaign regarding their involvement in the development, study or support of said topic and the rest of us could find out more about the company. Each topic could have as many PSA ads as companies that are legitimately involved in the topic.

Wikipedia would get content control of the PSAs to keep out conflicts of interest... ie only truthful PSA info would be allowed though highlighting good deeds and ignoring bad would be acceptable.

I'd be all for it!

But ONLY if the advertisements were subject to the same standards and scrutiny for factualness and neutrality as the articles are.

Wouldn't you LOVE to see free and open discussion threads for each ad? No way for the advertiser to control the content or threaten to sue? I think that concept could catch on.

Advertising is just part of our world

Advertising has not always been "just part of our world." Do you think Consumer Reports should be forcibly compelled to accept advertising? Do you think they have a valid reason for not accepting it?

In the early 1900s, one could have said "Child labor has