The Debate Over Advertising on Wikipedia 262
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."
Put your money where your mouth is! (Score:1, Interesting)
Scary Words (Score:4, Interesting)
"We have an idea to get more hits..."
Concentrate Wikipedia, you have a long way to go.
It's a Trap! (Score:5, Interesting)
set up some business deals (Score:3, Interesting)
Are AdWords unobtrusive? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 itself above all others. Should Wikipedia be another battalion in Google's world-conquering army?
If we're talking about free content, what about the risk that Amazon et al use adwords to appear at the top of any page on any piece of classic literature, leading readers into buying the book rather than scrolling down to the link to the wikisource or Gutenburg text?
Finally, what about WikiPedia's many languages? These services don't carry ads in most of the minority regional languages, instead defaulting to the dominant majority language for the area (Catalan gives way to Spanish, Gaelic gives way to English, Breton gives way to French etc). Blanket application of a system such as AdWords across the site would break the integrity of the Catalan, Gaelic, Breton etc versions of the content.
HAL.
Re:Advertising No Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
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 the advertisers? Many small newspapers cannot finiancially afford to run articles that conflict with their ad base. So if your biggest advertiser is a jewler, you'd be stupid to run an article about DeBeers backed fighting in Africa.
2. What safeguards are there in controlling spending? Most organizations, corporations, governments, and such tend to be regulated by the amount of money they can dispose. If you add a large amount of money into the system, the system's spending grows to accommodate the new money, but usually the service doesn't alter dramatically. I cannot imagine any new feature that I want in Wikipedia, so why throw money at it to make the existing features cost more.
Once an organization depends on a revenue stream, those providing the revenue stream can wield a lot of power. It's not done malicously, but eventually those with the cash will wish that their ads were more visible. They'll wish that their products were not "slandered" in wikipedia even when the product merits unfavoring words. Think of Mattel wanting to soften articles about dangerous toys they've released. Remove a reference, change the wording from "37 killed" to "a few children were injured, and one even died". You haven't outright lied, you're just misleading your audience.
Wikipedia already has had to combat product promotion and ad placement. How will they handle it when they are receiving money from these companies?
Why not let Google do searching? (Score:5, Interesting)
No blatant advertising, improve cashflow and company would get more ad revenue. Win/win.
The real problem: the volunteers hate it (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Idea for ad spec for Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Does it have to be all or nothing? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly what Wikipedia is doing, and as long as the sponsorship messages are kept in the context of Wikipedia donation drives and not plastered across the articles, I think it's a good thing. They're having a great run in their drive for $1.5M this time around, and a lot of that comes from corporate matching donations.
I'd be all for it! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Advertising No Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Advertising No Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:End justifies the means (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine there are some magazines out there above all this. I'd like to think that includes Scientific American.. but then, I've never seen a negative article about Dewars in there yet have I?!!
As for Wikipedia, one only has to look to many other non-profits to see where good groups go bad. Again, I'm speaking from first hand experience. It's very simple. When the people working for the group put their personal interests above the mission(s) of the group, force out people who are really for the cause, and put on a sham-show for the donors about how self-sacrificing they all are, the goose is cooked. The more money floating around the more likely this outcome becomes. Just say no Wikipedia! You're showing how volunteers are the true life-spirit of non-profits. Always remember - You ARE a charity.
-virto
-virto