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."
End justifies the means (Score:2, Informative)
Re:End justifies the means (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:End justifies the means (Score:5, Insightful)
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This doesn't need to be a problem. (Score:2)
Re:End justifies the means (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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I imagine there are some magazines out there above all this. I'd like
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>>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 really a collection of various weirdos who like to spend their free time writing encyclopedia articles for free. That and ideologues of every possible kind. Imagine Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Joe Stalin, Karl Marx, John Lennon, and Gandhi collaborating on
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There have ALWAYS been edit wars back-and-forth over every religion, and at some points in time there are "favorable" edit waves and sometimes "hostile" edit waves for certain sets of articles. It's a process, not a destination. I doubt that it had anything to do with any one group donating, though that
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Interestingly, you make this sound like a bad thing, but in fact Virgin Unite, AKA The Virgin Foundation is in reality the charitable organization formed by the Virgin Group... so how is it "advertising" to say:
Sure, why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They could easily do something non-intrusive, such as AdWords that correspond to the topic(s) being viewed. There is ample screen real estate on the left hand side for a discrete ad bar.
But they would need to be careful not to allow ads to creep into what could be considered content, or have advertisers directly choose which page they want to adve
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, le
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If you don't like adverts, block them! I have no problem with Wikipedia taking ads, frankly, I'd find a blocked ad that I don't see far less intrusive than their constant begging for donations.
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It seems like the only problem would be that the AdWords wouldn't trigger the correct ads, which would really only hurt Google.
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For me the three main ways
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The real issue regarding sponsorship is how it might affect content. It would suck to have certain content removed if a sponsor didn't like it. Or maybe sponsors would get special privilege/priority to edit articles in their favor.
-matthew
Advertising No Problem (Score:3)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (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.
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To beleive that projects like Wikipedia should not advertise is definatelly nieve, why should there not be extra pots of money for additional projects.
Mind you, I have a few issues with the way Sourceforge has handled having paid accounts. In spite of what they said, unpaid project hosting suffered. I was unable to access my project on a number of occasions. In that case monetising
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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
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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.
public broadcasting (Score:5, Insightful)
"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? (Score:3, Insightful)
Scary Words (Score:4, Interesting)
"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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is exactly what Wikipedia is doing, and as long as th
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The question really is, what would they do with it if they had (theoretically) unlimited funds?
Good point. If they use the money as has been suggested to support "free knowledge and free software projects" this will, for better or worse, provide an incentive structure in those areas. The exact nature of those incentives will depend on how funds are distributed. It's a potential source of political wrangling, if not corruption.
Advertising profanes (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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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The real world includes things like money, advertising and probably many other things you may consider to be corrupting or evil but it is often because of and not in spite of these facets of soc
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> be corrupting or evil but it is often because of and not in spite of these facets of society that progress
> and learning advance.
The real world also includes humans and our emotions; and, what's more, the real world as such does not exist - for we only perceive the world through our senses and our feelings.
> In this case Wikipedia has the opportunity to raise very large amounts of money i
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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 human sense, our perception of the Wikipedia - that will change.
Wow. You usually don't see utter BS of that level on Slashdot. Or, for that matter, the word "ethos" outside of a Starbucks. Congratulations!
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If I was simply factually wrong, then you could just tell me. But that's not what happened - what happened was you flamed me.
Your response doesn't actually equate to what I wrote, what actually happened; something else is going on.
I think the thing is, people get nasty when they *want* something to be wrong, when their feelings, their *beliefs* are involved. I could be wrong, but I think you believe that all this stuff a
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Why the insults? Well, I
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Wikipedia is not new knowledge, its a repository for the knowledge of many people and is an impressive collabarative document but it does have monetary value and it would be a shame if that value is not realised especially when it can be interesting projects or to help Wikpedia its self. I notice at the moment they are asking for donations which they wouldn't have to do if they could leverage their value to advertisers successfully.
Regarding the other points about e
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If it doesn't get enough free donations it stops working. Then it should just die? I'd prefer an advertising wikipedia over no wikipedia at all, and would prefer a donation-run wikipedia over an advertising wikipedia.
As for a multi-national government-subsidized wikipedia, that's not all that differ
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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 the purpose of solving the real world problems they came across.
Wikipedia is not designed to solve problems, it's primary goal is to share the knowledge of the world, with the world with NPOV in mind. While there is huge potential for marketability, you run into the very real possibility that by doing so compromises key objective to share knowledge in a neutral fashion, dollars st
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Ah yes, in the real world, there is this thing called the money tree, where a dollar earned by Wikipedia can also be spent as if Wikipedia had not earned it, so that every dollar spent by Wikipedia was in effect raked up fresh off the money lawn.
Money is not an intrinsic good, and not even economists delude themselves into thinking it is. There is no certainty whats
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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 dollars begin to dictate the direction of wikipedia. And that is very very very very not cool.
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Hmm. This I feel is kinda what I mean about people looking at the words "profane" and "sanctity" and so on as being religious. These words exist outside and independently of religion.
The issue is the nature and character of an entity.
If a man builds a web-site and pays for it himself, or through donations from others supporting his cause, it's quite noble; it's his effort, it's about what he cares about, it has meaning, a message - it has sanct
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It's not enough for you to just be a critic and then sit back. If not advertising, then how would you provide the funds to keep wikipedia running. It's not cheap to provide the systems and datacenter fees to run one of the most highly trafficed www website in the world.
You also have another option. You could start a rival wiki that has whatever stance towards advertising that you prefer. What is stopping you?
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> provide the funds to keep wikipedia running.
Well you know they're most of the way through I think it's a 1.5 million USD fund raising drive right now, and it's going really well; it's at about 900k USD after a week or two.
I think in fact that fund-raising like this, voluntary contributions, are the right way to provide funds.
You see, it's not just about how effectively you can get hold of dollars.
I
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Bill Hicks was right. Eventually they will use pictures of naked women in ecstasy to sell coke. Hell, Yves Saint-Laurent already did it to sell perfume. It's just a more obvious example of how advertising cheapens even the most intimate human actions in a frantic effort to grasp our attentions.
Are we expected to endure assault on our senses from the marketing legions while trying to actually learn something? Are we suppoed to be insulted by banner after ba
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Well, an empty space. I block adverts. But indeed,
> Dikembe Mutombo moved to the US to practice medicine to go back to the Congo to provide health care for
> his people. In college, NBA scouts gave him good offers if he chose to play basketball, so he gave up
> medicine, got into the NBA, and has contrib
Sounds good (Score:3, Insightful)
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Even if I was browsing an article for something I was interested in (say, a literary topic), I'd much rather hit up Amazon or whoever my trusted bookseller is, than click a random ad.
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you could start entering the real of marketers tailoring the wiki article to suit consumer driven needs. For example: let's say Coke and Pepsi have ads on the article regarding soft drinks [wikipedia.org]. Slowly, over time you see certain aspects of the article keep getting deleted, noticably
'Studies showing a correlation between soft drinks and obesity'
'Soft drinks linked to weight gain and type 2 diabetes'
While these articles can never be completely removed, it's a total PITA for volunteers to be looking after vandal
great idea (Score:3, Funny)
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! (Score:5, Interesting)
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To counter this, Wiki could build in rules that disallow any one source to spend more than N dollars where N is a percent of the operating budget. (something like
Of course, someone looking to exert control over the Wiki would
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If Wikipedia can keep knowledge as it's only goal can't we find corporate attacks against it as inherently immoral.
Wikipedia is already catching flakk for the silly political maneuverings occuring there, and, while solutions are being proposed those solutions (republicans:reprehensible actions, democrats:scandals) might not be applicable for corporate entities.
Currently any company
will make for some interesting "Talk:" pages (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:2)
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 where it CAN still be supported by donations, ideally by raising the notability criteria. This would have the beneficial effect of reducing the amount of unattended never-to-be-filled stubs and increasing the level of user coverage on more central topics.
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So why dont you just set a good example by stopping to use it?
Thats the thing with wikipedia (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats the thing with Wikipedia, no matter what you do, some Wikipedians are going to disagree with it.
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Wikiproject No Ads (Score:5, Informative)
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
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.
Against ads on wp. Here's why. (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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.
It's a foundation, you set up an endowment... (Score:2)
All Jimbo's horses and all Jimbo's men... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Which is different from the status quo how?
I don't see any problem with WP accepting advertising. I think it's perfectly feasible to tell prospective advertising customers that their dollars only give them permission to place a small advertisement on the page, do not give them any permission to alter the content of the page and, further, that if they are ever suspected of altering the page, their advertisement will be removed. If it can be proved that they altered the page, their money will not be ref
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Is a fork feasible? (Score:2)
As far as I know, all the text of wikipedia is available under some free documentation license. If wikipedia were to start offering advertising or something, what would stop people from simply forking it? Make a site which aims for the current set of ideals, with the current body of documentation?
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Also, the point about CDDB isn't about what they can do with the data, it's about bait-and-switch. Asking people to contribute and then changing the rules after they have.
set up some business deals (Score:3, Interesting)
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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.
No! Bad dog! Sit!
Wikipedia is open. Monopoly is closed. Wikipedia cannot unhypocritically give someone a practical monopoly. I personally like my local bookshops and would not want an "open" project to end up "closing" my shops. Same goes for music. Also, wouldn't it create a conflict of interests regarding out-of-copyright works.
All in all, suc
Non-issue (Score:2, Insightful)
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You're kidding me, right? (Score:2)
Asking for money isn't the same as selling advertising space.
There is probably a third option that we don't realize yet.
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Those sites are allowed to exist under the terms of Wikipedia's licensing. They willingly give out their database to anyone who wants to pay for the media.
My Two Cents (Score:2)
Too late. Read any Wikipedia "articles" of late? (Score:2)
The problem with an "Encyclopedia" that anyone can edit, frankly, is that anyone will. That means every coporate shill and
Why not let Google do searching? (Score:5, Interesting)
No blatant advertising, improve cashflow and company would get more ad revenue. Win/win.
Advertizing done RIGHT is not evil(TM) (Score:2)
Google's proves my point. Their ad system works.
It's when companies get greedy and stupid (like spam) that causes people to get mad
The only issue is that some may see it as a slippery slope, first google type ads, then pop-unders, then Gifs, etc.
A plague of spammers shall descend on ye (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Why not? Your news is already sponsored (Score:2)
Likewise, Wiki can be sponsored by whomever and it will largely go unnoticed. We may not even care. If we start seeing articles about global warm
Wikipedia's greatest asset: the ability to just go (Score:2)
The wiki is currently not an attractive target for legal action precisely because it could, in the worst case, just disintegrate at any time and be replaced using backup data, perhaps in a different country. Damage would be done, but the attacker wouldn't get a lot for his efforts. If the wiki had
it would
Educational distribution (Score:2)
Universities have the funding, infrastructure, relative impartiality, purpose and incentive that imbues them not just with the ability, but with the obligation in my opinion, to support
Ads as way to complement info (Score:2)
In fact, the wikipedia articles have already links that could count as "ads", links to external sites, some of them commercial, that talk more about that page topic. What if that page have an ad to that site/page in a less plain way?
Im firmly opposed to generic/bulk ads. But some way to syne
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.
what next? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ads are a degenerate form of human discourse in my opinion.
Would Wikipedia have reached the heights it has if they had advertised from day one? I tend to doubt it. So adding ads now is bait-and-switch. Bad news.
As for putting my money where my mouth is, I have been donating to Wikipedia since they've accepted donations.
I would love it if ad-based services like Google were opt-out. I would happily pay to get rid
If they do, they'll have to pay the editors (Score:2)
You can't run a commercial business with volunteers in the US. It's illegal. Violates minimum wage laws. AOL ran into this in 1995 [com.com], and had to pay back pay to all their forum moderators. "Labor attorney Victor Van Bourg added that volunteers "are employees of the companies, and they should be paid," he said."
With Wikipedia, it wouldn't be hard to establish that many editors are doing real work. There are rules, supervision, control, standards, and lists of things to be done. That's work.
Advertising is just part of our world (Score:2)
In the early 1900s, one could have said "Child labor has always been just part of our world," or "Fraudulent patent medicines have always been just part of our world," or "The six-day work week has always been just part of our world." That doesn't mean they were beyond criticism. Or that they should properly per
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mod parent up! (Score:2)
Asking money for content you freely obtained=scam.