[WikiEN-l] Selling books to increase funding

Sun May 9 18:38:38 UTC 2004

Bod NotBod wrote:

> Basically I wanted to present an idea for increasing Wikipedia's 
> funding by encouraging people to place more book references at the end 
> of articles.
>
> I understand that there was a controversy about Amazon in the past, 
> but according to...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources
>
> ...Wikipedia earns a commission on people who purchase through...
>
> http://www.priceowl.com/?site=wikipedia
>
> So, it occurred to me that if publicity is given to this it may 
> increase revenue. 

Jimbo tried an experiment of this sort some months back, and the 
commissions produced were negligible to the point of ludicrous.  Given 
the amount of controversy that such an idea would and has generated, it 
would be pointless to give serious consideration to something that does 
not provide meaningful benefits.

> You could be more aggressive about raising revenue this way, ie 
> cutting down the list of links, at the first page I referred to, so it 
> includes ONLY those that give Wikipedia a kick back - but I sense that 
> would be regarded as against the spirit of Wikipedia. 

That sounds like a classic example for the term "conflict-of-interest".

Ec