I'm curious -- what is the objection to advertising? If there was, say, one unobtrusive text ad per page, I imagine that would cover all of the wikimedia foundation's costs and allow new features to be developed a little more quickly. Would people be offended and stop contributing?

On 18/12/06, Parker Conrad <parkerconrad(a)gmail.com> wrote: one little Because people hate, despise and loathe the idea of advertising, and a substantial fraction of the volunteers who write all the content would get up and *leave*. And that would be bad. Basically, instead of the annoyance of advertising you get the annoyance of slow servers on a Sunday afternoon and occasional downtime. And people seem to be willing to accept that deal. Jimbo has said in the past that downtime is our most lucrative product ;-) So we get money by asking the readers, and now that we have properly audited books we're going after big-time donors. - d. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Contextual ads are small and unobstrusive. In addition, they may benefit the reader by pointing them to additional resources. Wikipedia is now a top-20 site. Server and bandwidth costs will grow rapidly. Donations are not a reliable way to keep Wikipedia financially afloat. I remember reading a report in the Signpost which says that Wikipedia could earn over $500 million if it used contextual ads.

What if the ads were off by default?

On 12/18/06, theProject <wp.theproject(a)gmail.com> wrote: Coca-Cola donation The nature of the relationship is different. Consider the following two scenarios: 1) Starbucks signs a $20,000-a-month contract to place banner ads on Wikipedia. Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales. They tell us to keep it out of their article or they'll cancel the contract. What does Wikipedia do? 2) Starbucks gives Wikipedia a $20,000 donation. Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales. They tell us to keep it out of their article. Wikipedia puts it in the article and thumbs its collective nose at Starbucks. What are they going to do, ask for their donation back? -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

On 12/18/06, theProject <wp.theproject(a)gmail.com> wrote: Coca-Cola donation The nature of the relationship is different. Consider the following two scenarios: 1) Starbucks signs a $20,000-a-month contract to place banner ads on Wikipedia. Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales. They tell us to keep it out of their article or they'll cancel the contract. What does Wikipedia do? 2) Starbucks gives Wikipedia a $20,000 donation. Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales. They tell us to keep it out of their article. Wikipedia puts it in the article and thumbs its collective nose at Starbucks. What are they going to do, ask for their donation back? -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Would people be offended and stop contributing?

Hi! I gather the only serious answer is: nobody knows. That's unless there had been previous experiments I'm not aware of.