[Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

Sat Nov 6 11:39:03 UTC 2010

You might want to look at this link from
ACSI<http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=220&Itemid=236>(American
Customer Satisfaction Index) which introduced indexing of social
sites this year:

"Satisfaction is measured with four social media websites—Facebook, MySpace,
Wikipedia, and YouTube—plus an aggregate measure of smaller sites...

Given the popularity of the four measured social media sites, each boasting
hundreds of millions of users worldwide, the first round of ACSI scores
offered some surprises. *At the top is Wikipedia*—the massive, multilingual,
user-produced encyclopedia run by the Wikimedia Foundation. With an ACSI
score of 77, Wikipedia is *more satisfying* than most of the ACSI-measured
news and information websites. Like Google, *Wikipedia’s user interface has
remained very consistent over the years, and its nonprofit standing means
that it has not been impacted by commercialization and marketing unlike many
other social media sites*...

*[C]ontroversies over privacy issues*, frequent changes to user interfaces,
*and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking
sites at satisfaction levels well below other websites and similar to
poor-performing industries* like airlines and subscription TV service..."

In other words, it seems a major survey picks out non-commercialization and
a strong approach to privacy as a key factor to pleasing users, and
increasing commercialization  as a reason why other social sites may become
less popular.

FT2

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Arlen Beiler <arlenbee at gmail.com> wrote:

I don't think I could stand it if we picked up advertising. I hate the way
> wikia looks, and therefore have an aversion to contributing in any way to
> its progress. Can you imagine! We actually link to Wikia sites and give
> them
> traffic (though I guess that is better than filling up wikibooks and
> wikipedia with useless junk)! Wikia is like the no good jerk up the street.
> Imagine us turning to ads after all these years! I am sure it could be
> a revenue source for some, but we are different, we are better. We create
> the best family of websites in the world, let's not mar them with ads. You
> know, wikia should sell itself to the Wikimedia Foundation so that
> Wikimedia
> would get the money. Then too, I guess the board members need some way to
> make money. What actually might be a better idea, would be for wikia to pay
> the board, since it is a for profit company. Or am I missing the point
> entirely? I read what that Greg Kohs said about it, and while I agree that
> it did sound like a conflict of interest, I don't know how much of this is
> proper or not. Anyway, those are my useless ramblings, so bye.
>
> On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:18 PM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk at googlemail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Adverts do not make content wrong, but create mistrust.
> > > Have a look what Lawrence Lessig tells about:
> > >
> > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHma3ZQRVoA
> >
> > After the first few minutes it turns into a long drawn out infomercial
> > supporting US "campaign finance reform".
> >
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