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

Mon Nov 8 21:59:03 UTC 2010

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On 08/11/2010 18:45, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> An interesting idea would be a standalone static copy of
> wikipedia that really tried their utmost to make the product
> visually appealing, and used the generated money from the
> advertisements purely to fund ever more timely database dumps
> 
> It would be interesting to see how frequent database dumping could be
> financed by advertisement on such a
> site; the synergy should be obvious -- the more money they generate
> from adverts, the more resources they can devote to making ever more
> frequent dumps, so the more timely is the content, which will again
> make therir product more attractive, and so on

This is clever. But let me expose the flaw with wikinews:
wikinews would thus get a financing for a printable version with ads.
Huge success! We then recruit an editorial team of 30 paid people to
keep with the production, formatting, checking.

But then the we discover that if the news are not to the liking of our
advertisers, they punish us. On the contrary, they could reward us. Our
editorial team start fearing for their job. They have a wife and two
kids to feed. They got used to having a job. They are dependent on
money, and now money will start deciding what should be the news. After
all, what is the value of a fact? 0. The value of displeasing our
sponsors? A big, significant lump of money.

So, I think that if there is money to be made, it should be without
intermediaries. If we need financing it must be coming directly from the
community and controlled and used directly by it. Anything else is
injecting corruption.
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