[WikiEN-l] Ads on Wikipedia?

Sat Dec 31 22:37:36 UTC 2005

Hi,

It's nice to hear the other side of the ad argument. If anyone has some
"further reading", I'd be grateful.

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium
> >At the moment we charge nothing, so isn't charging 
> *anything*  better?
> 
> For whom?  For what purpose?

For the purpose of making WP better of course :)

> As soon as you start counting the eyeballs of users, rather 
> than the edits 
> of editors, you actually change the whole dynamic of the project.

Good point.

> What if the best editors move to a clone that doesn't have ads?

Do you think they would do that rather than, say, pay $5 not to see
them? What if WP had a rule that said anyone with 1500 edits was exempt
from ads?

> If $750000 was spent in 2005, it's hardly a shoestring.  A 

IMHO it's a shoestring whenever income ~= expenses.  If the income for a
year only *just* covers server expenditure with no room for backups,
future proofing, redundancy, taking risks etc, then it's a shoestring -
the magnitude is irrelevant.

> 'low' yearly 
> fee - would be relative to the income of a developed-world 
> person in work, 
> or a villager in Asia or Africa in subsistence.agriculture?

I wasn't suggesting denying access to anyone. Presumably a poor African
would not object to seeing ads if they get a free encyclopaedia out of
the deal. "Presumably".

> 
> The 'server strain' argument occurs only because exponential 
> growth has been 
> seen.  WP _has not_ crumbled under the strain.  Traffic seems 

It's the only site I have regularly used in the last couple of years
which as a normal part of usage puts up "Server experiencing
difficulties, come back lately".  I get that message on WP pretty much
every day during certain hours.  And that's not to mention some of the
more esoteric messages like edits being disabled, the DB being out of
sync etc. I would *much* rather have ads than put up with server
unavailability.

(And yes, I'm a newbie, in case anyone was wondering :))

> to have risen 
> 50% in December alone.  We all know this can't continue for 
> ever.  But we 
> can't possibly know enough and rationally discuss how much 
> money WP needs, 
> until we have a clearer idea of where it is headed.  (It is 

True. Where is WP headed?

Steve