[WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia

Mon Jan 2 06:51:24 UTC 2006

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Lisa Thurston

> Why shouldn't the companies making money from the Wikipedia 
> data at the microscale should be the primary funders of Wikipedia?

Much as I appreciate and admire your principles, what you are proposing
makes little sense if you go to the other side of the boardroom table. You
might as well ask "Why don't individuals benefiting from Wikipedia
contribute?", because a company is just a group of individuals, namely the
shareholders. You are surely not suggesting that we have a log on screen so
that anybody who might get a benefit from WP enter their credit card details
before being granted access.

And even if we accept the premise that Bill Gates the individual be allowed
free access but Microsoft the corporation should pay megabucks, just how do
we enforce it? We cannot. And what commercial enterprise with a
responsibility to its shareholders is going to shell out money they don't
need to?

If, as you say, some large companies derive a commercial benefit from WP and
should fund us, then what is to stop them from downloading MediaWiki, hiring
some professionals, and building their own encyclopaedia, perhaps as a joint
effort with Google along with toolbars and popups and so on? That way,
they'd get the same benefits as well as control over the operation and a
more focused product.

Peter (Skyring)