[WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia

Mon Jan 2 07:08:55 UTC 2006

Yes, perhaps I'm suggesting a bit of a radical approach to funding and
economics isn't my strong point, but just take a moment to really think
about how certain web-oriented companies would survive without Wikipedia...

From: "Peter Mackay" <peter.mackay at bigpond.com>
>
> 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.

No I'm not suggesting that, Peter. I'm suggesting that, if Wikipedia was
genuinely threatened with collapse because of money issues, donations, both
corporate and personal would naturally flow in because they know how
important it is.

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.

These companies have a vested interest in keeping the content in one format
and one space. While it's impractical to assume there will never be
special-interest web encyclopaedias, Wikipedia is clearly a very large and
well-read resource with possibly more contributors than any other
collaborative web space. As one of the "big players", Wikipedia, without any
commercial loyalties, will be favoured over other collaborative
encyclopaedias by both individual contributors and corporate donors.

Lisa