[WikiEN-l] Ads on Wikipedia?

Mon Jan 2 13:00:08 UTC 2006

Fastfission wrote:
> Just a few thoughts on advertising:
> 
> * It wouldn't have to be banner ads in the obnoxious sense. Surely
> there could be some sort of quality control and discreteness about it.
> I'm sure we could find someone willing to shell out a lot of funding
> for a small ad on the lower left hand corner of each page. If every
> set of advertisements had to be approved by some small board of
> thoughtful people, it would probably keep out the "You may be a
> winner!" and "Mortgage your house online!" ads.
> 

Will NPOV apply to ads? :)

> * What if ad content could be controlled through user CSS pages? Those
> who are 'in the know' could outright disable them without difficulty.
> People without accounts could never disable them. What's the ratio of
> logged-in to non-logged in page hits?
> 

Already doable on Wikicities etc. Someone complained to Angela that I
was doing this, and was told that it was OK so long as I didn't do it to
an entire Wikicity or anything :)

> * I think that "targetted" schemes along the lines of Google Adsense
> are a bad idea. If we have ads, they should be as little connected to
> the content being viewed as possible, as a matter of integrity.
> Article content and article titles should have NO relation to
> advertising content. If it does, we are not only inviting some raised
> eyebrows about content validity, but we're inviting people to try and
> game the system by modifying articles in oh-so-clever and minor ways
> to get their specific advertisements listed first.
> 

I wonder, is there anything that community consensus (shudder) would
determine would be a "good cause" to run ads for?

> * Perhaps there are other revenue models we should consider first
> before advertising. At the moment the only ones on the table seem to
> be 1. selling hard-copies, 2. begging, and 3. advertising. I have the
> business acumen of a pigeon but surely there must be alternatives to
> these three.
> 

Given that Jimbo et. al. chose the GFDL to put everything under Way Back
When, hard copies seems like the perfect choice - it even tells you how
to do it! :)

PS. Is WikiProject No Ads still running? Or have things changed a whole
heap since the Answers.com proposal?

-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
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