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Tubal Reversal Information on Wikipedia tubal-reversal.net | Doctor Eugene Lipov, M.D. - Biography and Wikipedia Entry eugenelipovmd.org | Misleading Acne Skin Care Treatment Product Advertisements fitnesshealthandwellnessc... |
 
In a comment dated March 7, 2008 on his Wikipedia talk page Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has stated
The issue has been the topic of ongoing discussion. Revenue generated from advertisements could improve the website and help achieve its goals. On the other hand, advertising may be at odds with the mission of a neutral, non-profit website which aims to educate. Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the web.[1] Tens of millions of dollars could be generated if even just a few users allowed ads. With that money, the Wikimedia Foundation could increase server capacity, hire a larger staff, and improve various other Wikimedia projects such as Wiktionary and Wikinews. See: Possible uses for additional income. There is a long history to this issue. See: strategy:Advertising, meta:Polls, meta:Advertising on Wikipedia, meta:Opt-in Google-ads, Enciclopedia Libre, Wikipedia talk:Tools/1-Click Answers, and Wikipedia:User categories for discussion/Archive/December 2007#Wikimedia and advertising. See also the archives linked to the right of the table of contents on the talk page: Wikipedia talk:Advertisements. The following image (after the table of contents) demonstrates some of the history of conversations about advertising on the Wikimedia Foundation's mailing list [1].
 [edit] Arguments for optional adverts Help fund Wikipedia. On/off button for ads.
Click a button to view ads. At least during the Wikipedia fund-raising time of year. Fewer and fewer people in Wikipedia Village Pump discussions oppose opt-in ads. It is mandatory ads that most people reject. People want to help in many ways, and sometimes they can't donate money. This is about user opt-in ads and user opt-out ads for Wikipedia readers. The default setting for logged-in, registered readers would always be no ads. They could individually choose to opt-in to see ads. Depending on the model used there could be various default ad settings for non-registered readers. Wikipedia may want the default setting to be no ads for all users. This way the "look and feel" of Wikipedia is not changed. People choose for themselves. This would be an opt-in model. WikiHow, on the other hand, uses an opt-out model, and pays for all its operations with ad money. Non-registered readers normally see ads, but can opt out of ads. When a button was created for readers to opt out of ads for 24 hours ad revenue fell less than one percent.[2] WikiHow says they "were the first high traffic website to offer a 'hide ads' button." Readers can block ads for 24 hours by clicking the button. Those who are registered and logged in do not see ads.[3] WikiHow had 15.5 million unique readers in April 2009.[4] The advertising money has been sufficient to allow charitable donations also. For example; $48,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation.[5][6] WikiHow considers itself to be a hybrid business and organization – a 4th organizational structure combining features of 3 traditional organizational structures: businesses, non-profits, and government. Some other examples of hybrids are Wikia, Wikitravel, Firefox, Red Hat Linux, MySQL, Craigslist, SNPedia, and Newman’s Organics.[7] See also: Social enterprise. It doesn't take many people choosing ads to make a significant contribution. For example; WordPress.com uses minimal as-needed ads. Most people don't know that the millions of free blogs[8] on the Wordpress.com site are funded partially by ads, since only a few ads are used throughout the many blogs. It is unlikely that most readers will ever notice an ad. From Wordpress.com: "To support the service (and keep free features free), we also sometimes run advertisements. If you would like to completely eliminate ads from appearing on your blog, we offer the No-Ads Upgrade."[9] Wordpress.com is almost as popular as Wikipedia. It has a worldwide Alexa traffic rank of 18 compared to Wikipedia's rank of 6 (as of November 2009).[10][1] Ad settings. Readers could choose what kind of ads to allow. A system could be set up for controlling optional ads based on cookie settings. There could be a settings link that would allow the choice of top, bottom, and/or side placement of ads. Or concise or detailed ads. Or ads with or without Flash animation. A cookie would remember the choices. WP:Neutral point of view would be maintained and Wikipedia would remain non-profit. Advertisers would have zero influence on Wikipedia because there are millions of advertisers who use ad services such as Google Adsense. So pressure from any advertiser or segment of advertisers can be ignored. As long as wikipedia is a non-profit, consensus-seeking, democratic, board-run organization, then there is no danger of advertisers having any say in how Wikipedia is run. Some examples of nonprofit control of advertising, or search-related income, can be found in public radio, public television, and the Mozilla model. See Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation. Public radio and television have advertising, but it doesn't stop people from donating. Public radio and TV have multiple sources of help. During fund drives they tell people how much money they are trying to raise, and people either donate or they don't. Advertising has little to do with their decision to donate. If Wikipedia had more money, many problems could be solved. See: Possible uses for additional income, farther down. Ads could generate that money. Disturbed by how much time Wikipedia spends crashed? This problem varies depending on how far away one lives from Wikipedia servers. The Wikimedia Foundation could get more hardware. It could hire more staff and more programmers. More money may also help Wikimedia in more rapidly implementing some form of unified watchlist [2] [3]. This could further greatly increase the working user base of the other Wikimedia projects. Unified login has helped greatly, but unified watchlists would help even more. Especially if people could select which watchlists to unify, and which ones to keep separate. People could choose to keep Wikipedia in their own language in a separate watchlist, while uniting all the other watchlists for other Wikimedia and Wikipedia projects in another watchlist. Additional money and active registered users would help in more rapidly ramping up Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, and additional projects. See the relevant section below: Possible uses for additional income. [edit] Arguments against advertsAds cheapen the encyclopedia. By their very nature, ads are biased content intended to influence people. They are thus diametrically opposed to the goals of a neutral encyclopedia intended to inform people. They would cheapen the encyclopedia in the eyes of many readers, as evidenced by the numerous anti-ad comments received during every donation drive. Annoying. Readers come to us for encyclopedic information, not for ads. Ads have to be processed by the brain (if only subconsciously) and therefore distract and annoy. "The free encyclopedia" also means: free from distractions and annoyances. Contributors may leave. Many contributors vigorously oppose ads (see 1, 2, 3, 4). Since about 2002, Jimbo Wales has repeatedly stated that he opposes all advertising on Wikipedia as well. Based on these statements, some editors have probably contributed with the understanding that their content would not be diluted with ads. Changing the long-standing no-ads policy now could reasonably be perceived as a bait and switch tactic. Numerous contributors are likely to leave as a result and new ones are less likely to start. Contributor goodwill is Wikipedia's main asset and should not be gambled with. Privacy violation. If an ad consolidator such as Google AdSense is used, the privacy of our readers is compromised. The consolidator will invariably learn which Wikipedia articles a given IP number reads or searches for; they can then correlate that information with other data they may have about that IP number (e.g. GMail account). Changing customers. Right now, our customers are the readers and our product is an encyclopedia; we have to keep our customers happy in order to keep donations flowing. This is fundamentally healthy. Once we switch to an ad-based funding model, the situation changes dramatically: our customers now are the advertisers, our product is the readers' eyeballs, and it is this product that we sell to the customers. That is fundamentally unhealthy. [peacock term] Unnecessary. For several years now, the foundation has worked fine as a lean and mean donation-based operation, running a top-ten website. Threat to neutrality of content. Companies which pay directly to advertise on Wikipedia may then feel entitled to favorable coverage about themselves in Wikipedia articles. For comparison, commercial television occasionally must change its content to placate its advertisers. Threat to independence of design. Companies which pay to put ads directly on Wikipedia will naturally care about their click-through rates. They will have an incentive to suggest layout changes to Wikipedia which increase their click-through rates, or they may try editing particular articles with a view to increasing click-throughs. Until now, Wikipedia has not had to worry about satisfying anyone but its users with its site and page layouts. Something else to argue about. If a large amount of money begins flowing through Wikipedia, thousands of Wikipedia contributors might get distracted from editing and instead argue about where the money should go. This might become more of a problem if Wikipedia generates far more revenue than it needs for its own operation, and begins supporting outside charities. Advertisers can also be users. In traditional media, advertisers can sometimes try to exert editorial control, but they must do so indirectly, as they lack physical access to the creative tools. In contrast, anyone can edit Wikipedia. Even without advertisements, we already have to delete many articles that are overly promotional; accepting advertisements might increase this. Inappropriate ads. If no strict oversight of all ads is established, it is very likely that ads will appear on articles were their content would be highly inappropriate. Readers would feel offended, and the main authors of those articles could leave. [edit] Arguments for advertsadverts = money = reliability + speed + expansion ...basically. Would it really be *so* bad to have a few discreet adverts, if it means we could get more servers, programmers, bandwidth, staff...? There's a patch of whitespace on the left side of many Wikipedia pages that could be used for ads. If text-based and small, ads would put no strain on the servers. The extra money generated by ads would allow the purchase of more servers. Ads don't necessarily have to be distracting. Wikipedia could remain non-profit. The number of ads could be limited to current budgetary needs, or more ads could be used for setting aside money for future projects. A trial with short contracts would make it easy to just "revert" back to the previous ad-less version. It has been estimated [4] [5] that such endeavors could potentially raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Wikimedia could even become a charitable organization providing money for all kinds of seed projects, philanthropic causes, etc.. The work of selecting the ads could be handled by an ad serving consolidator such as Google Adsense. Another possibility is that all adverts would be screened. If this sounds like too much work for volunteers, extra staff could be hired, using the extra revenue from ads. Adverts could use the Monobook colours, font and style in order to distract little from Wikipedia. Or they could have a separate background color so that readers would more clearly know that they are ads, and not click them by accident. One option could be that no images, animations, sounds, or anything too distracting would be allowed. Or readers could choose what they would allow. Adverts could be placed unobtrusively at the bottom of the left side, just above the "A Wikimedia Project" image. Or the reader could choose to have ads placed anywhere they want. Adverts could all have the same width, and be grouped by height, with greater heights costing more (up to a limit). Adverts would only be shown on pages with enough whitespace to accommodate the largest category of advert. Or readers could choose to place ads on the side, top, or bottom of the page. Since Wikipedia has the ability to fund itself independently, is it acceptable to continue taking charitable contributions that could otherwise be going to organizations incapable of funding themselves? [edit] Income from search tools on Wikipedia pagesSee also: Wikipedia:Searching See this discussion also: The $6 million a year search box solution that will keep ads OFF of Wikipedia. From AdSense#AdSense for search is this:
A Google search option could be one of several search options in a dropdown search menu that is part of a single-line search form at the top of all Wikipedia pages. The search form could be placed to the left of the user name. With this prominent placement the search form would be used a lot more, and millions of dollars a year could be raised by charging Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft for putting their search engines as options in the dropdown menu. Along with the existing in-house Wikipedia search tool. All these search engines are already listed as options in the dropdown menu for the Wikipedia search form at Special:Search. Click the arrow next to "MediaWiki search" to access the dropdown menu. The nonprofit Firefox browser has a such a searchbar at the top of all its browsers. Firefox received 61.5 million dollars in search royalties in 2006. See Mozilla Foundation#Financing. Nearly all of the royalty money came from Google. Many people would choose to do Google-Yahoo-Microsoft-Amazon-Ebay-Flickr-etc searches via a Wikipedia searchbar over using the Firefox search form. This is because many people want some search royalties to go to the Wikimedia Foundation, too. In the Firefox browser one can add even more dropdown menu options. For example; options to use the search tools at Technorati, IMDb, Live Search, del.icio.us, Merriam-Webster dictionary, Yahoo Answers, Creative Commons, Answers.com, etc.. Any or all of the search engines can be removed by the user. It is all done via "Manage Search Engines" in the dropdown menu. People love good searchbars. If there were more search options in the Wikipedia searchbar, then the open-source search tool would be improved by the competition. Especially if a "search wikipedia" option button were added next to the searchbar. Then for searches of Wikipedia the Google and Yahoo search tools would compete directly with the existing open-source tool. Many people currently search Wikipedia by using the "Search only on the current Web site" button on the secondary Google Toolbar installed on their browsers. Or they use this search bookmark below, and then add search terms: The {{Google custom}} template (and its variants, such as {{Google wikipedia}}), provide a functionally similar search link to a cleaner search form; growing numbers of Wikipedia users are adding such links to their user pages, or setting up custom Google searches on subpage trees within Wikipedia (such as a search on the Help desk archive pages). In the Firefox browser a shortcut keyword such as "w" can be set up for the URL below. Then type "w <search terms>" in the address bar of Firefox to search Wikipedia for information.
In 2006 the Mozilla Foundation received US$66.8 million in revenues, of which 61.5 million is attributed to "search royalties".[11] The Mozilla foundation has an ongoing deal with Google to make Google search the default in the Firefox browser searchbar. A Firefox-themed Google search site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006 but was renewed for two years and expires in November 2008. Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract." This equates to approximately US$56.8 million.[11] [edit] Possible uses for additional incomeThere are many existing projects, and many proposed projects, that need money, servers, and staff. See: meta:Category:Proposed projects and meta:Proposals for new projects. There is a basic need to pay more developers to fix the 4000+ bugs listed in the Bugzilla Weekly Reports. This is an example of a basic need. Secondary goals may be unrealistic until basic needs are met. Such as expanding bandwidth, users, servers, and maintenance staff worldwide. Donations may never be enough to cover these currently unmet basic needs. Many users want faster access, and more servers in their countries, or closer to their countries. The additional income could be used for countless things to grow the project and spread knowledge. Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the web. Tens of millions of dollars could be generated from search tool revenues, or from even a few users allowing ads. Hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars yearly, could be raised if many users allowed ads. With that money, the Wikimedia Foundation could increase site speed, lessen downtime, increase server capacity, hire a larger staff, and improve various other Wikimedia projects such as Wiktionary and Wikinews. Additional money and registered users would help in more rapidly ramping up additional projects.
[edit] StatusThere are currently no plans for advertising on Wikipedia. The current standpoint is that the Wikimedia Foundation should not carry advertisements. On the other hand, there is some interest in that Wikimedia itself will run advertisements, in order to increase traffic to Wikimedia Foundation fundraising and donations pages, under the assumption that increased traffic will lead to increased donations (see meta:Advertising proposal for more info). A relevant comment from Jimmy Wales on his talk page is dated March 7, 2008, and here is the diff link to it. It needs to be read in context. The link to the relevant talk section is User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 35#Wikipedia:Advertisements This topic has been raised again in the Strategy disucssion, Sept 2009. See strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funding_Ideas and strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Users_Can_Choose_to_Take_Advertising [edit] UserboxesThere are userboxes for those users who support/oppose the use of advertisements on Wikipedia: The number of users transcluding any of the user boxes is not an accurate representation of the viewpoints of current Wikipedia users and readers. There has been very little discussion of optional ads or search income in the wider Wikipedia community. There was a very loud community-wide discussion concerning mandatory ads back around 2001. No community-wide discussion or representative poll has ever been taken concerning optional ads or search income. [edit] References
[edit] See also
[edit] Wikipedia history
[edit] External links
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