Wikipedia contributor and content rich but still cash poor |
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It’s time for the Wikipedia to just give up their fatalistic ideals and start running ads. Obviously the charity model isn’t working for them and they need to become a real business instead of donationware.
Via Phillipe from the LIFT conference:
“At this point, Wikipedia has the financial resources to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear”. The warning by Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The Wikipedia bandwidth bill must be enormous, but with all those golden top Google listings they could spin nearly instant profitability out of that.
I probably shouldn’t get started on Wikipedia. I’m still annoyed at the Wikipedia over adding NOFOLLOW to all their outgoing links and voting with my feet.
I’m not taking the route like Sterling and others are by adding a Wordpress plugin to add nofollow to all past and future Wikipedia links, although that’s one good way to show your disapproval. Instead I’m going to go out of my way not to link or even visit Wikipedia for anything. When I see them as the top search result I move down the list. Whenever I want to reference something from an encyclopedia I’m using Encyclopedia Britannica instead. Note to Jimmy Wales: they have ads. They are a business. It’s time for the Wikipedia to become the same. They can still be a non-profit with ads and donate the excess to worthy charities or whatever.
Hat tip to Scoble who is complaining again about link fairness. His target this time isn’t Engadget, it’s Techmeme, where he has enjoyed a disproportionate amount of linklove historically. Watching Scoble complain about link equity, especially involving Techmeme, is like watching a millionaire complain about not having money.
In Scoble’s defense he isn’t complaining about somebody not linking to him this time he’s sticking up for somebody else (Phillipe, also linked in this post) which is a noble cause. Before I finished writing this post he wrote in his comments (look, 2 links for you, Robert):
Please point it out when you see [Techmeme listing me prominently instead of the original source] again. I don’t want top billing on TechMeme if I didn’t earn it and I’d like to help Gabe improve his algorithms to bring his readers the best news, not the most popular news.
There you go fellow Techmeme readers, keep your eyes peeled.
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You can get into britannica.com for free with a netpass from: http://news.congoo.com
It also gets you into wall street journal, mornignstar and those other subscription sites for free. Andrew Tobias blogged this last week, I thought this was a good tip.
Comment by Ron David — February 10, 2007 @ 3:37 pm PST
I wasn’t aware that you needed a subscription to view Britannica content, Ron. I’ve started linking to their entries already. Am I missing something? (heading back to Britannica to look closer)
Comment by TDavid — February 10, 2007 @ 4:30 pm PST
Yeah, I guess they do have a subscription deal but what I’ve been doing is a search for keyword in google and adding “britannica” to get their concise page like this one on snlugs mentioned in a recent Hmmcast:
http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9378885/slug
Comment by TDavid — February 10, 2007 @ 4:33 pm PST
I got your email…thanks. For many things, the consice page works great but if you are researching health or more complex issues, you only get a preview page like this would a subsctipion: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9001564/diabetes-insipidus
That netpass somehow gets you the full artcile when you go to that same link. Same think on Wall Street Journal etc…anyway best Regards.
Comment by Ron David — February 10, 2007 @ 6:17 pm PST
[…] No, Wikipedia should not start operating as a real business. As an organization founded, built, and sustained on principles set outside of business values, Wikipedia needs to embrace profit in such a way that it can further grow and develop those principles. […]
Pingback by What to do With Wikipedia (or, There’s Nothing Wrong With Profit) at Disruptive Thoughts — February 11, 2007 @ 12:36 am PST
Britannica is a subscription site, but they have a feature that allows anyone full access to any article, if you put a link to that article (http://www.britannica.com/webmaster). Of course the Concise articles are totally free, but the full EB has many more articles, and they are much deeper.
Comment by Kunal sen — February 11, 2007 @ 4:00 am PST
Good tip, Kunal sen, thanks
Comment by TDavid — February 11, 2007 @ 4:28 am PST
[…] TDavid shares the general contempt for Wikipedia’s Google-juice shutoff, but rather than responding in kind he’s decided to link to Brittanica instead. An interesting choice — I’d bet that they have more reliable content, but not nearly as much — especially on geek topics. Try, for example, a search for rad50 on each. […]
Pingback by Chipping the web - Joltin’ Joe -- Chip’s Quips — February 12, 2007 @ 12:50 pm PST
[…] an example NOFOLLOW link to Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia chose to add NOFOLLOW to all external links from their service, I’d encourage other bloggers to add NOFOLLOW to any Wikipedia link, if […]
Pingback by How to highlight links marked NOFOLLOW using Firefox » Make You Go Hmm — August 16, 2007 @ 10:11 am PST
[…] you bet I added rel=nofollow to that link, touche for Wikipedia that adds rel=NOFOLLOW to all links on their site. The don’t think it’s important enough to help the search engines see the […]
Pingback by When complaining about internal links don’t forget Wikipedia » Make You Go Hmm — October 20, 2007 @ 5:30 am PST
I think it would be terrible for Wikipedia to start running ads, but I guess I should be donating to them if I would like it to continue. You can always block the ads anyway.
Comment by Dave Toys — May 4, 2008 @ 11:03 am PST
Its kind of funny listening to someone arguing that since Wikipedia is not selling ads you won’t support them. On the other hand I see the point in not supporting idiots who can’t figure out how to fund their site while the answer is so obvious.
Comment by Tim J — July 18, 2008 @ 2:45 pm PST