Comments on: I support advertising on Wikipedia

By: Wikipedia fundraising: advertising is cool | Commercial Open Source Software

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:50:26 +0000

[...] Wikimedia Foundation might do lots of good things and Slashdot readers objections to ads doesn’t sound good to me [...]

By: x

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:40:00 +0000

wikipedia will have ads sooner or later. when it will be too damn late to take them down:)

By: Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia interviewed by BBC HardTalk | Midas Oracle .ORG

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia interviewed by BBC HardTalk | Midas Oracle .ORG — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 23:10:33 +0000

[...] question that will be of interest only to mister Mike Linksvayer. How Wikipedia manages to harness the wisdom of crowds is much more [...]

By: Mike Linksvayer » Wikimedia advertising (soft) drive

Mike Linksvayer » Wikimedia advertising (soft) drive — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 04:20:05 +0000

[...] I support advertising on Wikipedia [...]

By: Your pal Johnny

Your pal Johnny — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:46:49 +0000

Sebastian Says:
I do not support advertising on wikipedia. Because then you are making money on information that isn’t yours (e.g. the users)

Sebastian, you’re a little shaky on the whole “public domain” thing, aren’t you? Some things don’t have owners.

But Chris is right that this decision should be made by the community. Speaking for myself, I support having text ads on Wikipedia.

By: Hinotori

Hinotori — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:38:30 +0000

Your take on this, while well-written and understandable, drastically oversimplifies the issue. Personally, I don’t think there will be any problem -initially-, as you say, but I believe there is a potential slippery slope to a future Wikipedia that is propped up more through commercial advertising than from the very users who keep it alive through effort and donations. If this should happen, those advertisers would find themselves with the ability to apply pressure via the purse strings. While it would be nice to envision a Wikipedia that would never buckle to such pressure and that would always be self-sufficient enough to ignore such threats, that future IS possible.

Most importantly, however, you show complete naivete in “completely discounting” the users who are paranoid about advertising. Even if you were right in every way about everything else, credibility is even more important than currency. What good is an encyclopedia if people don’t TRUST it? It doesn’t matter if that trust or mistrust is misplaced. If people don’t trust the project, it is doomed, end of story.

By: Wikipedia nofollow Plugin for WordPress » 世論 What Japan Thinks - Japanese Opinion Polls and Market Research Translated into English

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:27:05 +0000

[...] Wikipedia, search engines will raise Wikipedia even higher in the ratings. With the rumours that Wikipedia may soon start accepting advertisements, one could even conclude that this not much more than an attempt to boost their revenue. Read more [...]

By: Blueskyboris

Blueskyboris — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:29:43 +0000

Two questions should be asked: Why is Wikipedia popular? Who made wikipedia? If advertising threatens either of these it should not be supported.

By: Mike Linksvayer » Wiki search advertising

Mike Linksvayer » Wiki search advertising — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 01:28:24 +0000

[...] This wouldn’t be worth the hundreds of millions annually that tasteful text ads on articles could be (and the ability to fully fund* the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission), but it would surely obviate the need for begging to cover the costs of running Wikipedia. [...]

By: Mike Linksvayer » Wikipedia advertising redux

Mike Linksvayer » Wikipedia advertising redux — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:43:36 +0000

[...] Many good comments regarding supporting advertising on Wikipedia (or not) here and also on Slashdot and other blogs. I may further characterize and respond to these in aggregate (see the update to my first post for some of this). For now I want to call out or respond to a few particularly worthy comments and criticisms. [...]