‘Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!’ This is the only proclamation placed by Wikipedia on its home page. No ads at all. While debates have caught the wind number of times on the issue of advertising on Wikipedia in the past, the notable issue is once again in the limelight owing to the celebrated entrepreneur Jason Calcanics’s Wikipedia advertising proposal.
Indubitably, Calcanics has got the brain of an intellectual capitalist and he can bring an array of means that could make Wikipedia earn a huge sum of money. I completely agree with Jason’s one viewpoint that if Jimbo doesn’t wish to place the leaderboard on the site for personal profits, the earned revenue will be more than enough to make this world a better place by making donations for the welfare of unprivileged global community.
But, the very first question that strikes my mind is that ‘Could it be like that a person who is running Wikipedia from such a long time wouldn’t have thought of this?’ Fine, let us assume Wikipedia accepts the proposal of placing the leaderboards (And I don’t think that is ever going to happen), what will be the immediate outcome of the move? What about the 500 good fellows who made the Wikipedia a sensation?
Most of them would leave the Wikipedia.org at once and would become a part of other challenging forks. Ad free Wikipedia is one of the main reasons why the readers think of it as a reliable source. Slapping a ‘Hosted by AOL’ doesn’t make any sense to me when I don’t find Wikipedia falling short of anything in terms of revenue and server.
All folks who love to see Wikipedia running smoothly without any ‘Hosted by AOL‘ banners, should really dig the cool man Jimbo’s attitude. The fact that AOL is really capable or not to handle the ads on the world’s largest encyclopedia is a different question and for the time being we’d leave it on Jason to ponder on a bit more. And, please some go and tell Calcanics to keep aside his proposals. Why doesn’t he concentrate on Netscapedia rather?
Comments
Jimbo too must have realized this, but certainly is not here to play games. As far as making money for ‘charity’ is concerned, Wikipedia, which in itself is a phenomenon, can draw enormous amounts in donations for that too. Inclusion of ads would certainly degrade Wikipedia’s objectivity.
Naveen:
”And, please some go and tell Calcanics to keep aside his proposals. Why doesn’t he concentrate on Netscapedia rather?”
My thoughts actually. Calacanis, notwithstanding his contribution to the Web 2.0 thingy is an insufferable snob.
As far as monetizing wikipedia is concerned, one shouldn’t forget that the charm lies in its non-commercial and highly democratized model. The ’thinkers’ like Calacanis should know better, what do you say?