[CharlieA]

"We don’t run ads because doing so would sacrifice our independence. The site is not and should never be a propaganda tool."

I really don't understand wikipedia's continued hesitation to accept advertising--nor the argument that it would sacrifice their independence--anyone can edit it already, so I question whether sponsorship needs to have any impact on article content whatsoever.

What's the problem with having a banner at the top saying "Wikipedia is brought to you today by McDonalds..." just something small, as a way of saying that they care about free access to knowledge too.

[duopixel]

Advertising not only influences content, it influences the perception of content. If you see a "Wikipedia is brought to you today by McDonalds..." banner and then read the entry on McDonalds, a presumably intelligent reader without extensive knowledge of the inner workings of Wikipedia might wonder if there's some kind of editorial influence on the content.

[jpdoctor]

> I really don't understand wikipedia's continued hesitation to accept advertising

Try to think of an example where editorial maintained independence from the sales department.

My favorite example from dead-tree newspapers: For all the noise they make about the sacredness of editorial, I don't think it was a coincidence that the number of articles about the bubble in real estate were inversely proportional to RE advertising dollars.

[gujk]

Do you have any research about this inverse proportion? The bubble was in the news the whole time. People just didn't care. http://seattlebubble.com is entirely funded by real estate advertising.

[jpdoctor]

> The bubble was in the news the whole time.

Not from 2002-2005. By that point, it had already surpassed bubble prices of 1989 in real dollars.

[jonhendry]

They could probably get a small income by taking personal message ads, for example, a small blurb in honor of someone's late father or congratulating a friend on the birth of a child.

Charge, say, $50 or $100 to reduce nuisance ads and pranks. Careful design of a form for purchasing these ads, rather than using freeform text, would help cut down on the potential for controversy over content.

These would be non-commercial, so that wouldn't be an issue. They'd be small, so any one ad buyer would be unlikely to wield much influence. Most ads would have little or nothing to do with any content in Wikipedia, so skewing of related pages shouldn't be an issue.

[FaceKicker]

I don't really understand this idea. If you want a reasonable probability of your friend/family stumbling upon your ad, you'd have to be running it for probably about 10% of pageviews. In which case you'd only be running 10 at a time, charging $50 or $100 per...what? Week? That would be < $52,000 per year of income (compare to their 2011-2012 total budget of $28.3 million). Doesn't even seem worth it for that insignificant of a revenue stream.

[jonhendry]

No, you'd pay $100, and get it displayed for a day, on, say, the front page of Wikipedia. If you're the only person who bought an ad for that day, you show up for every visitor. If more than one person bought an ad for that day, the ads are rotated. I suppose this could be done for each language.

Perhaps ads could be sold for a day on a specified Wikipedia entry, which would expand the possibility of sales, but also increases the possibility for controversy. (Imagine someone buying a birthday message for Lee Harvey Oswald to be posted on the John F. Kennedy article, or a message honoring Himmler on the Judaism page.)

No guarantee of number of page views or impressions. This wouldn't be a money-maximizing advertising scheme, so regular ad-marketing measures would be irrelevant. Avoiding such things would also keep it informal, which might cut down on "OMG Wikipedia sold out and went corporate!" angst.

It'd just be an additional source of revenue that would avoid entanglement and influence issues. If it was popular, Wikipedia could tune it to raise revenue.

[devs1010]

so, this is just hypothetical, but lets say McDonald's ends up having some major scandal (say, like Enron, but not so bad that they go out of business), this scandal ends up being well known and there's a Wikipedia article written about it, as there is for the Enron scandal (Google "Enron Scandal wiki" to check for yourself). So, don't you think maybe McDonald's would put a little pressure on Wikipedia to censor or remove this page? I think its naive to think not, and the result would be censorship and suppression of information that would be available if Wikipedia was standing on its own and not propped up by this specific company in question.

[gojomo]

I don't think the presence of advertising makes Wikipedia any more subject to the influence of commercial institutions.

How exactly do you 'put a little pressure on Wikipedia' as an advertiser? It's a hive of independent contributors who, overwhelmingly, draw no money from the Foundation. Very few care at all about advertiser-friendliness.

Any communication to any particular editor suggesting warmer-treatment-for-money risks a big backlash, and provides little assurance of warmer coverage.

On the other hand, even without advertising, big interests can and do try to massage their Wikipedia entries indirectly. If they have a legal case against content, they can and do threaten legal action – again, no advertising link required.

There may be good reasons for excluding advertising. Since an important core of contributors hate the idea advertising, simply keeping them happy may be a good enough reason, and as long as annual donation drives generate plenty of money, why not?

But I don't see where advertising would add new motivations or mechanisms for commercial entities to meddle in article content, especially if proper care were taken to separate and automate ad functions.

[devs1010]

I've worked for companies where one client has an inordinate amount of influence over the company, why... because they are the biggest client, they represent a significant percentage of the company's revenue. Market forces inevitably can create situations where a particular client is "really good" for a company, they may pay more than other companies would, etc and, if this client is lost (or even just reduces the business they give the company) serious consequences can result including laying people off, etc. Of course Wikipedia can avoid this, at least initially, by not relying on one company, going through an ad-broker, etc but its possible that at some point a situation can arise where they are faced with a dilemma (and this would probably be years into the future after an infusion of money has inevitably re-shaped the organization to some degree) where a decision has to be made to either lose a client (advertising customer) or bend to pressure from them to censor or delete something... I'm just speculating here but past experiences of mine lead me to believe something like this could occur as companies bend to pressure from their clients all the time.

[gojomo]

Except: editing is done by an unruly hive. There is no organizational nexus on which to place "comply or we'll withdraw our advertising" pressure. And, any attempt to apply such pressure would quickly trigger its own self-nullification via editor outrage (as with the 'Streisand Effect').

In order for an advertiser to have sinister influence, you'd need to assume a bunch of other changes which weaken Wikipedia's resilience. Advertising could be implemented in a way that helps prevent such weakening-changes from happening. And if any org could pull that off, Wikipedia could.

That said, I still understand why, given their community's biases and their success with donation-drives so far, they have not seriously considered ads in many years. Don't mess with what works is usually a good principle.

[danssig]

Your posts on the subject seem far and away too utopian when we're talking about wikipedia. They've already had a lot of scandals about censorship/bias/etc. now. That would only get worse when money was on the line.

[gojomo]

How does advertising make it worse? Can't companies already hire PR firms and other editors to slyly improve their coverage? Isn't that cheaper and less subject to backlash than trying to communicate conditional advertising budgets?

[dodo53]

But wikipedia have previously frozen controversial pages that are having edit wars. They could choose the last revision that is reasonable favourable to advertiser and then freeze the page

[devs1010]

exactly. This would be all too easy for someone in their organization to do to keep a favorable relationship with a client.

[tingletech]

With all the dollars at play, I reckon there could be unforeseen ways to game the system. Maybe some "Enron" type will scrutinize every wikipedia bureaucratic procedure and term and condition of how the ad sales works and run some arbitarge keyword games that would distort the content in an ultimately un-usefull-to-the-user but profitable-for-the-gamer way.

I also worry about the increased tracking on politically sensitive pages or controversial topics.

[mseebach]

Let's say I donate money to Wikipedia, and then I end up having some major scandal that has a Wikipedia article written about it. So, I put some pressure on Wikipedia to censor or remove that page. Why is everyone so sure that Wikipedia is so much better equipped for resisting pressure from individuals than from businesses - especially considering that individuals are much better suited for crafting personal relations than a corporation would be, and the damage to a person is much easier to empathise with than damage to a corporation.

Wikipedias force in this regard is that their operating budget is small potatoes: they can easily afford to shun any one donor - commercial or personal.

[sixtofour]

The problem is perception. With ads, there is the possibility of influence, so there is also the possibility that readers would trust wikipedia less.

Although I would prefer that they take ads rather than disappear.

[namdnay]

The Foundation thought about this, and even did it during the fundraising drives (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Fundraising...). The most (in)famous example was Virgin Unite.

[6ren]

Chomsky argued that media cannot help but be influenced by the source of their bread and butter. He who pays the piper calls the tune. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

Note that Brandon used the term propaganda. Certainly, Wikipedia would be extremely effective as a propaganda tool.

[jlarocco]

I mostly agree.

On the other hand, I would block any ad they posted, so I'm not sure how much my opinion should count.

[protomyth]

Honest question, how would you have them get paid for your use of their service?

[jlarocco]

I use Wikipedia enough that I'd probably pay for it if they put up some kind of "pay wall".

To be honest, though, it's not my problem.

[mrsteveman1]

Someone (doctors, lawyers, corporations, someone) with a lot of money is willing to fork it over to Wikipedia for something that isn't available right now, and they should probably figure out what that something is.

Begging all the time is a bit silly for the 5th largest site on the internet.

[lukeschlather]

NPR is IMHO the best radio station in the USA, and that's how they get their funding.

If anything I think it may be the other way around - advertising is a stupid way for organizations that need to be unbiased to get their money, begging is the only way to get money with integrity for that sort of organization.