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Craigslist does have 'ads', of a sort: all postings in certain categories, in certain markets, require a posting fee. I think Craiglist, while not a non-profit, is actually a very good model for the path Wikipedia chose not to take. That is, don't just accept the default ad-inserts, but figure out a unique way to charge for promotional inserts that is complementary to your main model. (The fees actually make Craigslist better, by filtering the volume/quality of posts in certain economically-valuable categories.) Mozilla, a non-profit, is another example. The search-engine-default that they sell is now making them $300 million a year, but at negligible cost to their users (compared to the alternative of giving that placement away, via some hypothetical revenue-oblivious process of evaluation or install-time-choice). Once upon a time, Wikipedia could have kicked off an effort to find a promotional-placement model that was unique to Wikipedia, and considerate of concerns about the influences of commerce and advertising budgets. I think such an effort would have yielded interesting and beneficial results: if any organization had a chance to find a way to balance concerns and insulate editorial processes, Wikipedia had a chance. And today they might be a $billion-a-year budget nonprofit instead of a $40million-a-year budget nonprofit. (That would introduce plenty of other existential risks and opportunities different from their current focus.) But, they went another way, based on some really strong preferences from a large and important segment of the stakeholders. And, that path has still worked very well for Wikipedia. The idea that "no advertising" is a necessary part of the recipe is now core doctrine, and can't easily be reevaluated. It would take a major crisis or external challenge to change; in the meantime these discussions are just interesting thought experiments. |