

Ask HN: What do you think of Wikipedia's fund raising? - jagira

People have contributed more content to Wikipedia than any other site in this world. They should find a way to monetize it.<p>Also, 14 million dollars is too much. They should have some transparency.<p><i></i><i>I am fine with Google Chrome's, Microsoft Phone 7's or Toyota Prius's banner ads on Wikipedia. They will at least look better than their current begging banners.<p>Google counts its Google Chrome banners as ads and the same applies to wikipedia. Jimmy Wales' statement of having no banner ads is a lie.</i><i></i>
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_delirium
I have mixed feelings about it. It does take some money to run the site, but
there are some _very_ ambitious folks there who want to make it more of a big-
time NGO, so much of the fundraising is not really aimed at servers+code, but
at some of the big-dream initiatives, like fixing education in Africa or
something. There are also increasing numbers of "overhead" employees: full-
time donor-relations and PR/marketing/outreach folks (not just one or two of
them, but more like 10-15). They have picked up technical hiring, though; for
a while, _all_ the new hires were of the other sort.

I used to be really involved in Wikimedia meta-stuff from 2003-2006 or so,
until more of that started happening. I personally favor a grassroots-
community plus minimal legal infrastruture model, like Debian has with its
"parent" foundation Software in the Public Interest, which basically pays the
bills and otherwise mostly stays out of the way. Other people, especially
those with previous experience in the "nonprofit sector", have in mind a much
more professionalized nonprofit organization, along the lines of the Sierra
Club or one of the big NGOs. I'm skeptical of those organizations, especially
when it comes to community-driven initiatives, though I think they do
sometimes do good work. But imagine a Debian where the Release Manager
position was actually a full-time, professional position, hired by SPI. There
are some pros to that (a full-time employee being paid to do the job can
devote more time), but I think it runs a lot of risks as well.

Some of one's views on that might also depends on what you think the scope of
the Wikimedia Foundation should be. I tend to favor a more limited scope,
where they focus on shepherding the _production_ of content (by volunteers),
and then making it available for free under an open-content license. Other
people favor a more comprehensive mission of being a content
producer+publisher+distributor. There is much more that can be done with the
content once it exists, in terms of repackaging, distributing it to various
parts of the world, remixing it into useful subsets, producing new interfaces
to it, etc.

But I'd rather see third parties do that: part of the whole point of making
something open content is that anyone can do those things, not only the
Wikimedia Foundation, and you don't even need its permission to do them
(though friendly coordination is always good). I think the whole ecosystem
would be healthier if there were more interesting things being done with the
Wikipedia content by organizations and people _other_ than the Wikimedia
Foundation. Instead of doing those things itself, I'd rather it focused on
figuring out why not that many third parties are doing interesting things with
the content (one potential point of improvement: what kinds of database dumps
Wikimedia provides, and how regularly it provides them).

~~~
jagira
I am sure IBM will pay couple of millions every year for that kind of data.

Google can also pay for it, they might use for Google translate. Wikipedia
already has near similar articles in major languages. Google can fight a war
for this much of user translated/verified content.

------
madhouse
First of all, 14 million isn't all that much. Consider the traffic Wikipedia
serves, the vast amount of content it is storing, that's not going to be
cheap.

Second, I'd rather have Jimmy Wales' face staring at me once a year, than
random ads that are far trickier to filter out.

Therefore, I donated, and will do so again, if I can afford it. Wikipedia is a
great service, the least I can do is to help them with a little donation. And
while the begging banner got old very fast, it's still miles better than the
alternatives.

~~~
jagira
Even I have donated!!!

Some people can't donate but most have them have contributed in form of
content. Wikipedia can find a way to monetize it. Red Hat is doing it, Ubuntu
is doing it, Mozilla is doing it.

Maybe they can publish a book, journal or something. Also, they can show ads
to registered people who have no issues with ads. Google Chrome's or
Microsoft's banners are not that vivid and we can deal with it. I still visit
wired, lifehacker, engadget despite the ads. [Again this could be kept
optional]

 __* Just my two cents :-D

------
Skalman
14 million dollars is _not_ very much, as it's one of the largest websites
around. Most large websites are backed by companies that make a lot of money
and can easily have a huge staff improving the technology; this is not really
the case with the Wikimedia Foundation. Of course they could get better at
transparency, but you have some details here:
[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:2010-11_Wikimedia_F...](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:2010-11_Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan_FINAL_FOR_WEBSITE.pdf)
[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2010-2011_Annual_Plan_Qu...](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2010-2011_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Answers)

If you're annoyed by the ads you can always remove them (for that session, not
permanently). I fully agree that they are in fact ads, contrary to Wales'
statement. Within the Wikimedia community there is a (somewhat strong)
consensus that not having ads by 3rd parties is necessary to remain
indepenedent - there is a fear that such 3rd parties might affect the content
in a biased way.

~~~
jagira
They could raise some corporate/government grants. Maybe partner with schools,
universities and libraries.

Again showing ads to people who are fine with it is better than showing their
own ads, which are quite annoying!!!

------
dools
I usually just give them some money. I love Wikipedia and I give them $20 a
year or something. I'd much rather see a banner once per year asking for money
than crazy CPU hogging flash pop-up banners all year round like a newspaper
outlet.

