
Sergey Brin gives $500,000 to help Wikipedia - recusancy
http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/18/brin-wikipedia-grant/
======
nostromo
I personally would love to see Wikipedia sell ads. Nothing crazy, just one
subtle and tasteful text ad per page, sold by auction. (The ads would be much
smaller and more relevant than "a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy
Wales".)

The revenue could allow Wikipedia to take on ambitious projects to further its
mission statement, similar to the Mozilla Foundation or NPR.

Unlike most publishers, Wikipedia doesn't need to worry about maintaining a
firewall between sales and editorial -- so I think it's a natural fit.

~~~
nupark2
As someone who very much values the clarity of content without the insidious
distraction of advertisements, I would not like to see Wikipedia sell ads.

I would rather that they either continue to work through donations, or figure
out how to sell their content directly.

Ultimately, I think the use of advertising as a proxy mechanism for charging
customers is an inefficient historical fall-out of the constraints of
magazines, television, and the web. Any use of advertisement to fund modern
digital distribution is indicative of one of two things:

\- A failure find a less round-about, more efficient, and more profitable
mechanism for _directly_ charging consumers for what they consume

OR

\- A lack of respect for the customer and an attempt to maximize profit at the
expense of their enjoyment of your product. I do not subscribe to Hulu for
this reason.

~~~
maximusprime
You're an outlier. Most people don't mind ads.

~~~
Goladus
The fate of MySpace suggests otherwise. The existence of radio stations
exuberantly announcing "commercial free this hour!" suggests otherwise. The
prevalence of adblock suggests otherwise.

Ads are inherently disruptive, most people DO mind them under many
circumstances. And sometimes, even people who wouldn't mind them still have
their experience disrupted by their presence. The other day I was trying to
read an article, and some programming glitch caused a nearby ad to expand over
the article text and I wasn't able to get rid of it without reloading the
entire page. It's true there is some threshold of advertising under which
people genuinely appreciate and show interest in the content. That threshold
is certainly lower than you think.

Most people hate ads, they're merely willing to put up with them in exchange
for the content. The question isn't whether someone who minds ads is an
"outlier" or not, the question is how many "outliers" are there. My guess: you
don't actually know the answer to that.

~~~
EricBurnett
> The fate of MySpace suggests otherwise. The existence of radio stations
> exuberantly announcing "commercial free this hour!" suggests otherwise. The
> prevalence of adblock suggests otherwise.

MySpace failed because a better competitor came along. It had a history of
predators, spammers, and viruses, and was hard to use well. (Did you _see_ the
pages people made?). Ads were one cause among many, and it's doubtful how much
they contributed. For comparison, Facebook has ads, but people aren't flocking
in droves to G+, and I haven't heard the lack of ads cited as the reason for
any of those that are.

Radio stations certainly have ads, and those that claim "x songs without
commercials!" usually put self-advertisements in instead, which they count
separately. It's still advertising, just a different sort. Overall the whole
process is pretty duplicitous (imho).

AdBlock has minimal market share [1], so the prevalence of AdBlock isn't an
argument in your favour.

You may be correct that people hate ads, but the evidence you've given does
not support your conclusion.

[1] first hit guesstimates 2%: [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-
of-Internet-user...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet-
users-that-employ-AdBlock-Plus-or-similar-ad-blocking-plugins)

~~~
nuje
The closest thing to a guess at ad blocking rate at linked page says "I did
some research on this a while back, and discovered that 14% of all visitors to
MediaUK.com used ad-blockers". The only 2% figure there is a guess as what
portion of all web users use Firefox and AdBlock.

~~~
maximusprime
My own measurements put it at <2% (Based on visitors to my website).

~~~
eps
What ads do you have though? Are they from the ad networks? I have for example
Google blocked across the board, but I do let Deck ads to sip through.

~~~
maximusprime
That was a check for google adsense blocking.

------
benatkin
I wonder how many times he saw Jimmy Wales' face at the top of an article.

~~~
0003
It is an effective face... to wit:

>It was an excellent year for the Wikimedia Foundation from a financial
perspective. The 2010-11 plan called for us to increase revenue 28% from
2009-10, to $20.4 million, and to increase spending 124% from 2009-10, to
$20.4 million. In fact, we significantly over-achieved from a revenue
perspective, and we also under spent, resulting in a larger reserve than
planned. We closed the year with a reserve of $12 million, up from $7 million
the prior year. This over-achievement is primarily due to the success of the
2010 WMF fundraiser. In 2010-11, the Wikimedia Foundation refocused from a
mixed revenue model to a strong primary focus on the annual campaign: this
resulted in our shortest and most successful campaign to date, raising $15
million (up 72% from 2009's $8.7 million) in 50 days (25% fewer than 2009's 67
days). If you include the $6.5 million received by 12 chapters which acted as
payment processors in 2010, the total raised by the movement in the 2010
campaign was $21.5 million.[1]

[1][http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/7/72/Audit_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/7/72/Audit_FAQ_2011_Final.pdf)

~~~
benatkin
Indeed. I think he looks kind of like Larry Ellison but I'm not great at
recognizing faces and I haven't put them side-by-side yet.

------
benwerd
Serious question: is Sergey Brin Google's version of Steve Wozniak? He
certainly seems to be chasing the less-commercial, more-interesting ideas.

~~~
kmt
No. Beyond technical stuff and Apple, Wozniak is a simple man with a good
heart but still a rather simple man who apparently doesn't appreciate money
all that much. Beyond math, science and Google, Brin is an idealist with grand
ideas about the world. Expect much more from him in the future since he does
indeed have a lot of money, understands money's potential very well and is
careful about investing in anything now knowing that later he'll be even more
mature and will make much wiser investments.

~~~
eavc
Sounds like a description of Gates.

~~~
mayanksinghal
I am not so sure about that. MS has had significant contributions in research
that is not directly relevant to Microsoft's current revenue streams - but I
haven't heard if Gates was directly involved in any of them. Brin, on the
other hand, appears to be spearheading that stream of research and
development.

~~~
gxs
Brin and Page have compared themselves to gates and have mentioned they'd like
to follow his example as far as philanthropy goes.

------
djtriptych
As one of the unfortunate who has had to attempt to hack at mediawiki... I
hope some of that cash goes towards improving their code base. It's gotta be
costing them in maintenance (to say nothing of the ability to add new
features).

~~~
a3_nm
Mediawiki is indeed a very poor substitute for a VCS, and things could
probably be improved. For example, there once was a project to store Wikipedia
articles using git as a backend:
<[https://github.com/scy/levitation>](https://github.com/scy/levitation>).

------
scottkrager
The hundreds of millions of visitors from Google isn't enough? : )

Just joking, that's a nice donation. My wife was totally freaked out this week
though...she had never seen the donation banner before.

~~~
FooBarWidget
What made her freak out? Just the existence of the banner, or that she didn't
realize Wikipedia needs funding from the public? How did she respond
afterwards?

~~~
sjs
She was probably creeped out by Jimmy's mug staring her down, eerily grinning
at her. "Hi there. I'm watching you."

~~~
ErrantX
Because of the positioning it also looks like article titles are captions to
the image... which has led to "much amusement" in certain circles.

~~~
cobrausn
Yes. Yes it has.

<http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales>

Note: Though I would normally not post these kinds of links, it's somewhat
relevant to the topic at hand.

~~~
iso8859-1
Funny how you can't post a link to The Oatmeal without a note like that. :)

------
dvdhsu
Sergey's wife, Anne Wojcicki, is mentioned.

This is interesting because Anne's mother, Esther Wojcicki, is on the board of
Creative Commons [1], which is what Wikipedia uses.

\------------------------------

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Wojcicki>

~~~
iso8859-1
It is a very popular license. Content on Wikipedia used to be GFDL-only, but
the CC is obviously better suited. I doubt this connection has anything to do
with the donation.

------
leak
I think Wikipedia should get into printing & selling beautiful books from some
of their content.

Maybe that will be my weekend project!

~~~
allbutlost
Have you seen <http://pediapress.com/>? It seems to do exactly that, although
you need to compile the book yourself.

~~~
leak
Yeh, something similar except beautiful, not just printing the content.
Beautiful cover, font, design, maybe even vintage looking. It might not be
"scalable" tho but I think people would dig it and willing to pay $100 for
something like that. I would buy a vintage looking book about cars.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I'd be interested in _well_ -edited individual books, by someone
knowledgeable in the subject who took care with both the physical
presentation, and ideally some editing of the content, at least to make the
articles flow coherently and not have too much redundancy between chapters
(and make sure total crap sections didn't slip in).

In some ways that's the whole point of it being open-content, that you can
reuse/repackage it in various ways, but there hasn't been a lot of creative
third-party reuse yet.

~~~
ErrantX
I think part of the problem is that WP is still mostly incomplete (which is a
horrifying thought :D).

By which I mean; if you pick a topic to turn into a book your likely to have
articles of a wide range of quality (from featured status, the top, to stub,
the bare minimum).

Couple that with potentially disparate styles of writing and it can become
difficult to stitch several articles into a book form.

Not that people don't do it; the volunteer email support service regularly
gets people complaining about the $50 "text book" they bought of Amazon simply
being Wikipedia articles.

It's always been in the back of my mind to try and do something like it
though; perhaps an "obscure topics" book with some of the more interesting
articles put into it.

------
podperson
Unlike NPR (et al), Wikipedia could actually ask for donations and then not
show the appeals for donations to people who have donated (e.g. by providing
simple logins). Similarly, Wikipedia could show ads or not depending on
whether someone paid a small fee. I wouldn't mind either.

~~~
wmeredith
I would prefer this. I'd gladly pay for a pro account.

------
bborud
It probably went down like this:

Sergey: "hey Jimmy, how much do I have to pay you NOT to see your creepy face
on every wikipedia article?"

Jimmy: "Well...."

~~~
a3_nm
Jimmy: "Just click on the little cross to close the ad."

Seriously, why are so many people complaining about this?

~~~
aw3c2
I don't allow cookies. That way of removing the ad does not work for me.

~~~
jeffdavis
You can enable cookies to get the viewing experience that you prefer.

Or, you can download the content freely and see it any way you prefer.

Those seem like a couple reasonable options, to me.

------
DanBC
Some small areas of Wikipedia are so toxic that no-one would want to have
anything to do with them.

Some areas are probably not suitable for advertising. Would an ad on
"Holocaust" or "Lynchings" really be acceptable?

And so the problem then would be the megabytes of meta "discussion" about why
some page should or shouldn't have ads.

------
ayu
One time I applied for a software engineer position at Wikipedia. The first
phone interview was with a non technical director of people or whatnot, and
after a drawn out conversation of "tell me a time when..." she informed me
there would 2 others to speak with.

Feels like a nonprofit.

------
fsniper
I believe, a joint venture should be formed between Redhat, Canonical, IBM,
Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and Facebook to fund wikipedia and this kinds of
open source and very much needed projects with some of their yearly revenues.
I named those companies because much or they are making money over free and
open source projects. And this kind of venture is a way of showing good will.
This could make wikipedia to survive, build more kinds of projects that could
lead to more innovation and this new created innovation and brain would turn
into profits for this companies. A long shot maybe, but this organisations
contributors would not be harmed.

------
oth3r
No love for Knol? I guess Sergey would like to forget that that venture ever
existed.

~~~
iso8859-1
Why deny the existence of Knol? Google has tons of failed projects. Like many
others, I don't see Knol as a competitor; and I don't think it was even
supposed to be.

------
capex
I wrote about this in my little article a few days ago. Wikipedia needs to
raise money for the next 20 years, not for one year at a time. And then amaze
their visitors with more interactive and engaging stuff when they take the
money matters off their minds. [http://www.adnanymous.com/2011/11/why-jimmy-
wales-wikipedia-...](http://www.adnanymous.com/2011/11/why-jimmy-wales-
wikipedia-collect-donations-every-year/)

~~~
neilk
Hi, I work at the WMF. I'll address your points here.

> Why can’t we have Stypi recording all changes made to Wikipedia articles?

Because Stypi didn't exist until a few months ago?

Ok, more seriously: I and my colleagues have talked to everybody else that
ever did collaborative editing tools. We know the Wave guys, the Etherpad
guys, and others, over the past year. I myself did a little analysis of Stypi
a little while ago to try to learn some things from them.

We are working on this problem. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with
the results shortly. The new editing "surface" is making progress by leaps and
bounds lately.

See <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Future> and others.

There are reasons why we can't just grab anything off the shelf like Etherpad,
Wave, Etherpad-lite, or Stypi. MediaWiki already has a huge infrastructure of
tools behind it and the entire community model is organized around
chronologically ordered single-user discrete taggable edits of a very
specialized format. Wikipedia wouldn't work well without all the bots and
scripts that our community has written, and then we'd have to rewrite all of
_them_ too.

Etherpad has plain text with bold and italic. Stypi has even less, as far as I
know. It is possible to use these editors to create a collaborative way to
edit wikitext (I did an experiment this summer to do just that). But that
doesn't get us any closer to a GUI editor, which most people think is a sine
qua non.

Given the resources we have devoted to this -- basically _some_ of the time of
four or five engineers since March or so -- progress has actually been pretty
good. Anyway, that's a slice of life at the WMF. Just so you know, in my
corner of the world at least, we really are trying to make things awesome and
it isn't costing the world a whole lot.

> Why can’t we create more engaging Wikipedia articles using > something like
> Popcorn.js for videos?

Again it comes down to the wikitext format. We do not have the liberty of
banging out a new JS library and content model and then slowly adding
features.

Because the Foundation is adamant about never deploying any technology that's
not 100% open source, we missed the whole wave of Flash-based video. Only in
the past few years has it become possible to seriously do open source video in
the browser. Michael Dale from Kaltura has written some great HTML5 video
libraries for MediaWiki; watch for them on Wikipedia in the near future. In
the meantime we're also upgrading our APIs and storage infrastructure to
support uploading longer format videos and so on.

This brings us into parity with maybe Youtube circa 2007 or so, with some more
advanced editing and annotating tools due to the wiki-nature of everything we
do. But better late than never.

------
hmottestad
That is a very nice thing he did. Thank you Sergey Brin.

------
erichocean
Wealthy people giving money to Wikipedia is a great idea; I wish more would do
it.

------
dextorious
"Sergey Brin gives $500,000 to help Wikipedia"

Anything to keep Jimmy Wales off of my screen is good.

------
maximusprime
wikipedia only needs "help" because it spends so much money.

~~~
stdgy
I'm not sure how that's relevant. Every other organization operates the same
way.

~~~
maximusprime
Look at their budget. They spend shedloads. On things they don't need.

If wikipedia wanted to survive, it'd trim back it's massive spending.

~~~
megablast
For example? I guess they could save a lot by cutting out hosting.

~~~
maximusprime
Last time I looked, only a tiny % of their expenses were on hosting. The vast
majority was on research,salaries, business crap, idk what else.

Take a look.

------
napierzaza
And he wants to make sure everyone knows about it.

~~~
pjscott
The desire for recognition is a major driver of philanthropy. Let's not attack
the reason for Wikipedia getting half a million dollars.

------
rosshere
rad

------
hello-trolls
muscle

------
st3fan
Well that is very nice of him.

------
grigy
I think true donation should be anonymous, otherwise it becomes a promotion.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
As long as you realize that it would severely reduce the amount of money
donated to non-profits.

------
ckenst
Good for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia should consider experimenting with different business models to
generate money. Mozilla makes most of it's money from Google. By placing
Google.com as their start page, they split the revenue generated from ad
clicks - it's around 80% of their revenue (I looked at their financial
statements long ago but can't remember specifics).

$500k to Sergey Brin is pocket change.

------
zeruch
Basically he paid to stop seeing Jimmy's dessicated, mildly derpish face page
after page after page...

------
ajross
_[EDIT: could those downvoting this please reply and tell me why? I wouldn't
have thought this would be controversial, but I'm looking at this post sitting
at -4 just minutes after posting and am genuinely confused as to what the
issue is.]_

Hrm. Obviously this is a good thing, but...

Wikipedia tells me that Brin's net worth is $16.7B. Very roughly, my "net
worth" (in the sense of assets required to duplicate my income) is $2M. So
that's the equivalent of my dropping $59 on them.

Obviously all gifts are good (as long as you, like me, value wikipedia). And
this is a big one. But it hardly qualifies as earth-shaking philanthropy. It's
the gift amount Brin would be expected to give, I'd say. Obviously there's a
lot of apples and oranges here; both of the numbers above represent "tied
down" assets and not disposable cash, etc...

But shouldn't the extremely wealthy be held to _higher_ standards about what
they're expected to do with their charity? Why must it be news when someone
like Brin does the equivalent of clicking on "Donate via PayPal".

I guess one good thing came of this though: lest I feel like a hypocrite, I
went to Wikipedia and clicked on "Donate $100". So that makes me a better
person than Brin, I guess?

~~~
tycho77
Okay. I'll try and explain why you're being downvoted.

Every time someone wealthy donates a whole lot of money to a philanthropic
cause, people like you pop up in the comment section. "Oh it doesn't matter,
it's only X% of his net worth, that's the same as me only donating Y".
Seriously, you followed this template almost to the letter.

First, charity isn't a competition over who can sacrifice the most. At the end
of the day, that $500,000 helps Wikipedia five thousand times more than your
$100. More, probably, because his donation raises the profile and will
convince others to donate. Second, people aren't "expected" to give anything,
regardless of how much money they have.

I think the thing that annoys me the most is how obvious it is you came in
here with preconceived anti-rich notions and then did mental gymnastics to
convince yourself that you're "a better person" than this incredibly generous
man. If you want to spread that kind of negativity around, go back to
Slashdot.

I'm sure someone can articulate this better than I can, but seriously. These
sorts of posts just piss me off.

~~~
lhnn
>Charity isn't a competition

Ask a Christian that. A rich man giving a lot doesn't mean anything if it
isn't a sacrifice. Just like doing good things for the humanly recognition
isn't the way to give. So says Matthew).

Just sayin'.

~~~
lhnn
Point to the part where I'm wrong.

~~~
methane
Religion is true

