Can you imagine a Wikipedia with advertising?

[Poetlister]

This is the time of year that the WikiMedia Foundation, which controls Wikipedia, holds its annual fundraising drive. Wikipedia is a nonprofit venture, and it relies on donations for support. Wikipedia co-founder Wales said he’s asking users to “defend Wikipedia’s independence.”

Only two out of every 100 Wikipedia users donate to support the website. The rest, noted Wales, “don’t give. They simply look the other way. We depend on donations averaging $16.36 from the tiny portion of our readers who give.”

If everyone who used the service “donated $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come. The price of a coffee is all we need,” Wales said.

Wikipedia needs to stay under the control of a foundation because, Wales said, “it is a place to learn, not a place for advertising. It unites all of us who love knowledge: contributors, readers and the donors who keep us thriving. The heart and soul of Wikipedia is a community of people working to bring you unlimited access to reliable, neutral information. ... If Wikipedia provided you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, please take a minute to keep it growing,” Wales said.

Newschief.com

[Randy from Boise]

They sure do drink a lot of coffee in San Francisco.

tim

[Eric Corbett]

Wikipedia depends on contributors, not donations, but what would Wales know about what writing an article involves. I doubt there are many serious editors who haven't spent far more on books than the price of a cup of coffee. But of course they don't count, they're simply easily replaceable units of work.

[Johnny Au]

If Wikipedia were to have third-party advertising, then there would be pressure from advertisers not to include criticism of said advertisers in their respective articles and therefore constitute COI.

[Ryuichi]

It already has plenty of political promotional content.

[Poetlister]

Of course, many articles do contain a bit of free advertising, put there by clever (probably paid) editors.

[Eric Corbett]

Of course, many articles do contain a bit of free advertising, put there by clever (probably paid) editors.

You could argue that pretty much every article has free advertising already, or at least product placement. Click on any ISBN for instance, and in one more click you'll be taken to an Amazon site where you can buy the book. Does the WMF get commission on those sales I wonder?

[Randy from Boise]

Of course, many articles do contain a bit of free advertising, put there by clever (probably paid) editors.

You could argue that pretty much every article has free advertising already, or at least product placement. Click on any ISBN for instance, and in one more click you'll be taken to an Amazon site where you can buy the book. Does the WMF get commission on those sales I wonder?

Using book retail sales bar codes (ISBN numbers) drives me up the fucking tree. I try to discretely wipe them out whenever I can. They are a blatant commercial publisher and Amazon sales tool, no other rational reason for using them.... Anyone feeling the need to clutter articles with numeric hyperlinks should be using OCLC numbers.

RfB

[Poetlister]

Of course, many articles do contain a bit of free advertising, put there by clever (probably paid) editors.

You could argue that pretty much every article has free advertising already, or at least product placement. Click on any ISBN for instance, and in one more click you'll be taken to an Amazon site where you can buy the book. Does the WMF get commission on those sales I wonder?

I don't know if US Amazon does that, but certainly with UK Amazon there is a "smile" service so that they send a small donation to a charity of your choice every time you buy a book. If the US people do that, the WMF people would be missing a trick not to use it.

[Midsize Jake]

I don't know if US Amazon does that, but certainly with UK Amazon there is a "smile" service so that they send a small donation to a charity of your choice every time you buy a book. If the US people do that, the WMF people would be missing a trick not to use it.

We do have AmazonSmile in the USA, and Wikimedia isn't on it. Of course, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking we didn't have that feature, since nobody has smiled in the United States since before the 2016 election...

Oddly enough, a similar search for "Wikipedia" does return one result, but it's the Rhode Island Council For The Humanities, which (AFAIK) is not Wikimedia-related. (There's no mention of Wikipedia in their History and Mission statement, anyway.)

[DanMurphy]

Wikipedia with advertising? Sure. I call that "google." That's how most people read Wikipedia.

[eagle]

One would expect the 2030 Strategy to discuss advertising vs. no advertising. But instead it gets itself all tangled up in post-modernism "knowledge equity."

"Imagine a world were a bunch of social justice warriors get to wikibattle over which 'truth' is presented to unwitting consumers of verifiable reference information?"

For the price of a cup of coffee, we can send global south social justice warriors to a "harmonization sprint" in Tunis.

[Ryuichi]

For the price of a cup of coffee, we can send global south social justice warriors to a "harmonization sprint" in Tunis.

If we'd only paid for a demitasse.

[Johnny Au]

For the price of a cup of coffee, we can send global south social justice warriors to a "harmonization sprint" in Tunis.

It has to be Fair Trade Rainforest Alliance coffee from a cooperative.

[No Ledge]

WMF-appeal.jpg

Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters.

Dear readers,

If you really want to show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters, then don't bother sending money to the Wikimedia Foundation this year. Since the pandemic forced the cancellation of all conferences that your donations support, there is unfortunately no way for the editors who bring you neutral and verified content to see any of that money.

A much better way to show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters is to click the "thanks" button for some of their edits, or leave a barnstar on their talk page.

Thank you

[Randy from Boise]

WMF-appeal.jpg

Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters.

Dear readers,

If you really want to show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters, then don't bother sending money to the Wikimedia Foundation this year. Since the pandemic forced the cancellation of all conferences that your donations support, there is unfortunately no way for the editors who bring you neutral and verified content to see any of that money.

A much better way to show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters is to click the "thanks" button for some of their edits, or leave a barnstar on their talk page.

Thank you

The weasel-word is COULD keep thriving for years — if they didn't waste it on junkets, failed satellite programs, and an engineering department so inept that would have difficulty removing their lunch from a brown paper bag.

t

[Poetlister]

"If you are one of our rare donors" could mean, "Look, we're desperate because we don't get much money in donations", or "Don't feel you need to give; hardly anyone does".

[C&B]

They're all very hungry; The paper Bag has removed their Lunch from them already

[No Ledge]

I guess this Friday was the first time recently since this Wednesday!

[No Ledge]

Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters.

If you want to show the WMF fundraising department how much their work matters, HERE is their talk page.

[Anonyanonymous]

Well if you think that Wikipedia has absolutely ZERO advertising, it has actually a lot of advertising through creating a Wikipedia page for a company and just tell everything good about the company and criticize its opponents. There can be theoretically a lot of advertising through this method. If it were a .com and a for-profit organisation, then there would be even more annoying ads and the Wikipedia community may rebel. But it's a .org and a non-profit organisation, so they think that there would be NO advertising. What they do not know is that almost anyone can edit Wikipedia in almost anyway they like. And Wikipedia has so much inefficiency in being a non-profit that it will be difficult to track down such things.

So I think that Wikipedia is already foiled, but if it became back a for-profit, there would be ads EVERYWHERE around the site and its founder, Jimmy Wales, could become a billionaire(but now his net worth is just around a million dollars because Wikipedia is a non-profit and Wikipedia relies on donations to be supported), also, this would be creepy and lawsuits could be filed to sue the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Poetlister]

Show the editors who bring you neutral and verified content that their work matters.

If you want to show the WMF fundraising department how much their work matters, HERE is their talk page.

Obviously, giving money to the WMF is unlikely to impress most editors. Most will never get any recognition other than self-satisfaction.