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Posted by: victim of censorship

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.wikipedia.com

That would buy millions of little green laptops for
http://laptop.org/images/laptop/hardware-left-side-view.png

I would think WikiMediafoundation, as well as Jimmy (carbon friendly jet setting technocrat and his side kick Over paid Sue) could disband all the wiki's, Wikia, and sell the domains to more responsible parties, and give this gift to the world.

This would eliminate an online attractive nuisance, which attracts vermin and other small, smelly, critters and other pests.

This would contribute to world peace and global warming/cooling and feed little African Children hungry in belly and brain. They can browse youtube, and http://www.stockstorage.com/?gclid=COOT6cOa4Z4CFQIhDQoduzKVMA (note with the HOPE and Change happening and the growth of "http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/5744" This is stove is the prefect gift for that family, now settling in that new tent and life in an Obamaville near you.)

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

Although many will scoff, I agree that WP's worth is in this range. That is why I advocate a very large commitment of resource, $20-25,000,000/yr in staffing (200 - 300 positions) to address program concerns such as reliability, BLP issues, child protective concern, etc. This ought to be achieved during the period ahead in which the "maintenance" stage is entered in earnest. The problems of tech infrastructure and scaling will need less and less attentions. Program concerns will need more and more attention. New article creation will just about cease and content creation will be limited to updating articles. This will require paid staff and experts. "The community" will become marginalized and the end users will become those who matter. If WMF does this they will come out of the "mantenance" phase with their value as a website intact.

Posted by: Nerd

The .org domain is worth slightly less actually. It's not a .com site. (And it's Wikipedia, not peida).

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Hmmm, it also says:


<<<
Daily Ads Revenue $550003
>>>

What ads?

Posted by: Somey

Shite, it says wikipediareview.com is worth $28,586.80 and has daily ad revenue of $39.16! Hell, a person could live on that much... We'd better delete this thread before Selina sees it and starts getting "ideas"!

(EDIT) Hey, I just hit the "Update" button and we cracked $30K!

I smell IPO...

Posted by: Lar

I think this is one of those things where you crank the variable values into a formula and an answer pops out... even if the formula doesn't actually apply.

The domain whole shooting match might be worth 400M according to the formula, but you couldn't sell it for that. IMHO anyway. Not because someone wouldn't pay, but because no one exists that could execute the sale.


edit: replace domain with "whole shooting match", I misspoke, I was trying to talk about WMF as an enterprise, not just the domain per se.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Wrong!

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

The domain name isn't worth all that much. The domain does have significant goodwill (ironic, I know) but the $400, - 500,000,000 figure, in my view, would be ballpark for the operating site intact. This is a persistent top ten web site after all. Low-balling the sites value becomes an excuse for not committing the resources needed to operate in a responsible manner. This is not Danny's Wikipedia any more.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Indeed, an extra $1200/month would loosen many a tight budget.

It might be moderatly amusing for a few days to see what kind of ads AdSense selects for WR.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Brian Dowling should sue to rescind the fraudulent conveyance of the Wikipedia domain names from Bomis to WMF; he has an interest in Bomis because Michael Davis had a stake in Bomis that was, at the very least, attached, if not actually transferred, to Dowling as part of the execution of Dowling's judgment against Davis and the Chicago Options Associates mess. But I imagine by now the statute of limitations has run, and I thought that Dowling settled that suit anyway.

Posted by: Limey

Let me direct your attention to YouTube. What is Youtube? A site that relies on largely anonymous people to create and contribute content in return (in most cases) for nothing and then on other people to want to consume the content thus created. Sound like anything else you know? Google, of course, paid $1.65 billion for YouTube back in 2006 and at the time YouTube had almost no revenue. Since then, Google has, by all indications, found ways to make the investment pay off.

The general model in the Tech industry for years has been, try to beat 'em, then if you can't buy 'em. Google tried, and failed to beat Wikipedia with Knol. I have no doubt that if it were possible to sell Wikipedia (the whole non-profit thing creates issues that I'm not entirely informed on, so I'm not even sure if you could sell it), you could find a buyer for well north of $400m. I think Google would be willing to offer $1bn at least. It's an incredibly valuable web property, and not just because it gets lots of eyeballs. It would also be very easy to target ads on Wikipedia. Can you imagine what law firms would pay to advertise on top of the Wikipedia article on http://www.jeffwu.net/?p=319? Not to mention all of the other possible revenue streams.

Would some members of the "community" rebel at a Google takeover? Yes. Would that matter in the slightest? No. Frankly, I also think, with all due respect to the viewpoint of certain members here, that a Wikipedia run by Google would be a better place.

Posted by: EricBarbour

Like to see you convince a bunch of WP administrators that this is a great idea.
You must be feeling very brave.

Posted by: Limey

I shan't say that Wikipedia actually would sell, just that it would bring at least a billion dollars if it did, and even at that it's probably undervalued when compared to other similar sites (the aforementioned YouTube sale, the $580 million Myspace sale way back in '05, valuations of Flickr http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/05/08/is-flickr-worth-4-billion/, and Craiglist at http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/05/08/is-flickr-worth-4-billion/.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

There is a little problem ... if someone takes the money personally, then WR are far more likely to become a target for a malicious law suit.

So, take the money from ads but put into a 'not-for-profit' foundation to carry out the work of Wikipedia Review.

Use the money to pay someone/a few folk working part-time.

Move the blog/magazine to the front and the forum to the back ... add some easier way for people to whistleblow and expose dirt anonymously or network socially (e.g. install Buddypress). For as long as the Wikipedia keeps growing, dependent on the currently good editorial, you will keep growing as the primary 'off campus' location.

If Selina wants going to live off it for a while, then move somewhere cheaper and warmer where we can all come to visit please.

Posted by: thekohser

Before you start calling up AdSense to request direct deposit, please note that the site's estimate of Wikipedia Review's worth is about the same as its estimate of Wikipedia Review's worth. And I can safely attest that the traffic stats it estimates are off by about 30x, and the revenues overstated by perhaps 40x.

Posted by: Somey

Alas, I fear you are correct. A more realistic domain-valuation site, http://www.hiberya.com, lists wikipedia.org's value at only $312,857,143.17 (the extra $0.17 is sales tax, I suspect), whereas wikipediareview.com is valued at... wait for it... $0.00!

Don't worry, though, they've got Wikipedia Review.com listed for $21,974.46. Another site, http://dnsgroup.com/, isn't working at the moment, but I'm sure they'd probably have Selina paying someone to take the thing off her hands.

Oh well, so much for that potential financial windfall!

Posted by: wikademia.org

they could really go communist if they wanted.... sort of.... ------ keep it a non-profit - - - - throw on adsense or CPM forest... and then... revenue sharing.. using... a merit/trust metric .... i'm sure that would go horribly wrong.

Posted by: Trick cyclist

Do the administrators have any say in the matter? If they own the site theyre responsible for it and can be sued (if you can catch them and theyre old enough).

Posted by: thekohser

http://www.dnscoop.com/ has the value of Wikipedia Review at about $4,800 (seems reasonable) and Wikipedia Review is defined with the exact same valuation. Citizendium is just south of $70K. English Wikipedia? About $190MM.

Wikademia.org comes in with a valuation of $185.

I would venture to say that dnScoop may be a rather accurate valuation calculator, if one presumes that "buy-outs" of working domains are a common thing in the marketplace (which they really aren't).

Posted by: dtobias

"Domain valuators" need to be taken with at least as big a grain of salt as Wikipedia articles.

Still, Wikipedia undoubtedly has (mostly untapped) monetary value, connected with the site as a whole rather than specifically with the domain. Some people in this thread seem determined to destroy this value by insisting Wikipedia dismantle the site... how would this provide any help for those poor starving children? The salvage value of Wikipedia's domains after the site was eviscerated would be considerably less than the current value of the intact site, though there would undoubtedly be some lingering value from the traffic derived from links and bookmarks that would take a long time to go away.

GBG's "solution" of creating a big honking bureacracy to burn through all this hypothetical money, intentionally marginalizing the community while turning Wikipedia into a Britannica clone, hardly seems like a sensible idea either.

----------------
Now playing: http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/rose+reiter/track/i+dont+want+to+fight+(with+kyle+mcmahon)
via http://www.foxytunes.com/signatunes/

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

If it has a value of anything like $400,000,000 expenditures of $20 -25,000,000 per year seems appropriate. In fact Sue Gardner seems to anticipate annual expenditures of $10,600,000 in the http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a3/2009-10_Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan_FINAL_July2.pdf. The question is will the resource go to the kind of infrastructure to create a responsible project or for public reactions to spin away the irresponsibility.

Posted by: wikademia.org

nice; encouraging... thanks. lol

Posted by: thekohser

Shankbone.org = $530

JimmyWales.com = $21,584

LemonParty.org = $58,240

EncyclopediaDramatica.com = $1,029,710

Craigslist.org = $14,496,000 (actual revenue said to be over $100MM)

Posted by: FT2

I'd agree if someone could buy Wikipedia (or Wikimedia + subsidiary sites) the price would be very high. Not a valuation expert but $500m (low end) to bn's sounds right.

So how would they do it? They'd probably monetarize the site - adverts (discreet if they had sense). They'd have to ditch the community, or work it on a different basis. Paid staff to maintain high priority articles; building on user collaboration especially for less important ones, covered by ad income. It's workable.

Two thoughts:

1. What incentive would lead to WMF being willing to sell? If there's no seller, the matter is academic. How much is the core Smithsonian collection or the British crown jewels "worth" to their owners? Things that aren't for sale only have a notional value.
2. Value of a business tends to be a multiple of net income (ie earnings or profits). As a buyer pays for these extra resources and experts, their net income will clearly fall, perhaps a lot. In this commercial climate how would a buyer decide what to pay. Would they buy the site for a headline value then wonder how to monetarize it... or would they model the future structure, its income and costs, and base their price on that?