Who owns Wikipedia?, I am not a lawyer Options

[Peter Damian]

I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible? Who actually owns it? What is it they actually own? Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from ? What would they be getting their hands on?

[Somey]

There are two things that strike me about this, aside from the fact that even the most short-sighted businesses don't sell their #1 asset merely to "advance their stated goals."

The first, and the most obvious, is how they would reconcile the fact that Wikimedia isn't actually a charity (in any meaningful sense of the word) with these self-imposed restrictions on unloading assets, which are presumably in there primarily (if not solely) to support its spurious claim that it really is a charity. I don't think they can, so they would have to change their bylaws to make the sale, and if people got wind of the attempt in advance, they might try to stop them. I was actually thinking that these bylaws might serve an additional purpose, namely to prevent any kind of takeover whatsoever, friendly, hostile, or otherwise. (I doubt that would have been intentional, though.)

The second is that when you go from not being ad-supported to being even partially ad-supported, you have some pretty serious work to do. You're going to need some additional infrastructure in the organization - sales-people, a fulfillment department, dedicated technical support staff, maybe another accountant or three. It's likely they'd want to start small and ramp up - maybe just run something in the sidebar or a small sitewide banner, probably using some sort of automatic rotation scheme. If they suddenly threw in a whole bunch of new/untested features to show targeted ads based on page content (sort of like Google AdSense) or allow advertisers to buy space on particularly "hot" articles (namely those related to porn, politics, and current entertainment and media properties), that would be very risky, IMO.

I guess what I'm saying WRT advertising is that I believe the estimates of Wikipedia's value as an advertising platform are grossly inflated. I can certainly see them getting into 7 figures per year, maybe 8 later on if they do it right. But 50 million? I just don't see it, personally, unless several other media markets just completely collapse in the short term.

[Peter Damian]

even the most short-sighted businesses don't sell their #1 asset merely to "advance their stated goals."

Property developers do just this. The question is whether the asset is something that fits well with the business's current ability, strategic direction, business model etc etc.

If you read anything that WMF puts out, or join in their stupid forum, it's almost like Wikipedia doesn't exist. As though they are purposefully ignoring it. And perhaps they are: if they tried to manage it like any other business, they would be in for all sorts of trouble. Their business model is simply hosting an internet site (according to them). If so, why not just sell off the asset? Or lease it somehow? As well as the recent disposal of assets, my church also leases an adjoining building to a coffee shop. The running of the business is entirely the business of its owner. The church simply collects a rental.

On how much money Wikipedia could make from advertising, that's another subject. I would split it into three colour-coded or clearly identifiable sectors. One for straight advertising. Another for hobbyists who can collect information Pokemon stuff, train timetables or old Dr Who episodes and so on. The third for properly encyclopedic content.

Outbound links from the encyclopedia part to the other parts would be alowed, but strictly controlled. It always struck me as a shame that if I look on Wikipedia for any place I know about, there is very little. It would be nice to know which are the local restaurants, what are the good places to buy property, as well as the prices of property, what shops there are and so on. So you could have links in the encyclopedia part to the advertising part, just like when you get the free London Evening Standard, you can turn to pages that advertise houses or jobs or cars.

And there's nothing to stop the hobbyists also having pages about the place they live in, with comments about the local restaurants, which ones are shit and so on.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: