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_ The Wikimedia Foundation _ Who owns Wikipedia?

Posted by: 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?

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 8:00pm) *

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?


You have to identify what has value. The content is opensource, as is the site's software. You can grab both at any time and launch your own project. So they don't have any marketable value. The hardware is probably a few million, owned by the foundation.

What has real value is the traffic, but only in the context of commercializing it with advertisement and other schemes. Some have estimated that potential value in the billions.

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 3:00pm) *

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?

Not to be snide, but why is any of this important?

I would summarize the answers as such:

Is that possible? In business and law, anything is possible.

Who actually owns it? The Wikimedia Foundation owns the trademark to the name, while the authors of the content own the content, but they have irrevocably released the content under the terms of a free license.

What is it they actually own? The Foundation owns the trademark name "Wikipedia". The content authors own the right to forever demand that anyone who ever uses or modifies their content should do so with proper attribution and releasing the content again, in kind, under the same licensing terms. In other words, not much.

Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from ? Depends on your definition of "ton". I think an entity like Google could have the size and influence to take the content of Wikipedia, enhance it (think, Google Maps, Google Translate, etc.), polish it, and make it less vulnerable to nonsense. But that will only make significant money for Google if they were to simultaneously deprecate "Wikipedia.org" results in their search engine algorithms.

What would they be getting their hands on? Depends on whether you're talking about a Wikipedia takeover or a Wikimedia Foundation takeover. It's possible to disband a non-profit, but http://www.nonprofitissues.com/public/features/point/62.html, the assets have to go to another non-profit.

Which reminds me... remember how the Omidyar Network has that squirrelly dual status of being both a for-profit and a non-profit venture capital firm? And remember http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=halprin on the WMF board simultaneous to a $2 million "donation" to the Foundation?


Posted by: Ottava

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 3:00pm) *

I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible?


Why would anyone want to buy it? It is already CC-BY-SA-3.0. That means anyone can take the stuff, repackage it, and make money.

It is like marrying the town slut who promises to do anything sexual for anyone at any time. Would you really want to marry her? Maybe someone is crazy enough, but I am sure they are prepared for the diseases that will surely come with it.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Greg pretty much nailed it: the main transactable item of value related to Wikipedia is the name itself, more specifically the trademark "Wikipedia" and the (related) domain names of wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com. The Foundation currently holds all of these things and could dispose of them if it so saw fit, but the proceeds of such a sale would remain trapped within the Foundation and could only be used for purposes consistent with its tax-exempt status and purpose as declared in its charter and bylaws, or else conveyed to some other tax-exempt entity (or escheated to the state).

The Foundation is also in possession of various information that is potentially valuable (such as page access statistics) that it presently does not share publicly and could theoretically monetize, but it has shown little interest in doing so, possibly because doing so could jeopardize its charitable status, not to mention piss off its customer base.

Posted by: Peter Damian

Who owns the fact that when I Google anything it goes to that place?

That is worth a ton of money. As you have all commented, the content itself can easily be copied.

It's the name, i.e. the brand, and the fact that every search gets there. Who owns that? Could it be bought?

If 'it' were bought, would there be anger? Would people feel something had been stolen from them? Who?

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Thu 27th January 2011, 9:30pm) *

Greg pretty much nailed it: the main transactable item of value related to Wikipedia is the name itself, more specifically the trademark "Wikipedia" and the (related) domain names of wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com. The Foundation currently holds all of these things and could dispose of them if it so saw fit, but the proceeds of such a sale would remain trapped within the Foundation and could only be used for purposes consistent with its tax-exempt status and purpose as declared in its charter and bylaws, or else conveyed to some other tax-exempt entity (or escheated to the state).


Could members of the Foundation be paid a large sum of money to dispose of 'it' for well-below market value? Market value is defined by having a site such that any search on anything gets to 'it'.


QUOTE(Ottava @ Thu 27th January 2011, 9:14pm) *

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 3:00pm) *

I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible?


Why would anyone want to buy it? It is already CC-BY-SA-3.0. That means anyone can take the stuff, repackage it, and make money.

It is like marrying the town slut who promises to do anything sexual for anyone at any time. Would you really want to marry her? Maybe someone is crazy enough, but I am sure they are prepared for the diseases that will surely come with it.


No 'it' is not CC-BY-SA-3.0. 'It' is owning something that brings every search into 'it'. Town slut is fine. If I bought it I would get rid of the lowlife scum who hang around her and treat her like a princess. More like a call-girl or high-class hooker. Maybe even a princess.


QUOTE(thekohser @ Thu 27th January 2011, 9:03pm) *

It's possible to disband a non-profit, but http://www.nonprofitissues.com/public/features/point/62.html, the assets have to go to another non-profit.


Why do the assets have to go to another non-profit? In the UK, the Church commissioners can sell off an old church to property developers. Can WMF sell Wikipedia? I mean the name, and the URL and 'it'. A bit like a church on a valuable site in mid-town.

Sorry, I'm mixing up metaphors again (hookers, churches, oh well).

[edit] I looked at the UK rules, and the charity commission has to give permission for disposal of property. I don't know if there is equivalent legislation for 'it'.

Posted by: Ottava

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 5:20pm) *

No 'it' is not CC-BY-SA-3.0. 'It' is owning something that brings every search into 'it'. Town slut is fine. If I bought it I would get rid of the lowlife scum who hang around her and treat her like a princess. More like a call-girl or high-class hooker. Maybe even a princess.


I was going to say that, like a hooker, you couldn't ignore her past - i.e. you couldn't re-license the content without approval...

but that happened already, didn't it?

Posted by: gomi

Legally, the Wikimedia Foundation (or whatever it is called) owns Wikipedia.

Owning Wikipedia means these things:

1) Owning the trademarks, domain names, logos, and assorted intellectual property associated with Wikipedia and its related sites;
2) Owns the right to make agreements of any sort, including exclusive ones, surrounding and affecting its online systems and services;
3) Owns the right (subject to the limitations of a not-for-profit organization) to dispose of (by sale, license, or other agreement) any of its assets, including (potentially) any of the Wikipedia sites and related marks and materials.

This is not an exhaustive list. The Wikimedia Foundation would be within its right to sell the Wikipedia site to a for-profit company in exchange for a revenue stream. That for-profit company could shut down all user accounts and install advertising if they wanted to. The resulting revenue stream would (for a time) be very substantial. The Wikimedia Foundation would need to use the proceeds from such a sale for its charitable purpose.

There are potential complications if such a sale is construed as disposing of "substantially all" of its assets, or if it didn't get a fair market value for the asset, but those are details.

I'm not saying this is likely to happen, but it is all legally possible.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 27th January 2011, 10:46pm) *

Legally, the Wikimedia Foundation (or whatever it is called) owns Wikipedia.

Owning Wikipedia means these things:

1) Owning the trademarks, domain names, logos, and assorted intellectual property associated with Wikipedia and its related sites;
2) Owns the right to make agreements of any sort, including exclusive ones, surrounding and affecting its online systems and services;
3) Owns the right (subject to the limitations of a not-for-profit organization) to dispose of (by sale, license, or other agreement) any of its assets, including (potentially) any of the Wikipedia sites and related marks and materials.

This is not an exhaustive list. The Wikimedia Foundation would be within its right to sell the Wikipedia site to a for-profit company in exchange for a revenue stream. That for-profit company could shut down all user accounts and install advertising if they wanted to. The resulting revenue stream would (for a time) be very substantial. The Wikimedia Foundation would need to use the proceeds from such a sale for its charitable purpose.

There are potential complications if such a sale is construed as disposing of "substantially all" of its assets, or if it didn't get a fair market value for the asset, but those are details.

I'm not saying this is likely to happen, but it is all legally possible.


My emphasis. The user accounts would be the first to go. Can I buy all this outright or am I, as it were, leasing it?

Who makes the decision? The trustees? If I were to write each of them a large cheque, would they vote the right way? Everyone like money.

QUOTE

The Wikimedia Foundation would need to use the proceeds from such a sale for its charitable purpose.


Yes they can expand the WMF brand in other countries and to that bringing the sum of human knowledge crap with all that money.

[edit] Just to make it clear I am not completely stupid (only a bit). I do realise there are two aspects to this transaction. (1) To pay off the various lowlifes in charge of this mess to do the right thing. This would have to be very discrete and secret. (2) To pay the WMF a reasonable value for the assets in question, i.e. the brand, the servers, all that rubbish. I would go to a large bank, Goldmans are reputable and honest and have experience in this kind of thing, and they would lend me a large amount of money to do this (hopefully not too large, but this depends on (1) above). Then the income stream from the advertising pays the bank debt, as well as a handsome profit. I would hire all the professional staff from proper encyclopedias so there was a proper editorial board. They would delete all the shit and pornography and Pokemon. Then I would have really done a good job in bringing the sum of all human knowledge to everyone on the planet, and make a few bucks for myself.

Does anyone know who I would approach? I would leave a message on jimbo's page but not sure he anything to do with it. Also needs to be discrete.

Anyone from the WMF reading this please feel free to PM me and we can talk business, absolute discretion assured.

Posted by: WikiWatch

QUOTE(Ottava @ Fri 28th January 2011, 8:14am) *

Why would anyone want to buy it? It is already CC-BY-SA-3.0. That means anyone can take the stuff, repackage it, and make money.



You do realise that the licensing conditions can change? If wikipedia ever went up for sale to commercial interests, it's likely the new owner would change the license to reflect that.

Posted by: radek

QUOTE(Ottava @ Thu 27th January 2011, 3:14pm) *

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 3:00pm) *

I've heard claims here occasionally that Wikipedia could be sold off. Is that possible?


Why would anyone want to buy it? It is already CC-BY-SA-3.0. That means anyone can take the stuff, repackage it, and make money.

It is like marrying the town slut who promises to do anything sexual for anyone at any time. Would you really want to marry her? Maybe someone is crazy enough, but I am sure they are prepared for the diseases that will surely come with it.


As the others said it's the brand name. And even though that's "intangible" it can be worth quite a lot of money - consider that people who purchase fast-food restaurant franchises pay A LOT of dough simply to be able to use the logo/brand name, and that buying a fast food franchise, making a hefty upfront payment and then coughing up a good portion of your monthly revenue to the "parent company" STILL is a safer and probably a higher return investment (details depend on the local market), on average, then starting your own restaurant under a brand name of your choosing.

You might not like it, but Wikipedia's worth a buttload of money, despite the fact that all its content is "free" and reproducible.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

QUOTE(WikiWatch @ Thu 27th January 2011, 11:19pm) *

QUOTE(Ottava @ Fri 28th January 2011, 8:14am) *

Why would anyone want to buy it? It is already CC-BY-SA-3.0. That means anyone can take the stuff, repackage it, and make money.



You do realise that the licensing conditions can change? If wikipedia ever went up for sale to commercial interests, it's likely the new owner would change the license to reflect that.

Gracenote (ex CDDB) worked that trick successfully.

Posted by: Ottava

QUOTE(WikiWatch @ Thu 27th January 2011, 6:19pm) *

QUOTE(Ottava @ Fri 28th January 2011, 8:14am) *

Why would anyone want to buy it? It is already CC-BY-SA-3.0. That means anyone can take the stuff, repackage it, and make money.



You do realise that the licensing conditions can change? If wikipedia ever went up for sale to commercial interests, it's likely the new owner would change the license to reflect that.


I posted what you said above a good 45 minutes before you posted.



Dogbiscuit

QUOTE
Gracenote (ex CDDB) worked that trick successfully.


I didn't know that Gracenotes use to be a slut. ;/

Posted by: carbuncle

QUOTE(Ottava @ Thu 27th January 2011, 10:35pm) *

I was going to say that, like a hooker, you couldn't ignore her past - i.e. you couldn't re-license the content without approval...

but that happened already, didn't it?


I don't care about your past
I just want my love to last
I don't care about your faults
I just want to satisfy your pulse

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 5:54pm) *

Does anyone know who I would approach? I would leave a message on jimbo's page but not sure he anything to do with it. Also needs to be discrete.

Anyone from the WMF reading this please feel free to PM me and we can talk business, absolute discretion assured.


Peter, I am willing to credit each and every one of the WMF board members with enough intelligence and street smarts to know better than to go brokering some kind of "discrete" deal with someone who's trying to coordinate it by publicly asking questions he doesn't know the answer to, and who imagines "leaving a message on Jimbo's page" might have any favorable impact on the success of the highly volatile and risky gambit that you propose.

What happens when you line up 45% of the board, but then the next trustee you try to get to follow suit goes to the Associated Press and Slashdot with the whole story?

You know I have every respect for you, but you're sounding a bit bonkers here. Are you drinking large mugs of mead, or something?

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 12:08am) *
As the others said it's the brand name... You might not like it, but Wikipedia's worth a buttload of money, despite the fact that all its content is "free" and reproducible.

No, it's not the brand name. It's the traffic's potential add revenue. There isn't much else of value. Nobody cares about the brand-name, it's value is negligible compared to potential revenue of Wikipedia's traffic.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 27th January 2011, 4:46pm) *
This is not an exhaustive list. The Wikimedia Foundation would be within its right to sell the Wikipedia site to a for-profit company in exchange for a revenue stream. That for-profit company could shut down all user accounts and install advertising if they wanted to. The resulting revenue stream would (for a time) be very substantial. The Wikimedia Foundation would need to use the proceeds from such a sale for its charitable purpose.
And, in fact, it would probably have to do this if it wanted to monetize the site, because of the restrictions on charities receiving income from business activities. The wholly owned for-profit subsidiary would have to pay corporate income taxes, and distribute some or all of the retained earnings after taxes back to its parent nonprofit. (See also the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation.) Arguably Wikipedia should have been set up this way in the first place.

Posted by: radek

QUOTE(TungstenCarbide @ Thu 27th January 2011, 11:15pm) *

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 12:08am) *
As the others said it's the brand name... You might not like it, but Wikipedia's worth a buttload of money, despite the fact that all its content is "free" and reproducible.

No, it's not the brand name. It's the traffic's potential add revenue. There isn't much else of value. Nobody cares about the brand-name, it's value is negligible compared to potential revenue of Wikipedia's traffic.


Cause and effect. It's the brand name. That is the value. No brand name no traffic, even with all the google support and all that. Traffic is the RESULT of the brand name.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Fri 28th January 2011, 6:00am) *

QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 27th January 2011, 4:46pm) *
This is not an exhaustive list. The Wikimedia Foundation would be within its right to sell the Wikipedia site to a for-profit company in exchange for a revenue stream. That for-profit company could shut down all user accounts and install advertising if they wanted to. The resulting revenue stream would (for a time) be very substantial. The Wikimedia Foundation would need to use the proceeds from such a sale for its charitable purpose.
And, in fact, it would probably have to do this if it wanted to monetize the site, because of the restrictions on charities receiving income from business activities. The wholly owned for-profit subsidiary would have to pay corporate income taxes, and distribute some or all of the retained earnings after taxes back to its parent nonprofit. (See also the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation.) Arguably Wikipedia should have been set up this way in the first place.


They just never should have applied for 501©(3) status in the first place. It was a mistake to ask for it, and it was a mistake for the IRS to grant it.

A taxable non-profit corporation would have been much better (and much simpler than the Mozilla setup). Basically, they'd set up the WMF just the way they did, not apply for 501©(3), and file a regular 1120 each year. Donations wouldn't be deductible, but I'd guess that most small donations aren't deductible anyway (most US citizens don't itemize), and the large donations could be replaced by advertising/sponsorships (which generally *are* deductible as business expenses). Yes, they'd have to pay taxes on their net income, but in the end they're going to eventually spend it all anyway, and they could possibly argue that the donations were non-taxable as either gifts or capital contributions (I don't know, that'd have to be run past a tax pro smarter than I). And a carefully structured taxable LLC would have probably been the best, though that would have had to have been carefully structured by a tax-savvy lawyer or a lawyer working closely with a tax expert.

All in hindsight, of course. Except for the idea of making Wikipedia into a non-profit in the first place. I still don't entirely understand that. Even under the asset protection theory, I don't see why they couldn't have achieved the same thing in an LLC instead of a nonprofit organization.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(TungstenCarbide @ Fri 28th January 2011, 5:15am) *

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 12:08am) *
As the others said it's the brand name... You might not like it, but Wikipedia's worth a buttload of money, despite the fact that all its content is "free" and reproducible.

No, it's not the brand name. It's the traffic's potential add revenue. There isn't much else of value. Nobody cares about the brand-name, it's value is negligible compared to potential revenue of Wikipedia's traffic.


Whoever has the trademark has the right to take the domain name. And whoever has the domain name gets the traffic, at least until people switch to a fork and enough of the links get updated to kill the Google Juice (would take years).

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:18am) *

Cause and effect. It's the brand name. That is the value. No brand name no traffic, even with all the google support and all that. Traffic is the RESULT of the brand name.


No, it is not.

If Google decided tomorrow to copy Wikipedia's content to a new site called "Sergeypedia.com", and Google elected to remove Wikipedia domains from search results and to replace them with Sergeypedia links, I guarantee you and would be willing to bet you $100 (while there would be some significant outcry from the tech press about "Google being evil") that Sergeypedia (for at least a month, even if left absolutely unimproved by any Google gimmicks) would be a Top 20 website and Wikipedia would fall out of the Top 20.

Radek, if you can find some support for your logic, I would be amused to see it.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 3:50pm) *

If Google decided tomorrow to copy Wikipedia's content to a new site called "Sergeypedia.com", and Google elected to remove Wikipedia domains from search results and to replace them with Sergeypedia links, I guarantee you and would be willing to bet you $100 (while there would be some significant outcry from the tech press about "Google being evil") that Sergeypedia (for at least a month, even if left absolutely unimproved by any Google gimmicks) would be a Top 20 website and Wikipedia would fall out of the Top 20.


The problem with that argument is that Google wouldn't do that. And in fact, people use Google because it wouldn't do that.

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 28th January 2011, 10:54am) *
The problem with that argument is that Google wouldn't do that. And in fact, people use Google because it wouldn't do that.


Radek specifically said, "even with all the google support and all that".

I found that to be a false claim.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 28th January 2011, 3:54pm) *

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 3:50pm) *

If Google decided tomorrow to copy Wikipedia's content to a new site called "Sergeypedia.com", and Google elected to remove Wikipedia domains from search results and to replace them with Sergeypedia links, I guarantee you and would be willing to bet you $100 (while there would be some significant outcry from the tech press about "Google being evil") that Sergeypedia (for at least a month, even if left absolutely unimproved by any Google gimmicks) would be a Top 20 website and Wikipedia would fall out of the Top 20.


The problem with that argument is that Google wouldn't do that. And in fact, people use Google because it wouldn't do that.

Says who? Google will strip people out of search results if they think that they have been gaming the system, they will change the formula they use, and they would also come up with a plausible "do no evil" reason why the substitution was appropriate (like all the content is the same, but is no longer managed by teenage male IT geeks with too much time and too little ambition, but instead by experts of all genders).

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Fri 28th January 2011, 4:12pm) *

QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 28th January 2011, 3:54pm) *

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 3:50pm) *

If Google decided tomorrow to copy Wikipedia's content to a new site called "Sergeypedia.com", and Google elected to remove Wikipedia domains from search results and to replace them with Sergeypedia links, I guarantee you and would be willing to bet you $100 (while there would be some significant outcry from the tech press about "Google being evil") that Sergeypedia (for at least a month, even if left absolutely unimproved by any Google gimmicks) would be a Top 20 website and Wikipedia would fall out of the Top 20.


The problem with that argument is that Google wouldn't do that. And in fact, people use Google because it wouldn't do that.

Says who?


I think you answered that yourself: "QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 28th January 2011, 3:54pm)"

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Fri 28th January 2011, 4:12pm) *

Google [snip reasonable and irrelevant points] would also come up with a plausible "do no evil" reason why the substitution was appropriate (like all the content is the same, but is no longer managed by teenage male IT geeks with too much time and too little ambition, but instead by experts of all genders).


That's ridiculous.

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 4:10pm) *

QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 28th January 2011, 10:54am) *
The problem with that argument is that Google wouldn't do that. And in fact, people use Google because it wouldn't do that.


Radek specifically said, "even with all the google support and all that".

I found that to be a false claim.


Touche. I should have known better than to argue with you about marketing smile.gif.

Still, I contend that, in the short term (months, maybe even a year or two), the trademark is pretty much everything the single biggest asset, in any realistic (i.e., non-dogbiscuit) scenario.

(I changed my mind from "pretty much everything" to "the single biggest asset", because the technical expertise is also a big factor. Even though all the source code (that I know of) is open, there's still quite a lot of expertise in how to run a top-20 website using Mediawiki and MySQL, which would be quite expensive to replicate in a short amount of time.)

Posted by: dogbiscuit

It seems antony's been drinking the Google juice.

Still, I can't imagine Google doing anything wrong, not copyright theft, not intercepting and storing private information. No, they are the perfect ethical company who will never advantage their own interests above others and anyone who says otherwise is clearly barking.

Woof! Woof!

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 4:29am) *

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 5:54pm) *

Does anyone know who I would approach? I would leave a message on jimbo's page but not sure he anything to do with it. Also needs to be discrete.

Anyone from the WMF reading this please feel free to PM me and we can talk business, absolute discretion assured.


Peter, I am willing to credit each and every one of the WMF board members with enough intelligence and street smarts to know better than to go brokering some kind of "discrete" deal with someone who's trying to coordinate it by publicly asking questions he doesn't know the answer to, and who imagines "leaving a message on Jimbo's page" might have any favorable impact on the success of the highly volatile and risky gambit that you propose.

What happens when you line up 45% of the board, but then the next trustee you try to get to follow suit goes to the Associated Press and Slashdot with the whole story?

You know I have every respect for you, but you're sounding a bit bonkers here. Are you drinking large mugs of mead, or something?


Well I try to signal humour or irony by saying things that are so obviously absurd that no one will possibly think I am serious. Didn't the bit about the PM ring a bell?

Oh well.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:02pm) *

Well I try to signal humour or irony by saying things that are so obviously absurd that no one will possibly think I am serious. Didn't the bit about the PM ring a bell?

Oh well.


Wikipediots and those who hang with 'em too much eventually become desensitized to absurdity.

So watch out for that …

Jon tongue.gif

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:02pm) *

Well I try to signal humour or irony by saying things that are so obviously absurd that no one will possibly think I am serious. Didn't the bit about the PM ring a bell?

Oh well.

You didn't go "over the top" quite enough. I thought the whole opening salvo of this thread was a bit ill-formed. That wasn't part of the slapstick, too, was it?

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 7:22pm) *

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:02pm) *

Well I try to signal humour or irony by saying things that are so obviously absurd that no one will possibly think I am serious. Didn't the bit about the PM ring a bell?

Oh well.

You didn't go "over the top" quite enough. I thought the whole opening salvo of this thread was a bit ill-formed. That wasn't part of the slapstick, too, was it?


Well there was a serious point to it too.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Thu 27th January 2011, 8:00pm) *

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?


I suppose it should have been "Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from it? " That was a bit ill-formed yes.

I learned touch typing a few years ago and I find the hands have a quite different concept of spelling and grammar than my head does.

Horsey, if he is reading this, will remember 'The Red Shoez' of cours.

QUOTE
A young woman sees a pair of red shoes in a shop window, which are offered to her by the demonic shoemaker. She puts them on and begins to dance with her boyfriend. They go to a carnival, where she seemingly forgets about the boyfriend as she dances with every man she comes across. Her boyfriend is carried away and nothing is left of him but his image on a piece of cellophane, which she tramples.

She attempts to return home to her mother, but the red shoes, controlled by the shoemaker, keep her dancing. She falls into a netherworld, where she dances with a piece of newspaper which turns briefly into her boyfriend. She is then beset by grotesque creatures, including the shoemaker, who converge upon her in a manner reminiscent of The Rite of Spring. They abruptly disappear, leaving her alone. No matter where she flees, the shoes refuse to stop dancing.

Near death from exhaustion, clothed in rags, she finds herself in front of a church where a funeral is in progress. The priest offers to help her. She motions to him to remove the shoes, and as he does so, she dies. He carries her into the church, and the shoemaker retrieves the shoes, to be offered to his next victim.


Dancing, typing. Anyway, a bit off-topic. No one has PM'd me yet.

Posted by: gomi

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Fri 28th January 2011, 1:36pm) *
I suppose it should have been "Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from it?"

Let me ask a different question first: If someone was willing to [i]spend a substantial amount of money to destroy Wikipedia, how would they go about it?[/i]

The are corollaries to this is: Is there a way to destroy Wikipedia while making a lot of money? and Are there ways to make a lot of money from Wikipedia content which might or might not have the side-effect of destroying Wikipedia?

I frankly think that all of the answers turn out to be the same. If someone cared to invest in copying the Wikipedia article base, cleaning it up to make it safe for children and pets, correcting its many problems (mostly by deleting content), radically improving the GUI, changing the contributed-content and editorial models, and then marketed the hell out of it and found a couple ways to monetize it (other than dumb banner advertising), with a few years and many millions of dollars, you could eclipse Wikipedia and send it (more rapidly) into decline. I can imagine a business plan for this, but I doubt I would invest in it. It's too much work for too little upside, other than destroying Wikipedia. Hence the first question.

A more likely scenario (but harder to describe) is that Wikipedia is eclipsed by The Next Big Thing™ and suffocates under its own weight. But that will take longer and is less certain.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(gomi @ Fri 28th January 2011, 10:08pm) *

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Fri 28th January 2011, 1:36pm) *
I suppose it should have been "Could anyone get their hands on it and make a ton of money from it?"

Let me ask a different question first: If someone was willing to [i]spend a substantial amount of money to destroy Wikipedia, how would they go about it?[/i]

The are corollaries to this is: Is there a way to destroy Wikipedia while making a lot of money? and Are there ways to make a lot of money from Wikipedia content which might or might not have the side-effect of destroying Wikipedia?

I frankly think that all of the answers turn out to be the same. If someone cared to invest in copying the Wikipedia article base, cleaning it up to make it safe for children and pets, correcting its many problems (mostly by deleting content), radically improving the GUI, changing the contributed-content and editorial models, and then marketed the hell out of it and found a couple ways to monetize it (other than dumb banner advertising), with a few years and many millions of dollars, you could eclipse Wikipedia and send it (more rapidly) into decline. I can imagine a business plan for this, but I doubt I would invest in it. It's too much work for too little upside, other than destroying Wikipedia. Hence the first question.

A more likely scenario (but harder to describe) is that Wikipedia is eclipsed by The Next Big Thing™ and suffocates under its own weight. But that will take longer and is less certain.


Well one set of figures suggested the site was worth $50m a year. It's a different question and it's a different thread on how you would make that work without destroying it.

On who makes these decisions, how are the trustees elected? Suppose there were a model in which some of the existing adminstration survived and were paid a stipend to do what they currently do unpaid. Is it they who vote for the trustees? how?

Another separate question. What would adminstrators accept as payment for doing what they currently do on Wikipedia? $10,000? $20,000? I don't know.

[edit] OK I see how. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/en

Who voted in these? If you offered them $5,000 each, how would they vote?

Posted by: radek

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 9:50am) *

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:18am) *

Cause and effect. It's the brand name. That is the value. No brand name no traffic, even with all the google support and all that. Traffic is the RESULT of the brand name.


No, it is not.

If Google decided tomorrow to copy Wikipedia's content to a new site called "Sergeypedia.com", and Google elected to remove Wikipedia domains from search results and to replace them with Sergeypedia links, I guarantee you and would be willing to bet you $100 (while there would be some significant outcry from the tech press about "Google being evil") that Sergeypedia (for at least a month, even if left absolutely unimproved by any Google gimmicks) would be a Top 20 website and Wikipedia would fall out of the Top 20.

Radek, if you can find some support for your logic, I would be amused to see it.


I disagree - that Sergeypedia would be top 20, not sure about whether Wikipedia would fall out of top 20 -- and which Top 20 are we talking about? -- - but in the absence of a controlled experiment how do we know?

Posted by: carbuncle

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 11:25pm) *

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 9:50am) *

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:18am) *

Cause and effect. It's the brand name. That is the value. No brand name no traffic, even with all the google support and all that. Traffic is the RESULT of the brand name.


No, it is not.

If Google decided tomorrow to copy Wikipedia's content to a new site called "Sergeypedia.com", and Google elected to remove Wikipedia domains from search results and to replace them with Sergeypedia links, I guarantee you and would be willing to bet you $100 (while there would be some significant outcry from the tech press about "Google being evil") that Sergeypedia (for at least a month, even if left absolutely unimproved by any Google gimmicks) would be a Top 20 website and Wikipedia would fall out of the Top 20.

Radek, if you can find some support for your logic, I would be amused to see it.


I disagree - that Sergeypedia would be top 20, not sure about whether Wikipedia would fall out of top 20 -- and which Top 20 are we talking about? -- - but in the absence of a controlled experiment how do we know?

I am of the opinion, based on not much at all, that Google artificially inflates WP's ranking in search results because it is a reliably decent result for many searches. Better to get a WP article first than a linkfarm.

Posted by: gomi

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:30pm) *
On who makes these decisions, how are the trustees elected? Suppose there were a model in which some of the existing adminstration survived and were paid a stipend to do what they currently do unpaid. Is it they who vote for the trustees?
Most non-profits have "self-selecting" Boards, i.e. they nominate their own members. Wikipedia is unusual in that it provides for one or more "Community" members. I have not read the WMF Bylaws, but I suspect that such community members are a (small) minority of the maximum board size, and thus ultimately powerless. If these are serious questions, go read the WMF Bylaws and/or Articles of Incorporation, and that will answer most of your questions.

Posted by: WikiWatch

QUOTE(radek @ Sat 29th January 2011, 10:25am) *

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 28th January 2011, 9:50am) *

QUOTE(radek @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:18am) *

Cause and effect. It's the brand name. That is the value. No brand name no traffic, even with all the google support and all that. Traffic is the RESULT of the brand name.


No, it is not.

If Google decided tomorrow to copy Wikipedia's content to a new site called "Sergeypedia.com", and Google elected to remove Wikipedia domains from search results and to replace them with Sergeypedia links, I guarantee you and would be willing to bet you $100 (while there would be some significant outcry from the tech press about "Google being evil") that Sergeypedia (for at least a month, even if left absolutely unimproved by any Google gimmicks) would be a Top 20 website and Wikipedia would fall out of the Top 20.

Radek, if you can find some support for your logic, I would be amused to see it.


I disagree - that Sergeypedia would be top 20, not sure about whether Wikipedia would fall out of top 20 -- and which Top 20 are we talking about? -- - but in the absence of a controlled experiment how do we know?


Wikipedia's rank would eventually deflate but it would IMO still be scraping Top 20. Google's Knol has many articles that wikipedia has, yet Knol is not doing very well in search rankings for those articles that you might expect. Sergeypedia might not do any better. Wikipedia's huge size and masses of incoming links means it wont fade away that quickly, even if there is a competitor about. Sadly.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(gomi @ Sat 29th January 2011, 12:41am) *

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Fri 28th January 2011, 2:30pm) *
On who makes these decisions, how are the trustees elected? Suppose there were a model in which some of the existing adminstration survived and were paid a stipend to do what they currently do unpaid. Is it they who vote for the trustees?
Most non-profits have "self-selecting" Boards, i.e. they nominate their own members. Wikipedia is unusual in that it provides for one or more "Community" members. I have not read the WMF Bylaws, but I suspect that such community members are a (small) minority of the maximum board size, and thus ultimately powerless. If these are serious questions, go read the WMF Bylaws and/or Articles of Incorporation, and that will answer most of your questions.



And behold it is here

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/en-us

And note here

QUOTE
The powers of the corporation shall be exercised, its properties controlled, and its affairs conducted by a Board of Trustees to be comprised initially of five trustees. All trustees must be active (contributing or volunteer) or life members of the Foundation.


but also

QUOTE
The property of this corporation is irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes and no part of the net income or assets of this corporation shall ever inure to the benefit of any director, officer or members thereof or to the benefit of any private individual.

ARTICLE VIII: DISTRIBUTION OF ASSETS
Upon the dissolution or winding-up of this corporation, its assets remaining after payment, or provision for payment, of all debts and liabilities of the corporation shall be distributed to a nonprofit fund, foundation, or corporation which is organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes and which has established its tax exempt status under Section 501©(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, or corresponding provisions of subsequent federal tax laws.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws/en-us#ARTICLE_VII:_DEDICATION_OF_ASSETS


I would have to read more carefully to understand whether this still allowed Wikipedia (i.e. the name, the servers, the URL itself) to be sold. I suppose there is this:


QUOTE
These bylaws may be altered, amended or repealed and new Bylaws may be adopted by a majority of the entire Board of Trustees at any regular meeting or special meeting, provided that at least ten days written notice is given of intention to alter, amend or repeal or to adopt new Bylaws at such meeting.


As I'm reading Article VII, there is nothing to stop the Trustees authorising the sale, or the leasing, of Wikipedia to a non-profit, so long as the assets or the income from the sale were used for charitable purposes. It is no different from when my church, which had a building previously used for Scout meetings, sold the building for conversion into condos. The money from the sale was used to build a community centre.

If you look at what the WMF talks about and what it actually uses the money it raises for, very little of it is to do with Wikipedia. It's all about outreach and stuff, and building Wikimedia communities. These ambitions could be easily achieved if the Foundation sold its main asset - Wikipedia - to a third party, for a sum of money (or an income) which would enable them to achieve these laudable aims.

E.g. Bishakha Datta here http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees is "dedicated to disseminating women's perspectives through media, art and culture. " Fantastic. Here's a lot of money, Bishakha, for you to achieve these objectives. Samuel Klein is devoted to getting one Laptop per Child for everyone in the development. Here's a cheque for $100m Sam, take yourself off to PC World and get buying!

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE
...no part of the net income or assets of this corporation shall ever inure to the benefit of any director, officer or members thereof or to the benefit of any private individual.


I think Jimbo already proved that this particular rule hasn't been followed. (See the January 2009 decision to rent office space from Wikia, even though it wasn't the lowest bidder, and it was the only landlord asked to re-submit its bid in light of the other bids received.)

Posted by: Abd

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Fri 28th January 2011, 1:00am) *
QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 27th January 2011, 4:46pm) *
This is not an exhaustive list. The Wikimedia Foundation would be within its right to sell the Wikipedia site to a for-profit company in exchange for a revenue stream. That for-profit company could shut down all user accounts and install advertising if they wanted to. The resulting revenue stream would (for a time) be very substantial. The Wikimedia Foundation would need to use the proceeds from such a sale for its charitable purpose.
And, in fact, it would probably have to do this if it wanted to monetize the site, because of the restrictions on charities receiving income from business activities. The wholly owned for-profit subsidiary would have to pay corporate income taxes, and distribute some or all of the retained earnings after taxes back to its parent nonprofit. (See also the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation.) Arguably Wikipedia should have been set up this way in the first place.


Mmm... nonprofits can sell advertising, and can pay officers fat salaries. It's what they do with the profit that affects nonprofit status. Selling ads for a publication is not an unrelated business if the business is publishing, as it is. It's just a means of accomplishing the purpose: education, right?

Yes, the WMF, if it sold the name, would have to use the proceeds for a charitable. Purpose. Without impugning any member of the board, but from what happens sometimes in other nonprofits, the WMF would toss it in a big endowment, and then host conferences in plush resorts so that the board can be "advised" as to what to do. Absolutely, they'd need that corporate jet to ferry the board members and other staff around, right?

Bottom line, Wikipedia is owned by a nonprofit corporation, which is controlled by a self-elected board. Self-elected? Don't we vote for the board members? Sure. Those votes are advisory only. Who makes the bylaws? Believe me, this is all pretty standard, boringly so.

The community has real power because the community provides the labor to maintain the project and to expand it. Generally, it seems, the WMF has been terrified that the hoi polloi will organize and actually exert power, that's why, my guess, anything that hints of off-wiki coordination is snuffed ASAP.

My view, it's all short-sighted. But quite traditional.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Abd @ Sat 29th January 2011, 10:35pm) *

Mmm... nonprofits can sell advertising, and can pay officers fat salaries. It's what they do with the profit that affects nonprofit status. Selling ads for a publication is not an unrelated business if the business is publishing, as it is. It's just a means of accomplishing the purpose: education, right?


No, wrong.

Posted by: 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.

Posted by: EricBarbour

QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 29th January 2011, 3:49pm) *
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.

You might be correct, given the use patterns and userbase.

Don't forget that Facebook http://mashable.com/2011/01/17/facebooks-ad-revenue-hit-1-86b-for-2010/ last year, from advertising
(more-or-less the only revenue generator they've got).
But then, it's been absurdly overvalued by investors--currently http://mashable.com/2011/01/03/facebook-raises-500-million-now-worth-50-billion-report/.
I doubt an "encyclopedia" run by a bunch of Aspies could ever come close to that.

Maybe they could start a "MY Wikipedia" social site like Facebook?
Leverage their brand a little bit? biggrin.gif

(Did you know that mywikipedia.com redirects to a spam-filled blog?)

Posted by: gomi

QUOTE(Abd @ Sat 29th January 2011, 2:35pm) *
Mmm... nonprofits can sell advertising, and can pay officers fat salaries. It's what they do with the profit that affects nonprofit status. Selling ads for a publication is not an unrelated business if the business is publishing, as it is. It's just a means of accomplishing the purpose: education, right?

Re "fat salaries", the IRS newly requires non-profits to submit on their Form 990s the salaries of all "highly compensated" executives, and certify that the total compensation for those executives is comparable to that of executives at similar institutions elsewhere. "Excess compensation" is prohibited and can endanger the tax-exempt status of the institution.

Regarding selling advertising, many non-profits do so (for example in their magazines, or whatever), but it is usually "unrelated business taxable income" which is usually limited to 30% of the non-profit's revenue. The key test for UBTI is "not substantially related to furthering the exempt purpose of the organization". The IRS goes on to say that "the causal relationship [to the exempt purpose] must be substantial" and "the activities that generate the income must contribute importantly to accomplishing the organization's exempt purposes to be substantially related." The IRS uses an example of advertising in a yearbook, and concludes that ads are unrelated business income. There are other relevant examples in IRS Publication 598.

Note, however, that sponsorship advertising (of the kind, e.g. that Public Broadcasting does) is not generally considered UBTI, but the sponsorship statements cannot be "inducements to purchase, sell or use ... products or services". Note also that any "trade or business in which substantially all the work is performed by volunteer labor without compensation" is specifically excluded from being UBTI in the statute. It is all quite complicated.

I'll keep explaining this to you guys, but I have no idea where this conversation is going.

Posted by: radek

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Sat 29th January 2011, 5:58pm) *

QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 29th January 2011, 3:49pm) *
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.

You might be correct, given the use patterns and userbase.

Don't forget that Facebook http://mashable.com/2011/01/17/facebooks-ad-revenue-hit-1-86b-for-2010/ last year, from advertising
(more-or-less the only revenue generator they've got).
But then, it's been absurdly overvalued by investors--currently http://mashable.com/2011/01/03/facebook-raises-500-million-now-worth-50-billion-report/.
I doubt an "encyclopedia" run by a bunch of Aspies could ever come close to that.

Maybe they could start a "MY Wikipedia" social site like Facebook?
Leverage their brand a little bit? biggrin.gif

(Did you know that mywikipedia.com redirects to a spam-filled blog?)




Mmmm.... agree with that. It's like Yahoo!'s market value at one point was greater than of all the automobile producing firms in US put together and people bought into that. And these days most "kids" don't even know what a "Yahoo!" is, more or less. Same thing with Facebook. Silly pop culture movies made for the "meme of the day"and the "celebritization" of the guy behind it are actually a pretty good indication that soon no one will care.

For better or worse somehow I don't think the same is true for Wikipedia. Too much "economies of scale" and path dependence.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(gomi @ Sun 30th January 2011, 12:24am) *

Regarding selling advertising, many non-profits do so (for example in their magazines, or whatever), but it is usually "unrelated business taxable income" which is usually limited to 30% of the non-profit's revenue. The key test for UBTI is "not substantially related to furthering the exempt purpose of the organization". The IRS goes on to say that "the causal relationship [to the exempt purpose] must be substantial" and "the activities that generate the income must contribute importantly to accomplishing the organization's exempt purposes to be substantially related." The IRS uses an example of advertising in a yearbook, and concludes that ads are unrelated business income. There are other relevant examples in IRS Publication 598.

Note, however, that sponsorship advertising (of the kind, e.g. that Public Broadcasting does) is not generally considered UBTI, but the sponsorship statements cannot be "inducements to purchase, sell or use ... products or services". Note also that any "trade or business in which substantially all the work is performed by volunteer labor without compensation" is specifically excluded from being UBTI in the statute. It is all quite complicated.


Thanks for that. I've always wondered whether or not a charity with an exempt purpose of dissemination of informational content could justify (at least the more informational forms of) advertising as being directly related to that exempt purpose, but it's not something that I'd recommend without a private letter ruling or signoff by someone more knowledgeable than myself on the relevant case law.

And yes, I'm aware of qualified sponsorship statements, but I'm thinking of advertising that would not qualify, among other things due to "containing qualitative or comparative language, price information, or other indications of savings or value".

But in the end, for something like Wikipedia, I'd say the benefit of being able to retain earnings tax free comes nowhere near the detriments of having to deal with the IRS's micromanagement of charity organizations.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 29th January 2011, 11:49pm) *

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.

Posted by: EricBarbour

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Sun 30th January 2011, 1:34am) *
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.

Oh, but sometimes, they do. They have to. Legal threats and all that.
But they just "pretend" to not have a problem.
Have a look at http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=32775 for the latest example.

QUOTE
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.

You've just described Wikia, btw. (Minus the third part, although there's probably a lot of useful
encyclopedia content hidden away in there somewhere.)

Frankly, I don't think anything will change at the WMF. They are like General Electric--so hidebound,
conservative, and unable to change, that the mere idea of moving from making electrical
switchgear and turbine engines to, say, mining equipment, would cause them to laugh their heads off.

But if the market for switchgear and turbines ever collapses, they will just ride the whole massive
entity into the ground, all the while pointing fingers at each other. It almost happened to GE--read
Jack Welch's biography. GE was headed for the dustbin when Welch took the reins in 1981. He was
a bastard, but he probably saved the company from irrelevance-followed-by-bankruptcy.

(Did you know that in 1981, GE still owned the world's largest vacuum-tube factory, in Owensboro, Kentucky?
One of Welch's first acts was to sell off the white elephant--given that the market for tubes was
crashing because consumer electronics had already gone solid-state, it wasn't a bad decision.)

I don't see any Jack Welches at the WMF. Just a gang of mediocrities, blaming each other for
each disaster and crisis, and then trying to cover it all up.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Sun 30th January 2011, 10:27am) *

You've just described Wikia, btw.


Not quite. Wikia kept the advertising quite separate from the content, and there was no encyclopedia. Here I'm envisaging carefully policed outbound links from the encyclopedia part to the advertising part. The police are employed by the encyclopedia part, and their job is to protect its neutrality. So if your local estate agent or restaurant has a reasonably good article, say like this

QUOTE
Light Horse Tavern received favorable mention in a 2003 review for The Jersey Journal, which noted, "With its beautiful decor, try to stay focused on the food. It's surprisingly good and reasonably priced."[1] The Waterfront Journal described the Light Horse Tavern in 2004 as "an exquisite restaurant where you can dine Manhattan-style".[11] In 2004, Hudson Reporter referred to the establishment as "the center" of the "political world" in Hudson County, New Jersey.[12] The publication noted, "Unfortunately, so many political people show up at the Light Horse these days that enemies cannot help but bump into each other."[12] The tavern was a favorite hangout location for New Jersey politician Paul Byrne.[13][14] In 2005, The Jersey Journal recommended the Light Horse Tavern among locations to celebrate New Year's Eve.[2] A 2006 article about Jersey City in New York Magazine highlighted the Light Horse Tavern, among recommended local attractions of the city, and described it as "upscale".[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Horse_Tavern

then you can get an outbound link in the encyclopedia part. The difference from the Wikipedia article above is that the encyclopedia would get paid for both the link and the article/advertising space. In the case above, the restaurant owner got it for free.

In the case of articles about large corporations, which would deserve space in the encyclopedia itself, that's more difficult. I would suggest a very short article in the encyclopedia, restricted to the bare facts, plus a link to an article paid for by the company and written by its own PR staff, clearly identified as such (like the advertisement-feature articles you see in normal newspapers that have 'this is an advertisement' in big letters at the top).

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Sun 30th January 2011, 5:36am) *
In the case of articles about large corporations, which would deserve space in the encyclopedia itself, that's more difficult. I would suggest a very short article in the encyclopedia, restricted to the bare facts, plus a link to an article paid for by the company and written by its own PR staff, clearly identified as such (like the advertisement-feature articles you see in normal newspapers that have 'this is an advertisement' in big letters at the top).

Things like that have been suggested (and, of course, roundly rejected by the "community") before, but I should just point out that if WMF/Wikipedia allowed for something like that, then yes, their potential ad revenue could go into 9, 10, or jeez, maybe even 11 figures someday.

The lowball estimate I used earlier in this thread was based on the fact that advertisers want a fair amount of control over the space they buy, and by "fair" I mean "total." If the seller of ad space is forced to tell the advertiser, "we can't guarantee, or even give you any kind of assurance whatsoever, that the page on which your corn-flakes ad will appear won't occasionally contain information about the negative effects of eating corn-flakes, or won't even contain the words "CORN FLAKES SUCK BALLS" in large capital letters," that's going to make the space less valuable to the advertiser, so the advertiser will insist on paying less than he would on, say, Facebook, where he has much greater control.

But if Wikipedia were to set up something like Wikipedia Review.com, where the subject of an article can control what's on the page and still get the same amount of Google juice, then sure, the WMF would clean up. It would be a ca$h-grabbing bonanza. What's more, the organizational infrastructure required just to manage that part of the business would force the WMF to expand to, I dunno, at least twice its current size and maybe 4 or 5 times its current size, in terms of employees, office space, etc. - with all that such an expansion would entail. Obviously I hope they don't do that, because the WMF is bad enough as it is, without being a billion-dollar company. Imagine how much damage they could do with that kind of money.

Posted by: Peter Damian

QUOTE(Somey @ Sun 30th January 2011, 6:22pm) *

But if Wikipedia were to set up something like Wikipedia Review.com, where the subject of an article can control what's on the page and still get the same amount of Google juice, then sure, the WMF would clean up. It would be a ca$h-grabbing bonanza. What's more, the organizational infrastructure required just to manage that part of the business would force the WMF to expand to, I dunno, at least twice its current size and maybe 4 or 5 times its current size, in terms of employees, office space, etc. - with all that such an expansion would entail. Obviously I hope they don't do that, because the WMF is bad enough as it is, without being a billion-dollar company. Imagine how much damage they could do with that kind of money.


MWB was a much better idea. The problem always was that there is only room for one Wikipedia. I have tested writing the same page on Wikipedia and on MWB. Wikipedia grabs the juice every time. And that's what I mean by 'it'. I don't want to buy the content, or even the name. I just want the ability to have everything I write get to #1 in Google. That's what people buying the advertising want, too.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Sun 30th January 2011, 12:23pm) *

QUOTE(Somey @ Sun 30th January 2011, 6:22pm) *

But if Wikipedia were to set up something like Wikipedia Review.com, where the subject of an article can control what's on the page and still get the same amount of Google juice, then sure, the WMF would clean up. It would be a ca$h-grabbing bonanza. What's more, the organizational infrastructure required just to manage that part of the business would force the WMF to expand to, I dunno, at least twice its current size and maybe 4 or 5 times its current size, in terms of employees, office space, etc. - with all that such an expansion would entail. Obviously I hope they don't do that, because the WMF is bad enough as it is, without being a billion-dollar company. Imagine how much damage they could do with that kind of money.


MWB was a much better idea. The problem always was that there is only room for one Wikipedia. I have tested writing the same page on Wikipedia and on MWB. Wikipedia grabs the juice every time. And that's what I mean by 'it'. I don't want to buy the content, or even the name. I just want the ability to have everything I write get to #1 in Google. That's what people buying the advertising want, too.

There's an un-doable experiment I'd love to try: suppose Google were jiggered so that, for a year, it automatically put the Wikipedia Review (MWB) article above WP's, in any case where both articles existed. How long before MWB started to shoot into the statosphere? For all the "I get to control the article about my business and myself" reasons that Greg has mentioned.

The problem with WP is that Google sees it as one homogenous site, so that every article with 2000 page views a month gets the same ranking, when you search that term, as an article that gets 100 times more. There's something basically unfair about that.

However, this has allowed WP (as a WHOLE) to achieve "escape velocity," so that there's no way to catch any individual part of it now, in GOOGLE rankings. I believe it would take GOOGLE deliberately jiggering their own product, Google Knol, to get past that advantage now, so long as they insist on seeing en.wiki (and the other language wikis, too) as "single" websites, and not the many many sub-pages that each is composed of.

And Google has not done this, at least not yet. Example: search Google for "Knol." Sure, Google's own site comes up FIRST, then the help site for it. Then, (THIRD) WP's article on Knol, even though that page is only seen 5500 times a month on WP. All this is purely because the ENTIRE Knol site beats out the single WP article for this term, but it won't happen for any given page of Knol vs. any given page of Wikipedia. Example: Knol itself gives "Insomnia" as a good example article for Knol. But if you search on Google for "insomnia", WP's article on it comes up FIRST on page one, and I can't find the Knol article in first FIVE pages of the search (at which point I gave up). Effectively, it might as well not exist on the web.

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Sun 30th January 2011, 2:23pm) *

MWB was a much better idea. The problem always was that there is only room for one Wikipedia. I have tested writing the same page on Wikipedia and on MWB. Wikipedia grabs the juice every time. And that's what I mean by 'it'. I don't want to buy the content, or even the name. I just want the ability to have everything I write get to #1 in Google. That's what people buying the advertising want, too.


The secret, Peter, is to write the high-quality content on Wikipedia Review, then expressly do not write anything at all on Wikipedia. Keep doing that about 400,000 times, and we'll begin to make a dent in Wikipedia's search engine dominance.

Posted by: EricBarbour

You guys are assuming that Google's page ranking scheme is 100% "honest" and "predictable".
I've seen a few declarations to the contrary. Not to mention the mountains of blather SEO
people have written about gaming Google.

Perhaps Mr. Brandt would have a few choice comments about this subject.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Mon 31st January 2011, 2:17am) *
Perhaps Mr. Brandt would have a few choice comments about this subject.

i'd rather hear from Bambi.

Posted by: WikiWatch

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Mon 31st January 2011, 1:17pm) *

You guys are assuming that Google's page ranking scheme is 100% "honest" and "predictable".
I've seen a few declarations to the contrary. Not to mention the mountains of blather SEO
people have written about gaming Google.

Perhaps Mr. Brandt would have a few choice comments about this subject.


I agree with you Eric. The Google ranking system is unfair and biased.