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: Sun 30th January 2011, 9:37am

[EricBarbour]

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 this thread for the latest example.

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.

[Peter Damian]

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

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).

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sun 30th January 2011, 11:38am

[Somey]

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.

[Peter Damian]

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.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sun 30th January 2011, 7:24pm