Jimbo's all fired up about Rupert Murdoch's pay-wall on The Times. Could it be that he's also aware that Jana Winter is paid by Murdoch?

Anyway, Jimbo's going to love: "the London office of Wikia, the commercial arm of Wikipedia".

Now that it's in a reliable source like MediaWeek, can't we get the Wikipedia article about Wikia to finally say that it's "the commercial arm of Wikipedia"?

Really, Greg, don't post links to one of these creepy pics of Jimbo without a NSFSS (Not Safe For Sensitive Stomachs) warning.

Jon

Comment from the author of the piece, moments ago:

The long arm of Mr. WPple wipes again !

Take that, Omar !!!

Jon

The conflict would be present whether a Fox journalist was pursuing WP on issues relating to pornography or not. Murdock (at least here) represents the long sustained practice of paying for the development of content through employing journalists and researchers and developing leads and contacts. This material does not appear as if by magic and it is reasonable to charge for it. I don't know if this model will take hold or if something else is needed but it is important that people in the business of wresting information from a hard world do not give up trying to find a way to sustain their work. Wales represents the web 2.0 aggregator and echo chamber of endless re-transmission. For him content is free, easy and as far as he is concerned does appear by magic.

It is the "what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine" school of thought.



What kind of person would refer to himself that way? He sounds like Stephen Colbert in full character as a self involved asshole.

New on ABC this Fall —

The Influencer

Jon

With due regard to The Rule of Blind Pig, Jimbo has to be right at least some of the time, and this would appear to be one of those times. The paywall probably won't work, and for the reason that Jimbo cited: its content simply isn't unique enough. There are too many competitors offering similar quality content for free for it to work. Still, Jimbo being Jimbo, he still manages to come off as what the cousins would call a "pompous prat":

To err is human. To be an insufferable self-involved asshole is objectivist.

The logic behind the Times paywall has nothing to do with content delivery, and everything to do with market segmentation. Murdoch is banking on The Times retaining sufficient loyalty from SEGs A&B to encourage high end advertising revenue exclusive to the paywall, in this respect Murdoch is probably on safe ground as The Times readership is in the main not sensitive to the monetary cost of news (and more importantly comment and opinion of those commentators likely to be published by The Times) but is sensitive to time costs, so that digital delivery will suport a premium. Little Jimmy got the basics of the issue when he recognised that The NYT and FT can succesfully levy such a premium, it's just that he knows nothing about the UK, so can't grasp why The Times may be successful at doing the same.




Wrong ascription - "complete wanker" would be the more commonly applied idiom. But then we UKans gave the US BP, so it's only fair we get some of your toxic businesses in return, though Lehmann Brother, Goldman Sax et al might be thought enough without foisting Wikia on us as well.

A.virosa

From the article on wallblog:



You must be off your game today Greg, if you're letting me catch the horrid editing.

Not to mention the one that's two paragraphs below that: "Wales said he had would have no qualms about paying for the New York Times on an Apple iPad"...

Paywalls rarely work on the Internet, particularly for information of general interest rather than some obscure specialty where the paywalled content may actually be of unique interest, such as investment tips or odd-fetish porn.

Much as I dislike NI and Murdoch I hope this works and more follow him. There are far too many sites that provide no content of their own and simply scrap the work of others - Yes Google I'm looking at you.

At some point the freetards are going to be wondering where all the music, news, and movies went.

"Freetard"... nice.

Ah, the hopelessness of open content. I'm with you -no one ever made a dime letting their work get shared freely.

Adding it to my own vocabulary immediately!!

Eh, how much do you want for it? Wondering if the license fee for a fine word like freetard™ is more than I'm willing to pay. Crap, I used it so it looks like I'm in some debt already.

Don't be a sucker, someone's bound to repost it on WP soon enough.

ps. was "fine word" a deliberate double entendre? Be honest!

See Dan Lyons, who purportedly coined the term.

Unless I'm missing something it's not that good a pun. Or I'd claim it.

What would happen if it was? Would it be like scrabble and count more?

=========

"When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

"Oh!" said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.

"Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night," Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side, "for to get their wages, you know."

Arguably, the New York Times is of unique interest; there is only one Times, whatever its faults...

Not to sound too much like a certain sockmaster, but if you ask for 'The Times' in London, they won't hand you the 'New York' upstart.

A newspaper once so highly regarded that Britain once euthanized the king so that his death wouldn't be reported first in a lesser tabloid.
Probably it's best that a newspaper never again will have that stature.

Somewhere up in the future, I foresee some hospice person giving Jimbo his final shot of morphine just before being the first to update Wikinews.

Perhaps you'd levy it.

Show-off.

A fine distinction.

If the Times gave us some actual good reporting, and in-depth analysis, I'd pay.
If they specialized in that, they might survive. But if they keep on puking up the Same News As
Everyone Else, plus crap "lifestyle" featurettes, they're done for.

And as for that other guy.

Now you're just tolling.

You are missing the point of The Times, it doesn't operate on the basis of selling 'good reporting', it operates on the basis of being the in house magazine of what would once have been described as the 'British Establishment'. Having a paywall fits in with an established sense of exclusivity. The fact that it's absolute shite (a Murdoch speciality) does not matter, it's well polished shite that's approved of by people whose approval matters to the type of people who buy The Times. Whether there's enough of them to support the paywall business model remains to be seen, in any event very few would care what some yank chancer sometime soft core pornographer has to say the matter.

A.virosa

Then again, if he had not stuttered like Max Headroom, and if you had not paused to notice his stutter, I would have overlooked an opportunity to congratulate the staccatic emphasis on using the word "qualms".

Qualms may not be nice (they are mildly nasty), but it's nice to be able to utter the word when it's appropriate to do so.

Oh, and how did you feel about stumbling over that ill-crafted phrase, "staccatic emphasis"?

I know you meant "scrape" (not "scrap") but my experience is that Wikimedia projects have been scrapping my contributions for three years now.

And I daresay I am not alone in feeling scrapped.


Well I dunno where all the good music went, but I know of a dumping ground where you can find all the atrocious poetry and nasty song parodies that have been unceremoniously dumped from this estimable site over the years.