Why does everyone think Wikipedia is such a big fucking deal? It took 100,000 people over a decade to slap this thing together. Samuel Johnson wrote the first definitive English dictionary on his own, in nine years, by candlelight, in an 18th century world riddled with wolves and syphilis. According to technology writer Jane McGonigal, if every internet user donated just one hour a week – a fraction of the collective effort squandered on massively multiplayer online gaming – humanity could shit out 80 Wikipedias a month. As human accomplishments go, one measly online encyclopedia isn't exactly the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Annons
It's easy to think otherwise, however, when confronted with one of Wikipedia's plus-sized, banner ad fundraisers. In these "personal appeals", founder Jimmy Wales stares out at humanity and pleads – through puppy dog eyes Photoshopped into Kevin Costner's face – don't let this great thing that is us die. Don't cast humanity back to the dark ages of physical libraries. Sometimes Wales' mug is replaced with lesser known clerics, all those authors and coders and editors who gaze at the viewer with their own puppy dog eyes. Don't let all our free work have been in vain. What do you call such extractors of fun and joy from the world? Fussy hippies? Fippies? Hupsies? Hissie Fips?Their appeals are plenty sad, just not in the way they were intended. The Huffington Post sold for $315,000,000: For every one Huffington reader, Wikipedia gets sixteen. The Silicon Alley Insider values the site at $5 billion. Wikipedia deserves as much spare change as IBM.To unlock that $5 billion, of course, the site would need to run some ads. They could be itty bitty little word ads, Gmail-style. The tradeoff would be immense. With even half of that $5 billion, you could pay 50,000 writers, researchers and fact checkers $50,000 a year, each. A lengthy debate page inside Wikipedia discusses uses for such a cash infusion, but at no point is there any acknowledgment that the site should ditch contributors altogether. Sure, Wikipedia wouldn't have grown to what it is now without dedicated volunteers. But so what? Why not use this vast, untapped ocean of capital to make Wikipedia a reliable, definitive, an everlastingly free resource?
Annons
The answer can be found halfway down the lengthy debate page: "Ads cheapen the encyclopedia." Even if you factor out that newspapers have dealt with this very challenge for centuries, it seems like a rather bold statement from a reference material that can be cheapened by any 7-year-old with a Dell.A few years ago, I tracked down and contacted a Wikipedia contributor. There were some errors on a page mentioning my name, and if I'd made the changes myself this contributor would've swooped in and "corrected" the page within hours. He was a nice enough young man, and he made the revisions quickly. But the transaction left me feeling confused, and morally grubby. What I should have written was, who do I have to blow to not be included in your encyclopedia?This gave me a million-dollar fundraising idea. What if Wikipedia charged a nominal opt-out fee? I'd gladly pay $20 every year to have my name scrubbed from the book of life. There are probably millions of people just like me. Wikipedia could raise far more than their $20 million annual goal with this one simple manoeuvre.Would this be considered a cheapening of the encyclopedia? And if the answer is no, could this be the key to get Jimmy Wales to stop peering into all of our souls?Previously: The Brutality Report - Stupid People What Don't Know They're Stupid@sammcpheeters
