This page is about the issue of boosting
Wikipedia revenues by
mandatory ads, user-optional ads, search result ads, search tool contracts, or various other advertising and fundraising options. For the issue of unwanted advertisement in Wikipedia articles, see
Wikipedia:Spam.
 | This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion. Essays are not Wikipedia policies. |
 Sick of seeing these? (...you probably live in Europe) |
While I continue to oppose the introduction of any advertising in Wikipedia, I also continue to agree that the discussion should evolve beyond a simple binary. I believe that if we looked at putting ads into the search results page (only), with the money earmarked for specific purposes (with strong community input into what those would be, either liberation of copyrights or support for the languages of the developing world or...). As the Foundation continues to evolve into a more professional organization capable of taking on and executing tasks (yay Sue and the growing staff!), it begins to be possible to imagine many uses of money that would benefit our core charitable goals. Lest I be misunderstood: I am not saying anything new, but saying exactly what I have said for many years.
The issue has been the topic of ongoing discussion. Revenue generated from advertisements could improve the website and help achieve its goals. On the other hand, advertising may be at odds with the mission of a
neutral,
non-profitwebsite which aims to educate.
There are currently no plans for advertising on Wikipedia. The current standpoint is that the Wikimedia Foundation should not carry advertisements. On the other hand, there is some interest in that Wikimedia itself will run advertisements, in order to increase traffic to Wikimedia Foundation fundraising and donations pages, under the assumption that increased traffic will lead to increased donations (see
meta:Advertising proposal for more info).
[edit]Arguments against adverts
Insignificant revenue. The click-through rate might very well be so low that only a small amount of revenue would be brought in by the ads. It would not be worth barraging thousands of readers with ads for only a few pennies of revenue.
Ads cheapen the encyclopedia. By their very nature, ads are biased content intended to influence people. They are thus diametrically opposed to the goals of a neutral encyclopedia intended to inform people. They would cheapen the encyclopedia in the eyes of many readers, as evidenced by the numerous anti-ad comments received during every donation drive.
Contributors may leave. Many contributors vigorously oppose ads (see the forking of the
Spanish Wikipedia,
1,
2,
3,
4), and in 2009 the Wikimedia Foundation promised to keep
"Wikipedia. Ad-free forever." Since about 2002, Jimbo Wales has repeatedly stated that he opposes all advertising on Wikipedia as well. Based on these statements, some editors have probably contributed with the understanding that their content would not be diluted with ads. Changing the long-standing no-ads policy now could reasonably be perceived as a bait and switch tactic. Numerous contributors are likely to leave as a result and new ones are less likely to start. Contributor goodwill is Wikipedia's main asset and should not be gambled with.
Annoying and distracting. Readers come to us for encyclopedic information, not for ads. Ads have to be processed by the brain (if only subconsciously) and therefore distract and annoy. "The free encyclopedia" also means: free from distractions and annoyances.
Privacy violation. If an ad consolidator such as
Google AdSense is used, the privacy of our readers is compromised. The consolidator will invariably learn which Wikipedia articles a given
IP address reads or searches for; they can then correlate that information with other data they may have about that IP address (e.g.
Gmail account).
Changing customers. Right now, our customers are the readers and contributors and our product is an encyclopedia; we have to keep our customers happy in order to keep donations flowing. Once we switch to an ad-based funding model, the situation changes dramatically: our customers now are the advertisers, our product is the readers' attention, and it is this product that we sell to the customers.
Unnecessary. For several years now, the foundation has worked fine as a lean and mean donation-based operation, running a top-ten website. Donations (and readership) are growing, the annual fundraiser is getting shorter and we have a growing group of repeat donors. By contrast the cost of running the site benefit from the improving price performance of computers, so the minimum necessary to keep the site running may well be falling.
Threat to neutrality of content. Companies which pay directly to advertise on Wikipedia may then feel entitled to favorable coverage about themselves in Wikipedia articles, or to content that is compatible with their message. For comparison, commercial television occasionally must change its content to placate its advertisers.
[3] Threat to independence of design. Companies which pay to put ads directly on Wikipedia will naturally care about their
click-through rates. They will have an incentive to suggest layout changes to Wikipedia which increase their click-through rates, or they may try editing particular articles with a view to increasing click-throughs. Until now, Wikipedia has not had to worry about satisfying anyone but its users with its site and page layouts.
Something else to argue about. If a large amount of money begins flowing through Wikipedia, thousands of Wikipedia contributors might get distracted from editing and instead argue about where the money should go. This might become more of a problem if Wikipedia generates far more revenue than it needs for its own operation, and begins supporting outside charities.
Advertisers can also be users. In traditional media, advertisers can sometimes try to exert editorial control, but they must do so indirectly, as they lack physical access to the creative tools. In contrast, anyone can edit Wikipedia. Even without advertisements, we already have to delete many articles that are overly
promotional; accepting advertisements might increase this.
Inappropriate ads. Without establishing strict oversight of ad placement, it is very likely that ads will appear on articles where their content, message, or mere presence, would be highly inappropriate or contrary to the nature of the article's content. Readers or contributors might be offended, or the main authors of those articles might leave.
Hacking danger. If ads are of served as plugins (e.g. Flash), they can deliver viruses to user computers; there have been many examples of this on major websites, where the advertising agency has let through seemingly-innocent ads that deliver viruses. (Even simple text ads, if they use certain common web elements like iframes of xhr requests, can transmit a compromise from the ad agency to the viewer; though this is far less likely than pictures and plugins. A vulnerability in image-display code can also make pictorial ads a vector for viruses.)
Conflict of interest. Some ads may be attempt to spread disinformation or be purposefully misleading; Wikipedia is about educating users; this can be seen as a conflict of interest.
Commitments made to donors Wikimedia has been collecting donations on the basis of being advertising free, if it were to renege on that it would come under pressure to return that money.
The right to fork it is inherent in the use of an open license that projects can fork. Thus far the largest fork away from Wikimedia was by a large part of the Spanish Wikipedia community who left because advertising was being considered. The adoption of advertising on Wikimedia sites would be very likely to precipitate a fork, and if the search engines were to favour the ad free version over the one that competed with their ads then there would be a very good chance that the ad free version would be more successful than the one with ads.
[edit]Arguments for adverts
One proposed implementation of ads on Wikipedia.
adverts = money = reliability + speed + expansion ...basically.
Maybe it would not be bad to have a few discreet adverts, if it means we could get more servers, programmers, bandwidth, staff... There's a patch of whitespace on the left side of many Wikipedia pages that could be used for ads.
If text-based and small, ads would put no strain on the servers. The extra money generated by ads would allow the purchase of more servers.
Ads don't necessarily have to be distracting. Wikipedia could remain
non-profit. The number of ads could be limited to current budgetary needs, or more ads could be used for setting aside money for future projects.
A trial with short contracts would make it easy to just "revert" back to the previous ad-less version. It has been estimated
[1] [2] that such endeavors could potentially raise hundreds of millions of
dollars. Wikimedia could even become a charitable organization providing money for all kinds of seed projects, philanthropic causes, etc..
The work of selecting the ads could be handled by an
ad serving consolidator such as Google
Adsense.
Another possibility is that all adverts would be screened. If this sounds like too much work for volunteers, extra staff could be hired, using the extra revenue from ads.
Adverts could use the Monobook colours, font and style in order to distract little from Wikipedia. Or they could have a separate background color so that readers would more clearly know that they are ads, and not click them by accident. One option could be that no images, animations, sounds, or anything too distracting would be allowed. Or readers could choose what they would allow.
Adverts could be placed unobtrusively at the bottom of the left side, just above the "A Wikimedia Project" image. Or the reader could choose to have ads placed anywhere they want.
Adverts could all have the same width, and be grouped by height, with greater heights costing more (up to a limit).
Adverts would only be shown on pages with enough whitespace to accommodate the largest category of advert. Or readers could choose to place ads on the side, top, or bottom of the page.
Since Wikipedia has the ability to fund itself independently, is it acceptable to continue taking charitable contributions that could otherwise be going to organizations incapable of funding themselves?
Adverts can actually be useful to users.
Advertising income is arguably more independent than donations from foundations, which can all too easily be withdrawn.
Advertising income can be used to build a Wikipedia Foundation which can make Wikipedia more independent.
The argument against adverts "Ads cheapen the encyclopedia. By their very nature, ads are biased content intended to influence people" is weak and misaligned. The bias from advertisement is to sell a product, not to influence the content of the article.
If sufficient revenue were generated from adverts, contributors would no longer need to donate to the foundation, and could donate to other, life-saving, causes.
[edit]Arguments for optional adverts
According to the
December 2010 Wikimedia Foundation Report there were 411 million global unique visitors to all Wikimedia Foundation projects in November 2010.
The Huffington Post with over 25 million monthly unique visitors was sold to
AOLfor $315 Million in February 2011.
[5][6] Wikimedia has over 16 times the number of monthly unique visitors as the
Huffington Post. 16 times $315 Million equals $5.04 billion.
Compare to
WordPress.com. From their stats page in February 2011: "Over 277 million people view more than about 2.3 billion pages each month."
[7][8][9] It doesn't take many ads to make a significant contribution. WordPress.com uses
minimal as-needed ads. Most people don't know that the millions of free blogs
[7] on the WordPress.com site are funded partially by ads, since only a few ads are used throughout the many blogs. It is unlikely that most readers will ever notice an ad. From their "Features You’ll Love" page
[10]:
"Advertising. To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog, however we do this very rarely. You can remove ads from your blog for a low yearly fee." See also their advertising page
[11]: "
To support the service (and keep free features free), we also sometimes run advertisements. If you would like to completely eliminate ads from appearing on your blog, we offer the No-Ads Upgrade."
WordPress.com has a worldwide
Alexa traffic rank of 19 compared to Wikipedia's rank of 8 (as of February 2011).
[12][1] Wikimedia Foundation sites had around 68 million unique visitors from the U.S. in September 2009 according to
comScore. WordPress.com had 28 million unique visitors from the U.S. in September 2009.
[13] WordPress.com has had explosive growth since it opened in August 2005 (see
WordPress.com).
[14] Matt (WordPress.com founder) explains their ad use that started in August 2006:
In November 2010
ReadWriteWeb wrote: "Wikipedia was the 12th most popular Web property in the U.S. in September, with comScore reporting nearly 80 million unique visitors for the month. By comparison, Google had 180 million, while Facebook had just under 150 million. But Wikipedia's English language content accounts for only a fifth of the collaborative encyclopedia's content. Looking at global traffic to Wikipedia, the site has doubled its monthly unique visitors since 2007, with just under 400 million in September. As opposed to its 12th place ranking in the U.S., these 400 million unique visitors make it the fifth most popular Web property in the world."
[15]Clicking a button to view ads puts more control back in the hands of the users, not the major contributors and endorsers. Wikipedia/Wikimedia can less and less afford to offend the large contributors and endorsers just as
National Public Radio (NPR) and
PBS can not afford to offend their many large
"underwriters." See
underwriting spot. This is why NPR and PBS put out mostly uncontroversial material that does not present all major viewpoints. Wikipedia on the other hand presents all sides due to
WP:NPOV. Opt-in ads would come from tens of thousands of companies and organizations, and so no individual company could influence Wikipedia. Wikipedia presents a much fuller picture of any subject it covers, because of the
WP:NPOV requirement to present all major viewpoints. Wikipedia gets by mainly on tens of thousands of small donations. This is the model of many funders that needs to be maintained, and not the NPR and PBS model with the possibility of offending the major "underwriters." Having many advertisers maintains the model of many funders, and makes the chilling effect of advertisers leaving unimportant. There are many more advertisers to replace them when using something like Google
Adsense.
Help fund Wikipedia. On/off button for ads.
The yearly fundraising banners on Wikipedia have a hide/show link that is remembered in subsequent sessions. It works for both registered and non-registered users, and is based on cookies. So there is already a system set up that could be adapted for an opt-in button.
Fewer and fewer people in Wikipedia Village Pump discussions oppose opt-in ads. It is mandatory ads that most people do not want. People want to help in many ways, and sometimes they can't donate money.
This is about user opt-in ads and user opt-out ads for Wikipedia readers. The default setting for logged-in, registered readers would always be no ads. They could individually choose to opt-in to see ads. Depending on the model used there could be various default ad settings for non-registered readers. Wikipedia may want the default setting to be no ads for all users. This way the "look and feel" of Wikipedia is not changed. People choose for themselves. This would be an opt-in model.
WikiHow, on the other hand, uses an opt-out model, and pays for all its operations with ad money. Non-registered readers normally see ads, but can opt out of ads. When a button was created for readers to opt out of ads for 24 hours ad revenue fell less than one percent.
[16] WikiHow says they "
were the first high traffic website to offer a 'hide ads' button." Readers can block ads for 24 hours by clicking the button. Those who are registered and logged in do not see ads.
[17] WikiHow had 15.5 million unique readers in April 2009.
[18] The advertising money has been sufficient to allow charitable donations also. For example; $48,000 to the
Wikimedia Foundation.
[19][20] WikiHow considers itself to be a hybrid business and organization – a 4th organizational structure combining features of 3 traditional organizational structures: businesses, non-profits, and government. Some other examples of hybrids are
Wikia,
Wikitravel,
Firefox,
Red Hat Linux,
MySQL,
Craigslist,
SNPedia, and
Newman’s Organics.
[21] See also:
Social enterprise,
B Corporation (or "
Benefit Corporation"),
List of social enterprises, etc..
Ad settings. Readers could choose what kind of ads to allow. A system could be set up for controlling optional ads based on
cookie settings. There could be a settings link that would allow the choice of top, bottom, and/or side placement of ads. Or concise or detailed ads. Or ads with or without
Flash animation. A cookie would remember the choices.
Wikipedia would remain non-profit. As long as wikipedia is a non-profit, consensus-seeking, democratic, board-run organization, then there is no danger of advertisers having any say in how Wikipedia is run. Some examples of nonprofit control of advertising, or search-related income, can be found in the non-profit
Mozilla Foundation and its control of the
Mozilla Corporation and its search-related income from Google, etc..
Advertising doesn't stop people from donating. Public radio and TV have multiple sources of help. During fund drives they tell people how much money they are trying to raise, and people either donate or they don't. Their ads (
underwriting spots) have little to do with whether people donate.
If Wikipedia had more money, many problems could be solved. See:
Possible uses for additional income, farther down. Ads could generate that money. Disturbed by how often Wikipedia slows down or crashes? This problem varies depending on various factors such as how far away one lives from Wikipedia servers. The
Wikimedia Foundation could get more hardware. It could hire more staff, programmers, developers, etc..
More money may also help Wikimedia in more rapidly developing unified, integrated watchlists. See various discussions:
[3] [4]. Integrated watchlists would greatly increase the number of people editing other projects such as
Wikibooks,
Wikimedia Commons,
Wiktionary,
Wikisource,
Wikiquote,
Wikinews,
Wikiversity,
Wikijunior,
Wikispecies, and additional projects. There are many proposed projects that integrated watchlists could help. See:
meta:Category:Proposed projects and
meta:Proposals for new projects. These projects are not being done because there is not enough participation in (and thus donations for) existing projects. So new projects aren't started. If people could have some integrated watchlists set up the way they like them, then there would be more participation, growth, and donations.
People could select which watchlists to unify, and which ones to keep separate. People could have more than one integrated watchlist. Many new English-speaking editors (less than 5 edits a month) quit because there is little room for new interesting articles on English Wikipedia. People can't be bothered to open multiple watchlists, especially new editors who barely understand watchlists, signatures, time stamps, etc.. Other Wikimedia projects have a great need for editors (new and old), and a wide range of topics to cover.
[edit]Semi-profit Benefit Corporations using ads
- Note. Some of the info discussed below references discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales that is archived here. There is Village Pump discussion archived here.
If there were paid staff just for each of these projects combined with the
social enterprise goals, then things like Wikiversity, Wikinews, and Wikibooks could do much more.
- From the Mozilla Foundation article: It "owns two taxable for-profit subsidiaries: the Mozilla Corporation, which employs several Mozilla developers and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, and Mozilla Messaging, Inc., which primarily develops the Mozilla Thunderbirdemail client."
A
Benefit Corporation is a legal designation for socially responsible businesses. Here is some info:
- "At its core, benefit corporations blend the altruism of nonprofits with the business sensibilities of for-profit companies. These hybrid entities pay taxes and can have shareholders, without the risk of being sued for not maximizing profits. Companies can consider the needs of customers, workers, the community or environment and be well within their legal right."
Collaborative knowledge work needs to spread much more widely beyond Wikipedia. There is not much good work elsewhere. Attempts have been made, but 100% for-profit models do not seem to do very high level work (not like the quality of info at Wikipedia), and 100% non-profit models are marginal and frequently disappear to due lack of funding. Hybrid models of organization seem to be working and expanding in areas outside collaborative knowledge work.
- Timeshifter, I wanted to thank you for bringing this to my attention. I've had a longstanding interest in hybrid models, due to the limitations of both the non-profit and for-profit models. While I don't think "under the control of the Wikimedia Foundation" for-profit subsidiaries is the right way forward, you should feel free to pitch the idea to the board. It's certainly interesting.
- Camelbinky, let me give one example of how a for-profit (or semi-profit) model might benefit a project. Most of our smaller projects feel a somewhat justified neglect - the Foundation's primary focus has to be on Wikipedia because it is so big. We know, for example, that the software we use at Wikipedia is optimized for writing an encyclopedia, but isn't really awesome for Wikinews (for example). I can envision lots of things that could be done to improve Wikinews with some investment, investment that the Foundation isn't in a position to make. But imagine if Wikinews could raise $4 million in venture capital, with the investors expecting to make a return from an advertising-based business model, but also with the "Benefit corporation" charter giving very clear and legally enforceable rights to the community of editors, for example mandating editorial independence, NPOV, pursuit of quality, etc. You can tinker with this idea all you want, because the precise details aren't the point: the point is that in a hybrid model, the organization can be well-funded, provide a good return to investors, and still pursue social goals.
- In the past, I've thought about various ideas about what can be done to help Wikinews realize its potential. I've thought about Wikinews being spun out into a separate non-profit, so that it can have an organization that focuses only on Wikinews... but such a non-profit could very well not survive. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikinews simply isn't popular enough to count on sufficient support from its readers and editors. (Maybe, maybe not... I think not.)
- Ok, what about spinning Wikinews out and having it be a for-profit? Well, I don't see how that really makes sense. Anyone can start a for-profit wiki-based news site anytime they want, and in our considered business judgment at Wikia, we've not (yet) seen that as a viable alternative.
- But maybe a hybrid model could work. I don't know for sure. But it's certainly interesting to think about.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
- ...
- Yes, it's very interesting. I am not advocating for any particular arrangement in the future, and of course I'm not the decision maker on such things, the entire board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation is. However, I personally would invite and support proposals for novel institutional arrangements that might be beneficial for some of our other projects that could likely flourish if given appropriate resources. This is not a top priority for the board right now, but I think it's worthy of sustained discussion in the community.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:08, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Strictly for-profit sites can be bought and sold, and their initial leadership can change to the point that they start deleting lots of stuff, and completely lose their
social enterprise utility. They "sell out", lose their way, or otherwise lose focus. They also do not use a completely free license for info on their sites.
Whether a site has ads or not does not indicate whether the site's info is completely free or not. Wikia is for profit and uses a completely free license,
CC-BY-SA. Many for-profit sites use a
CC-BY or
CC-BY-SA license. The problem is whether one trusts a solely for-profit site to keep that info up on the web without spinning it, or whether they may just decide to go in another direction and delete most of the
CC-BY or
CC-BY-SA info and focus. Both for-profit and non-profit sites disappear all the time. Semi-profit sites may have better longterm survival possibilities, better funding, and a longterm
social enterprise focus.
Public radio is non-profit and has ads. Public radio is not nearly as
WP:NPOV as Wikipedia, though. Public radio is too dependent on government money, and spins much of what they do to not offend politicians. Wikipedia shows far more viewpoints on any issue.
Most of the for-profit sites are tame in their coverage of issues, mostly because they have a fiduciary requirement to make profit above all else. This is another reason semi-profit sites are needed using
Benefit Corporation incorporation, or similar. They are not
required to make a profit.
[edit]Income from search tools on Wikipedia pages
See this December 2011 article:
Google Paying Mozilla Almost $1B for Firefox Search: Why?. "Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla's $123 million revenue in 2010. ... And the new contract guarantees to give Mozilla revenue and Google search prominence for the better part of three years. At nearly $300 million a year, that works out to just under $1 billion for Mozilla."
Some people support the idea of getting paid for putting
Google,
Bing, etc. as the default search tool on Wikipedia. Most people support this only if the search result pages are on the sites of the search providers. That way the ads are never on Wikipedia pages.
- "A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search, allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box, Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner. However the publisher is paid only if the advertisements on the page are clicked: AdSense does not pay publishers for mere searches."
The default search engine for Wikipedia could be auctioned off to the highest bidder among Google, Bing, etc.. Google and Bing search options could be among the search options in a dropdown search menu that is part of a single-line search form at the top of all Wikipedia pages. The search form could be placed to the left of the user name to make it more prominent. With this more prominent placement the search form would be used more, and millions of dollars a year could be raised by charging Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft for putting their search engines as options in the dropdown menu. Along with the existing in-house Wikipedia search tool. The search results for the commercial search engines would open up in new tabs, and would have no Wikipedia logos on the search result pages. This way the ads would not be on Wikipedia pages. The search result pages would be on the sites of the commercial search providers.
The
nonprofit Firefox browser has such a searchbar at the top of its browsers. Firefox received 61.5 million dollars in search royalties in 2006. See
Mozilla Foundation#Financing.
Nearly all of the royalty money came from Google.Many people would choose to do Google-Yahoo-Microsoft-Amazon-eBay-Flickr-etc. searches via a Wikipedia searchbar over using the Firefox search form. This is because many people want some search royalties to go to the Wikimedia Foundation, too. Also, the Wikipedia search form is closer to what the reader is reading.
In the Firefox browser, one can add even more dropdown menu options. For example; options to use the search tools at Technorati, IMDb, Live Search, del.icio.us, Merriam-Webster dictionary, Yahoo Answers, Creative Commons, Answers.com, etc.. Any or all of the search engines can be removed by the user. It is all done via "Manage Search Engines" in the dropdown menu. People love good searchbars.
If there were more search options in the Wikipedia searchbar, then the open-source search tool would be improved by the competition. Especially if a "search wikipedia" option button were added next to the searchbar. Then for searches of Wikipedia the Google and Yahoo search tools would compete directly with the existing open-source tool.
Many people currently search Wikipedia by using the "Search only on the current Web site" button on the secondary
Google Toolbar installed on their browsers. Or they use this search bookmark below, and then add search terms:
In the
Firefox browser a shortcut keyword such as "w" can be set up. Then type "w <search terms>" in the
address bar of Firefox to search Wikipedia for information. For more info see:
[5] [6] [7].
In 2006 the
Mozilla Foundation received
US$66.8 million in revenues, of which 61.5 million is attributed to "search royalties".
[22]The Mozilla foundation has an ongoing deal with
Google to make Google search the default in the Firefox browser searchbar. A Firefox-themed Google search site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006 but was renewed for two years and expires in November 2008. Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract." This equates to approximately US$56.8 million.
[22][edit]Possible uses for additional income
There is a basic need to pay more developers to fix the 4000+ bugs listed in the
Bugzilla Weekly Reports. This is an example of a basic need. Secondary goals may be unrealistic until basic needs are met. Such as expanding bandwidth, users, servers, and maintenance staff worldwide. Donations may never be enough to cover these currently unmet basic needs. Many users want faster access, and more servers in their countries, or closer to their countries.
The additional income could be used for countless things to grow the project and spread knowledge. Wikipedia is one of
the most visited sites on the web. Tens of millions of dollars could be generated from search tool revenues, or from even a few users allowing ads. Hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars yearly, could be raised if many users allowed ads.
With that money, the
Wikimedia Foundation could increase site speed, lessen downtime, increase server capacity, hire a larger staff, and improve various other
Wikimedia projects such as
Wiktionary and
Wikinews. Additional money and registered users would help in more rapidly ramping up additional projects.
- Pay more MediaWiki developers to develop many requested enhancements, and quickly implement the MediaWiki roadmap beyond MediaWiki's current features.
- Raise tens of millions of dollars a year for African schools.
- Free or low-cost print copies of Wikipedia, Wikibooks, etc. for the developing world.
- Print copies of Wikipedia in the bookstores and libraries of the developed world.
- Wikipedia internet appliances and other products.
- Advertising Wikipedia elsewhere (media, TV, magazines, newspapers, etc.) to ensure a constant influx of contributors.
- Paying Wikipedia board members, employees, and developers for their time and effort.
- Implement unified watchlists [8] [9] to vastly increase the userbase of other Wikimedia projects such as Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, etc..
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