Wikipedia + Ads = End of Society?

[JaoSming]

I was just doing some very important research for school using the most trusted sources available to me and saw this

Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others.

When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission, and leave waste to others.

Seriously? Would anyone really care if those harmless Google Text ads showed up on a Wikipedia page?

[J@3]

I use ad block pro so I wouldn't notice, but those ads where they take keywords and underline them with a pop-up on mouse-over drive me nuts. I like it the way it is, plus if it went public or was making money like Facebook and the like they'd probably keep fucking with the layout/functionality and changing it like they did to Myspace and gradually to FB.

[Andrew]

To be honest, I probably wouldn't notice or mind that much. I'm with Jae though, those keyword/mouse-over ads are extremely annoying.

[benji]

Part of it is to help keep the pages without a point of view, which they try hard at (even if it's not always a success) for example you don't want to have a situation where somebody goes to McDonald's entry and it's plastered with Burger King ads or gory PETA ads. You don't want to go to Barack Obama's page and get Mitt Romney ads. They already have increasing issues with campaigns, organizations, companies, etc. editing entries to whitewash content or add to competitors.

They also might not be able to make a profit or utilize advertising depending on what license and corporate status they're under. If they didn't get their donations they probably would switch to advertising in a heartbeat but people like to keep things "pure" from the corporate brainwashing. They get more than enough money from that. I think there was some controversy about Wales using that money on himself rather than the site/servers/etc.

[shadowgrin]

I regularly spam a basketball video game forum that occasionally has some horrendous annoying ads in its rotation. So yeah, I'm ok with ads in Wikipedia.
I'm also used with those mouse-over ads, in most sites I think I can differentiate the ads from the helpful links so I learned how to avoid the ads if possible, I think.
It's not a problem for serious research either since you go straight to the source of the citations in the bottom of the page instead of using the Wiki article itself as the base source of your info.


What I don't want to see are ads in the Google main page. I like it really simple. Call me racist but I still don't like the black strip it has on top of the main page.

[Dc311]

Racist.