If the Wikipedia foundation put adsense on all their pages...

they would be multimillionaires in a matter of months.
They should do that, it won't scare people away...

 

they should do a trial first and i can lend them my adsense code for a couple of months.

 

maby they dont want to do it!

I know many thousand of TOP sites which dont have any ads at all, but I think its stupid if you can make money on a website do it.

 

It's great that they don't do it for the money! Wikipedia is one of the best things on the web... But its a shitload of potential cash. Thank god they have so many donations

 

I don't think they will ever be able to cash in. They seem to rank pretty much in the top 5 for every search term going, so I would imagine they would make a ton of money.

 

wikipedia must make alot via personal donations...they have a massive fleet of staff and the servers must work over time...

 

Think of it this way: would you really use an encylopedia full of ads? I don't think it would feel as useful. Or for that matter, you would get distracted and never find what you needed.

 

Why not ?
If the ads are targeted they are even useful for most people. I see it more as a win-win situation. Clean google ads would not bother me if they were on wikipedia.

 

The ads wouldn't take the place of the content, they would just be over to the side of it.

Maybe the Wikipedia owners are just biding their time, until one day... bam! They suddenly monetize every page and put everyone else out of business.

 

Haha, they may make more from donations...opps.. forget about it I was kidding ..

 

Yes, I agree that they would make a killing if they were putting adsense on their website.
It would be interested to hear their rational for not doing so.

 

well ads on wiki will be the most targeted ads possible. And why do they need adsense with hundreds of millions of searches per month. They can start there own advertisement network. And can put the money in making wiki better

 

Don't you worry, many people who is fetching an exact copy of wikipedia are putting as many AdSense codes as they can so you can have the multimillonaires wanted

 

if they put ads in the first day that will not get as big as they are right not IMHO

and money "is not" the reason why wikipedia is created

 

One of the challenges of adding Adsense to a site is that you have to monitor the content a lot closer, so as not to break Adsense TOS. This is especially relevant when most of the site content is user-submitted, like at Wiki.

BTW, I remember wondering the same thing about Open Directory - they've let anyone in the world use their content, most mirrors have ads, but the original site never did.

I am sure Wiki will have no problem striking gold - as you remember, Google's revenue strategy was unclear too, until they made a killing with Adwords.

 

They do. Last time they had a fund raiser they got like $300,000 in one week all from donations.

 

Well they don't put up Adsense or any form of online advertising because its against their principles or something. I remember this being suggested in Wikipedia sometime ago and many of the Wikipedians shot it down. I doubt there will be ads there any time soon.

- MENJ

 

Although I don't see it happening, I think Wiki could easily add a nice stream of income without distracting from the content of the site.

 

Wikipedia was founded on the hippie principles of delivering free information to the masses in an unbiased way, free from corporate control or "official" manipulation. All their "workers" are volunteers, and they only take donations. Once they start to make money, they'll have to start paying people, and then they'll be just another corporation. That's it. Period.

 

Wiki is great. Probably the best site on the internet.

I've spent hours on there before just cruising around.