For
millions around the world, Wikipedia is the first and last source of
information. For more than twenty years, the encyclopedia continues to give
without any technical problems. Perhaps what distinguishes this encyclopedia
from other sites is that it is completely free; She has never bothered us with
an ad here or there. I think if the founders of Wikipedia wanted it to generate
the highest profits among its readers, this would not have been a challenge for
them, but they chose to publish knowledge freely and favored the user's
interest.
The
problem is that the continuation of an encyclopedia as large as Wikipedia
requires not a small amount of money, whether to host the site or to motivate
authors and publishers, as we said the site has existed for more than 20 years
and certainly, the founders will not continue to self-finance the project for
that long to know the users only and because the site does not have
Advertisements, this puzzled users and raised a question today: How does
Wikipedia make profits?
Wikipedia Founding...Knowledge for All!
In
October 1999, Jimmy Wales began to think of creating a comprehensive
encyclopedia of all the knowledge anyone might have, later called Nupedia and
based entirely on the efforts of volunteers. Wells prepared his team, appointed
Larry Sanger to oversee the project, and Nupedia was officially launched in
March of 2000.
The
problem with Nupedia was that it needed experts, auditors, and reviewers;
Therefore, publishing a single article on it was not easy at all, and this is
in contrast to what we now know about Wikipedia, which anyone can edit, or
publish articles on it easily, and in their desire to speed the spread of
knowledge, both Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger created the Wikipedia encyclopedia
to be Helper subsite for Nupedia.
Once
it was officially launched in January 2001, Wikipedia caught the attention of
many, and its popularity boomed very quickly, and soon it became the main site
for everyone with a lot of articles, and anything you want to fill your brain
cells with, you will often find it on it. You can imagine that by January 2015,
14 years after the encyclopedia was founded, Wikipedia was home to over 5
million articles in English, and many more in languages other than English
put together. At the time, Alexa ranked Wikipedia as the seventh most popular
site in the world, and the only site in the top ten list of non-profit sites.
Non-profit! why then ?
Everyone
in life has their own principles; Because the vast majority of companies today
are greedy capitalists; Their goal is only money, but it does not mean that
there are no people who believe in lofty principles and only for the sake of
lofty principles. There must not necessarily be a hidden goal, there is someone
who loves to benefit mankind and make his name immortal. Therefore, if you
search for the goal for which Wikipedia was founded, and as we explained in the
first paragraphs, you will find that the encyclopedia aims to make knowledge
available wherever it is and for free! And knowledge should not be the monopoly
of anyone.
If
Wikipedia places ads on its site, this is flagrantly contrary to its primary
purpose; Imagine that you are searching in the encyclopedia for “hair care” and
were surprised by an advertisement for a hair cream, would you believe the
information in it 100%? You might tell me that Wikipedia contains a lot of
misinformation already; Because anyone can modify it however they like, so what
difference does this announcement make? This presents us with a big dilemma.
If
Wikipedia embraces the idea of ads and opens its doors to advertisers,
advertisers will not be satisfied with the policies that Wikipedia is
following; A company will not want to place an advertisement for one of their
products and someone swearing at that product comes on the same page.
As
for the other obvious point, it is that ads are one of the most annoying things
in existence. Imagine that you are immersed in reading an article, and it comes
out to you a poster advising you to buy the product Doe; Because you need to
lose weight. What about the ads that appear from time to time and everywhere on
the screen? It is very annoying and does not fit into reading etiquette at all.
Does this mean that the encyclopedia does not make profits?
In
a nutshell, donations, my dear; are Donations from individuals, companies, and
foundations. Wikimedia (the parent company of Wikipedia), has enough partners
to raise enough annual donations to keep the project going and even private
individuals can donate to the encyclopedia, there is an open fundraising page
in almost all countries. We said at the beginning of the introduction that
Wikipedia needs quite a bit of money in order to continue, and this is true for
us; The project needs about $3 million annually to continue.
This
number is not small for us as users, of course, it is very staggering, but for
a company like Google, which spends 2 billion dollars on ads annually, it's
just a crumb! Fortunately, Wikipedia collects donations that exceed its needs
many times over, so don't worry about the continuity of the encyclopedia.
The
only strange thing is what has been noticed in the recent period; If you're
constantly accessing Wikipedia, you might have noticed an ad at the beginning
of all the articles this time around. The encyclopedia is credited as one of
the honorable ones who have not changed its "Business Model" since
its inception, but is it time?
What is this ad I'm talking about?
This
time the situation is different, the ad you might have noticed is a fundraising
ad. The ad says - adaptively: "The encyclopedia is based on the donations
of exceptional readers, but only about 2% donate. If you donate anything it can
help us keep going."
Recently,
Bates Pena, Account Manager at Wikimedia, stated that the foundation is
entirely based on donations, and he emphasized what we talked about above; That
Wikipedia needs donations to survive, and she said that the real reason for
this is that the organization has about 250 employees, and in the last 20
years, Wikimedia has released about 50 million articles for free in 300
languages, and she said in the end what we're interested in knowing, she said,
"We need to pay the salaries of our employees.
When
this announcement came out, we all feared that it was the beginning of the end;
The phrase "for the continuation of Wikipedia" made us feel a little
concerned about the biggest encyclopedia of all time, but don't worry, the
donations are more than enough; According to the company's financial report,
Wikipedia was able to raise about $28 and a half million in the year 2018-2019
alone, and that's enough and overflowing to pay employees and keep the site
going, which needs $3 million annually.
Asking
for more donations or money doesn't mean bankruptcy, but don't forget that the
founders need money for the continuity of Wikipedia and the rest of the parent
company's projects, and don't forget that it's okay to ask for more money!