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All Jimbo's horses and all Jimbo's men...

2007-06-06 10:52:40

(Score:5, Insightful)

by dpbsmith (263124) on Wednesday January 03 2006, @09:28AM (#17443716)

(http://www.dpbsmith.com/)

The very fact that this idea is being discussed leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

In Wikipedia's early days there was a good deal of discussion about this very

point, with some conspiracy-minded contributors fearing that Jimbo Wales would

talk freedom, neutrality, and noncommercialism at the start and change the

rules later in the game.

There are a number of precedents for this sort of bad-faith maneuver, one of

the most notorious being CDDB, which happily accepted contributions of CD track

names from thousands of volunteers who believed they were contributing to an

open-source project; sneakily changed their software so that it add "stealth"

then took it private and sold people's generous volunteer work and lined their

own pockets with the money.

One of Wikipedia's cornerstones is the "neutral point of view" policy. This

policy is a fragile and precious thing. Innumerable people are constantly

leaning on it and chipping away at it in an effort to use Wikipedia for

promotion. The only reason why NPOV works is that the core of Wikipedians truly

accept that WIkipedia really is neutral, and are willing to enforce the policy.

If Wikipedia ever accepts paid advertising, I believe it will destabilize the

fragile balance. Advertisements will most likely be targeted to appear on the

same pages as relevant article. Many WIkipedia articles about commercial

products contain substantial amounts of both praise and criticism. In its

nature, this material is frequently in a somewhat dynamic state of flux, with

competing editors wordsmithing things back and forth; at its best, a stable

state is reached in which the editors on one side of an issue grudgingly

acknowledge that the wording of the material on the other side is acceptable to

them.

What happens when an advertiser notices that the related article contains

material that has a different spin from its marketing communications? I think

the delicate house of cards comes tumbling down, that's what. I don't see how

anyone can ever build a "Chinese wall" between advertising and editorial when

any advertiser can be an editor.

And once it becomes generally accepted that Wikipedia is no longer neutral,

WIkipedia is dead. That will unleash a flood of self-promoting crap which

old-time WIkipedians will be unable to hold back.

It will also piss off everyone who, like me, has made voluntary monetary

contributions to Wikimedia almost every time they've launched one of their

frequent pledge drives, in the belief, which will have been shown to be na?ve,

that Wikipedia was promised to be noncommercial.

Wikipedia can survive a reputation for occasional inaccuracy and for

"fancruft." But if it is ever seen that Wikipedia articles are a practical

avenue for promotion and advertising, or that they reflect the interests of

advertisors, all Jimbo's horses and all Jimbo's men will never be able to put

WIkipedia together again.

And all the old-time Wikipedians will say "We told you this was going to

happen." And they'll be right.