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Wikipedia is an amazing website. In fact, it’s probably become such an integral part of your life that you hardly give it much thought except for when messages start popping up at the top of the screen, asking for your financial aid.
In a world of Spotifys and Netflixs and countless other subscriptions, what’s just one more? Especially for something as wildly useful as Wikipedia. If Wikipedia was to go to a subscription model, how much would you be willing to pay? How much would be high enough that you would try to go without?
Image by pernillarydmark under Creative Commons license
It’s not really a wiki any more then, it’s just an encyclopaedia.
I’d pay about a tenner a month. Probably more.
nothing, the internet should be free and open. and that’s what advertising is for, its a necessary evil these days
It would defeat the purpose, there are already excellent paid for encyclopedias that do not have any of the more negative aspects or inaccuracies that are common in wikipedia.
Word for word wikipedia has less flaws than encyclopedia brittanica.
that is all.
Many of the articles are of poor quality and some mainstream encyclopedia topics are not covered adequately
Except when they are wrong they are really wrong. If you rated them based on the significance of the errors then Britannica looks much better. Also you don’t get massive swings in content and bias in a traditional encyclopaedia.
I’d have to say nothing. I totally understand where they’re coming from, but when something is set up as free and portrayed as free and potentially by being free is responsible for the demise of paid for Encyclopedias then I just wouldn’t feel right paying for it. I’d much rather pay for something that from the outset has been marketed as a Paid service.
I donate £3 a month to wiki foundation, and wouldn’t mind paying up to a fiver if it meant some improvements to the service (though what might be improved that wouldn’t change the entire idea of wikipedia, I can’t say)
People felt it when wikipedia took themselves down for 24 hours – but I still don’t feel that they have a compelling case to charge for a subscription.
I’d maybe pay for it if it was more accurate. As it is, being editable by anyone, it’s not worth paying for.
I’d pay up to 5 pounds if they would ensure actuate info for there service
2 reasons for nothing:
1. They were happy taking out the paid for resources (Encylopedia Britannica, etc) when advertising how great they were, and FREE
2. Although a great resource, they still don’t have any information you can’t get elsewhere.
If they do go down the payroute, I can see another site taking its place.
This. The information you find on Wikipedia IS available elsewhere, so if they went for a paywall most people would just look elsewhere. Also, many of the people who write and edit for them would leave, maybe taking a copy of Wikipedia at the last minute before the shutters came down, and set up elsewhere. As far as I know all the information is public domain so there would be nothing to stop them doing this.
Anyone can take a copy of wikipedia at any time. You can download it all and burn it onto DVDs or an external hard drive so you can have it available anytime offline.
I imagine the whole of wikipedia (including all images etc) must be quite a chunk of download.
I used to see a lot of magazine coverdiscs in Germany offering archives of educational content for school children, sort of like Key Stage 3 level articles relevant to the subjects they would be studying. I always thought it would be a bit of a lost cause given how quickly things change and get updated.
Absolutely massive, just the data without user content such as images is terabytes. Some of the articles can get even bigger with the all the larger pieces of optional data. The backup downloads pretty much just grab text and metadata and leave the images behind to save space.
You can download backups of wikipedia nightly, so if they added a paywall people would just start a new one using the existing data.
+1
Didn’t realise this was possible. Might have get this just in case!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps
Thats the main page for backups, they actually want people to make copies available.
Hmmm… I don’t have enough space…
Surely they can’t charge for community created content? That’s the reason it should remain free anyway, it’s the public that creates the content so they’re only have to pay to host it, no different to many other free websites such as 4chan, Reddit, 9gag, Anonib, Youtube, Facebook, etc.
£12 per year (£1pcm)
Seems reasonable enough. I can’t imagine going back to an encyclopaedia britannica style site.
Surely if it becomes a paid-for service, its google page ranking would drop seriously, and not being top ranked for pretty much every search anymore, it’d lose a lot of relevance?
I guess lots of people would probably pay something for it, but I expect there’ll be a lot fewer people linking to it in just about every post they make
Why not create a hybrid model, the put adverts on the free site and then when you sign up for an account you have the option of a paid subscription where they remove the adverts for a small fee £3 pm.
They could also add rewards for paid subscribers who upload quality content and contribute to the articles, maybe give you 1 free month for so many quality edits.
4chan actually do this with their pass system, where 10USDs a year removes the captcha system so posting is easier. They still get advertising revenue to keep the site on and supporters pay a little keep things going. Free users still get to use the site as normal albeit with the captcha to slow things down.
I wouldnt pay anything. I’d just Google my question, miss the first link (wiki) and go for the second, maybe the third one. But never go to page 2. People are never the same once they go and do a silly thing like that.