Wikipedia debating what to do about finances

Some wonder if it’s time for Wikipedia to increase its revenue with ads.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Scroll the list of the 10 most popular Web sites in the U.S., and you’ll encounter the Internet’s richest corporate players — names like Yahoo, Amazon.com, News Corp., Microsoft and Google.

Except for No. 7: Wikipedia. And there lies a delicate situation.

With 2 million articles in English alone, the Internet encyclopedia “anyone can edit” stormed the Web’s top ranks through the work of unpaid volunteers and the assistance of donors. But that gives Wikipedia far less financial clout than its Web peers, and doing almost anything to improve that situation invites scrutiny from the same community that proudly generates the content.

And so, much as how its base of editors and bureaucrats endlessly debate touchy articles and other changes to the site, Wikipedia’s community churns with questions over how the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the project, should get and spend its money.

Should it proceed on its present course, soliciting donations largely to keep its servers running? Or should it expand other sources of revenue — with ads, perhaps, or something like a Wikipedia game show — to fulfill grand visions of sending DVDs or printed books to people who lack computers? Is it helpful — or counter to the project’s charitable, free-information mission — to have the Wikimedia Foundation tight with a prominent venture capital firm?

These would be tough questions for any organization, let alone one in which hundreds of participants can expect to have a say.

The system “has strengths and weaknesses,” says Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder and “chairman emeritus.” “The strength is, we don’t do anything randomly, without lots and lots of lots of discussion. The downside is we don’t get anything done unless we actually come to a conclusion.”

Even the foundation’s leaders aren’t unified. Florence Devouard, a French plant scientist who chairs the board, said she and other Europeans involved with the project are more skeptical than Americans such as Wales about moneymaking side projects with for-profit entities.

The project’s financial situation is not exactly dire. Although the group does not have an endowment fund with interest fueling operations, cash contributions jumped to $2.2 million last year, from $1.3 million in the prior year. With big gifts recently, the foundation’s budget is $4.6 million this year.

In the past year, the foundation has tried to become less of an ad hoc outfit, expanding staff from less than 10 people to roughly 15 and moving to San Francisco from St. Petersburg, Fla.