4,200 Wikipedians Vote
This entry was posted on 07-22-2007 and is filed under uncategorized.
Looking over the number from the 2007 Wikimedia Board Elections, it struck me that only about 4,200 people voted. 4,200 people who accomplished the feat of building a website whose worth I'd guess is a billion dollars. A billion dollars divided by 4,200 people is $230,000 per person. I guess it's too late to buy that election? I am estimating the billion dollar value, looking at the values of Google, MySpace, YouTube, eBay, and Facebook. I have no sources, and this blog doesn't meet the standards of an article on Wikipedia.
I have the idea that if Wikipedia goes for profit, 90% of the volunteers walk. But what would happen after that? Could be they replaced, and would someone make the effort to do so? Wikipedia may just be in its Beta version. Have they got it right, and can they maintain things in changing world? What would work better?
One option is Ads on Wikipedia generating enough to pay for the new formerly volunteer editors. They'd need $210 million in ad revenue to pay 4,200 editors $50,000 / year, and that seems like a lot. But that's not the whole story, they'd be 40 hour a week editors so maybe there could be less of them. And if perhaps settling differences took less time we might find we need even less editors. On the other hand, contributions from minor editors might drop off. But maybe Sanger is going to be right after all, and relying on volunteers isn't quite going to work.
I see Wikipedia as somewhat outside of capitalism as it is traditionally defined. So I keep asking myself if the capitalists couldn't do a better job of it? Asking the question isn't even neccessary, as there are plenty of capitalist watching Wikipedia and asking themselves that question quite often, and it's hard to stop a capitalist.
Can we say that Wikipedia has been asking itself this question and trying to work out something acceptable to its volunteers? I think the real power at Wikipedia resides in its volunteers and that those just elected realize that. Maybe my take on this is all wrong, and that Wikipedia can forever exist on contributions.
