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By DAVE GUSSOW
Published April 13, 2005
Donations keep Jimmy Wales' free Wikipedia online encyclopedia going. But with Wikicities, a new collaborative community, Wales is accepting ads.
The ads are not necessarily for profit, but rather a way to fund what has become a mission of free information for all.
"That means finding ways of getting our content distributed," Wales said, adding, "What do we need to keep going and survive? And what do we need to accomplish our goals?"
Wales' Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) has become an online phenomenon, attracting millions of visitors a month. Its appeal is not just as a free online encyclopedia. Anyone can write an article, and anyone can edit anything that has been posted.
The site has more than a million articles but no advertising. In a recent fundraising effort, Wikipedia raised $95,000 in two weeks when it had hoped to raised $75,000 in three weeks, reflecting the loyalty of its users. (According to the site, "The name was based on the Hawaiian term wiki wiki , meaning "quick' or "super-fast."')
Wikicities, www.wikicities.com which has been online since November, allows the same flexibility to post and edit. Community themes must be approved by Wales and his colleagues. Among the rules, communities need enough appeal to attract an audience as well as editors to help maintain it.
As of recently, 193 communities were online, including topics as diverse as the American Federation of Musicians, the military and Ashlee Simpson. Despite its name, the site does not focus on geographic locales, though a few real cities such as Baltimore and San Diego are represented.
"The truth of it is ... Wikicommunity might have been better," Wales said of the name, which reflects the popularity of the Geocities sites. "It's the idea of each topic area is a city unto itself."
Wales, of St. Petersburg, doesn't expect any backlash about the ads, which come from Google's AdSense program. Those who object, he says, just won't visit the site. So far, the amount of money generated has been "so low as to be unimportant," Wales said.
Wales doesn't know yet what other wikis might be developed, but the wikis are here to stay.
"It's sort of a new era on the Internet of people doing this sort of thing," Wales said. "We don't know yet what the limitations are."
-- Dave Gussow gussow@tampabay.com
Information from Times files was used in this report.
[Last modified April 13, 2005, 16:55:49]
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