Jimbo is found here mouthing off about another company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars, while his Wikia is probably in the “several” millions range.

I didn't know this was going on (admittedly I don't follow Google's potentially-evil activities as much as WP's). But this seems to be suggesting that Google may be backing away from giving preferential rankings to crowdsourced websites.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1734184/googles...-yahoos-content

...and yet, the guy from Yahoo! says that Yahoo!Answers traffic has gone up. And if we assume that Wikipedia's traffic is likely to be unchanged (like Jimbo seems to be suggesting), then clearly Google either hasn't quite got it right, or they're being highly selective about who's going to get dinged - as usual, if you ask me. Nevertheless, this is probably something that should be encouraged.

It's worth noting that the majority of Yahoo!Answers pages are about pop culture, just as Wikipedia heavily emphasizes pop culture (at the expense of business-related topics, among others). Jimbo says the "majority of the crap" is on sites with pages about "how do I refinance my mortgage" - so if Google agrees with him, then it isn't much of a leap to interpret this as an attempt by Google to knock down their own competition in the corporate-parasite sector. In other words, banks would rather have potential customers look for answers to refinancing questions on their websites, not some crowdsourced "how-to" aggregator site, and Google has presumably determined that their own income is obtained mainly from the banks, not the aggregators.

If so, then this could be the first, or the first visible, step in a kind of corporate shakeout that will leave the internet looking more like the pre-internet world, at least in terms of commercial web activity. Google's role would be somewhat like AT&T's, prior to the monopoly breakup. Personally, I suspect this would be a slight improvement over the way things are now, even though I have little faith in Google's desire to do the right thing.

Then again, I'm probably reading too much into it.

Hizzoner's Card —

What about paying people a proper salary to write on topics they're really passionate about?

But that's the whole reason for Wikipedia's success. There are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of people who are only too pleased to be allowed to write about their favourite topics in a public place. Of course they'll do it without payment. Some of them will even pay WMF for the privilege, which of course is how the place keeps afloat.

Doesn't a lot of Wikipedia's "success" have to do with it being a non-profit charity organization? I was thinking more in terms of a Wikia-like project, as that was what Wales was talking about.

Exactly. Remember that one of Wikipedia's main functions is to give authors a forum to publish their works. While good authors insist on being paid for their writing (see also Yog's Law: "Money flows toward the writer"), there are many many many not-so-good (and outright bad) writers who disregard this and are willing to pay to get their writings published. Wikipedia offers these authors (and wanna-bee authors) a venue for publication that doesn't cost them anything. If all you care about is Having Other People Read What You Wrote (which is a big motivation for this type), Wikipedia offers a whole lot more eyeballs than you'll get just putting whatever you wrote up on a blog or other random website.

I'm pretty sure Giano started out as one of these people. There's quite a lot of them on Wikipedia; they tend to hang out on the pages related to the FA process and brag about how many DYKs and GAs and FAs they have and so on and so forth.

Don't confuse the wannabee author with the self-promotionist; the two archetypes have entirely different motivations and entirely different behaviors on the site.

That explains modern-day Wikipedia to some extent (*), but I think Wikia is a lot different in this regard.

And my main musing was not so much whether or not people will write half-decent (**) content for free, but what would happen if you paid a few of the most productive of them, like props at a poker table.

(*) At least, I guess it does. I'm not really up-to-date with the stats as to who's actually doing most of the work.

(**) Good enough to not get blacklisted from Google.

Wikipedia has a deal with Google to give it high ratings! Of course it's not going to be blacklisted! It's a business deal.

This is frequently asserted but nobody has produced any solid evidence of it or explained what Google gains from such a relationship.

I can tell you what Google gains, though I have no evidence that Google pays for what it gains, or that it even changes its algorithm in exchange for what it gains. But perhaps it does.

What Google "gains" from Wikipedia, is that the existence of Wikipedia keeps Goggle from being hurt so badly by Microsoft's Bing (which is merging with Yahoo!). If the first "I feel lucky" Google search is a Wikipedia article on the subject (which it usually is) and that article has a decent 3 to 5 paragraph LEDE, then there you are. That's all most people need, or what, to know. Suppose that WASN'T there? How does the Google entry #2 (after Wikipedia and WP scrapers like Ask.com) compare with what you get from Bing (which of course usually links WP at the top, also). Google is better, but there are differences that you could make money on. With Wikipedia coming up on top of both search engine searches, it levels the playing field from the very first, without Google having to pay a nickel.

Without Wikipedia, Google would need to worry a lot about the crowd that only uses Bing to get "common knowledge" answers. WP is a great equalizer between the two.