Wikitravel Gets Filthy Lucre

Their Milestones page shows 5000 registered users.

Interestingly the site has no "news" of the sell out.

Something here

From the linked page:

There are some people who are going to hear commercial or advertising and head right for the door. We hope that the rest of you give us the benefit of the doubt. We don't think "community" and "commercial" have to be opposite terms. What this community has done with Wikitravel is important, and we're committed to being good custodians for the impressive guide you're making.

I hae ma doots.

world66 is an excellent site. wikitravel has a long way to go (bad pun).

Hi, gang. My name's Evan, and I'm one of the two founders of Wikitravel. I kibozed this thread on Technorati and thought I might provide some responses.

First, as far as drop off in contribution, there hasn't been a significant drop in the last 24 hours. I think that the Wikitravel community is giving us the time to show that we mean what we say in our announcement. We'll see what the future brings, but my guess is that most people experienced with the guides are going to keep a wait-and-see attitude until and unless we drop the ball.

Second, I agree that information wants to be free, but bandwidth, servers, sysadmins, developers, designers and others don't. Somebody's always gotta pay, and after a lot of thought we decided that a commercial company with good stability was the fairest and most realistic way to advance this project. On-site ads seem about the most direct and transparent business model we could come up with.

I think the idea that Open Source/Open Content is incompatible with a commercial venture is archaic at best. There are a number of companies that use Creative Commons licenses for music, photos, etc., and I think CC-branding has been a big part in the success of e.g. flickr.com. Wikia (formerly Wikicities) is doing Free Content wikis with ads, and of course there's a slew of Open Source software companies doing quite well.

As for the registered users: the current total is 5,503 (see http://wikitravel.org/en/Special:Statistics for an update out of the database) for English, and another 1500 or so in the other 9 language versions. Having a wiki means that unregistered users make a big contribution; I think my last count of unique IPs by anonymous contributors it was around 30K, which when you balance out folks on rolling IP blocks, and folks behind NATted firewalls, probably gives a rough scale number of people who've contributed without registering.

Like you said, Mat, our on-site announcement is here:

http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:20_April_2006

I'm not sure what your 'doots' are about, though. Whether a commercial company can support a community-led, Open Content project? Or whether people will stick around to find out? Or whether I meant what I said when I wrote that?

As for how far we have to go: we have a loooong way to go. The world is a really big place. It's going to take a while to have top-quality travel guides for the whole thing.

I think it can be done, and I think that improvements in our software, and continued growth in the number of contributors, are crucial to making it happen. Having a good platform for growth, more development time and effort, and a partnership rather than a competition with World66 (which, I agree, is an excellent site), means we're farther along on our way to getting there.

Anyways, interesting conversation, thanks.

I suppose the bottom line is "can you still get the free input of time from posters is you are a commercial site?"

I don't see it as getting people to work for us; I see it as providing a platform so people can work for each other.

evan, let me say: talk is cheap.
cornwall has got a serious point. i think the only solution to this is giving registered authors the option of receiving a percentage of the profits, based upon the percentage of the site they wrote. then we can all say 'no thanks' and hapily write on.

Makes you wonder from a SE perspective, what's to trust in a site full of non trusted links.

Trust our site, it's full of links, but we don't trust any of them.

Joost: I agree, talk is cheap. Bandwidth, servers, programmers and sysadmins are not, though.

It doesn't really make sense to pay contributors. First, and most importantly, it's all Open Content, licensed under a liberal Creative Commons license. That means that anyone -- contributor or not -- can take the content on Wikitravel or World66 and make money off it through advertising, selling books, giving tours, whatever. They don't have to contribute any percentage of the revenue to anyone. There are a number of Wikitravel and World66 mirrors already out there, supported by ads.

We will be indirectly helping contributors by paying for their collaboration platform. Unlike other Wiki companies, you don't have to pay to work on Wikitravel. The servers are open to all because they benefit all.

Least importantly, it's impossible to do; does the guy who wrote "Paris is really really really really really really [x100] great" get paid more than the person who fixed one digit in a phone number? Also, the vast majority of contributors make less than a sentence of contribution. The transaction costs of getting $0.000000003 won't be worthwhile.

Finally, if it becomes a pay-to-play venture, people's motivation changes for the worse. Instead of getting generous and altruistic contributors who want to share information with other people, we'll get contributors who want to figure out how to game the system to squeeze out more money ("I figured out that if you write short sentences with at least 2 words more than 3 syllables, you get 3 cents more per sentence!"). That's going to generate a lot of lousy content that's not worth hosting.

Robwatts: thanks for the point about nofollow; that's a MediaWiki setting that changed from default false to default true in recent versions, and I hadn't noticed it. I've switched it back to false.

now i personally don't give a beep if people are making money out of my hobby. but i understand there are others who don't like to be in that situation. a small parabel to explain why not :)

imagine working your whole life with some friends in a factory. you're just working for pleasure, and anyone can just come by and take a look at the beautiful works you and your friends are making. then one day, the guy who provides the workplace says: "guys, i can't support this place anymore. but as there are so many people coming here, i'm going to hang some pirelli posters on the wall, the company will pay me for that. oh, and if i would happen to make more money out of that business than providing this place costs me, it's all for me, okay? 'cause in the end, this is my place remember."
"come on dude, we used to be friends!"

the change is sensitive, because it changes the relationship between worker and owner. everyone used to have their own input, now someone is putting things in, someone else is taking things out. for people who don't like this changed relationship, the least that will happen is a slideback in their motivition to contribute. that's the only reason why you really have to think seriously about this.

my previous proposition wasn't exactly serious, that's why it's impossible. if you want a serious proposition: how about letting your best users know they can get a discount when they buy shares of their favorite wiki company? the company or the community gets to decide who is eligable for that. transaction cost seem to be close to zero, and even the cost to the company looks pretty small. you wouldn't be encouraging three silabel words, as some intelligent force decides which users deserve this sign of appretiation.

as most people who are bothered by the changed relationship don't care about getting money out of their work, rather about an equal relationship, i'm pretty sure most of them would let the opportunity slide. however i do think that it would rebalance the relationship. saying: "hey, i'm still providing your workplace", seems like a bit of an insensitive thing to do.