Week 5 answer
February 17th, 2007 by Amyloo
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, talked about the Muppet Wiki and a bunch of other interesting things on net@night, a Twit podcast hosted by Amber MacArthur and Leo LaPorte.
I’m enclosing another clip from the show, where Wales talks about alternative funding methods. The guy just doesn’t want to have ads on Wikipedia, and I wish people would stop trying to force the issue. Not everything has to be about ads and business uber alles and cashing in because you can. To paraphrase a commenter on Jason Calacanis’s most recent push , “Just leave him alone, Jason!” I don’t know, just guessing really, but it seems to just kill Jason to see all that reputation and traffic and leave it unexploited? What do you think?
I think it’s cool that Wales and Co. are looking into things like selling trivia games and thinking beyond the ad model, which might not hold up in the long run anyway, politics and modes of capitalism aside. Listen to the whole interview. There’s more about the greatly exaggerated rumors of the death of Wikipedia and about fundraising early on in the conversation.
net@night is taped on Sunday nights. You can listen, chat and ask questions live on Talkshoe. Amber’s a natural. She’s got that nice fresh genuinely friendly way about her that’s very easy to like.
