> I don't care if some website perishes because it couldn't make money. The web would be better off if all such sites went away, leaving only the sites that provide a "web presence" for a real business, and the sites of those people who have something to present and the money to put it out there.
You're missing the probably most valuable kind of sites - those that are there to provide information. Not everything on this planet runs around making money - most of the time, whatever runs around it is probably shit.
The things that are actually valuable for people - like Wikipedia, like articles from domain specialists, are usually free and supported by either donations, said specialist's own pockets or by some other mechanism that doesn't include authors profiting from the information they publish.
That's why when you want to learn something about, well, anything, you go to subreddits or to Hacker News, and view the comments and not the articles. Or you visit bloggers that don't run said blogs as their primary occupation. Because all that content is created for free, out of people's spare time, in order to help one another. People running business charging you for their articles? It's them who have an agenda, and you can easily see it reflected in the low quality and trustworthiness of said articles.
The Wikipedia runs on the egos of the people who create accounts. It provides a stage for them showing off how smart they are, for fighting against one another, and for promoting their narrowly focused interests to the world.
I suspect that people are willing to pay to do that. In other words, that Wikipedia would still work if it charged people to create editor accounts (but viewing the content remained free).
Basically, it's a form of web hosting (but with rules governing content).
It's the fact that anyone can create an account for free and start editing that ruins the Wikipedia; that the one single thing that is responsible for the vandalism, and poor quality of some of the material, as well as its banality.
If Wikipedia charged for editing, people would think twice about writing a 40 page treatise on some pop song du jour or Pokemon character.
If Wikipedia charged for editing, it also wouldn't exist. "The fact that anyone can create an account for free and start editing" is the sole reason Wikipedia is as big as it is and contains as much quality information as it does. People like sharing their knowledge for free, and when they do it, it's usually better quality than if they were paid for it. Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, instrumental vs. terminal goals, you name it.
What actually surprised me about your comments is that you seem to show a money-centric view, i.e. the only things that are worth something are those someone paid for. I happen to hold exactly the opposite worldview. Correct me if I'm wrong about the view you're trying to present here.
> If Wikipedia charged for editing, it also wouldn't exist.
While I understand the obvious intuition behind your suspicion, consider that people pay money to participate in running races (which also feature volunteers who donate their time, and spectators who don't pay anything).
If there was no such thing in the world as a runner-funded running race, you might think, "come on, who would pay to run in such a thing, when you can just put on your shoes and run for free?" Yet it turns out that people do!
There are incentives: competition, having your time publicly noted. There is also the intangible benefit of just being part of the event. The entry fees are justified as paying for the expenses, and charities. (Some races have cash prizes for the winners, though obviously that's not an incentive for anyone who has no such hope.)
It's also a matter of how much. If the site asked people to pay $100 a year for accounts, then that would likely be dead in the water. At $5 per year: definite maybe! There could be built-in incentives. The best editors could get cash rewards, so end up in the green.
> What actually surprised me about your comments is that you seem to show a money-centric view, i.e. the only things that are worth something are those someone paid for.
My view isn't that extreme, but I believe that connecting some systems with money in the right way can fix some of their problems.
With that I agree. There is of course caution needed when structuring incentives; introduce too much money in wrong places, and you can instantly lose the quality and motivation of people.
$5 per year could definitely work, though I believe it would still drastically reduce the amount of content Wikipedia has. A lot of really good stuff (and a lot of really bad stuff, too) is created by teenagers - the only large group that is both smart enough to meaningfully contribute and has free time to do it. And the one thing they don't have is money.
> There is of course caution needed when structuring incentives
Absolutely! For instance paying cash for blood donations is an obviously bad idea. You don't want blood from the kinds of people who would donate for money. Moreover, some people would donating excessively, thereby harming their health or even losing their lives.
> I don't care if some website perishes because it couldn't make money. The web would be better off if all such sites went away, leaving only the sites that provide a "web presence" for a real business, and the sites of those people who have something to present and the money to put it out there.
You're missing the probably most valuable kind of sites - those that are there to provide information. Not everything on this planet runs around making money - most of the time, whatever runs around it is probably shit.
The things that are actually valuable for people - like Wikipedia, like articles from domain specialists, are usually free and supported by either donations, said specialist's own pockets or by some other mechanism that doesn't include authors profiting from the information they publish.
That's why when you want to learn something about, well, anything, you go to subreddits or to Hacker News, and view the comments and not the articles. Or you visit bloggers that don't run said blogs as their primary occupation. Because all that content is created for free, out of people's spare time, in order to help one another. People running business charging you for their articles? It's them who have an agenda, and you can easily see it reflected in the low quality and trustworthiness of said articles.