Wiki growing pains: mo' money mo' problems

The "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is in the midst of an identity crisis. Having evolved far beyond its original, modest vision of collaborative knowledge and free information, it needs to decide what it is, and what to do next.

Although Wikipedia has studiously avoided bowing to commercial interests such as advertising, Ms. Gardner knows the site could easily get rich if it began acting more like a big media company. That is, if it began selling its audience to advertisers. That's 57 million unique users in the U.S. alone last month.

Once an unassuming little website, it is now an Internet powerhouse.

"We hear it all the time: you're leaving billions on the table," she said. "It's hard for people to understand."

Such a change could make Wikipedia worth billions, and make the recent $1.8-billion (U.S.) purchase of online news pioneer CNet by CBS Corp. look like chump change.

But advertising is out of the question, since the site is backed by a charity. So the problem for Ms. Gardner is how to harness Wikipedia's potential in order to sustain the foundation's growing costs - new servers, more staff, new technology - without straying from the notion of Wikipedia as a not-for-profit. The organization needs less than $6-million a year, with most coming from fans who donate between $25 and $500,000 - but it wants to grow.

"A lot of things have been discussed like board games and TV shows. And I'm not ruling that out," Mr. Wadhwa said. "But what we'd really like to do is focus on things that are more directly associated with our mission."

While the debate between business interests and non-profit independence is often black and white for Wikipedia, the Bertelsmann deal, struck before Mr. Wadhwa arrived, is an example of an acceptable venture that exists in the grey area between those two categories, he said. That's the message Mr. Wadhwa is taking to companies. "We're actually open to suggestions that can be bounced back and forth."

Wikipedia is allowing others to help write its strategy - a familiar approach. "Our business plan is like a wiki. That's a good way of putting it," Mr. Wadhwa said.

By the numbers

8,000

The percentage amount

by which Web traffic has

grown in the past five years.

11.2 million

The number of unique visitors

in Canada in March, ranking it

6th in traffic with half that

of top-ranked Google.

17 minutes, 51 seconds

The average time spent by U.S. visitors to the site in April

Source: Nielsen Co.,

comScore.com