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1) Is it ethical :
Wikipedia is open licensed : Anybody is free to duplicate the content as long as the follow the licensing guide lines.
2) Is it legal :
Yes it is
3) Is it good for the advertisers :
Google already follows smart pricing algorithms.
[edited by: jatar_k at 6:38 pm (utc) on May 17, 2006]
If there are five sites with information about the same subject area, and one of them created it themselves, while the other four copied it from Wikipedia, why SHOULDN'T the site with the original content get a better rate?
If I were an advertiser in the print world, I would expect to pay more for an ad in a publication with original content than one that just reprinted public domain content.
Finally, why would an advertiser want to pay the same for leads that are generated by a site without original content as they pay for leads from a site that does have original content?
[edited by: jatar_k at 6:38 pm (utc) on May 17, 2006]
If I were an advertiser in the print world, I would expect to pay more for an ad in a publication with original content than one that just reprinted public domain content.Finally, why would an advertiser want to pay the same for leads that are generated by a site without original content as they pay for leads from a site that does have original content?
I agree with you in principle, but not your logic. I have a concern about adsense encouraging duplicate junk sites. I wish they wouldn't do it.
However, your characterization of advertisers in print media isn't really accurate, in my experience. I can tell you, as a writer who has sold reprints in print (and also exclusive content), that the ads in the publications that bought my stuff were no different in rates.
What they do care about is demographics and "eyes" - circulation, and content that may be relevant to their products/services.
There's a bottom line. Leads are leads. Sales are sales. If duplicate content creates poor leads or lower sales (and you haven't suggested any empirical evidence to prove this one way or another), then it has lower value. It doesn't have lower value, however, simply because it's a duplicate. At least not as far as ad placement.
Frankly, from some slight experience with DMOZ sites I don't believe the described phenomenon exists at all. I think it's more likely that the "informational" slant to Wikipedia gives the page a lowish smart pricing score, or else the traffic to this kind of site is simply too low-quality or untargeted.
Informational slants give a page a lowish smart pricing score?
That could explain a lot for me. I don't use wiki content (in fact, someone once stole one of my pages and submitted it to Wikipedia, resulting in a nightmare of tracking down copyists), but my content tends to be wordy, "informational" stuff. And my numbers are apparently a lot lower than those of others I see here. Am I giving readers too much?
(I'm only a sporadic mostly-lurker here, so if this has been discussed here before, please just point me to it.)
Informational slants give a page a lowish smart pricing score?
How about: wikipedia+clones have an audience that's heavily skewed towards kids, Third-World countries, students, and folks who don't believe in paying for anything if they can help it.
It's unclear what these are, and I suspect there may a manual element to it, but it's generally intended to distinguish (for example) a page about camera purchasing considerations from a page describing the history of photography. As a reference source without much relevance to the process of shopping for goods and services, Wikipedia articles may be smart-priced accordingly.
I tend to agree with you, based on my own experience. Pages providing general information are not as "valuable" as those with specific product information.
