On 30 August 2010 00:58, Ray Saintonge <[email protected]> wrote: > Ian Woollard wrote: >> On 27/08/2010, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Wikipedia needs competitors. >> Realistically, the space that Wikipedia occupies seems to be a more or >> less a natural monopoly. > What makes any monopoly "natural"? This is a term of art in economics. As such, I understand there is a popular online encyclopedia with a reasonable article on "natural monopoly", which would answer your question. In this case, I'd guess first-mover advantage and network effects. >> And Wikipedia doesn't even make money per se, so why would anyone even >> want to be a competitor to it? There's no market. A market is where >> people pay for stuff. > That seems to reflect the fundamental error of economists: that anything > that cannot be monetized is by definition worthless. Economics is not quite physics, but it's not entirely composed of balderdash; ask Mugabe about Zimbabwean fiscal policy. In this case the market is attention and reputation. You know full well there are a lot of people tearing their hair out that a charity site that doesn't run advertising is #5 in the world and has a stupendous Google page rank with no actual effort towards such. - d. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
