How Wikipedia Can Get Some Revenue

Two news stories in today's newspaper combined to give me an idea that I'm offering for free to Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia.

The first story was about Wikipedia and their ongoing money woes. They can't sell ads without violating the spirit of their mission and they can't raise enough money to operate purely by donations. What's a non-profit foundation to do?

The second story was about a very creative couple in Colorado who are selling their home in this horrible market by holding an essay contest with an entry fee. For $100, you submit an essay. They have a judging team set up. The winning essay gets the house. If they can get 2,000 essays submitted (they have a couple hundred so far), they can get out of their financial dilemma and help someone in the process.

So, my somewhat twisted mind said, "What if Wikimedia Foundation held regular contests to judge the most informative, most interesting, best-written, funniest, weirdest, etc., entries in Wikipedia? If you author a particular essay or just really like one, you submit it for consideration along with an entry fee of, say, $10. The Wikimedia Foundation board appoints a panel of judges to review the entries (or submits them to site content editors and contributors), selects a winner (or a 1-2-3 winner set) and awards them cash prizes.

Seems to me this has the salutary potential side effect of increasing the quality of content on the site at the same time as it could generate huge piles of money for the foundation.

I'm emailing this to the new Executive Director of the foundation today. Who knows, maybe she'll like it.