This is a hard no. The argument is litterally "I would make so much money. I won't have to search for a job". That is a shit argument to make and degrading the user experience for personal gain is selfish. Also consider that those ads also track the ip's which means you aren't just showing users ads but also letting companies track them

I will only do this if it makes so much money that I can fairly pay everyone who had non-trivial contributions to the wiki, and still have enough money left to have it as my main source of income.

Unless I underestimate the amount of traffic the wiki gets I'm guessing this is going to be a frustrating amount of ads. Yes, there are ad blockers but I'm guessing that will defeat the goal and then we have no wiki maybe? I'm more than willing to add this site as another regular patreon donation.

Just put ads up, we'll live, and if we cant, we'll make another website

I'm fine with the basic idea (even though I don't like ads), but here are some concerns that either weren't adressed or didn't have a proposed solution:

• Logistics: How many users are there that make significant contributions to the wiki? Is it plausible to do this as a solo dev?
• Article Quality: As mentioned in the post, there is the risk of people spamming low quality articles for money. What is the solution here? Maybe a fixed amount for bigger contributors, but who falls into that category? Again: Logistics.
• Trust: Since it was promised there won't be ads on the wiki, people may not react positively to this announcement, which might possibly be hurting the wiki. To be fair here, the process seems to be very transparent, though a forum to discuss about this would be nice, rather than just e-mail.

From the post:

potentially making more money than I've done in the past by working 40 hours.

And I could retroactively pay contributors, who made bg3.wiki what it is, for their past volunteer work. Potentially significant amounts,

It might make lots of money, and I could pay all past contributors.

they will be very non-intrusive and clean.

I wonder if he's overestimating the potential ad revenue here. Many of us use ad blockers, and some only use bg3.wiki at all because it's free of the junk that comes with getting/sharing the same information elsewhere. If the money he's expecting depends on traffic remaining the same once ads are introduced, and users not using ad blockers, I think the income estimates might be... unrealistic.

In any case, he does ask for feedback at the end of the post. It might be worthwhile to send him a (kindly worded) note.

Is it really that expensive to run a wiki? I mean, I host Lemmy and PeerTube (+more) out of my own pocket.