Just a few thoughts on advertising:
* It wouldn't have to be banner ads in the obnoxious sense. Surely
there could be some sort of quality control and discreteness about it.
I'm sure we could find someone willing to shell out a lot of funding
for a small ad on the lower left hand corner of each page. If every
set of advertisements had to be approved by some small board of
thoughtful people, it would probably keep out the "You may be a
winner!" and "Mortgage your house online!" ads.
* What if ad content could be controlled through user CSS pages? Those
who are 'in the know' could outright disable them without difficulty.
People without accounts could never disable them. What's the ratio of
logged-in to non-logged in page hits?
* I think that "targetted" schemes along the lines of Google Adsense
are a bad idea. If we have ads, they should be as little connected to
the content being viewed as possible, as a matter of integrity.
Article content and article titles should have NO relation to
advertising content. If it does, we are not only inviting some raised
eyebrows about content validity, but we're inviting people to try and
game the system by modifying articles in oh-so-clever and minor ways
to get their specific advertisements listed first.
* Perhaps there are other revenue models we should consider first
before advertising. At the moment the only ones on the table seem to
be 1. selling hard-copies, 2. begging, and 3. advertising. I have the
business acumen of a pigeon but surely there must be alternatives to
these three.
FF