On 10/24/07, GDonato <gdonato(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any
advertising on Wikimedia.
This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and
guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely
desperate.
Some, like Andrew Keen, have argued exactly the opposite - that unpaid
editors are inevitably bound to create content which serves their own
purposes, so what you end up with when you don't have explicit
advertising is hidden advertising. I think it's a reasonable point of
view, and something we're starting to see quite a bit of in Wikipedia.
The problem is there's no real way to fix it without throwing away so
many of the basic concepts of Wikipedia. So while it might be the
best way to go, it's probably best saved for another project. Maybe
Citizendium could try it, it fits in much better with their model.