--- David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
How about using the old domain,
wikipedia.com, as a
site for stable
Wikipedia versions, with ads on? The ad money, as well as paying our
comparatively small hosting and staff costs, could go toward
educational programmes for those people who could benefit from our
hard work but *aren't* comfortable, well-fed first-world citizens.
I think it would be confusing to use
wikipedia.com for this since the distinction is
non-obvious
to pretty much any non-geek. It is simply too fine a distinction.
However, A long time ago, I had the same idea for the use of the
Nupedia.com domain. If
that were
done by a spin-off of Wikimedia (let's call it Nupedia Publishing for the sake of
conversion),
then they could use that revenue to fund a printed/DVD version for sale and donate money
back into
Wikimedia. The relationship would be symbiotic and not dissimilar to the relationship
between
Linux distros and the Linux development community.
Having a separate legal entity for publishing helps the Foundation avoid a lot of
potential legal
liability and keeps our goal on content production/improvement and the methods of
dissemination
that directly support content production/improvement (e.g. wikis on the Internet). Of
course,
IANAL.
(As far as I can tell, pretty much all opposition to
ads on Wikimedia
comes from people who are in fact comfortable, well-fed first-world
citizens. I eagerly await news and demographics otherwise.)
Some of us, including me, being in the overfed subcategory of first worlders. :) Alas, so
are my
catsÂ…
-- mav
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