[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership

Sat Oct 22 04:43:57 UTC 2005

On 10/20/05, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/20/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In a press release today
> > (<http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051020/ukth030.html?.v=1>), The
> > Wikimedia Foundation announced a new partnership with Answers.com.
> >
> > A proposal was made by Answers Corporation to add a link in the
> > sidebar of the English Wikipedia to the Wikipedia:Tools page
> > (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools>).
> >
> > That page will highlight the "1-Click Answers, Wikipedia Edition"
> > software. Revenues from this toolbar will be split with the Wikimedia
> > Foundation. The Board have signed up to a 60-day trial of this
> > proposal.
> >
> > I would like to welcome comments on this, both before the launch early
> > next year, and during the trial period. The talk page at
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools/1-Click_Answers>
> > should be used so that comments can be kept in one place.
>
> This smells like advertising and spyware to me. I can't believe that
> the foundation would go along with this. If we're to be NPOV, we'd
> need to do this for Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc until that sidebar
> was all but useless. And if that's not done, than this is pure
> advertising.

I'd like to apologize as I thought it'd be placed in the side bar.
While still smelling fishy, at least it's not getting as much
exposure. I'd still like to know what is meant by "charter placement"
as any placement constraint would be at the very least very anti-wiki.