[Wikipedia-l] Yahoo has choosen Wikipedia for his non-commercial channel of CAP

Wed Mar 3 15:34:29 UTC 2004

Salve Jimbo,

Am Dienstag, 2. März 2004 21:58 schrieb Jimmy Wales:
> Yes, I was in negotiations with Yahoo about this last week.
Great :)

> I tried to get their PR person to feature us more prominently in the
> press release, but alas, she didn't listen to me.  :-)

I don`t think that the Wikipedia god a bad placement inside their press 
release - and we have the chance to place a statment of our own about this 
cooperation now, or in the future. ;-)

Cooperations with a commercial project is alltimes a walk on tightrope and it 
needs transparency - this is why I suggesst to think about our image
- in the media 
- in the view of wikipedia user
- in the view of wikipedianer
- in the view of GO/NGOs, people we want to win as friend of the wikipedia.

Not everybody knows about the GNU-FDL and the spirit of GNU. The article in 
the Geman newsmagazin doesn´t mention the GNU-FDL nor explaind how our 
content is free - they wrote that one businessman Jimmy Wales started this 
project and serve the server and the software came from the programmer Ward 
Cunningham.

"Homo economicus" would think now, Mr Jimmy Wales is a smart businessman, he 
find and motivate naive young people to work for his projekt for free and he 
sells this content to big players like Yahoo.

(To avoid to be missunderstud by some non-Wikipedianer like journalists, I 
don`t share this point of view - I know that our Wikiproject would stay a 
free project and because it is free I do not have the smallest doubt, that 
Jimbo could sell this project for his own big profit - because it is free, 
yahoo could take our content for free :)

But I want to make clear what a Homo economicus could think about us, when he 
only knows the facts and not the spirit behind this project.

Such an image would be a handicap to win new friends for the wikipedia.
We need a popularity of our spirit. How many people outside the GNU/Linux or 
IT world does understand the spirit and motivation behind GNU-FDL?

What is neccessary that e.G. an old person reads about the wikipedia in the 
newspaper and become motivatet to share his pictures and texts he made in is 
life as journalist? How can we get such an image about us in public that he 
deccide that we are the right  partner for his" last wish" to save his work 
for the general public?

This cooperation with yahoo and the yhaoo non-commercial channel with 11 GO/
NGOs would be a good cause (chance) to give a press release/conference with 
all these other 10 groups and explain
- why we are sharing content for free
- how people all over the world can profit from our work
- how people can support us

This wouldn`t be action for popularity, but for a better image that people 
would trust us more and would get a higer willingness to joining or 
contributing us.
(Or one of the 10 others GO/NGOs, what would makes us, of course, happy, too).

Greetings
rob