[Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

Fri Jan 5 21:49:24 UTC 2007

On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> It is nice to be insulted with a word that I do not know .. Thank you.

Not trying to insult you, though I guess fatuous is a bit strong. I did mean
it in the "delusive", not "inanely foolish" sense. Wiktionary is missing
that definition.

When you read what I wrote, you will find that they are TYPICALLY
> ignored. You would also read in the part that you did not bother to copy
> that often a better deal can be had by not being lazy and by thinking
> about what there is to buy.

It's a mistake to believe that ads are typically ignored. Again, ads work
because they influence people. Ads typically do not motivate people to
direct action (at least percentagewise) but they do inevitably influence
people.

Now that we have exchanged pleasantries, the point I make is not that it
> has no effect it has little effect. Another point that I l make is that
> the Wikimedia Foundation can be much more effective when it had a bigger
> budget. Given the growth rate of all our projects, our need for money
> will increase even when we only want to continue to provide the level of
> service that we do.

One would hope that the need for money will not grow disproportionately to
the growth in audience. In fact, there should be economies of scale.

Given that many people in Europe do not know Wikipedia, given that we
> have not really made an impact in Africa, Asia and South America I do
> argue that we have not scratched the service of what we aim to do. The
> fact that only the English Wikipedia has more than a million articles
> proves to me that Wikipedia is still very much a rich man's game.
>

That's an interesting conclusion but hardly the only one that can be drawn.

We do
> not have the organisational infrastructure to do well in many languages.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "well".

One thing to recognize is that Wikipedia is part of the Web -- if the reach
of the Web in particular regions of the world is limited in certain ways,
that will limit the effectiveness and growth of those language's Wikipedias.

The point is that we need much more money than we have.

That's your argument. It's not prima facie true. We'd certainly *like* much
more money, but need?

The aim of the
> foundation is to bring information to everyone. We do not do as good a
> job as we could. This is the argument that is not addressed when people
> are rabidly against advertisements. Even when like in the Virgin Unite
> case that organisation does not sell a thing. The problem I have with
> this blanket anti add attitude is that it has little to do with our aims

In your opinion. If, for example, you accept that ads influence people, then
it's not too far to conclude that they unavoidably violate NPOV.