[Foundation-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia

Tue Mar 11 19:37:09 UTC 2008

Hopefully, a free encyclopedia sponsored by a university would allow
anyone to reuse content - so anything added to that could've been added to
the es.wikipedia. Still, my comment holds I think - some people will always
be
upset by change they don't agree with, but oftentimes this is offset by the
benefit of the change in other ways. I personally believe strongly that even
limited ad revenue would ensure the mission of Wikimedia for a long time and
I suspect that it could be accomplished without alienating a large portion
of
our contributors or readers.

Having said that, I don't think Wikimedia or the Wikimedia community can
make a considered decision about this subject without information about all
the factors involved - right now we don't have concrete knowledge about any
aspect of this debate (except that there was a fork in the past on one
project
seemingly related to advertising). A report to the community and Board that
gave us the data and research we need to really weigh this option is the
best
way forward and I hope to see one before too long. This issue will keep
coming
back - and each time, a decision will be made anew by a new board and a new
community. Slapping it down because it was once decided it was a bad idea
(without evidence or anything but strong feeling) is the wrong strategy.

Nathan

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Nathan wrote:
> > People get upset at any significant change. That isn't really a good
> reason
> > to not make significant changes - the increased ability of the
> foundation to
> > raise its profile in ways that cost money will, I imagine, offset
> potential
> > lost contributors. I would sincerely hope that a considered decision
> made
> > for the benefit of the Foundation would not cause many people to quit in
> > frustration. After all - what good is it to make the worlds information
> free
> > and accessible for everyone, if you can only do it for 10 or so years
> before
> > the funding strategy bottoms out? It should be "permanently free and
> > accessible" - and that takes money.
> >
> Well, it isn't only a hypothetical---the last time anyone even *raised*
> the issue of adding advertisements, the Spanish Wikipedia forked, with
> many of the contributors leaving for a university-sponsored "we
> guarantee we'll never have ads" version, Encyclopedia Libre. It's now
> mostly back on track, but that fiasco seems to have set its progress
> back significantly---it took about two years from the fork for the
> Spanish Wikipedia to catch back up to Encyclopedia Libre in article count.
>
> -Mark
>
>
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