A survey on Special:Search asking readers various questions about their
thoughts, feelings and opinions regarding putting adverts on that page could
help to clarify this issue. It would need to be carefully designed and well
controlled, but it can be done in an unbiased and statistically sound
manner. With hundreds of millions of page views a month, we could afford to
do iterations of the survey until all parties are satisfied that it is fair,
and then discuss the results.
We would also need to anonymously survey active Wikipedia editors
separately. Their opinions matter enormously.
Folks seem generally agreeable to an objective, dispassionate analysis. A
data driven approach is the best way.
On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 5:08 PM, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 11/03/2008, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com>
wrote:
Having said that, the issue of public perception
is absolutely vital,
and you do make a perfectly good point.
the influential editors within
wikipedia have a certain viewpoint
which is not representative of the actual readership
who don't get
involved in this issues.
Peter