On 12/28/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Dedalus <dedalus(a)wikipedia.be> wrote:
Somebody else mentioned the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation. It's in
the
press they would like to raise the level of
primary and secondary
education
in the US. Wikiversity and or Wikibooks might be
helpful in raising the
level of education there and elsewhere. Suppose the Bill and Melinda
Gates
Foundation would like to grant some money to WMF
on the condition that
it
would be for specific projects, e.g. Wikibooks or
Wikiversity, would
that
raise any objections by anyone?
Not by me. Also, the charge that the current message is an advertisement
sounds bizarre to me
since no product or service is even mentioned, let alone pushed.
From Wikipedia: "*Advertising* is paid
communication through a non-personal
medium in which the sponsor is identified and
the message is controlled.
Variations include publicity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicity>, public
relations <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations>, product
placement<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_placement>nt>,
sponsorship <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship>,
underwriting<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwriting_spots>ts>,
and sales promotion <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_promotion>."
Hmmmmmm.
The message is simply an acknowledgement of a very generous donation that is
linked to the amount
of money our readers can give in a day; this is an inducement to donate.
It is NOT an inducement
to buy any product or service of Virgin Unite or the Virgin group of
companies.
This is no different than the sponsorship messages seen or heard on the
non-profits NPR and PBS.
Right. Those, too, are ads.