The argument in favour of ads appears to be 'if we don't use them, we're throwing away a big potential revenue stream'. How long before the idea of allowing advertisers 'final approval' of articles on which their ads appear appears on the basis that 'by not doing it, we're throwing away a big potential revenue stream'?
Ah, the old slippery slope idea. IMHO, that particular slope is not particularly slippery. Wikipedia would *not* be Wikipedia if NPOV was sacrificed for advertising $$$. There are clear guidelines that would clearly be breached by doing that. Wikipedia with ads doesn't cross any lines, other than a somewhat ambiguous promise from Jimbo some years back that it wouldn't happen without community support.
You might argue that this is someting of a logical fallacy (see, for instance, [[Slippery slope]]), but I am very
Whoops, I just did that :)
concerned about the idea of opening up the principles of the project to anything other than 'making an encyclopaedia'. 'Making an encyclopaedia while keeping our advertisers happy' isn't in the mission statement as far as I'm concerned.
"Making an ad-free encyclopaedia" is also not the mission statement, as far as I can see. In fact, if you look at the whole reasoning for using the GFDL, the goal seemed to be making whatever concessions were necessary and removing all restrictions to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the work. Refusing ads seems to go against that particular goal.
Steve