2008/9/5 Judson Dunn cohesion@sleepyhead.org:
There is an assumed goal that Wikipedia wants more eyeballs/pageviews. If you ranked the importance of pageviews to most wikipedians it would be very low. It is a goal, in as much as we want people to benefit from wikipedia, but I think it would certainly fall below core principles like neutrality, free content, and the other [[WP:5P]]s. There are probably lots of other normal policies that people would rate higher than pageviews.
In fact, Wikipedia has achieved its vast mainstream popularity precisely by concentrating on being an encyclopedia. No ads, no hooks, no idea if anyone's reading this ...
Our culture is very much more like co-workers with a shared goal, than is it a bunch of chums at the pub. (with a few exceptions of course :)
Both work well together! There's nothing quite like a pile of encyclopedists down a pub!
- d.