2008/12/25 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2008/12/25 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
At this point the prudent move for us is to do nothing and continue to exist. Which has actually worked out surprisingly well for us so far.
We've never run into anyone significant who's first reaction is to run to PR people and lobbyists. The PRC is hardly western media friendly and the poor IWF clearly isn't used to people caring about them. The hard Christian right we ran into back in what may? weren't interested in having any impact on the wider media. The various German people have tended not to realise what they are getting into.
Note that we don't have to be famous to do what we do. Running the #4 website on a budget made of donations is basically a massive pain in the ass.
We just have to (1) do something worth doing (2) be very clear what it is (3) keep doing it. We have that.
It's actually quite hard to come up with a company or group that is both rich and media savy that we could end up seriously inconveniencing. School text book people perhaps?
They're haemorrhaging money without us. If Wikibooks texts start getting used in proper schools, they might worry. But if a Wikibooks text is up to the task, it'll get used in places they don't bother selling to. c.f. Schools-Wikipedia, which was created for SOS Children's Villages to use in their own schools and just happens to have become very popular with teachers around the world.
Getty might be a candidate but their problem is more the internet as a whole(and since they are still worth a couple of billion they would appear to be surviving that).
Getty Images makes its living from the Internet.
The pictures of Mohamed thing was already overdone by the time it reached us but some religious groups might be a risk factor I suppose.
Neutrality and principle is our trump card in such situations.
The existence of this project, despite its highly marketable and credible air of neutrality, does, as an Enlightenment L'Encyclopedie-style project, push a very strong and detailed point of view. So who hates the idea of the core of what we do *that much*? Whose project are we all set to termite horribly?
Wikinews is nice, but unlikely to take over the world any time soon. Commons would be fantastic if the search wasn't poo. Who else?
- d.