Hello,
There is much going on today. The community is split about the actions the
Foundation took. Let me clarify something about Virgin Unite:
Virgin Unite is a charity organisation of one of the largest multi-nationals
in the world. If I can think about one company that will really do everything
to own Wikipedia, it's Virgin. Their €250.000 is nothing compared to that.
Virgin Unite is just a PR-department. Almost every multi-national has these
kind off charity organisations. What if the Gates Foundation will offer these
kind of money? A lot of us will see that it is just a PR-stunt from
Microsoft. That's why Virgin Unite is just pure advertisement for Virgin.
It also creates a precedent to the future. The road to daily advertisement has
been opened by a weak Foundation. Yes we need the money, but there are other
ways. Rather no money than sell the basis principles of Wikipedia/-media to
whoever has the money.
Meanwhile the Foundation has tear apart a lot of local communities. Partly
this could be avoided by informing the communities, at least a few days in
advance. Every community had a local mailinglist, a sysop list and a village
pump.
Anyhow; a lot of people are angry. A lot of people are talking about forks. A
lot of people, including a lot off the hardcore contributors, are leaving the
project. Only because of these unintelligent actions from the Foundation,
backed by a lot of misinformed people and people who don't understand or
don't want to understand the rules of free content.
These actions will have very negative consequences and I'm ashamed about that.
Especially on the day the Dutch and Flemish media are reporting about the
quarter of million articles on the Dutch language Wikipedia. This evening the
Dutch Wikipedia will peak with a lot of new visitors and new users. They will
see the advertisement and gone is the neutrality of the project. Thank you
Foundation; for selling us out!
Jeroenvrp
Moderator on the Dutch language Wikipedia since oct 2003
In addition to Jeroens post, I agree with him that a borderline seems to
have been crossed. We never mentioned the name of any other company on the
top of any page. I regret this form of advertisement, but wont cancel my
contribution, like many others. The borderline between sponsorship and
advertisement is razorthin, especially with virgin unite, which is viewed by
some as an advertisement agency for the company.
I wonder:
1) Did the foundation decide themselves to reward virgin unite with this
banner, or was this a (politely worded request) from virgin unite?
2) Have there been any donations by other companies of the same order of
magnitude?
3) If so, wouldnt it be fair if we offer these other companies a banner for
a day, on our own initiative? I also think of yahoo and kennisnet, who are
supporting us heavily with servers and bandwidth.
4) The example of virgin unite will invite other charities and companies to
also barter for a banner - or more. Did the foundation board write up for
themselves any guidelines how far they want to go in the matter of
sponsoring and advertisement (remember that sponsoring is just a form of
advertisement)
5) Could the board please communicate all decisions which are sensitive
among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent mailinglists?
6) Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
teun
The Resources of Sheboygan Commission said that they will donate free resources to The Wikimedia Foundation.
Some of the resources will be:
* Free subdomains
* Free email
* Free photos
The Resources of Sheboygan Commission said that they will pay the $500 in the costs to provide the resources.
Yours Truly,
Asher Heimermann
Board Member
The Resources of Sheboygan Commission
www.roscfriends.tripod.com
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