Whilst I don't support or advocate for Wikimedia projects including advertising, I would like to ask a hypothetical question. Would people's opinions towards ads would be different if google's ads were to be incorporated ONLY on the Search page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search in the whitespace on the right.
This is by far the most popular individual page http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/ and ads there would be able to be served in a way that is both relevant to the end-user (based on the term being searched for) and yet without having to "sell out" our article pages. On the other hand it would mean we could no longer say "we have zero ads" and it would create a lot of angry Wikimedians (possibly me included) making the "slippery slope" argument.
Like I said, I'm not actually supporting this position, but would like to know if people thought that this would theoretically be a way to gain revenue without losing reputation/independence.
-Liam
wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata