On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 23:00, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed; and arguably Craig Newmark is much, much more famous in San Francisco (where he's a local celeb) than he would be pretty much anywhere else. That might be part of the issue here. If you know who he is in the SF-tech-community-philanthropy context, it might strike you as more of a clear use of his good name to generously support a cool project. If you don't, it might look like more of a clear advertisement for Craigslist.
Yes, that would be my main "criticism" about this all. Not that I think it's advertising, but I think Greg mentionned it earlier in the thread, rather that Craigslist has probably an audience that (apart from being centered in the US, SF etc.) has a lot in common to our contributing community. ie. people who already have desactivated the site notice long ago ;)
Regardless this is basically the same debate we had over Virgin Unite -- the name of any commercial organization (and probably any other nonprofit organization, too, if we're honest with ourselves) being displayed on the site provokes intense dislike and debate among a large section of the community -- for various reasons, but mostly summarized as we don't want to use the resources of Wikipedia to advocate or advertise for another organization.
Sooo true. Parochialists, are we? :D
Delphine