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