Poe, Marshall wrote:
Could someone, just for the benefit of this (relative)
outsider and
journalist, explain what the basic objections are to AdSense type ads on
Wikipedia? I know you'll be speaking for yourself and not the community,
and will read the explanations accordingly.
From my point of view:
1) I think ads on the internet typically look gaudy and unprofessional.
Reliable, authoritative pages from non-profit organizations rarely have
ads---take a look at, say, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
which is also in financial straits but ad-free
(
http://plato.stanford.edu). Or
http://www.gnu.org. Take a look at
http://www.dailykos.com for an extreme example of the opposite.
2) By their keyword placement, they allow people with money and a bit of
trial and error to purchase prominently-displayed links to rebuttals on
specific Wikipedia article pages.
-Mark