Chris Jenkinson wrote:
The way you can demonstrate it is a good move is to make a page which clearly sets out why it is needed, why Answers is the correct corporation to have a partnership with, and what will happen if anything goes wrong. I think it would be a bad idea to jump in, cross our fingers and hope for the best.
I wonder whether we could stop referring to this Answers.com deal as a "partnership" please? imho "partnership" is a two-way arrangement and this product placement is purely one-way (their advert, our site, their payment; nothing sending people towards us from them), and given that the link would not exist without the payment then there can be no valid argument against it being an advertisement (of sorts).
Personally, I doubt that the anwsers.com deal will produce much of an income - the people who look at the tools page will likely be editors with their own ethos of how they want to see wikimedia projects work, however it has been very beneficial to us all on this list to discuss financing and income generation and I believe that we must indeed seek new lines of income. Saying that though I do not believe advertising is the right way to go as it demeans our 'product' and - like adverts on other sites - leads readers to believe that we will be favourable to advertisers in our articles (whether that is the case or not).
Alison
btw. I presume that our accounts are done to *US* GAAP (which is quite different from UK GAAP)