--- David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
How about using the old domain, wikipedia.com, as a site for stable Wikipedia versions, with ads on? The ad money, as well as paying our comparatively small hosting and staff costs, could go toward educational programmes for those people who could benefit from our hard work but *aren't* comfortable, well-fed first-world citizens.
I think it would be confusing to use wikipedia.com for this since the distinction is non-obvious to pretty much any non-geek. It is simply too fine a distinction.
However, A long time ago, I had the same idea for the use of the Nupedia.com domain. If that were done by a spin-off of Wikimedia (let's call it Nupedia Publishing for the sake of conversion), then they could use that revenue to fund a printed/DVD version for sale and donate money back into Wikimedia. The relationship would be symbiotic and not dissimilar to the relationship between Linux distros and the Linux development community.
Having a separate legal entity for publishing helps the Foundation avoid a lot of potential legal liability and keeps our goal on content production/improvement and the methods of dissemination that directly support content production/improvement (e.g. wikis on the Internet). Of course, IANAL.
(As far as I can tell, pretty much all opposition to ads on Wikimedia comes from people who are in fact comfortable, well-fed first-world citizens. I eagerly await news and demographics otherwise.)
Some of us, including me, being in the overfed subcategory of first worlders. :) Alas, so are my cats
-- mav
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