There is no acceptable compromise on advertising. As I dont need to make a living at this, I'd rather do my unpaid work for a truly free encyclopedia. Fortunately, there's Citizendium. True, they are currently much weaker financially that Wikipedia, but if Wikipedia become financed by adsense, then those able to contribute financially will naturally prefer a project that actually needs them.
As a librarian, I can say that the freedom from advertising is a major reason why an educational institution would tell people that there is some reason to trust wikipedia to be impartial, if not necessarily perfectly accurate.
As for other projects than enWP, I don't work on them. It will be a shame if they degenerate, but that's not my lookout in the same way as what i actually work for. If the foundation wants to depart from its principles with them, my only involvement with it need be to vote for trustees who feel as I do and will be ready to reverse such a decision.
I don't think I'm unique about feeling this way.
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 12:49 AM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.com wrote:
What if the Foundation created a skin that users could opt into and tagged it with adsense? That would actually be a acceptable compromise.
----- Original Message ---- From: Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 11:57:14 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia
As long as user Foo is the one collecting the ad revenue, and user Bar is using user Foo's script and user Bar is not engaging in click fraud I don't see the problem. Plus, there are lots of advertisers besides Google. I'm sure there is a completely legitimate way to do it.
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 12:47 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
<snip>
However, if someone wants to set up such an opt-in scheme (e.g.,
importScript('User:Foo/show_me_adverts.js')) and then donate the money earned to the Foundation, I don't think you need anyone's permission.
If you are using a script to add ads to your own Wikipedia skin, and then clicking on those ads yourself, you would be violating the terms of service of systems like Google Adsense.
To avoid fraud, one of the underlying requirements of all online advertising systems is that the person or entity placing ads on a website must be different from the person clicking on the ads.
-Robert Rohde
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