Anthere wrote:
The
Answers.com deal, on the other hand, is just a recipe for offence.
The benefit is unknown and will probably be small. The Board has agreed
to it in secret, apparently to repay favours such as the Wikimania
sponsorship. They've given a single organisation preferential treatment,
which brings their motives into question: are they doing this to help
Wikipedia or Answers.com?
Since you are mentionning the Board here, I am clearly included. I will
not speak for the other board members here, but only for me though.
I consider your comment being an accusation of corruption.
I do not think you have any basis, as far as I am concerned, for making
such a public accusation. Unless you can provide a good argument to
support it and explain how I could in any sens benefit of the current
deal, I will kindly ask you to provide public apologies for this comment
I consider defaming.
Sorry, by "apparently" I only meant that that is the way it appears that
way to the most extreme members of the community, I don't hold such
views myself. I was only trying to explain why I think this deal has met
such strong opposition, especially on the wiki. It was wild speculation
in any case, my apologies.
Jimmy Wales wrote
"apparently to repay favours such as the
Wikimania sponsorship" -
absolutely false.
"a single organization preferential treatment" - absolutely false.
I'm so shocked by these remarks, that I'm going to do something fairly
rare for me and ask for a public apology.
Fair enough, it was ill-considered.
> That's
why I join the chorus of editors in asking the Board to withdraw
> from this deal. If we are going to have advertising, it needs to be done
> with extreme sensitivity to the sensibilities of the community. Claiming
> that it's not advertising most certainly doesn't help -- even if the
> Board believes that line, the community certainly doesn't.
Then as a longstanding member of the community with a good reputation, I
ask for your help in explaining to them how it is *not* advertising. In
order to do that, you'll have to stop spinning wild accusations first
and ask some basic questions about the deal until you understand it.
I'll come back to this in a later post.
-- Tim Starling