On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 14:43 -0600, Nathan Reed wrote:
> Moded the user...
Sorry about that.
[Nathan, if he didn't get that message I thiny you should send him one.
Wikipedia came before the WMF. The 501(c) was set up to support the
per-consensus wishes of the community at that time. I'm not privy to all
the details of, nor totally happy with those I know of, around changing
the composition of the board. I have a "gut feeling" that moves to
professionalise may impede some community innovations. However slowing
change, and making it more difficult, does have positive points. There
is no need to worry one day you'll wake up and the Conservapedia Cabal™
have taken over. (Us Socialists are safe here, at least for now. ;-)]
Anyway, now that the "representative sample" of people who use @AOL.COM
email addresses has gone....
<mutters about September That Never Ended>
If someone on sr.wikinews wanted to take all the published articles -
per the license - and automatically reproduce on their own site - they
could add any advertising they wanted (*ANY* Wikinews contributor or
reader could). They could even charge a small fee for adverts to cover
costs. What such a site *can't* do is use the logo or in any way bill
themselves as Wikinews. Both the logo and name are registered marks.
That doesn't rule out a licensing agreement for their use. I *think* if
you wanted to take Wikinews content and have that up-front, with a
craigslist-style advertising system, you might have a chance of a
commercial venture. Thinking project-selfishly it'd make a great
recruiting tool that could fund advertising itself.
With the annual fundraiser coming up, now is not a time to bug Kul about
that. Frankly, with such a small WMF staff, you may have a hard time
getting to talk at all about something like that.
However, if you could find someone interested in putting money into a
project like that for Serbia and get them to accept a number of strict
conditions - possibly even penalty clauses - would be written into such
an agreement; then, as long as the language barrier isn't too big an
obstacle, I can see that going through quickly.
You could even get investment in tools to speed up or near-automate
generation of a print edition - where an ability to distribute at an
even more local level was possible (Adds 'Wikinewsies paid for producing
free print-edition copies with added advertising and distributing to
local businesses so they can do the original reporting they want' to the
global domination plan) .
If it's all being funded by advertising - and someone investing
initially in tools for a commercial use that also fits Wikinews needs -
you are vastly improving the dissemination of knowledge from a Wikimedia
Foundation project that I think is overlooked where it has great
potential.
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