On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 7:30 AM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
No. The community cannot act outwith with WMF mission and project guidelines.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
- Adverts do not qualify as educational content
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Mission_statement
Note in the Wikinews mission statement that the project is compared to AP and Reuters - which are newswires who do not carry *any* advertising.
I'm not wasting any more time on this. Allowing people to post adverts would be a magnet for spam and repeat upload of copyright violation images. That's before we even get into the potential for abuse I raised earlier. If people can abuse the system to gather personally identifying information they will.
"Useful" or "a cool idea" does not magically put something within the Wikinews project scope. The idea is not to emulate the local newspaper.
Brian, did you notice that it was proposed for the Serbian Wikinews, not English? The en.wikinews mission statement is relevant as a point of comparison, but isn't binding anywhere else (and is subject to revision even on the English project, following discussion). Milos asked for a discussion, and there is nothing wrong with that. It makes sense to discuss both practical and philosophical implications, but there's no need to try to shut the discussion down when others find it worth kicking around.
Nathan