Today I've noticed creation of the account on sr.wn which means "Jobs Serbia". It is obviously that it is an account from some portal which is used for job advertisement. Instantly I've got an idea: to offer to that portal to make one page per day for linking the job offerings. It is useful and it is relevant to many Wikinews readers, as well as it may make Wikinews more relevant to its readers.
But, I've started to think further... To allow original advertisements or to require linking to a relevant site? For some time I was thinking that it is better not to allow original content related to advertisement, but, after all, I think that it is about wiki and wiki should allow that. At last, advertisement is the part of almost all daily newspapers and why not to put it on Wikinews, too?
Further, advertisement may be about a lot of fields, not just about jobs. It may be about housing, cars, whatever...
So, the question is where to stop? At the beginning and not do that at all or to allow every [legal] advertisement? Or something between?
At one side, it is not so relevant at the English language area: there is Craigslist for that. In many other language areas such portals don't exist and they don't have a lot of chances for success because there are not enough of users who would be willing to use one specialized site for that kind of advertisement.
At the other side, it is relevant as a concept for en.wn and other Wikinews editions. If it becomes successful as a model, it may bring new quality and many more users.
You may guess that I am very interested for that idea :) However, I think that it is very possible that I am inside of a small minority. Tell me what do you think about that and, more important, which problems may we have? (BTW, yes, it is about spreading free information and I don't think that it is against WMF's goals.)
Can you elaborate on what you mean? News articles related to advertisements, or pages that are solely advertising? Is there money involved, or just free advertising space for anyone at the rate of one page per day? I have the feeling that anything advertising-related is going to find a deep wellspring of objection with the wider Wikimedia community, but perhaps if you can expand on how it relates to adding useful content...?
Nathan
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:10 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Can you elaborate on what you mean? News articles related to advertisements, or pages that are solely advertising? Is there money involved, or just free advertising space for anyone at the rate of one page per day? I have the feeling that anything advertising-related is going to find a deep wellspring of objection with the wider Wikimedia community, but perhaps if you can expand on how it relates to adding useful content...?
It would be for free (I mentioned "free" inside of the topic), as the most simple advertisements are usually for free inside of the newspapers.
To be honest, I don't have a precise idea. I've started to think about advertisements which are useful to the most of Wikinews readers, like job offerings, buying or selling [used] cars, hotel/hostel prices and so on are. I am not talking about advertisement for money which intention is to promote some product or so. (I hope I've defined that clear.)
The first idea was about listing job offerings (one page per day) from one site initially, then from other such sites. However, continuum of thoughts brought me to the broader definition of advertisement (buying/selling, listing various prices and so on).
However, if the idea develops, it is possible to have one page per advertisement: "I am selling a Peugeot 207 one year old [[image:photo of my peugeot 207 on commons.jpg]] for XX EUR. My phone is xxx.xxx.". (BTW, privacy reasons are the same as they are on other wikis and on other advertisement places: abuse is always possible.)
Besides the primary reason -- making Wikinews more useful for readers -- it may bring a lot of free media to Commons. Possibly, some other benefits, too.
I understand that there are a lot of possible problems and I would like to hear them. But, again, I would like a kind of constructive discussion about possible problems, not an ideological discussion. (Again, this is not about payed advertisement.)
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:07 +0100, Milos Rancic wrote:
Today I've noticed creation of the account on sr.wn which means "Jobs Serbia". It is obviously that it is an account from some portal which is used for job advertisement. Instantly I've got an idea: to offer to that portal to make one page per day for linking the job offerings. It is useful and it is relevant to many Wikinews readers, as well as it may make Wikinews more relevant to its readers.
But, I've started to think further... To allow original advertisements or to require linking to a relevant site? For some time I was thinking that it is better not to allow original content related to advertisement, but, after all, I think that it is about wiki and wiki should allow that. At last, advertisement is the part of almost all daily newspapers and why not to put it on Wikinews, too?
Further, advertisement may be about a lot of fields, not just about jobs. It may be about housing, cars, whatever...
So, the question is where to stop? At the beginning and not do that at all or to allow every [legal] advertisement? Or something between?
At one side, it is not so relevant at the English language area: there is Craigslist for that. In many other language areas such portals don't exist and they don't have a lot of chances for success because there are not enough of users who would be willing to use one specialized site for that kind of advertisement.
At the other side, it is relevant as a concept for en.wn and other Wikinews editions. If it becomes successful as a model, it may bring new quality and many more users.
You may guess that I am very interested for that idea :) However, I think that it is very possible that I am inside of a small minority. Tell me what do you think about that and, more important, which problems may we have? (BTW, yes, it is about spreading free information and I don't think that it is against WMF's goals.)
It is an interesting idea, but would be pretty much against policy in terms of putting it in the main namespace. Really, I don't think any of the WN projects have the resources or knowledge to manage advertising job vacancies. You could end up directing people to fishing expeditions where their personal data is harvested for identity fraud.
So, I'd say, not in line with project or WMF principles. Cannot be effectively policed. Should not be done.
I think the idea of allowing advertisements of things which are free, and allowing it for free, sounds great. I agree that it would bring more people into the project. And it would make it seem more similar to other news services. I'm not so sure about allowing, for free, advertising things which themselves aren't free.
Will Johnson
I'm going to have to agree with Brian on this one. It just steps over too many lines for me. #Terin
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.orgwrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:07 +0100, Milos Rancic wrote:
Today I've noticed creation of the account on sr.wn which means "Jobs Serbia". It is obviously that it is an account from some portal which is used for job advertisement. Instantly I've got an idea: to offer to that portal to make one page per day for linking the job offerings. It is useful and it is relevant to many Wikinews readers, as well as it may make Wikinews more relevant to its readers.
But, I've started to think further... To allow original advertisements or to require linking to a relevant site? For some time I was thinking that it is better not to allow original content related to advertisement, but, after all, I think that it is about wiki and wiki should allow that. At last, advertisement is the part of almost all daily newspapers and why not to put it on Wikinews, too?
Further, advertisement may be about a lot of fields, not just about jobs. It may be about housing, cars, whatever...
So, the question is where to stop? At the beginning and not do that at all or to allow every [legal] advertisement? Or something between?
At one side, it is not so relevant at the English language area: there is Craigslist for that. In many other language areas such portals don't exist and they don't have a lot of chances for success because there are not enough of users who would be willing to use one specialized site for that kind of advertisement.
At the other side, it is relevant as a concept for en.wn and other Wikinews editions. If it becomes successful as a model, it may bring new quality and many more users.
You may guess that I am very interested for that idea :) However, I think that it is very possible that I am inside of a small minority. Tell me what do you think about that and, more important, which problems may we have? (BTW, yes, it is about spreading free information and I don't think that it is against WMF's goals.)
It is an interesting idea, but would be pretty much against policy in terms of putting it in the main namespace. Really, I don't think any of the WN projects have the resources or knowledge to manage advertising job vacancies. You could end up directing people to fishing expeditions where their personal data is harvested for identity fraud.
So, I'd say, not in line with project or WMF principles. Cannot be effectively policed. Should not be done.
-- Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org Wikinewsie.org
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
I'm also with brian and Terin. I just can't see how it fits in with either the wmfs aims or wikinews. Think of news Sources like the BBC, they have nothing like this. even sky and CNN don't, although they display ads alongside for money, that is something we are definitely not going to be doing.
Regards
On Wednesday, November 4, 2009, Terin Stock terin.stock@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I'm going to have to agree with Brian on this one. It just steps over too many lines for me.#Terin
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:07 +0100, Milos Rancic wrote:
Today I've noticed creation of the account on sr.wn which means "Jobs Serbia". It is obviously that it is an account from some portal which is used for job advertisement. Instantly I've got an idea: to offer to that portal to make one page per day for linking the job offerings. It is useful and it is relevant to many Wikinews readers, as well as it may make Wikinews more relevant to its readers.
But, I've started to think further... To allow original advertisements or to require linking to a relevant site? For some time I was thinking that it is better not to allow original content related to advertisement, but, after all, I think that it is about wiki and wiki should allow that. At last, advertisement is the part of almost all daily newspapers and why not to put it on Wikinews, too?
Further, advertisement may be about a lot of fields, not just about jobs. It may be about housing, cars, whatever...
So, the question is where to stop? At the beginning and not do that at all or to allow every [legal] advertisement? Or something between?
At one side, it is not so relevant at the English language area: there is Craigslist for that. In many other language areas such portals don't exist and they don't have a lot of chances for success because there are not enough of users who would be willing to use one specialized site for that kind of advertisement.
At the other side, it is relevant as a concept for en.wn and other Wikinews editions. If it becomes successful as a model, it may bring new quality and many more users.
You may guess that I am very interested for that idea :) However, I think that it is very possible that I am inside of a small minority. Tell me what do you think about that and, more important, which problems may we have? (BTW, yes, it is about spreading free information and I don't think that it is against WMF's goals.)
It is an interesting idea, but would be pretty much against policy in terms of putting it in the main namespace. Really, I don't think any of the WN projects have the resources or knowledge to manage advertising job vacancies. You could end up directing people to fishing expeditions where their personal data is harvested for identity fraud.
So, I'd say, not in line with project or WMF principles. Cannot be effectively policed. Should not be done.
-- Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>> Wikinewsie.org
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org');> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
Broadcast news does certainly have advertisements. What do you mean? Cable news is paid for by subscription, which is merely another form of payment. Neither are "free" of monetary considerations.
-----Original Message----- From: Tristan Thomas tris@waterhay.co.uk To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Nov 3, 2009 7:29 pm Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] RfC: Free advertisements on Wikinews
I'm also with brian and Terin. I just can't see how it fits in with either the wmfs aims or wikinews. Think of news Sources like the BBC, they have nothing like this. even sky and CNN don't, although they display ads alongside for money, that is something we are definitely not going to be doing.
Regards
On Wednesday, November 4, 2009, Terin Stock terin.stock@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I'm going to have to agree with Brian on this one. It just steps over too many
lines for me.#Terin
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({},
'cvml', 'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:07 +0100, Milos Rancic wrote:
Today I've noticed creation of the account on sr.wn which means "Jobs Serbia". It is obviously that it is an account from some portal which is used for job advertisement. Instantly I've got an idea: to offer to that portal to make one page per day for linking the job offerings. It is useful and it is relevant to many Wikinews readers, as well as it may make Wikinews more relevant to its readers.
But, I've started to think further... To allow original advertisements or to require linking to a relevant site? For some time I was thinking that it is better not to allow original content related to advertisement, but, after all, I think that it is about wiki and wiki should allow that. At last, advertisement is the part of almost all daily newspapers and why not to put it on Wikinews, too?
Further, advertisement may be about a lot of fields, not just about jobs. It may be about housing, cars, whatever...
So, the question is where to stop? At the beginning and not do that at all or to allow every [legal] advertisement? Or something between?
At one side, it is not so relevant at the English language area: there is Craigslist for that. In many other language areas such portals don't exist and they don't have a lot of chances for success because there are not enough of users who would be willing to use one specialized site for that kind of advertisement.
At the other side, it is relevant as a concept for en.wn and other Wikinews editions. If it becomes successful as a model, it may bring new quality and many more users.
You may guess that I am very interested for that idea :) However, I think that it is very possible that I am inside of a small minority. Tell me what do you think about that and, more important, which problems may we have? (BTW, yes, it is about spreading free information and I don't think that it is against WMF's goals.)
It is an interesting idea, but would be pretty much against policy in terms of putting it in the main namespace. Really, I don't think any of the WN projects have the resources or knowledge to manage advertising job vacancies. You could end up directing people to fishing expeditions where their personal data is harvested for identity fraud.
So, I'd say, not in line with project or WMF principles. Cannot be effectively policed. Should not be done.
-- Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>>
Wikinewsie.org
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org');> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
_______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 22:56 -0500, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Broadcast news does certainly have advertisements. What do you mean? Cable news is paid for by subscription, which is merely another form of payment. Neither are "free" of monetary considerations.
Public-service broadcasting does not have advertisments. This is what Wikinews is functionally equivalent to.
Public-service broadcasting does have ads. For one they advertise themselves, they also advertise their own sponsors ("Paid for by the Annenburg Group"... and so on).
But the sort of advertisement of which we're speaking isn't that sort anyway. Broadcast media forces the consumer to watch it from beginning to end, you can't flip back and forth through the pages. Newspring advertisement can be completely ignored, not read at all, you can't do that with broadcast advertisement except to turn off the television when the ads come on.
So I think we're not like a broadcast at all. We're like a print vehicle, where a reader can flip from page 2 to page 15 then back to page 7 at their whim. The advertisements are not in-your-face.
-----Original Message----- From: Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Nov 3, 2009 8:12 pm Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] RfC: Free advertisements on Wikinews
On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 22:56 -0500, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Broadcast news does certainly have advertisements. What do you mean? Cable news is paid for by subscription, which is merely another form of payment. Neither are "free" of monetary considerations.
Public-service broadcasting does not have advertisments. This is what Wikinews is functionally equivalent to.
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:06 -0500, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Public-service broadcasting does have ads. For one they advertise themselves, they also advertise their own sponsors ("Paid for by the Annenburg Group"... and so on).
But the sort of advertisement of which we're speaking isn't that sort anyway. Broadcast media forces the consumer to watch it from beginning to end, you can't flip back and forth through the pages. Newspring advertisement can be completely ignored, not read at all, you can't do that with broadcast advertisement except to turn off the television when the ads come on.
So I think we're not like a broadcast at all. We're like a print vehicle, where a reader can flip from page 2 to page 15 then back to page 7 at their whim. The advertisements are not in-your-face.
I suggest - before anyone else wastes *any* time on this they read the WMF and Wikinews mission statements quite carefully.
This can't be done as part of a WMF project - I'm surprised anyone even proposed it.
The community decides what it wants and what it doesn't want. The community can decide to change what it wants. And the voice of the community supercedes all other things.
-----Original Message----- From: Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org To: Wikinews mailing list wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, Nov 4, 2009 2:40 am Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] RfC: Free advertisements on Wikinews
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:06 -0500, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Public-service broadcasting does have ads. For one they advertise themselves, they also advertise their own sponsors ("Paid for by the Annenburg Group"... and so on).
But the sort of advertisement of which we're speaking isn't that sort anyway. Broadcast media forces the consumer to watch it from beginning to end, you can't flip back and forth through the pages. Newspring advertisement can be completely ignored, not read at all, you can't do that with broadcast advertisement except to turn off the television when the ads come on.
So I think we're not like a broadcast at all. We're like a print vehicle, where a reader can flip from page 2 to page 15 then back to page 7 at their whim. The advertisements are not in-your-face.
I suggest - before anyone else wastes *any* time on this they read the WMF and Wikinews mission statements quite carefully.
This can't be done as part of a WMF project - I'm surprised anyone even proposed it.
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 06:00 -0500, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
The community decides what it wants and what it doesn't want. The community can decide to change what it wants. And the voice of the community supercedes all other things.
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.
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
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 11:38 -0400, Nathan wrote:
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
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.
Yes I did. It still violates all the WMF principles and policies I've left above. If the Serbian mission statement allows it - the WMF will withdraw approval for that mission statement and demand it be revised.
I'm also with brian and Terin. I just can't see how it fits in with either the wmfs aims or wikinews. Think of news Sources like the BBC, they have nothing like this. even sky and CNN don't, although they display ads alongside for money, that is something we are definitely not going to be doing.
Regards
On Wednesday, November 4, 2009, Terin Stock terin.stock@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I'm going to have to agree with Brian on this one. It just steps over too many lines for me.#Terin
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:07 +0100, Milos Rancic wrote:
Today I've noticed creation of the account on sr.wn which means "Jobs Serbia". It is obviously that it is an account from some portal which is used for job advertisement. Instantly I've got an idea: to offer to that portal to make one page per day for linking the job offerings. It is useful and it is relevant to many Wikinews readers, as well as it may make Wikinews more relevant to its readers.
But, I've started to think further... To allow original advertisements or to require linking to a relevant site? For some time I was thinking that it is better not to allow original content related to advertisement, but, after all, I think that it is about wiki and wiki should allow that. At last, advertisement is the part of almost all daily newspapers and why not to put it on Wikinews, too?
Further, advertisement may be about a lot of fields, not just about jobs. It may be about housing, cars, whatever...
So, the question is where to stop? At the beginning and not do that at all or to allow every [legal] advertisement? Or something between?
At one side, it is not so relevant at the English language area: there is Craigslist for that. In many other language areas such portals don't exist and they don't have a lot of chances for success because there are not enough of users who would be willing to use one specialized site for that kind of advertisement.
At the other side, it is relevant as a concept for en.wn and other Wikinews editions. If it becomes successful as a model, it may bring new quality and many more users.
You may guess that I am very interested for that idea :) However, I think that it is very possible that I am inside of a small minority. Tell me what do you think about that and, more important, which problems may we have? (BTW, yes, it is about spreading free information and I don't think that it is against WMF's goals.)
It is an interesting idea, but would be pretty much against policy in terms of putting it in the main namespace. Really, I don't think any of the WN projects have the resources or knowledge to manage advertising job vacancies. You could end up directing people to fishing expeditions where their personal data is harvested for identity fraud.
So, I'd say, not in line with project or WMF principles. Cannot be effectively policed. Should not be done.
-- Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>> Wikinewsie.org
Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org');> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
I haven't commented on this yet, but I do have one little comment about the non-ideological, practical portion of this advertising thing.
The key here is that this isn't some randomly place Yahoo!/Google/MS ad on our site (that's another topic of discussion entirely), it's us purposefully choosing a product or service to push or help propagate. We therefore aren't talking about regular advertising, but rather about community endorsement of a product or service. By endorsing a product or service (free or not), we would be inherently biasing ourselves to an entire range of stories about competing products.
Here an example that is so far removed from the current topic of discussion that we can examine it from an objective point of view: Say we as a community officially endorsed ...Ubuntu, one particular version of Linux . Let's make this easy: by endorsing Ubuntu all we would be doing was placing a download link on Wikinews to ubuntu.com and saying "we think that this is cool!" But that simple act would mean that we would be connecting ourselves to Ubuntu, and, by that association, calling down all of their competitors as an unintended side effect.
Because of this we could never write a story about Windows, OS X, or any version of Linux again, or about the companies or groups who produce those products. We endorsed Ubuntu, so we're biased against their competitors in the eyes of our readers. Since we couldn't write about Microsoft without being accused of inherent bias , we couldn't write a story about Sony (PS3) or Nintendo (Wii), since we wouldn't be able to mention Microsoft (Xbox 360) in a non-biased fashion.
Following that train of thought out farther, we basically couldn't write about the whole electronics and software industry, due to our minor, seemingly insignificant "endorsement" (if you even want to call a simple link an endorsement) of one product.
Now I realize that is a rather extreme example, but there is a reason why most *real* news organizations take pains not to be seen to endorse things, services, people, or places. If you endorse something, you're screwed forever.
We can *never* be seen to endorse *anything*. Not ever.
gopher65 -------------------------------------------------- From: "Tristan Thomas" tris@waterhay.co.uk Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 6:07 AM To: "Wikinews mailing list" wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] RfC: Free advertisements on Wikinews
I'm also with brian and Terin. I just can't see how it fits in with either the wmfs aims or wikinews. Think of news Sources like the BBC, they have nothing like this. even sky and CNN don't, although they display ads alongside for money, that is something we are definitely not going to be doing.
Regards
On Wednesday, November 4, 2009, Terin Stock terin.stock@wikinewsie.org wrote:
I'm going to have to agree with Brian on this one. It just steps over too many lines for me.#Terin
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>> wrote:
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 00:07 +0100, Milos Rancic wrote:
Today I've noticed creation of the account on sr.wn which means "Jobs Serbia". It is obviously that it is an account from some portal which is used for job advertisement. Instantly I've got an idea: to offer to that portal to make one page per day for linking the job offerings. It is useful and it is relevant to many Wikinews readers, as well as it may make Wikinews more relevant to its readers.
But, I've started to think further... To allow original advertisements or to require linking to a relevant site? For some time I was thinking that it is better not to allow original content related to advertisement, but, after all, I think that it is about wiki and wiki should allow that. At last, advertisement is the part of almost all daily newspapers and why not to put it on Wikinews, too?
Further, advertisement may be about a lot of fields, not just about jobs. It may be about housing, cars, whatever...
So, the question is where to stop? At the beginning and not do that at all or to allow every [legal] advertisement? Or something between?
At one side, it is not so relevant at the English language area: there is Craigslist for that. In many other language areas such portals don't exist and they don't have a lot of chances for success because there are not enough of users who would be willing to use one specialized site for that kind of advertisement.
At the other side, it is relevant as a concept for en.wn and other Wikinews editions. If it becomes successful as a model, it may bring new quality and many more users.
You may guess that I am very interested for that idea :) However, I think that it is very possible that I am inside of a small minority. Tell me what do you think about that and, more important, which problems may we have? (BTW, yes, it is about spreading free information and I don't think that it is against WMF's goals.)
It is an interesting idea, but would be pretty much against policy in terms of putting it in the main namespace. Really, I don't think any of the WN projects have the resources or knowledge to manage advertising job vacancies. You could end up directing people to fishing expeditions where their personal data is harvested for identity fraud.
So, I'd say, not in line with project or WMF principles. Cannot be effectively policed. Should not be done.
-- Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org');>> Wikinewsie.org
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On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 18:30 -0600, gopher65 wrote:
<snip>
We can *never* be seen to endorse *anything*. Not ever.
Pretty much my conclusion too.
Wikinews needs to go 'above and beyond' the appearance of editorial independence.
We're not the BBC; we don't have the independent BBC Trust overseeing us and reviewing reader complaints. The community needs to robustly defend this themselves, and in public, such that it is seen to strive to high standards.
There is a very, very long way to go until "Wikinews" starts appearing instead of "AP" or "Reuters" in mainstream sources.
I'm all in favour of helping commercial interests use our content and make that a reality. I am - to again use that word - ideologically opposed to any commercialisation of the Wikinews site that could remotely threaten that independence or give any indication it might be at risk or subtly compromised.
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