On 31/12/06, Friðrik Bragi Dýrfjörð dyrfjord@gmail.com wrote:

I haven't fallowed the discussion so I might be repeating an old idea, if so just ignore my comment. In any case this is an old idea, this is a business model you have probably seen before if you are familiar with The Hunger Site (thehungersite.com) and The Million Dollar Homepage (milliondollarhomepage.com). I was thinking we could have a button on the fundraising-page that people would be asked to click if they wanted to support Wikimedia (this is not advertising). Clicking that button would send you to a side project of the Foundation (hopefully with a special domain name) which would essentially be a page full of ads like the Million Dollar Homepage. So in this way we do not advertise on Wikipedia but instead offer people who whish to support the Foundation to support us in this way (and in this way make use of our traffic).

It's a good idea, but I don't think this would overcome many of the problems that placing adverts on Wikimedia projects (esp. Wikipedia) would have. One of the main reasons I have for opposing advertising is the bias, or perceived bias, this may introduce. If [Corporation] is giving us $1 million a year in advertising, how could readers be sure that Wikipedia's article on [Corporation] was unbiased? I don't think abstracting the advertising a layer would remove this problem.