Brion VIBBER wrote:
This has the added benefit for the paranoid
anti-corporate set of not
making it look like Wikipedia is forcing commercial links down the
throats of the unwary. Remember, we don't want to end up looking like
The Fact Factory. ;)
As the recipient of such negative sentiments, I think this is pretty
important.
It would not be a bad thing for these links to generate money for the
project, so that the project can buy the next round of servers instead
of me buying the next round of servers. But, we have a _mission_ here
that's very important. We want to avoid even the appearance of
impropriety.
The wiki nature provides a fairly absolute check against corporate money
influencing the reporting of the encyclopedia, but nevertheless, we want to
stay squeaky clean on that front, even if we do someday choose to generate
revenue from affiliate book links.
One way to do that would be to say: look, here's a bunch of book
stores. Use the one that's best for you. We don't like Amazon much,
for reasons X, Y, and Z. But if you are going to shop there anyway,
please use this link so that they make less money and wikipedia can
have a little dough for new servers and what not.
I also think full disclosure of any revenue, when and if that happens, will
be important.
But seriously, I think that the best method of revenue will be a
program of sponsorship where we can accept credit cards and people can
sign up for a monthly patronage. I think plenty of the regulars would
be willing to chip in $10 or $20 a month, particularly if they could
see, transparently, that the money would not be to finance my
extravagant lifestyle, but to directly benefit the project through
hardware purchases and whatnot.
--Jimbo