Jimmy Wales wrote:

Chuck Smith wrote:

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I was thinking the other day that the goals of Wikipedia are in line with those of Unesco and I was wondering if we could somehow try to become officially connected with Unesco to gain a better reputation.

My primary concern is that our independence is very likely to be hampered by any such association. I'm not sure what you have in mind by our being 'officially connected', but I certainly can't envision that we could become entangled with the UN and retain our neutrality.

The strings attached may be more like a load of spaghetti.

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We might also be able to get significant financial grants from them in this way.

I have a general philosophical disagreement with our purely volunteer effort being corrupted with money taken by force, which is what UN money would be. I am not a complete hardliner about this, but I am not particularly eager to do anything of the sort except possibly as a very last resort.

There are enough arguments to make us suspicious of this kind of funding source, without even getting into the issue of how thay get *their* funding. I tend to look at some of these sources as some kind of corporate welfare that perpetuates "corporate welfare bums".

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I know people are going to yell at me, but I think Google AdSense would produce an incredible amount of money for the project. We could show them to anonymous users and people who log in could turn them off if they wanted. Well anyway, it's just a suggestion, don't bite my head off.

I know that not many people share my curious political views, but to me, it's much worse to seek money from governments, i.e. to ask them to take money by force from others, than it is to accept advertising money.

"Curious" political views are essential, no matter where they fall in terms of traditional political spectra. Similarly, Wikipedia does well to accomodate and document offbeat views without taking sides.

Volunteer organizations change when they have government funding. There may be no explicit strings, but that does not protect from the implicit unspoken ones. When I'm travelling by car I make a point of visiting small local museums. There's a big difference between museums that are government controlled or operated, and locally controlled museums. Last summer I visited museums in Ludington, Mich. and Hardin, Mont. The only significant government support that they had was property tax concessions from local governments. Hardin didn't even charge an admission fee. Both were excellent facilities.

Government facilities often have an air of advanced sterility. This diminishes when municipal operations are based in small towns. Many volunteer operation have a cluttered appearance, and seem sorely lacking in expertise. They leave you with the feeling that you just want to pitch in and help even though you're a thousand miles from home. There's a lesson to be drawn from this kind of situation.

However, it is not clear to me that ads would produce "an incredible amount of money". I should look at the traffic and make an estimate, just so we have some awareness of what we're giving up.

Exactly. If we have objective measures that show us that it doesn't provide any significant resources, then we don't even need to go into great detail about the more complicated social and moral arguments. If there is no benefit, we don't need the cost.

Ec