[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership

[Dori]

On 10/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > Promoting a company or product in return for payment is advertising,
> > > > pretty much by definition...
> > >
> > > A link to a tool is not advertising. It is a link to a tool.
> > >
> > > -- mav
> >
> > No, it's a paid link (or sponsored as Google might call it) to a tool,
> > and a tool that could be used to snoop on people too.
>
> Explain, exactly, how this snooping would occur?

What do you mean how? They track usage. I don't trust a company that's
out to make money to not abuse their position. Even if they're well
intentioned now, they could be bought off.

>
> We can't expect reader donations to carry us indefinitely. We need to diversify
> our income sources. Partnerships like this, along with other funding strategies
> such as grants, are needed to ensure we stay in the black.

"Diversify our income source" sounds horrible to me. That's not what's
important.

>
> BTW, do you have a few extra million dollars laying around to pay for servers
> next year?

Sure, but only if you put in some articles saying how great I am and
ban anyone saying otherwise.

> And what about the special projects we would like to fund but can't?

What projects? If we can't fund them, we can't. Do partnerships mean
that we'll be able to fund every project? If we put in advertising
(flash, popups, selling user tracking), and changed the license to be
restrictive I'm sure we could get in more money and fund more
projects. Does that mean that's the direction we should head?

Do we even know how much money we'll be getting out of this? Have we
exhausted all other possibilities? Whatever happened to the Google
donation? Has the board gone to all possible sources before going to
advertising deals?

--
Dori