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

[Delirium]

Dori wrote:

>Let's not get angry over this. I trust Mav and I think he's being
>doing a great job, and I'm certainly appreciative of his efforts. I
>just don't think we should go the advertising route as once you come
>to rely on it you're screwed.  I'd hate to see Wikipedia (and to tell
>the truth I don't think the rest of the projects are going to get
>anywhere anytime soon) degenerate into ads just to stay alive. I'd
>much rather see it become read-only most of the time, and only allow
>editing like a random hour each day if necessary.
>  
>
I mostly objected to the suggestion that people outside of "Wikimedia 
finance" are not welcome to voice opinions on what sorts of steps 
Wikimedia should take to finance itself.  Certainly mav is 
better-informed on certain details of the finances, but broad policy 
decisions, such as whether we ought to provide paid links to "partners", 
ought to be open to discussion amongst Wikipedians at large.  This is 
how it was done in the past---the Amazon trial balloon was only floated 
with the explicit assurance that it was a trial balloon.  Feedback was 
solicited, and it was eventually abandoned after a significant number of 
Wikipedians objected to that method of raising money.  Perhaps a large 
majority of Wikipedians will support the answers.com-tool method of 
raising money (perhaps because answers.com is less evil than Amazon, or 
perhaps because it's less visibly advertised than the ISBNs are, or some 
other reason), but that should be up to Wikipedians to decide, not 
presented as a /fait accompli/.

-Mark