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

[Chris Jenkinson]

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Will the Wikimedia Foundation ever accept money to change the content of
> the articles?  Not as long as I'm alive, ok?  Anyone who thinks
> otherwise should check their premises and remember who I am and what I'm
> doing and how I spend my life.

Forgive my scepticism, but if we start accepting advertising and become 
reliant on it, it isn't unknown for the company who is advertising to 
pull their adverts, cutting Wikimedia's revenue.

A possibly apocryphal story is of a program on the BBC, I believe it was 
a car review program, who gave a bad review to a certain American car 
model. The CEO of the company found out about it, was furious and 
ordered the advertising team to pull all adverts to punish the TV 
station. The advertising team replied "sorry sir, but the BBC don't run 
adverts".

A lack of adverts is one of the reasons why Wikipedia can be neutral. If 
we become reliant on others for our existence, they can exert influence 
over our content. I don't want to see us go down that route.

Chris