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

[Jimmy Wales]

Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> 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.

Obviously, this is a danger to be avoided.

> 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.

It strikes me as absolutely impossible for *anyone* to exert influence
over our content.  Our very development model ensurees that.

--Jimbo