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

[Delirium]

Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> The press release, and the text posted by Angela in various locations,
>> was certainly not clear on the nature of the agreement, especially
>> regarding the rules relating to placement. Accordingly, I've updated the
>> page on Wikipedia on the subject, with some help from Jimbo:
>
>
> Thanks, that's a great deal clearer! As I've mentioned previously, the 
> initial press release sounded greatly like Answers paid to get their 
> tool prominently displayed on Wikipedia.
>
> Now it turns out that Answers are simply making a new tool with 
> advertising, and are giving some of the revenue to the Foundation, and 
> are asking nicely if we'd put the tool on the Tools page.
>
> Hopefully the lesson learnt from this is that the detail should be 
> provided right from the beginning, rather than confusingly-worded 
> which creates false impressions right from the start.

The new wording is still a bit confusing to me, if "asking nicely if 
we'd put the tool on the Tools page" is all it's supposed to mean.  
Simply putting the tool on the tools page was not an issue---the tools 
page is for listing pretty much any tool we know about, so of course it 
should be listed.  The controversy was over an agreement to give it 
"charter placement" on that page.

Some people object to even having a profit relationship in the first 
place (and did with Amazon anyway), but I haven't generally been among 
them (I supported the Amazon referrer revenue way back then, so long as 
it was disclosed and not displayed any more prominently than other 
bookstores' links).  The objection, from me anyway, is to displaying 
such partners' links in a more prominent location.  Amazon referrer 
link: fine.  Putting Amazon link at the top of the ISBN page in larger 
font (or otherwise highlighted uniquely): not fine.  The present 
situation is pretty much identical, imo, and it's a bit bizarre how 
directly the board seems to have completely ignored the community 
consensus that was reached the last time this issue came up.

-Mark