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

[AlisonW]

Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> The way you can demonstrate it is a good move is to make a page which 
> clearly sets out why it is needed, why Answers is the correct 
> corporation to have a partnership with, and what will happen if anything 
> goes wrong. I think it would be a bad idea to jump in, cross our fingers 
> and hope for the best.


I wonder whether we could stop referring to this Answers.com deal as a 
"partnership" please? imho "partnership" is a two-way arrangement and 
this product placement is purely one-way (their advert, our site, their 
payment; nothing sending people towards us from them), and given that 
the link would not exist without the payment then there can be no valid 
argument against it being an advertisement (of sorts).

Personally, I doubt that the anwsers.com deal will produce much of an 
income - the people who look at the tools page will likely be editors 
with their own ethos of how they want to see wikimedia projects work, 
however it has been very beneficial to us all on this list to discuss 
financing and income generation and I believe that we must indeed seek 
new lines of income. Saying that though I do not believe advertising is 
the right way to go as it demeans our 'product' and - like adverts on 
other sites - leads readers to believe that we will be favourable to 
advertisers in our articles (whether that is the case or not).

Alison

btw. I presume that our accounts are done to *US* GAAP (which is quite 
different from UK GAAP)