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

[Anthony DiPierro]

> >You're not claiming that having advertising is going to cause *all*
> editors
> >to leave, are you?
> >
> >
> No, we are not claiming that having advertising is going to cause all
> editors to leave, but it will be the creative ones who stick their necks
> out, are bold, and make things happen. In any project, company, or
> community for that matter, the creative ones are only about 1%, and it
> is often very difficult to tell just who those very creative ones are.
> They are the ones that make a group grow and propser instead of die and
> fall apart. An effort to do advertising like this is going to drive
> away that precious 1%, and you won't even notice that they are gone
> because for a short time edits will actually go up and it will appear as
> though everything is just fine. But the creative ones will be gone and
> Wikipedia will be a dying project afterward.


So you think all the creative ones are going to be gone? I still doubt it.
It doesn't make any sense to me. Why would someone leave a project because
it tries to make enough money to sustain itself? Should I have quit the
volunteer fire department when we ran comedy night and charged admission, or
when we *gasp* handed out newsletters which local businesses paid money to
be listed in?

Non-profit organizations need to make money to survive, and sponsorship is a
good way to do so, especially when the sponsorships can be done in a way
that is tasteful. No one is talking about pop-unders or BFAs or anything
like that. The way I picture it it'd be targetted text ads on the bottom of
the articles, which could be turned off by simply clicking on a link saying
"turn off ads". They probably wouldn't even have to run all the time, just
during the times when we'd run ads anyway, ads which say "click here to
donate". If it'd please people more we could even make it even more clear
that it's a sponsorship and just put a link at the bottom of the page which
says "this page request brought to you by [whoever]".

I really have a hard time understanding where people opposing this are
coming from. Cynically I'd say maybe you want something for nothing, but I'd
rather give you the benefit of the doubt and think that you'd rather donate
money every three months than view a few text ads. I don't know, I don't
have money to spend on servers, especially when there are corporations who
will gladly pay for those servers for me in return for an acknowledgement of
their support.

You don't even have to believe me on this point, but it is a warning to
> not take the general opinions of the community for granted. It is a
> hard task to try and balance the wants and needs of a community of
> volunteers in particular, and aristiocratic governace of such
> communities just lead to their eventual demise.


You don't have to warn me of anything. I have no power in Wikipedia. I'm
just wondering how many people actually would leave, and trying to figure
out why in the world they'd do so.

>By going the route of advertising, the few bucks will instead come from
>corporate sponsors rather than from readers/editors directly

Actually, if we wanted, we could sell the ads only to readers/editors of the
site.

Anthony