[Foundation-l] Benefits of advertising (was Our exponentially increasing costs)

[Ray Saintonge]

I was there too and IIRC this came up at the Sunday question and answer 
session when somebody mentioned the matter of ads.  Some people get very 
upset whenever this comes up.  It was a very informal show of hands, but 
the proportion for both questions was pretty much as David reports.

Ec

GerardM wrote:

>Hoi,
>I was at Wikimania and I do not even know that this poll was held. There may
>have been a presentation about this, there may have been a "hands up" but
>the amount of people present at this presentation do not represent all those
>that were at Wikimania. The suggestion that it truly represents the ideas of
>those that were at Wikimania is a fallacy. The suggestion that it represents
>the ideas of the Wikimedia crowd is even more rediculous; what do you base
>this on ??
>
>As the mail says "apparantly" it is not even sure there was such a poll and
>certainly it does not express the opinion of all those that were at
>Wikimania.
>
>Thanks,
>GerardM
>
>On 10/27/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Dan Grey wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On 27/10/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com <http://gmail.com>>
>>>      
>>>
>>wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>>A full one-third of that hard core sufficiently dedicated to Wikipedia
>>>>to spend their own scarce cash going all the way to Wikimania 2005,
>>>>wasn't it? Something about that doesn't sound "insignificant" to me.
>>>>Maybe it does to you.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I think you're under-estimating the total number of editors WP has,
>>>over-estimating who'd leave, and over-valuing their importance.
>>>Where'd you get that figure from anyway?
>>>      
>>>
>>This list:
>>
>>http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-October/004659.html
>>
>>"Apparently a poll was done at Wikimania and 2/3 of people were
>>against it and 1/3 said they'd leave. So yeah, there's one good
>>argument not to have ads, I guess. I just can't figure out what any of
>>the other ones are."
>>
>>(I've only just noticed it was posted by Anthony DiPierro, who may or
>>may not be a primary source - was he at Wikimania?)
>>