[Foundation-l] Ads or no ads: another pebble in the pond

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 4/23/07, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> "No ads" is, today, our best and biggest selling point. Not to the
> casual reader maybe, not even to the editors, but to the people who
> give (or can and could give) money.
[snip]

To the best of my knowledge, we've never conducted a study on the
motivations of donors. For all we known most people who donate googled
up some other charity, enwiki came up first so they donated there
thinking they were donating to the other charity. :) Okay, not that
likely, but we don't even know enough about our donors to reject that
as a significant driver of donations.

>All in all, I believe we have to be very careful about ads anywhere,
>at least at this stage, because we would be losing much of what makes
>us special and what prompts people to give to us (apart from the fact
>that we are offering a service that people love).

Care is required. You have no argument from me there. However, if "no
ads" is really "much of what makes us special" and what motivates
donors, then we are already failing.