[Foundation-l] Why not use Nupedia.com instead? (was Re: A modest proposal: ads on wikipedia.com)

[Daniel Mayer]

--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about using the old domain, wikipedia.com, as a site for stable
> Wikipedia versions, with ads on? The ad money, as well as paying our
> comparatively small hosting and staff costs, could go toward
> educational programmes for those people who could benefit from our
> hard work but *aren't* comfortable, well-fed first-world citizens.

I think it would be confusing to use wikipedia.com for this since the distinction is non-obvious
to pretty much any non-geek. It is simply too fine a distinction. 
 
However, A long time ago, I had the same idea for the use of the Nupedia.com domain. If that were
done by a spin-off of Wikimedia (let's call it Nupedia Publishing for the sake of conversion),
then they could use that revenue to fund a printed/DVD version for sale and donate money back into
Wikimedia. The relationship would be symbiotic and not dissimilar to the relationship between
Linux distros and the Linux development community. 

Having a separate legal entity for publishing helps the Foundation avoid a lot of potential legal
liability and keeps our goal on content production/improvement and the methods of dissemination
that directly support content production/improvement (e.g. wikis on the Internet). Of course,
IANAL. 

> (As far as I can tell, pretty much all opposition to ads on Wikimedia
> comes from people who are in fact comfortable, well-fed first-world
> citizens. I eagerly await news and demographics otherwise.)

Some of us, including me, being in the overfed subcategory of first worlders. :) Alas, so are my
cats


-- mav


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