[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales donation appeal

[Anthony]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:56 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Although my own experience is that many Americans are a bit baffled
> that we don't run ads. They've often not even heard the multitude of
> arguments against pervasive/invasive advertising.  I don't believe
> it's Wikimedia's place to argue against advertising, but there might
> be an opportunity for some of our community members to work with
> anti-consumerist groups like Adbusters to make a public argument as to
> why our current lack of advertisements is laudable from their
> perspective.


It's an interesting debate once you've heard both sides of it.  The story of
Gillette is a good one which shows the positive benefits of advertising.  A
"Utopian Socialist" who opposed all advertising and "advocated that all
industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public,
and that everyone in the US should live in a giant city called Metropolis
powered by Niagra Falls", Mr. Gillette went on to utilize both capitalism
and advertising in his safety razor company, and "estimated that his razor
saved mankind one-and-a-half billion dollars a year".

Of course, pervasive/invasive advertising is another thing altogether.  As
are pervasive/invasive donation requests.  Whether begging for money and not
giving the donors anything in return, or helping businesses inform the
public about their inventions for a fee, the banners should be small,
tasteful, and easy to "make go away".