[Foundation-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 7:00 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
>  It is not exactly a non-zero sum game. When a projects decides to have
>  adverts, does this mean that projects without adverts will benefit from this
>  as well? Will the benefits be allocated to things that benefit a project
>  that accepts ads?

I wouldn't expect this, no. This would be like saying that my donation
money should go to benefit Wikibooks only, not Wikipedia. Revenues, be
they from donations or otherwise, should go to benefit the entire
foundation. Of course, if only a handful of very small projects join
the effort, there will be no net revenues to speak of. I'm banking on
the idea that when one project adopts advertisements, and the world
does not end, that other projects might be willing to give them a
chance too.

>  The good news is that with the professionalisation of
>  our Foundation the potential for more successful fund raising is increasing.
>  We just have to wait and see to what extend this will suffice to prevent the
>  need for advertising.

I agree. Let's see how the next year goes in terms of fundraising. No
sense panicking just because Sue hasn't turned water into money in the
past two months. If this next year doesnt go much more smoothly then
this past year, I would like to think that people would seriously
consider alternatives (advertisements are certainly not the only
possible alternative, and might very well be the worst).

--Andrew Whitworth