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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
When you donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, you donate to the Foundation,
not to an individual project. When you compare the different projects, you
will have to agree that not much has been done for the "other" projects.
There are clear ideas on how the software could be improved and when funding
is available it would be possible to do so. When you look at Alexa for
Wiktionary, you will see that it is doing really well. A lot of revenue can
be had by the Wiktionary projects alone.

When you bank on the fact that the world will not end (it will not and at
most some people will suffer from withdrawal symptoms) the automatism
whereby you want to take what is not yours is funny. Now when the WMF states
that they are not equipped to take targeted money, that would be a different
story because that would be a practical issue.

When you bank on the fact that "other projects might be willing to give it a
chance too", you have to appreciate that with increased revenues it will
become possible to start work on all the projects that we dream about. When
we adopt advertisements, we will change our budget and we will want to
continue to do the things once started. Remember, it is not a zero sum game.
With more money we are able to do more and only when you consider a few
single language projects can it be argued that we already do "enough".
Thanks,
     GerardM

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 12:13 AM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>
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