[Foundation-l] Advertisements?

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:39 AM, effe iets anders
<effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, here the big question comes up :) What should be determining our choice
> for ads or not... Just a few options:
>
> 1) Financial trouble
> 2) Our core principles
> 3) Our values
> 4) Because the community favors it over donations
> 5) Because the visitors favor it over donations
>
> Of course there are many more, but my stake here is actually that *first* we
> should discuss 1), 2) and 3), probably too 4) and then we go to 5). If there
> are financial trouble, there is little choice, and we'll *have* to, whether
> we like or not. If there are no trouble, but the usual shoestring, then we
> should see what our core principles and values have to say about it.
> Finally, I think that in this case, the opinion of the community is at least
> as important as the opinion of the visitors.
>
> I think both opinions will be measured in the UNU research? And as there
> seem to be no threatening financial problems right now, 2) and 3) are left
> in the open :)
>
> BR, Lodewijk

I see several problems with this analysis, but in the interest of readability,
I'll snip and save the bulk of them as a draft for later, and concentrate on
the most significant one:

If we take it as a given that the moment wikipedia succumbs to
(momentary or long term) financial hardship, it will go all supine and
welcome advertisements in, no questions asked, this will merely
encourage those who for whatever reason (quite possibly the noblest of
reasons - such as wishing to expand our charitable mission way
beyond our original remit) find advertising to be a boon to WMF in
(perhaps subconsciously; unwittingly) overreaching its operations.



Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]