[Foundation-l] Subject: Re: Advertisements?

[Durova]

IF ads are ever added to Wikipedia, then I for one would stick with the site
that would be expected to have tens of millions of dollars for further
development rather than clinging to an idealistic, but ultimately
self-destructive, fork.

******
That idealistic urge is what has made Wikipedia the world's eighth most
popular website.  An enormous base of unpaid labor is what drives that
success and the volunteer community's priorities cannot be ignored.

Certainly *some* Wikipedians would tolerate advertisements.  A significant
portion would not, and we have no good estimate of how much loss that would
be, or of whether the volunteer pool would ever recover if that goodwill
were lost.

Another possible solution would be to emulate the practice of many existing
nonprofits that offer some kind of tasteful thank-you to major donors that
stops short of outright advertisement.  Think of how public radio thanks
program sponsors and how theater groups thank donors in the back pages of
the programs.  In informal conversations I've been hearing a much higher
tolerance for that general approach.

It's probably possible (and might even be worthwhile) to run a survey and
study these options.  Even more important would be to put together a
knowledgeable set of people to craft a meaningful set of survey proposals.

-Durova