[Foundation-l] Advertisements?

[Kul Takanao Wadhwa]

In regards to Jimbo's comments, I believe we owe it to our
mission to revisit these revenue models frequently, including
advertising. I am not saying that we ever will allow ads
but anything we do to bring in money comes at a price; we
have to give up something. And the question is "at what cost?"
We would obviously have to weigh all the positives and
negatives about doing anything in this area BEFORE we even
consider delving into this area. I don't really have any
answers right now for ads but, for the moment, there are
other biz dev ops that are at the top of the list to evaluate.

Kul Takanao Wadhwa
Head of Business Development
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
kul at wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885 ext. 603

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Nathan wrote:
>> Can you comment on in what circumstances or at what point the Board would
>> consider a step like that?
> 
> Oh, I have no idea.
> 
> This question pops up in the community from time to time, and the press 
> loves the question.
> 
> One of the concerns I have about this whole issue is that it can be such 
> a "third rail" to even discuss it or look into it.  I think that's 
> unfortunate.  My longtime position is that we should really make sure we 
> have a very good idea of how much money we are turning down before we 
> turn it down.  (Including various variants such as one-click permanent 
> opt-out, opt-in, search page only, approval by community on a per-ad 
> basis only, etc.)
> 
> My own sense of things is that even after we look (together, as a 
> community) at all those options (calmly, rationally, and without people 
> going into hysterics that the discussion is even happening), we will 
> still turn down ads.  But we will then be doing so in a responsible 
> adult manner, rather than a knee-jerk manner.
> 
> But, this is just the opinion of one community member / board member.
> 
> --Jimbo
> 
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