[Foundation-l] the annual advertisement discussion

[Thomas Dalton]

On 8 November 2010 13:03, Arlen Beiler <arlenbee at gmail.com> wrote:
> For one thing, we have always been proud of how Wikipedia and its sister
> sites have been ad-free. Why don't we get those half-breeds with their ads
> and everything to do the revenue making? I mean, of course, Wikia. Having
> ads on Wikipedia (or anywhere else) would be awful.

Wikia is doing lots of revenue making (I believe it is even turning a
profit now, which is impressive given its age). That doesn't really
benefit us, though. It benefits the shareholders of Wikia (although
Wikia has donated to the WMF in the past and probably will the future,
so we get a little out of it, I suppose). Wikia has nothing to do with
Wikipedia except for running on the same software and sharing a board
member. It certainly doesn't exist to raise money for the Wikimedia
movement.