[Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

[James Heilman]

Does Wikimedia currently have a financial problem? It does not appear too.
So if the funding model is not broken what are we trying to fix / accomplish
with advertising? Wikipedia currently gets hundreds of millions of dollars
worth of content from its volunteer editors. Many of us would be a little
turned off to say the least if ads starting appearing on the pages we were
working on. It is not worth risking our contributors if at this point these
finances are not needed. BTW it is enough work already keeping advertising
off of Wikipedia pages the last thing we should do is legitimize it.

I guess one trial would be to start a separate mirror that allows
advertising on Wiki content. A few of these already exist. Moving to
something more would require unanimous approval of our editing body IMO.
-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.