[Foundation-l] Is a research banner "advertising" of the evil sort?

[Bod Notbod]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't see the problem, myself. There's no product, service or
> commercial interest being advertised. It's for users who are logged
> in, not all readers. People who choose to participate actually receive
> money, which can then be donated to the IRC or Wikimedia. Yet other
> objections are based on privacy concerns (over being redirected to a
> third party website)... Such concerns are so overblown,

I haven't seen the banner and am not taking a position on it but some
of your "objections to the objections" seem rather odd.

1. You say "it's for users who are logged in, not all readers". I am
not going to take this to mean that you feel advertising McDonalds
would be fine if it were a) only to logged in users and/or b) only
displayed to some users. But it is possible to read it that way.

2. You say "users actually get money out of it" and, again, I will not
take this as you saying that McDonalds could place ads on Wikipedia if
they a) allowed users to click through activating a donation to
Wikipedia and/or b) were given a small sum of money if they clicked on
it... but, again, you rather leave yourself open to these
interpretations.

So, if you'd like to fight for the right for the banner to appear,
fine. But the way you're positioning yourself on the issue seems
rather flakey.