Sam Korn wrote:
On 4/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
- Ads are incompatible with NPOV
I've never understood this: how are they incompatible? NPOV applies to articles only (as the userbox people are so keen to point out). Articles are what's in the div wrapper "content", i.e. the article content.
OK, if we take the assumption that advertising inherently is non-neutral, Wikipedia (and, indeed, the Wikimedia Foundation) does not need to be neutral. Of course, in an ideal world, we would be utterly and totally neutral, but this isn't an ideal world. Why shouldn't the Foundation publicise those who are keen to give us backing? This is just a smaller scale version of http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors
Our role is not to produce a neutral website. It is to produce neutral and factual content.
So, you wouldn't mind reading an article on eg. the September 11 attacks and having ads for jewsdidwtc.com appearing at the side?