[WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 10/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. What is the point of such a rule in a TOS? It won't stop
> deliberate violation. So how is it planned to enforce it?

Right now we're hardly even telling advertisers no.

There are many organizations with reputations and pocketbooks that
they need to protect... the first step in keeping their behavior
acceptable is giving them clear direction.

You're right, we can't stop bad people from being bad, but that
doesn't mean that we can't keep employ measures to encourage the
honest people to stay honest.

Or are you also opposed to doors that lock?  ... with the exception of
high security doors, a locked door actually does fairly little to
prevent a determined attacker from getting inside, and yet locked
doors have been demonstrated over and over again to be effective.

Or another way of looking at it:   One of the more clearly stated
arguments against us running advertising on Wikipedia ourselves is the
potential creation of bias, or at least the creation of the appearance
of bias.   It strikes me as odd that people will scream so loudly
against the introduction of advertising which would bring us lots of
useful money without a definite introduction of bias, and yet folks
are not willing to take maximal measures against the abuse of
Wikipedia as an astroturfed advertising medium... when the latter does
create a clear bias in our content.