[WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Bartning at aol.com [mailto:Bartning at aol.com]
>Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2007 09:06 PM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?
>
> 
>In a message dated 3/11/2007 8:00:16 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
>Bartning at aol.com writes:
>
>There's  been a lot of talk about paid editors, but what about conflicts of   
>interest with Wikipedia when it accepts donations from  corporations?   
>There's 
>already belief that the organization  gives large companies a lot of  perks, 
>e.g. allowing them to upload  their logo, even mentioning them in an  
>article, 
>but how do donations  from them influence Wikipedia?
>
>
>
>The readers don't hold the purse strings like in a regular encyclopedia,  and 
>that's one area where I see a major conflict of interest in the format of  
>Wikipedia as a source of information.  There's less incentive to write for  the 
>readers, and certainly it's deteriorated as far as I'm concerned.  I'd  say 
>that Wikipedia hit its peak sometime ago right now, not that it's  necessarily 
>in permanent decline, mind you, but it's going to take taking things  more 
>seriously or justice or something to correct the fall right now,  IMHO.
> 
>Vincent Bartning

The public, which consists partly of readers and editors certainly does have the power, both to use us, and contribute to us. Corporate donors would never support us if the public did not use us. We have certainly not cut ourselves free in the sense Google has, although they too, ultimately depend on use by the public, otherwise no one would advertise.

We cannot focus on ephemeral press coverage, we must focus on creating useful reference works. If we do that we will succeed. We can always do better, but to imagine we have hit our peak, after only a few years, is overly sensitive. Better to look a bit further ahead, when we will have accomplished something more substantial.

Fred