[WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

[Andrew Gray]

On 12/03/07, Bartning at aol.com <Bartning at aol.com> wrote:
> 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?

Experience suggests that the *attention* helps improve their articles;
they suddenly become an organisation of much more specific interest to
the community, so a lot of people who are already working on Wikipedia
are motivated to improve their articles.

But then, the same effect would appear if they announced they were
suing us. It's not so much the nature of the donation as the profile
of it!

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk