On 10/24/07, GDonato gdonato@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
Personally, I really dislike the idea of any advertising on Wikimedia. This makes a fool of [[WP:NPOV]], [[WP:COI]] and related policies and guidelines. It should only be considered if things get extremely desperate.
Some, like Andrew Keen, have argued exactly the opposite - that unpaid editors are inevitably bound to create content which serves their own purposes, so what you end up with when you don't have explicit advertising is hidden advertising. I think it's a reasonable point of view, and something we're starting to see quite a bit of in Wikipedia.
The problem is there's no real way to fix it without throwing away so many of the basic concepts of Wikipedia. So while it might be the best way to go, it's probably best saved for another project. Maybe Citizendium could try it, it fits in much better with their model.