[Foundation-l] wikipedia.it

[Michiel Sikma]

On December 14, 2006, at 6:19 PM, Michael Bimmler wrote:

> I just heard (and saw), that when going to wikipedia.it, there is now
> a grey banner at the head, stating "hosted by yepa and a link to
> http://wikipedia.it/disclaimer.html".

This is terrible. It's a blatant misuse of the Wikipedia brand, which  
stands for free and neutral information without conditions. It does  
not stand for advertisements. This big banner is an advertisement and  
therefore an endorsement. How can anybody trust the information in  
the Italian Wikipedia to be neutral if it has a big commercial label  
on it?

> I wonder a bit, whether this has
> been discussed with italian wikipedia community and whether WMF is all
> right with this (after all this is probably the way through which most
> italians access itwiki, rather than via it.wikipedia.org)

Hmm. So when going to it.wikipedia.org, there is no banner. Yet, when  
going to www.wikipedia.it, there is. So that means that  
www.wikipedia.it is really a fork of the Italian Wikipedia, except  
with that one extra banner added to the top? I'm not sure whether it  
is, but that would be a misuse of the Wikipedia brand, I recon, since  
our logo and name cannot simply be used by whoever wants to use it.

I really do want some more information on this, because I personally  
am adamantly against things like this and feel that the Foundation  
also would be, as it directly contradicts the essence of Wikipedia.

Michiel Sikma
michiel at thingmajig.org