[Foundation-l] Advertisement

[Jeroenvrp]

Hello,

There is much going on today. The community is split about the actions the 
Foundation took. Let me clarify something about Virgin Unite:

Virgin Unite is a charity organisation of one of the largest multi-nationals 
in the world. If I can think about one company that will really do everything 
to own Wikipedia, it's Virgin. Their €250.000 is nothing compared to that.  
Virgin Unite is just a PR-department. Almost every multi-national has these 
kind off charity organisations. What if the Gates Foundation will offer these 
kind of money? A lot of us will see that it is just a PR-stunt from 
Microsoft. That's why Virgin Unite is just pure advertisement for Virgin.

It also creates a precedent to the future. The road to daily advertisement has 
been opened by a weak Foundation. Yes we need the money, but there are other 
ways. Rather no money than sell the basis principles of Wikipedia/-media to 
whoever has the money.

Meanwhile the Foundation has tear apart a lot of local communities. Partly 
this could be avoided by informing the communities, at least a few days in 
advance. Every community had a local mailinglist, a sysop list and a village 
pump.

Anyhow; a lot of people are angry. A lot of people are talking about forks. A 
lot of people, including a lot off the hardcore contributors, are leaving the 
project. Only because of these unintelligent actions from the Foundation, 
backed by a lot of misinformed people and people who don't understand or 
don't want to understand the rules of free content. 

These actions will have very negative consequences and I'm ashamed about that. 
Especially on the day the Dutch and Flemish media are reporting about the 
quarter of million articles on the Dutch language Wikipedia. This evening the 
Dutch Wikipedia will peak with a lot of new visitors and new users. They will 
see the advertisement and gone is the neutrality of the project. Thank you 
Foundation; for selling us out!

Jeroenvrp
Moderator on the Dutch language Wikipedia since oct 2003