[Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
It is nice to be insulted with a word that I do not know .. Thank you.

When you read what I wrote, you will find that they are TYPICALLY 
ignored. You would also read in the part that you did not bother to copy 
that often a better deal can be had by not being lazy and by thinking 
about what there is to buy.

Now that we have exchanged pleasantries, the point I make is not that it 
has no effect it has little effect. Another point that I l make is that 
the Wikimedia Foundation can be much more effective when it had a bigger 
budget. Given the growth rate of all our projects, our need for money 
will increase even when we only want to continue to provide the level of 
service that we do.

Given that many people in Europe do not know Wikipedia, given that we 
have not really made an impact in Africa, Asia and South America I do 
argue that we have not scratched the service of what we aim to do. The 
fact that only the English Wikipedia has more than a million articles 
proves to me that Wikipedia is still very much a rich man's game. We do 
not have the organisational infrastructure to do well in many languages. 
We do not have a clue in what language the next "Seigenthaler" affair 
will come to light. We do not have the ability to deal with such an affair.

The point is that we need much more money than we have. The aim of the 
foundation is to bring information to everyone. We do not do as good a 
job as we could. This is the argument that is not addressed when people 
are rabidly against advertisements. Even when like in the Virgin Unite 
case that organisation does not sell a thing. The problem I have with 
this blanket anti add attitude is that it has little to do with our aims 
and that it prevents to do good for languages other than the other 
languages of economically strong countries.

Thanks,
     GerardM

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fatuous

The Cunctator schreef:
> On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hoi,
>> I do not know if you observe when people watch watch television, but
>> people go to the toilet when there is an advertisement break. People
>> tape a program and fastforward the ads. The notion that ads provide
>> information is vastly overrated. Advertisements are typically ignored.
>>     
>
>
> Look. Ads obviously work. That's why so much money is spent on them.
>
> Claiming that people just ignore ads is fatuous.
>
>  Ads influence people. Please don't pretend otherwise.