[Wikimedia-l] questions on the use of banner space to promote a cause

[James Salsman]

geni wrote:

> On 30 March 2013 20:57, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>...
>>
>> (A) Should the Foundation devote banner space on project home pages to
>> CISPA advocacy?[3][4]
>>
>> (B) Should the Foundation devote banner space on project home pages to
>> CALEA advocacy?[5]
>>
>> (C) Should the Foundation devote banner space on project home pages to CFAA
>> advocacy?[6]
>
> No since none of those have any impact on our core issues.

I disagree. All of those measures represent various forms of
government intrusion likely to change editor behaviors in a way which
can reasonably be expected to degrade article quality and
comprehensiveness.

Oliver Keyes wrote:

> On 30 March 2013 20:57, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> As a more specific practical reformulation of this question, how bad would
>> poverty in developed countries have to become before it would be
>> appropriate for the Foundation to advocate on the issue? Is it already
>> appropriate? Would it only be appropriate if the proportion of editors
>> leaving the project due to personal poverty was increasing? Would it never
>> be appropriate?
>
> Speaking personally: ... It would, practically speaking, never be appropriate
> for us to spend page impressions or chunks of page impressions on this kind
> of advocacy - I say "practically" because, while things might alter slightly
> if it turned out editors were leaving in droves due to poverty, this
> seems...'ludicrously unlikely' doesn't cover it.

I presume that this opinion doesn't have any actual data behind it.
Here is some actual data, from the county where I went to school:

"The school system, which keeps the best records of homelessness in
the county, says the number of homeless students rose from 59 in 2001
to 2,812 in the current school year." --
http://prospect.org/article/weeklies

So there you have an example of students who would otherwise likely
join in the pool of potential editors in the developed world. Over the
period of time that Wikipedia has existed, they have become far less
likely to become editors because they have far less free time, less
access to internet resources, less access to personal educational
resources, and less financial capacity to perform ordinary tasks in
support of editing such as travel to university libraries and
obtaining specialist reference materials.

> James, I appreciate that you care a lot about these issues. But please stop
> trying to use the movement as your personal soapbox.

When poverty increases in the developed world, the demand for my
customers' products increases in the developing world. Over the past
six years, the extent to which this has happened has far surpassed and
entirely supplanted my income as a software engineer in Silicon
Valley. I resent the insinuation that I am doing anything for myself
by showing the connections between poverty and the health of the
editor community, when in fact the opposite is true.

Sincerely,
James Salsman