[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia public relations

[Arvind Narayanan]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 03:39:12PM -0600, Chuck Smith wrote:
> Three points:
> 
> o Unesco
> o TakingItGlobal
> o Google AdSense
> 
> I was thinking the other day that the goals of
> Wikipedia are in line with those of Unesco and I was
> wondering if we could somehow try to become officially
> connected with Unesco to gain a better reputation.  We
> might also be able to get significant financial grants
> from them in this way.
> 
This is a great idea!
> Also, I think it would good if we could put the
> Wikipedia project and the Wikimedia foundation in the
> TakingItGlobal database which is a database for
> activists, so that we can connect.  TIG works as an
> umbrella organization for other non-profits.
> 
I don't know what TakingItGlobal is, so I have no opinion.
> I know people are going to yell at me, but I think
> Google AdSense would produce an incredible amount of
> money for the project.  We could show them to
> anonymous users and people who log in could turn them
> off if they wanted.  Well anyway, it's just a
> suggestion, don't bite my head off.
> 
No way!! Many people, me included, contribute to wikipedia because 
of a   spirit of freedom/communist zeal/whatever   that would
largely evaporate if wikipedia started serving ads. Even a
symbolic thing like the change from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org
was a big motivation for me. Anyway didn't Jimbo promise us
long back that there would *never* be ads on wikipedia? :)

Arvind 
-- 
Its all GNU to me