[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia public relations

[Jimmy Wales]

Chuck Smith wrote:
> 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.

My primary concern is that our independence is very likely to be
hampered by any such association.  I'm not sure what you have in mind
by our being 'officially connected', but I certainly can't envision
that we could become entangled with the UN and retain our neutrality.

> We might also be able to get significant financial grants from them
> in this way.

I have a general philosophical disagreement with our purely volunteer
effort being corrupted with money taken by force, which is what UN
money would be.  I am not a complete hardliner about this, but I am
not particularly eager to do anything of the sort except possibly as a
very last resort.

> 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've just looked at their site, and I have no particular objection to
our being listed there.  Actually, it looks like I can do it right
now, so I will.

> 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.

I know that not many people share my curious political views, but to
me, it's much worse to seek money from governments, i.e. to ask them
to take money by force from others, than it is to accept advertising
money.

However, it is not clear to me that ads would produce "an incredible
amount of money".  I should look at the traffic and make an estimate,
just so we have some awareness of what we're giving up.

--Jimbo