[Wikipedia-l] Re: Donation History

[Daniel Mayer]

greatpatton wrote:
>For me advertising will destroy the concept of NPOV. 
>Even if all the contributors respect it the reader will 
>always have a doubt as wikipedia will be dependent 
>of this money income. And we will lose the trust of 
>many. For me the only independent press is the one 
>without ads. 

Hm. Nicely said. OK, that and the fact that we were able to raise well over 
US$20,000 in two days convinces me that ads simply are not worth the bother 
for the foreseeable future. But just as we might have to one day limit edits 
to logged-in contributors we may one day have to accept some form of 
non-obtrusive advertisements. However, we should continue to find clever ways 
to avoid both of those evils. 

One could also argue that if our community of readers don't care enough about 
Wikipedia and her sister projects to pay the bills, then our products aren't 
worth supporting and further development on those products should die-off.

I'm confident that that will never happen since as we get more popular there 
will be more donors and as time goes by our products get better. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)