Wikipedia fundraising: advertising is cool
While many are still arguing about Microsoft’s move to send free PC to bloggers, as I learn from my webmaster these days is running an important discussion about advertising on wikipedia.
As in every democracy there are at least two parties, wikipedians pro advertisment and against it.
I’m with Evan Prodromou, one of the wikitravel founders, saying:
I’m not sympathetic with these folks; in fact, I’m in solid opposition. I think that Wikipedia’s huge amount of Web traffic is a resource that the Foundation is squandering. Traffic like Wikipedia’s is worth tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue per year. That’s money that could go to disseminate free (libre and gratis) paperback pocket encyclopedias to millions of schools and millions of children, in their own language, around the world.
It’s irresponsible to abuse that opportunity.
An advertising-fueled Wikimedia Foundation might do lots of good things and Slashdot readers objections to ads doesn’t sound good to me also.
I support advertising on Wikipedia.
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