Mailing List Archive

Hoi,
Please define "financial trouble". Given that the dollar is taking a nose
dive and given that this is affecting the value of the cash reserves as they
exist, we can talk of trouble. Given that the budget for 2008 is not
covered, we can talk of trouble. Given that there are many things that we
want developed but do not get either finished or started, we can talk of
trouble. Given that there are several content projects that we want to give
a bigger profile but do not have the means to make this happen, we can talk
of trouble. When you think that sacking staff or not taking up the
opportunities that exist is "the usual shoestring" then I consider that
trouble.

Please define "our core principles". There are people vehemently against
advertisements and there are many people cowered into silence. What has
always been said and this is a good thing is that if it is not necessary to
have advertisements, we will not. Equating no advertisements with core
principles is ludicrous; it means that others may make money from our effort
and we do not make the money we need for the activities we have planned, the
costs that we incur...

Please define "our" in "our values". Please understand that I do not want
advertisements either however, this *has *to be weighed as one issue with
the other issues. When advertisements are considered the single most
important issue and all other issues are considered of less relevance, then
I absolutely cannot consider it a value that is ours. Read what the WMF aims
to do, read what Wikipedia aims to do. We are about bringing knowledge to
the people of this world. That is our aim, our values can only be the ones
that make this possible.
Thanks,
GerardM

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 8:39 AM, effe iets anders <effeietsanders@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ah, here the big question comes up :) What should be determining our
> choice
> for ads or not... Just a few options:
>
> 1) Financial trouble
> 2) Our core principles
> 3) Our values
> 4) Because the community favors it over donations
> 5) Because the visitors favor it over donations
>
> Of course there are many more, but my stake here is actually that *first*
> we
> should discuss 1), 2) and 3), probably too 4) and then we go to 5). If
> there
> are financial trouble, there is little choice, and we'll *have* to,
> whether
> we like or not. If there are no trouble, but the usual shoestring, then we
> should see what our core principles and values have to say about it.
> Finally, I think that in this case, the opinion of the community is at
> least
> as important as the opinion of the visitors.
>
> I think both opinions will be measured in the UNU research? And as there
> seem to be no threatening financial problems right now, 2) and 3) are left
> in the open :)
>
> BR, Lodewijk
>
> 2008/3/18, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com>:
> >
> > On 17/03/2008, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> > > Brian wrote:
> > > > Asking if advertisements should be shown on Wikipedia on a website
> > that is
> > > > currently showing them an advertisement is obviously not a good
> > design
> > > > methodology :)
> > >
> > >
> > > Yes, and facebook users are not representative of the people we care
> > > about (i.e. everyone) in some other important ways too... they tend
> to
> > > be college kids in the US.
> >
> >
> > It might be worth paying for a professional polling company to do a
> > proper survey - I'm not sure what those kind of things cost, but I'm
> > sure the information would be very enlightening.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 1:09 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Please define "financial trouble". Given that the dollar is taking a nose
> dive and given that this is affecting the value of the cash reserves as they
> exist, we can talk of trouble. Given that the budget for 2008 is not
> covered, we can talk of trouble. Given that there are many things that we
> want developed but do not get either finished or started, we can talk of
> trouble. Given that there are several content projects that we want to give
> a bigger profile but do not have the means to make this happen, we can talk
> of trouble. When you think that sacking staff or not taking up the
> opportunities that exist is "the usual shoestring" then I consider that
> trouble.
>
> Please define "our core principles". There are people vehemently against
> advertisements and there are many people cowered into silence. What has
> always been said and this is a good thing is that if it is not necessary to
> have advertisements, we will not. Equating no advertisements with core
> principles is ludicrous; it means that others may make money from our effort
> and we do not make the money we need for the activities we have planned, the
> costs that we incur...
>
> Please define "our" in "our values". Please understand that I do not want
> advertisements either however, this *has *to be weighed as one issue with
> the other issues. When advertisements are considered the single most
> important issue and all other issues are considered of less relevance, then
> I absolutely cannot consider it a value that is ours. Read what the WMF aims
> to do, read what Wikipedia aims to do. We are about bringing knowledge to
> the people of this world. That is our aim, our values can only be the ones
> that make this possible.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 8:39 AM, effe iets anders <effeietsanders@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Ah, here the big question comes up :) What should be determining our
> > choice
> > for ads or not... Just a few options:
> >
> > 1) Financial trouble
> > 2) Our core principles
> > 3) Our values
> > 4) Because the community favors it over donations
> > 5) Because the visitors favor it over donations
> >
> > Of course there are many more, but my stake here is actually that *first*
> > we
> > should discuss 1), 2) and 3), probably too 4) and then we go to 5). If
> > there
> > are financial trouble, there is little choice, and we'll *have* to,
> > whether
> > we like or not. If there are no trouble, but the usual shoestring, then we
> > should see what our core principles and values have to say about it.
> > Finally, I think that in this case, the opinion of the community is at
> > least
> > as important as the opinion of the visitors.
> >
> > I think both opinions will be measured in the UNU research? And as there
> > seem to be no threatening financial problems right now, 2) and 3) are left
> > in the open :)
> >
> > BR, Lodewijk
> >
> > 2008/3/18, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > On 17/03/2008, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> > > > Brian wrote:
> > > > > Asking if advertisements should be shown on Wikipedia on a website
> > > that is
> > > > > currently showing them an advertisement is obviously not a good
> > > design
> > > > > methodology :)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Yes, and facebook users are not representative of the people we care
> > > > about (i.e. everyone) in some other important ways too... they tend
> > to
> > > > be college kids in the US.
> > >
> > >
> > > It might be worth paying for a professional polling company to do a
> > > proper survey - I'm not sure what those kind of things cost, but I'm
> > > sure the information would be very enlightening.
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

And a lack of ads is a core component which makes this possible. NPOV
is a core principle which makes our mission possible and worthwhile.
NPOV and ads are fundamentally incompatible. "Buy this!" cannot
possibly be NPOV.

Skilled volunteer contributors are also necessary for the continuation
of the project, and many of those will simply refuse to work for a
commercial project. Number me among those who would walk out the door
and never look back if ads were added in any but the most dire
circumstances. By dire circumstances, I mean a choice between "Run ads
today or shut down the servers tomorrow", and removing them -as soon-
as financial stability is reached again. I don't mean just not
covering the budget. Trim fat from the budget first.

You speak as though ads are not fundamentally incompatible with our
mission (providing accurate, neutral information for free reuse and
distribution to the world). They are. If they turn out to be the
lesser of evils at one point (total failure or temporary ads), I'd
grudgingly accept the ads temporarily, provided a fixed threshold is
set for when they will be removed, but we're a long way from that
point.

--
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:39 AM, effe iets anders
<effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, here the big question comes up :) What should be determining our choice
> for ads or not... Just a few options:
>
> 1) Financial trouble
> 2) Our core principles
> 3) Our values
> 4) Because the community favors it over donations
> 5) Because the visitors favor it over donations
>
> Of course there are many more, but my stake here is actually that *first* we
> should discuss 1), 2) and 3), probably too 4) and then we go to 5). If there
> are financial trouble, there is little choice, and we'll *have* to, whether
> we like or not. If there are no trouble, but the usual shoestring, then we
> should see what our core principles and values have to say about it.
> Finally, I think that in this case, the opinion of the community is at least
> as important as the opinion of the visitors.
>
> I think both opinions will be measured in the UNU research? And as there
> seem to be no threatening financial problems right now, 2) and 3) are left
> in the open :)
>
> BR, Lodewijk

I see several problems with this analysis, but in the interest of readability,
I'll snip and save the bulk of them as a draft for later, and concentrate on
the most significant one:

If we take it as a given that the moment wikipedia succumbs to
(momentary or long term) financial hardship, it will go all supine and
welcome advertisements in, no questions asked, this will merely
encourage those who for whatever reason (quite possibly the noblest of
reasons - such as wishing to expand our charitable mission way
beyond our original remit) find advertising to be a boon to WMF in
(perhaps subconsciously; unwittingly) overreaching its operations.



Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

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this is not really an opinion, just an analysis of the situation. *if* there
would be huge financial trouble, we would have no choice, would we? (and to
be clear with trouble, I mean real trouble, not that we're not able to bring
the printed version out to Africa, that is all about priorities, and comes
in 2)-4).)

And as financial trouble are never fun or good, I do not buy it that people
will intentionally try to get there, just to get the advertisements going...

BR, Lodewijk

2008/3/18, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@gmail.com>:
>
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:39 AM, effe iets anders
> <effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ah, here the big question comes up :) What should be determining our
> choice
> > for ads or not... Just a few options:
> >
> > 1) Financial trouble
> > 2) Our core principles
> > 3) Our values
> > 4) Because the community favors it over donations
> > 5) Because the visitors favor it over donations
> >
> > Of course there are many more, but my stake here is actually that
> *first* we
> > should discuss 1), 2) and 3), probably too 4) and then we go to 5). If
> there
> > are financial trouble, there is little choice, and we'll *have* to,
> whether
> > we like or not. If there are no trouble, but the usual shoestring, then
> we
> > should see what our core principles and values have to say about it.
> > Finally, I think that in this case, the opinion of the community is at
> least
> > as important as the opinion of the visitors.
> >
> > I think both opinions will be measured in the UNU research? And as there
> > seem to be no threatening financial problems right now, 2) and 3) are
> left
> > in the open :)
> >
> > BR, Lodewijk
>
>
> I see several problems with this analysis, but in the interest of
> readability,
> I'll snip and save the bulk of them as a draft for later, and concentrate
> on
> the most significant one:
>
> If we take it as a given that the moment wikipedia succumbs to
> (momentary or long term) financial hardship, it will go all supine and
> welcome advertisements in, no questions asked, this will merely
> encourage those who for whatever reason (quite possibly the noblest of
> reasons - such as wishing to expand our charitable mission way
> beyond our original remit) find advertising to be a boon to WMF in
> (perhaps subconsciously; unwittingly) overreaching its operations.
>
>
>
>
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
>
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Hoi,
How do you substantiate your assertions? It reads like arguments of faith.
Adds do not say "buy this" when they are so unsophisticated they will not
sell much. You assert that we will lose volunteers. The question you do not
ask is what will balance this loss. The question you do not ask is what the
value is of the contributions when we have more staff. When we had more
staff we could work on things like a GUI for our data, one of the biggest
impediments for the use of our data. We could improve our software and
support the languages that we currently do not support properly.

You speak as if advertisements are fundamentally incompatible with our
mission. For you it is an article of faith. For me advertisements are a
potential way to ensure that we have sufficient money for the budget that
has been approved by our board. I doubt that you have a clue how much more
of an impact we would have when we had substantially more money with the
same frugal outlook on spending.

In my opinion our aim is in bringing information to the people of this
world. We could do much better if we had sufficient funding. This whole
notion that there is fat in our budget is based on what, more faith ?
Thanks,
GerardM


On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:39 AM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 1:09 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > Please define "financial trouble". Given that the dollar is taking a
> nose
> > dive and given that this is affecting the value of the cash reserves as
> they
> > exist, we can talk of trouble. Given that the budget for 2008 is not
> > covered, we can talk of trouble. Given that there are many things that
> we
> > want developed but do not get either finished or started, we can talk
> of
> > trouble. Given that there are several content projects that we want to
> give
> > a bigger profile but do not have the means to make this happen, we can
> talk
> > of trouble. When you think that sacking staff or not taking up the
> > opportunities that exist is "the usual shoestring" then I consider that
> > trouble.
> >
> > Please define "our core principles". There are people vehemently
> against
> > advertisements and there are many people cowered into silence. What has
> > always been said and this is a good thing is that if it is not
> necessary to
> > have advertisements, we will not. Equating no advertisements with core
> > principles is ludicrous; it means that others may make money from our
> effort
> > and we do not make the money we need for the activities we have
> planned, the
> > costs that we incur...
> >
> > Please define "our" in "our values". Please understand that I do not
> want
> > advertisements either however, this *has *to be weighed as one issue
> with
> > the other issues. When advertisements are considered the single most
> > important issue and all other issues are considered of less relevance,
> then
> > I absolutely cannot consider it a value that is ours. Read what the WMF
> aims
> > to do, read what Wikipedia aims to do. We are about bringing knowledge
> to
> > the people of this world. That is our aim, our values can only be the
> ones
> > that make this possible.
> > Thanks,
> > GerardM
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 8:39 AM, effe iets anders <
> effeietsanders@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > Ah, here the big question comes up :) What should be determining our
> > > choice
> > > for ads or not... Just a few options:
> > >
> > > 1) Financial trouble
> > > 2) Our core principles
> > > 3) Our values
> > > 4) Because the community favors it over donations
> > > 5) Because the visitors favor it over donations
> > >
> > > Of course there are many more, but my stake here is actually that
> *first*
> > > we
> > > should discuss 1), 2) and 3), probably too 4) and then we go to 5).
> If
> > > there
> > > are financial trouble, there is little choice, and we'll *have* to,
> > > whether
> > > we like or not. If there are no trouble, but the usual shoestring,
> then we
> > > should see what our core principles and values have to say about it.
> > > Finally, I think that in this case, the opinion of the community is
> at
> > > least
> > > as important as the opinion of the visitors.
> > >
> > > I think both opinions will be measured in the UNU research? And as
> there
> > > seem to be no threatening financial problems right now, 2) and 3) are
> left
> > > in the open :)
> > >
> > > BR, Lodewijk
> > >
> > > 2008/3/18, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com>:
> > > >
> > > > On 17/03/2008, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> > > > > Brian wrote:
> > > > > > Asking if advertisements should be shown on Wikipedia on a
> website
> > > > that is
> > > > > > currently showing them an advertisement is obviously not a
> good
> > > > design
> > > > > > methodology :)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Yes, and facebook users are not representative of the people we
> care
> > > > > about (i.e. everyone) in some other important ways too... they
> tend
> > > to
> > > > > be college kids in the US.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > It might be worth paying for a professional polling company to do a
> > > > proper survey - I'm not sure what those kind of things cost, but
> I'm
> > > > sure the information would be very enlightening.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> And a lack of ads is a core component which makes this possible. NPOV
> is a core principle which makes our mission possible and worthwhile.
> NPOV and ads are fundamentally incompatible. "Buy this!" cannot
> possibly be NPOV.
>
> Skilled volunteer contributors are also necessary for the continuation
> of the project, and many of those will simply refuse to work for a
> commercial project. Number me among those who would walk out the door
> and never look back if ads were added in any but the most dire
> circumstances. By dire circumstances, I mean a choice between "Run ads
> today or shut down the servers tomorrow", and removing them -as soon-
> as financial stability is reached again. I don't mean just not
> covering the budget. Trim fat from the budget first.
>
> You speak as though ads are not fundamentally incompatible with our
> mission (providing accurate, neutral information for free reuse and
> distribution to the world). They are. If they turn out to be the
> lesser of evils at one point (total failure or temporary ads), I'd
> grudgingly accept the ads temporarily, provided a fixed threshold is
> set for when they will be removed, but we're a long way from that
> point.
>
> --
> Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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--- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:39 AM, effe iets anders
> <effeietsanders@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ah, here the big question comes up :) What should
> be determining our choice
> > for ads or not... Just a few options:
> >
> > 1) Financial trouble
> > 2) Our core principles
> > 3) Our values
> > 4) Because the community favors it over donations
> > 5) Because the visitors favor it over donations
> >
> > Of course there are many more, but my stake here
> is actually that *first* we
> > should discuss 1), 2) and 3), probably too 4) and
> then we go to 5). If there
> > are financial trouble, there is little choice, and
> we'll *have* to, whether
> > we like or not. If there are no trouble, but the
> usual shoestring, then we
> > should see what our core principles and values
> have to say about it.
> > Finally, I think that in this case, the opinion of
> the community is at least
> > as important as the opinion of the visitors.
> >
> > I think both opinions will be measured in the UNU
> research? And as there
> > seem to be no threatening financial problems right
> now, 2) and 3) are left
> > in the open :)
> >
> > BR, Lodewijk
>
> I see several problems with this analysis, but in
> the interest of readability,
> I'll snip and save the bulk of them as a draft for
> later, and concentrate on
> the most significant one:
>
> If we take it as a given that the moment wikipedia
> succumbs to
> (momentary or long term) financial hardship, it will
> go all supine and
> welcome advertisements in, no questions asked, this
> will merely
> encourage those who for whatever reason (quite
> possibly the noblest of
> reasons - such as wishing to expand our charitable
> mission way
> beyond our original remit) find advertising to be a
> boon to WMF in
> (perhaps subconsciously; unwittingly) overreaching
> its operations.
>
>
>

I wonder how people would feel about limited
advertisements (not in the article space), if all ad
revenue was put towards funding an endowment rather
than the general budget.

Birgitte SB


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> If we take it as a given that the moment wikipedia succumbs to
> (momentary or long term) financial hardship, it will go all supine and
> welcome advertisements in, no questions asked, this will merely
> encourage those who for whatever reason (quite possibly the noblest of
> reasons - such as wishing to expand our charitable mission way
> beyond our original remit) find advertising to be a boon to WMF in
> (perhaps subconsciously; unwittingly) overreaching its operations.

I think you're paranoid... I really can't see anyone doing that...

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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Please define "financial trouble". Given that the dollar is taking a nose
> dive and given that this is affecting the value of the cash reserves as they
> exist, we can talk of trouble. Given that the budget for 2008 is not
> covered, we can talk of trouble. Given that there are many things that we
> want developed but do not get either finished or started, we can talk of
> trouble. Given that there are several content projects that we want to give
> a bigger profile but do not have the means to make this happen, we can talk
> of trouble. When you think that sacking staff or not taking up the
> opportunities that exist is "the usual shoestring" then I consider that
> trouble.

I personally would define "trouble", in this instance, as the point at
which we can no longer afford to keep the servers running, and we need
to start shutting machines down, or even selling server equipment. I
make the assumption that everything besides the servers are not
fundamental expenses, so things like office space, paid salaries, etc
would all be cut before server resources were shut down. Given that
assumption (and I don't know whether it is accurate or not), we have a
lot of wiggle room in the budget before we start to hit this point.

Given the choice between shutting the servers down for good, or
displaying some adverstisements (and then we have to define the word
"some" here), I personally would pick the advertisements.

--Andrew Whitworth

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Gerard Meijssen's mail client expels the following stream of bytes on
18/03/2008 07:29:
> Hoi,
> How do you substantiate your assertions? It reads like arguments of faith.
> Adds do not say "buy this" when they are so unsophisticated they will not
> sell much.
Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s) that
the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
external links.
> You assert that we will lose volunteers. The question you do not
> ask is what will balance this loss. The question you do not ask is what the
> value is of the contributions when we have more staff. When we had more
> staff we could work on things like a GUI for our data, one of the biggest
> impediments for the use of our data. We could improve our software and
> support the languages that we currently do not support properly.
Actually, when an individual or an entity is paid to contribute, the
quality (and thus, value) of the contribution(s) will go *down*. This
is excessively prominent in the People's Republic of China, where
public signs in Chinese are badly translated into English (the English
Wikipedia article on Chinglish has examples of this). The
translations are usually done by advertisement companies, which wholly
explains why the translations are [almost always] rubbish. If
advertisements were to be placed in Wikimedia, the same would happen,
though to a wider scale, with the quality of Wikimedia as a whole
going down.
>
> You speak as if advertisements are fundamentally incompatible with our
> mission. For you it is an article of faith. For me advertisements are a
> potential way to ensure that we have sufficient money for the budget that
> has been approved by our board. I doubt that you have a clue how much more
> of an impact we would have when we had substantially more money with the
> same frugal outlook on spending.
They /are/ incompatible. As what I said above, the advertiser(s)
could edit, or force someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article
about the advertiser or something related to the advertiser to make
them look good. This breaks NPOV.
>
> In my opinion our aim is in bringing information to the people of this
> world. We could do much better if we had sufficient funding. This whole
> notion that there is fat in our budget is based on what, more faith ?
>
>
> [snip]
No duh. However, many people do not realise that Wikimedia *is a
charity*, proven by Jimbo's Facebook poll. Only businesses or "funded
by a rich guy who started it" would have run advertisements earlier.

- --
Charli Li (vishwin/O)
Hmm, what should I say? Last week, my approval ratings were in the
30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice
president has just shot someone. Ah, those were the good ol' days.
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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s) that
> the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> external links.

<snip>


Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive editing by
advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that advertisers
would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who come to
us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which the
companies are quite comfortable with.

Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
expectation of control over the content of the pages those advertisments
appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have no
reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if there
are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community would go
to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.

Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is much
less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF budget
comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back later
expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of the
WMF's income.

-Robert Rohde
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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s) that
> the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> external links.

<snip>


Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive editing by
advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that advertisers
would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who come to
us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which the
companies are quite comfortable with.

Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
expectation of control over the content of the pages those advertisments
appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have no
reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if there
are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community would go
to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.

Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is much
less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF budget
comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back later
expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of the
WMF's income.

-Robert Rohde
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Andrew Whitworth a écrit :
<snip>
> Given the choice between shutting the servers down for good, or
> displaying some adverstisements (and then we have to define the word
> "some" here), I personally would pick the advertisements.

I would prefer shutting down the servers with a press release issued the
day before. The effects would be interesting and I am sure a solution
will be found faster than six months of discussions ;-)

--
Ashar Voultoiz


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Birgitte SB wrote:
> I wonder how people would feel about limited
> advertisements (not in the article space), if all ad
> revenue was put towards funding an endowment rather
> than the general budget.
>
I think you're to be commended for being creative in seeking a
compromise. However, it seems that the sentiment against advertising is
strongest when the scenario isn't a hypothetical financial crisis. Since
funding an endowment as opposed to day-to-day operational costs is,
basically by definition, not a crisis matter, it makes a weaker case for
overcoming the resistance to advertising. I do still hope that we will
eventually be able to build up a solid endowment, though.

--Michael Snow

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Slight correction that seems important: The sentiment is strongest by the
loudest voices. This is why well designed large scale user surveys are
critical.

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:51 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia@verizon.net> wrote:

> Birgitte SB wrote:
> > I wonder how people would feel about limited
> > advertisements (not in the article space), if all ad
> > revenue was put towards funding an endowment rather
> > than the general budget.
> >
> I think you're to be commended for being creative in seeking a
> compromise. However, it seems that the sentiment against advertising is
> strongest when the scenario isn't a hypothetical financial crisis. Since
> funding an endowment as opposed to day-to-day operational costs is,
> basically by definition, not a crisis matter, it makes a weaker case for
> overcoming the resistance to advertising. I do still hope that we will
> eventually be able to build up a solid endowment, though.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> > Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> > advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> > entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> > return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s) that
> > the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> > case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> > someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> > or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> > advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> > would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> > external links.
>
> <snip>
>
>
> Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive editing by
> advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that advertisers
> would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who come to
> us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
> reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which the
> companies are quite comfortable with.
>
> Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
> expectation of control over the content of the pages those advertisments
> appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have no
> reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if there
> are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community would go
> to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.
>
> Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is much
> less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF budget
> comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
> privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back later
> expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
> publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of the
> WMF's income.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

Regardless, -external purchase links violate NPOV-. Period. NPOV is a
Foundation issue. The ONLY text that should appear on a mainspace page
is an NPOV article and the standard utility and navigation links, at
least provided the user hasn't voluntarily modified that him/herself
with Javascript tools. Having text anywhere on that page which might
say "Brand X Widgets: The best in the world!" or "Buy the best,
longest-lasting Something around at a great value today!" is
unacceptable and violates NPOV. Worse, with something like Google
Adwords, the text of the ads would likely be closely related to the
article the reader is looking at, compounding the problem.

I suppose, if someone really wanted to sell ads in projectspace, or
other namespaces where NPOV is not a requirement, that wouldn't
violate that critical Foundation issue (that article space must remain
-absolutely free- of POV, be it boosterism or attacks, and ads are by
definition one or the other), but it wouldn't provide a significant
benefit in that case. Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's mission,
especially the requirement for NPOV, are not compatible with
advertising. Ads are, by definition, POV ("Buy from me, not my
competitors!"), and therefore deliberately inserting them into
projects requiring NPOV (which all Wikimedia projects do)
fundamentally contradicts that critical principle.

That's aside from annoyance, bad PR, volunteers leaving, and the
likelihood of a successful fork (and if no one else were to fork when
ads were added, I happily would.) We'd be left with two equally bad
choices: The Foundation removing NPOV from its list of "must-have"
Foundation issues, or the Foundation to say "Well this only applies to
the -projects-, not to -us-, when we're making money from violating
it." We cannot have both ads and NPOV, so I say let's keep NPOV. It's
really pretty done us pretty well so far.

--
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

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I agree with Todd. Plus, if there was a fork I would be right there with him.


----- Original Message ----
From: Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 9:20:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Advertisements?

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> > Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> > advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> > entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> > return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s) that
> > the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> > case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> > someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> > or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> > advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> > would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> > external links.
>
> <snip>
>
>
> Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive editing by
> advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that advertisers
> would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who come to
> us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
> reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which the
> companies are quite comfortable with.
>
> Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
> expectation of control over the content of the pages those advertisments
> appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have no
> reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if there
> are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community would go
> to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.
>
> Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is much
> less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF budget
> comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
> privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back later
> expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
> publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of the
> WMF's income.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

Regardless, -external purchase links violate NPOV-. Period. NPOV is a
Foundation issue. The ONLY text that should appear on a mainspace page
is an NPOV article and the standard utility and navigation links, at
least provided the user hasn't voluntarily modified that him/herself
with Javascript tools. Having text anywhere on that page which might
say "Brand X Widgets: The best in the world!" or "Buy the best,
longest-lasting Something around at a great value today!" is
unacceptable and violates NPOV. Worse, with something like Google
Adwords, the text of the ads would likely be closely related to the
article the reader is looking at, compounding the problem.

I suppose, if someone really wanted to sell ads in projectspace, or
other namespaces where NPOV is not a requirement, that wouldn't
violate that critical Foundation issue (that article space must remain
-absolutely free- of POV, be it boosterism or attacks, and ads are by
definition one or the other), but it wouldn't provide a significant
benefit in that case. Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's mission,
especially the requirement for NPOV, are not compatible with
advertising. Ads are, by definition, POV ("Buy from me, not my
competitors!"), and therefore deliberately inserting them into
projects requiring NPOV (which all Wikimedia projects do)
fundamentally contradicts that critical principle.

That's aside from annoyance, bad PR, volunteers leaving, and the
likelihood of a successful fork (and if no one else were to fork when
ads were added, I happily would.) We'd be left with two equally bad
choices: The Foundation removing NPOV from its list of "must-have"
Foundation issues, or the Foundation to say "Well this only applies to
the -projects-, not to -us-, when we're making money from violating
it." We cannot have both ads and NPOV, so I say let's keep NPOV. It's
really pretty done us pretty well so far.

--
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This seems to be a generally agreed upon point. I don't know of anyone who
has seriously thought about it that thinks that showing adverts in the main
namespaces (or even a meta namespace) would ever be approved by the
community. So the real question is, what about Special:Search? Would the
community be willing to put up with adverts on the search engine if the
funds were mostly put to african schools or an endowment, with a small
portion going to servers/software/quality? Every year that we don't do this
we are deliberately choosing to not put tens of millions of dollars to a
good cause. Is that choice well founded? That's the question that needs to
be answered.

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:20 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> > > advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> > > entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> > > return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s)
> that
> > > the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> > > case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> > > someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> > > or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> > > advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> > > would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> > > external links.
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >
> > Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive
> editing by
> > advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that
> advertisers
> > would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who
> come to
> > us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
> > reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which
> the
> > companies are quite comfortable with.
> >
> > Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
> > expectation of control over the content of the pages those
> advertisments
> > appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have
> no
> > reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if
> there
> > are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community
> would go
> > to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.
> >
> > Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is
> much
> > less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF
> budget
> > comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
> > privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back
> later
> > expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
> > publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of
> the
> > WMF's income.
> >
> > -Robert Rohde
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> Regardless, -external purchase links violate NPOV-. Period. NPOV is a
> Foundation issue. The ONLY text that should appear on a mainspace page
> is an NPOV article and the standard utility and navigation links, at
> least provided the user hasn't voluntarily modified that him/herself
> with Javascript tools. Having text anywhere on that page which might
> say "Brand X Widgets: The best in the world!" or "Buy the best,
> longest-lasting Something around at a great value today!" is
> unacceptable and violates NPOV. Worse, with something like Google
> Adwords, the text of the ads would likely be closely related to the
> article the reader is looking at, compounding the problem.
>
> I suppose, if someone really wanted to sell ads in projectspace, or
> other namespaces where NPOV is not a requirement, that wouldn't
> violate that critical Foundation issue (that article space must remain
> -absolutely free- of POV, be it boosterism or attacks, and ads are by
> definition one or the other), but it wouldn't provide a significant
> benefit in that case. Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's mission,
> especially the requirement for NPOV, are not compatible with
> advertising. Ads are, by definition, POV ("Buy from me, not my
> competitors!"), and therefore deliberately inserting them into
> projects requiring NPOV (which all Wikimedia projects do)
> fundamentally contradicts that critical principle.
>
> That's aside from annoyance, bad PR, volunteers leaving, and the
> likelihood of a successful fork (and if no one else were to fork when
> ads were added, I happily would.) We'd be left with two equally bad
> choices: The Foundation removing NPOV from its list of "must-have"
> Foundation issues, or the Foundation to say "Well this only applies to
> the -projects-, not to -us-, when we're making money from violating
> it." We cannot have both ads and NPOV, so I say let's keep NPOV. It's
> really pretty done us pretty well so far.
>
> --
> Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Clarification: That good cause is precisely the Foundation's mission:

> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people
> around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free
> license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and
> globally.


http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:42 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:

> This seems to be a generally agreed upon point. I don't know of anyone who
> has seriously thought about it that thinks that showing adverts in the main
> namespaces (or even a meta namespace) would ever be approved by the
> community. So the real question is, what about Special:Search? Would the
> community be willing to put up with adverts on the search engine if the
> funds were mostly put to african schools or an endowment, with a small
> portion going to servers/software/quality? Every year that we don't do this
> we are deliberately choosing to not put tens of millions of dollars to a
> good cause. Is that choice well founded? That's the question that needs to
> be answered.
>
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:20 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> > > > advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> > > > entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something
> > in
> > > > return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s)
> > that
> > > > the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> > > > case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> > > > someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the
> > advertiser
> > > > or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> > > > advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where
> > there
> > > > would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> > > > external links.
> > >
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > >
> > > Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive
> > editing by
> > > advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that
> > advertisers
> > > would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who
> > come to
> > > us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
> > > reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which
> > the
> > > companies are quite comfortable with.
> > >
> > > Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
> > > expectation of control over the content of the pages those
> > advertisments
> > > appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I
> > have no
> > > reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if
> > there
> > > are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community
> > would go
> > > to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.
> > >
> > > Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation
> > is much
> > > less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF
> > budget
> > > comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
> > > privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back
> > later
> > > expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
> > > publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion
> > of the
> > > WMF's income.
> > >
> > > -Robert Rohde
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> > Regardless, -external purchase links violate NPOV-. Period. NPOV is a
> > Foundation issue. The ONLY text that should appear on a mainspace page
> > is an NPOV article and the standard utility and navigation links, at
> > least provided the user hasn't voluntarily modified that him/herself
> > with Javascript tools. Having text anywhere on that page which might
> > say "Brand X Widgets: The best in the world!" or "Buy the best,
> > longest-lasting Something around at a great value today!" is
> > unacceptable and violates NPOV. Worse, with something like Google
> > Adwords, the text of the ads would likely be closely related to the
> > article the reader is looking at, compounding the problem.
> >
> > I suppose, if someone really wanted to sell ads in projectspace, or
> > other namespaces where NPOV is not a requirement, that wouldn't
> > violate that critical Foundation issue (that article space must remain
> > -absolutely free- of POV, be it boosterism or attacks, and ads are by
> > definition one or the other), but it wouldn't provide a significant
> > benefit in that case. Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's mission,
> > especially the requirement for NPOV, are not compatible with
> > advertising. Ads are, by definition, POV ("Buy from me, not my
> > competitors!"), and therefore deliberately inserting them into
> > projects requiring NPOV (which all Wikimedia projects do)
> > fundamentally contradicts that critical principle.
> >
> > That's aside from annoyance, bad PR, volunteers leaving, and the
> > likelihood of a successful fork (and if no one else were to fork when
> > ads were added, I happily would.) We'd be left with two equally bad
> > choices: The Foundation removing NPOV from its list of "must-have"
> > Foundation issues, or the Foundation to say "Well this only applies to
> > the -projects-, not to -us-, when we're making money from violating
> > it." We cannot have both ads and NPOV, so I say let's keep NPOV. It's
> > really pretty done us pretty well so far.
> >
> > --
> > Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:20 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> > > advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> > > entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> > > return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s)
> that
> > > the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> > > case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> > > someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> > > or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> > > advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> > > would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> > > external links.
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >
> > Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive
> editing by
> > advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that
> advertisers
> > would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who
> come to
> > us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
> > reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which
> the
> > companies are quite comfortable with.
> >
> > Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
> > expectation of control over the content of the pages those
> advertisments
> > appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have
> no
> > reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if
> there
> > are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community
> would go
> > to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.
> >
> > Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is
> much
> > less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF
> budget
> > comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
> > privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back
> later
> > expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
> > publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of
> the
> > WMF's income.
> >
> > -Robert Rohde
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> Regardless, -external purchase links violate NPOV-. Period. NPOV is a
> Foundation issue. The ONLY text that should appear on a mainspace page
> is an NPOV article and the standard utility and navigation links, at
> least provided the user hasn't voluntarily modified that him/herself
> with Javascript tools. Having text anywhere on that page which might
> say "Brand X Widgets: The best in the world!" or "Buy the best,
> longest-lasting Something around at a great value today!" is
> unacceptable and violates NPOV. Worse, with something like Google
> Adwords, the text of the ads would likely be closely related to the
> article the reader is looking at, compounding the problem.
>
> I suppose, if someone really wanted to sell ads in projectspace, or
> other namespaces where NPOV is not a requirement, that wouldn't
> violate that critical Foundation issue (that article space must remain
> -absolutely free- of POV, be it boosterism or attacks, and ads are by
> definition one or the other), but it wouldn't provide a significant
> benefit in that case. Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's mission,
> especially the requirement for NPOV, are not compatible with
> advertising. Ads are, by definition, POV ("Buy from me, not my
> competitors!"), and therefore deliberately inserting them into
> projects requiring NPOV (which all Wikimedia projects do)
> fundamentally contradicts that critical principle.
>
> That's aside from annoyance, bad PR, volunteers leaving, and the
> likelihood of a successful fork (and if no one else were to fork when
> ads were added, I happily would.) We'd be left with two equally bad
> choices: The Foundation removing NPOV from its list of "must-have"
> Foundation issues, or the Foundation to say "Well this only applies to
> the -projects-, not to -us-, when we're making money from violating
> it." We cannot have both ads and NPOV, so I say let's keep NPOV. It's
> really pretty done us pretty well so far.
>

I don't know what the community as a whole really thinks, but I think
your view that clearly labeled and distinguished advertisements are
fundemental breach of NPOV is absurd. I trust in the basic intelligence of
our readers to be able to distinguish between a clearly labeled ad and our
actual content. Do you consider the NYTimes (and essentially every other
newspaper and magazine) to be fundementally biased simply because they carry
ads?

IF ads are ever added to Wikipedia, then I for one would stick with the site
that would be expected to have tens of millions of dollars for further
development rather than clinging to an idealistic, but ultimately
self-destructive, fork.

-Robert Rohde

PS. I'm not saying ads are the only solution, but I consider them an
entirely reasonable option.
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On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:42 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu> wrote:
> This seems to be a generally agreed upon point. I don't know of anyone who
> has seriously thought about it that thinks that showing adverts in the main
> namespaces (or even a meta namespace) would ever be approved by the
> community. So the real question is, what about Special:Search? Would the
> community be willing to put up with adverts on the search engine if the
> funds were mostly put to african schools or an endowment, with a small
> portion going to servers/software/quality? Every year that we don't do this
> we are deliberately choosing to not put tens of millions of dollars to a
> good cause. Is that choice well founded? That's the question that needs to
> be answered.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:20 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> > > > advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> > > > entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> > > > return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s)
> > that
> > > > the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> > > > case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> > > > someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> > > > or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> > > > advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> > > > would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> > > > external links.
> > >
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > >
> > > Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive
> > editing by
> > > advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that
> > advertisers
> > > would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who
> > come to
> > > us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
> > > reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which
> > the
> > > companies are quite comfortable with.
> > >
> > > Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
> > > expectation of control over the content of the pages those
> > advertisments
> > > appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have
> > no
> > > reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if
> > there
> > > are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community
> > would go
> > > to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.
> > >
> > > Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is
> > much
> > > less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF
> > budget
> > > comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
> > > privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back
> > later
> > > expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
> > > publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of
> > the
> > > WMF's income.
> > >
> > > -Robert Rohde
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> > Regardless, -external purchase links violate NPOV-. Period. NPOV is a
> > Foundation issue. The ONLY text that should appear on a mainspace page
> > is an NPOV article and the standard utility and navigation links, at
> > least provided the user hasn't voluntarily modified that him/herself
> > with Javascript tools. Having text anywhere on that page which might
> > say "Brand X Widgets: The best in the world!" or "Buy the best,
> > longest-lasting Something around at a great value today!" is
> > unacceptable and violates NPOV. Worse, with something like Google
> > Adwords, the text of the ads would likely be closely related to the
> > article the reader is looking at, compounding the problem.
> >
> > I suppose, if someone really wanted to sell ads in projectspace, or
> > other namespaces where NPOV is not a requirement, that wouldn't
> > violate that critical Foundation issue (that article space must remain
> > -absolutely free- of POV, be it boosterism or attacks, and ads are by
> > definition one or the other), but it wouldn't provide a significant
> > benefit in that case. Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's mission,
> > especially the requirement for NPOV, are not compatible with
> > advertising. Ads are, by definition, POV ("Buy from me, not my
> > competitors!"), and therefore deliberately inserting them into
> > projects requiring NPOV (which all Wikimedia projects do)
> > fundamentally contradicts that critical principle.
> >
> > That's aside from annoyance, bad PR, volunteers leaving, and the
> > likelihood of a successful fork (and if no one else were to fork when
> > ads were added, I happily would.) We'd be left with two equally bad
> > choices: The Foundation removing NPOV from its list of "must-have"
> > Foundation issues, or the Foundation to say "Well this only applies to
> > the -projects-, not to -us-, when we're making money from violating
> > it." We cannot have both ads and NPOV, so I say let's keep NPOV. It's
> > really pretty done us pretty well so far.
> >
> > --
> > Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

Special:Search is, by and large, an extension of mainspace, as its
main use is far and away to find mainspace articles. To have readers
see POV ads -before- finding the article they're looking for is
arguably worse in terms of NPOV than having that happen -after- they
find it. So my answer remains the same, let's not auction off NPOV at
any price, and if ads appear there, I will leave.

--
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

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Ads in articlespace would shoot the credibility of Wikipedia down the toilet. We have built our reputation by being ad free, lets not screw this up.



----- Original Message ----
From: Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 10:11:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Advertisements?

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 9:20 PM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Rohde <rarohde@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:30 AM, Charli Li <kbblogger@verizon.net>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Advertisements usually do not say "buy this". However, when an
> > > advertiser is contracted to financially support an individual or an
> > > entity, the advertiser wants something in return. That something in
> > > return is usually the placing of an advertisement on the venue(s)
> that
> > > the individual or entity owns, but that can be different in every
> > > case. In Wikimedia's case, the advertiser(s) could edit, or force
> > > someone to edit, a Wikipedia or Wikinews article about the advertiser
> > > or something related to the advertiser to make them look good. The
> > > advertiser(s) could also spam external links to the point where there
> > > would be too many that violated the specific guideline(s) about
> > > external links.
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >
> > Why do you believe the community or the WMF woud tolerate abusive
> editing by
> > advertisers? You speak as if it is a foregone conclusion that
> advertisers
> > would control content and I think that is nonsense. Advertisers who
> come to
> > us with that expectation could and should be rejected. However, many
> > reputable companies have profiles that are both fully NPOV and which
> the
> > companies are quite comfortable with.
> >
> > Advertisers participating in Google Adwords (for example) have no
> > expectation of control over the content of the pages those
> advertisments
> > appear on, and their advertisements are plainly distinguished. I have
> no
> > reason to expect that Wikipedia should be any different. In fact if
> there
> > are visible advertisements for Widget by X, I suspect the community
> would go
> > to extra lengths to strip any self-serving bias from X's article.
> >
> > Frankly, I think the potential for self-serving content manipulation is
> much
> > less with advertising than it is when a large fraction of the WMF
> budget
> > comes from a handful of anonymous major donors. When a single entity
> > privately donates $300k to the WMF the risk that they would come back
> later
> > expecting secret favors seems much higher than when there are many
> > publicly-visible advertisers each contributing only a small portion of
> the
> > WMF's income.
> >
> > -Robert Rohde
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> Regardless, -external purchase links violate NPOV-. Period. NPOV is a
> Foundation issue. The ONLY text that should appear on a mainspace page
> is an NPOV article and the standard utility and navigation links, at
> least provided the user hasn't voluntarily modified that him/herself
> with Javascript tools. Having text anywhere on that page which might
> say "Brand X Widgets: The best in the world!" or "Buy the best,
> longest-lasting Something around at a great value today!" is
> unacceptable and violates NPOV. Worse, with something like Google
> Adwords, the text of the ads would likely be closely related to the
> article the reader is looking at, compounding the problem.
>
> I suppose, if someone really wanted to sell ads in projectspace, or
> other namespaces where NPOV is not a requirement, that wouldn't
> violate that critical Foundation issue (that article space must remain
> -absolutely free- of POV, be it boosterism or attacks, and ads are by
> definition one or the other), but it wouldn't provide a significant
> benefit in that case. Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia's mission,
> especially the requirement for NPOV, are not compatible with
> advertising. Ads are, by definition, POV ("Buy from me, not my
> competitors!"), and therefore deliberately inserting them into
> projects requiring NPOV (which all Wikimedia projects do)
> fundamentally contradicts that critical principle.
>
> That's aside from annoyance, bad PR, volunteers leaving, and the
> likelihood of a successful fork (and if no one else were to fork when
> ads were added, I happily would.) We'd be left with two equally bad
> choices: The Foundation removing NPOV from its list of "must-have"
> Foundation issues, or the Foundation to say "Well this only applies to
> the -projects-, not to -us-, when we're making money from violating
> it." We cannot have both ads and NPOV, so I say let's keep NPOV. It's
> really pretty done us pretty well so far.
>

I don't know what the community as a whole really thinks, but I think
your view that clearly labeled and distinguished advertisements are
fundemental breach of NPOV is absurd. I trust in the basic intelligence of
our readers to be able to distinguish between a clearly labeled ad and our
actual content. Do you consider the NYTimes (and essentially every other
newspaper and magazine) to be fundementally biased simply because they carry
ads?

IF ads are ever added to Wikipedia, then I for one would stick with the site
that would be expected to have tens of millions of dollars for further
development rather than clinging to an idealistic, but ultimately
self-destructive, fork.

-Robert Rohde

PS. I'm not saying ads are the only solution, but I consider them an
entirely reasonable option.
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____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Robert Rohde's mail client expels the following stream of bytes on
19/03/2008 01:11:
> I don't know what the community as a whole really thinks, but I think
> your view that clearly labeled and distinguished advertisements are
> fundemental breach of NPOV is absurd. I trust in the basic intelligence of
> our readers to be able to distinguish between a clearly labeled ad and our
> actual content. Do you consider the NYTimes (and essentially every other
> newspaper and magazine) to be fundementally biased simply because they
carry
> ads?
Mass-media like /The New York Times/ are for-profit businesses.
Wikimedia is a non-profit charity. Non-profit means no ads.

- --
Charli Li (vishwin/O)
You helped our nation celebrate its Bicentennial in 17- in 1976.
[Queen gives him a sharp look and mutters inaudibly] She gave me a
look that only a mother could give a child.
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> I don't know what the community as a whole really thinks, but I think
> your view that clearly labeled and distinguished advertisements are
> fundemental breach of NPOV is absurd. I trust in the basic intelligence of
> our readers to be able to distinguish between a clearly labeled ad and our
> actual content. Do you consider the NYTimes (and essentially every other
> newspaper and magazine) to be fundementally biased simply because they carry
> ads?

Actually, yes. I am rather suspicious of such publications when they
run stories about their major advertisers. One also wonders what they
choose -not- to run about them. If there were a newspaper which did
not use ads, I would read it any day over the ones that do, for the
exact reason of lack of potential bias (and actual bias, in giving
part of their space to someone to promote themself). If we sold ads,
we would be doing the same thing; namely, allowing self-promotion on
part of our site in exchange for money. We have, historically, totally
disallowed self-promotion in article space (or other areas such as
Special:Search commonly viewed by readers), and should continue to
strictly forbid it.

As to labelling and distinguishing, I wouldn't find part of an article
acceptable if it were blatant self-promotion, even if it were labelled
"Blatant self-promotion". When a reader views or searches for an
article, there should be -no self promotion- anywhere on the reader's
screen. Period, end of the story. Anything else violates NPOV.
Labelled POV is still POV.

>
> IF ads are ever added to Wikipedia, then I for one would stick with the site
> that would be expected to have tens of millions of dollars for further
> development rather than clinging to an idealistic, but ultimately
> self-destructive, fork.

Wikipedia/Wikimedia itself was initially an idealistic but ultimately
unrealistic and self-destructive project. It has survived and
prospered on the sweat of dedicated contributors who agree with its
ideals (and many of whom disagree with the sale of those ideals to the
highest bidder), legions of readers who find it a valuable resource
due to exactly the same, and donations. It has never had large amounts
of cash. It has been successful in spite of, or perhaps even because
of, that lack.

>
> -Robert Rohde
>
> PS. I'm not saying ads are the only solution, but I consider them an
> entirely reasonable option.

For some websites, sure they are. For this one, it's one of the most
divisive and destructive things we could do to the project. I would
urge you to learn from the experience of the Spanish Wikipedia. It
took them years to recover from that. You know as well as I do that
ads on the English Wikipedia (which I'm most familiar with, so I use
it as an example) would cause drama beyond belief and contributors to
leave in hordes. This is not for no good reason, -Wikipedia should not
have ads-. Ever. The only thing I would come back to do is vote every
board member who even makes a peep about instituting or keeping the
ads out on their ass, and vote for everyone who advocates getting rid
of them. And I am by no means alone in this view.

The reason this project is worth anything at all, monetarily or
otherwise, is because of the volunteers who worked to build it. Even
setting aside the ethical question of alienating and ignoring the
wishes of a large percentage of those, there is the practical
question--we can always hold a fund drive, or at the worst slash
costs, and things would keep kicking along, but could Wikimedia
survive a mass exodus and major forking across the board? Maybe, but
I'd like to not find out.

I am not heartened by the silence of most of the Foundation board
members. I would very much like to hear a resounding "ABSOLUTELY NOT",
or at the very least "We considered the option but have already
rejected it." I find the quiet on this issue to be worrisome. Our
current Board is composed of some pretty smart people, but it would
still be good to hear definitively that they do not intend to do this.
And of course, if such an option is under ANY amount of consideration,
the Board certainly must be aware that it would be most unwise to even
begin deliberation on such a question without first seeking community
input.

P.S. Spare us the "children in Africa" bit. (That applies to everyone
who is directly or indirectly using it.) It is Wikimedia's job to make
knowledge available to the world, but better to fulfill that mission
slowly and surely than never at all, by killing the project or
tainting it with (real or perceived) bias. It's a despicable rhetoric
tactic to make one's opponent appear as though (s)he is "against
helping the poor (insert sympathetic cause here)", when in reality
that's tangential to the discussion at best.

--
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

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Hoi,
We do not write articles about our advertisers. We do not even write well
about our major sponsors. If anything the
Kennisnet<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennisnet>article is out dated
and it does not even inform substantially what it is
that they do. Now I am not going to improve the article, it is just that I
want to point out that this is not what we do. Given the English wikipedia
community stance on self promotion, do you really believe that an article
that is more then the NPOV about an advertisement has a chance? Do you think
that anyone in his right mind expects this to happen?

With advertisements you do not sell to the highest bidder. The most you do
is provide a segregated platform, indicated as such, where a commercial
message will be available. The other part is separate and is independent in
its message. When this is not be the case, it is time to fork.

The WMF has in the past indicated that they were not considering
advertisements, that they would not absolutely rule it out because it may
become necessary in the future. What we can do is be plain in not wanting
advertisements. What we can do is consider under what circumstances
advertisements need to be considered. What we can do is consider what
advertisements should look like when we are to have them. What we can
consider is what we could do when more money is available. These are all
different issues and they should be treated as such.

I disagree that the WMF should bring information slowly. Because this
attitude maintains the digital divide as it exists today. In languages like
English, German, Dutch there is a wealth of information available. All the
Wikipedia information is available for these languages in other sources as
well. I am not so convinced that for a language like Bengali or Telugu we
have the same luxury. Mind you imho Bengali and Telugu are doing really
well.

When the "children in Africa" are mentioned, I am happy to tell you that the
OLPC is working hard to give these kids (also in Asia, South America and the
US) their own computer. It is for this reason, among many others, that we
have to have information available for these kids now because they are
learning now.

There is a lot that you can do with a little money and a lot of effort. We
are good at a lot of effort, we often do not have the little money to
leverage our lot of effort. We need to invest where our money does the most
good. I invest in making the localisation of MediaWiki more relevant and why
I actively support Betawiki. The only language that does not need to do
anything for its localisation is English. You may infer from this why you do
not see Americans or Britons on Betawiki. People who have English as their
first language do not appreciate how easy things are for them.

Thanks,
GerardM



On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 7:22 AM, Todd Allen <toddmallen@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I don't know what the community as a whole really thinks, but I think
> > your view that clearly labeled and distinguished advertisements are
> > fundemental breach of NPOV is absurd. I trust in the basic
> intelligence of
> > our readers to be able to distinguish between a clearly labeled ad and
> our
> > actual content. Do you consider the NYTimes (and essentially every
> other
> > newspaper and magazine) to be fundementally biased simply because they
> carry
> > ads?
>
> Actually, yes. I am rather suspicious of such publications when they
> run stories about their major advertisers. One also wonders what they
> choose -not- to run about them. If there were a newspaper which did
> not use ads, I would read it any day over the ones that do, for the
> exact reason of lack of potential bias (and actual bias, in giving
> part of their space to someone to promote themself). If we sold ads,
> we would be doing the same thing; namely, allowing self-promotion on
> part of our site in exchange for money. We have, historically, totally
> disallowed self-promotion in article space (or other areas such as
> Special:Search commonly viewed by readers), and should continue to
> strictly forbid it.
>
> As to labelling and distinguishing, I wouldn't find part of an article
> acceptable if it were blatant self-promotion, even if it were labelled
> "Blatant self-promotion". When a reader views or searches for an
> article, there should be -no self promotion- anywhere on the reader's
> screen. Period, end of the story. Anything else violates NPOV.
> Labelled POV is still POV.
>
> >
> > IF ads are ever added to Wikipedia, then I for one would stick with the
> site
> > that would be expected to have tens of millions of dollars for further
> > development rather than clinging to an idealistic, but ultimately
> > self-destructive, fork.
>
> Wikipedia/Wikimedia itself was initially an idealistic but ultimately
> unrealistic and self-destructive project. It has survived and
> prospered on the sweat of dedicated contributors who agree with its
> ideals (and many of whom disagree with the sale of those ideals to the
> highest bidder), legions of readers who find it a valuable resource
> due to exactly the same, and donations. It has never had large amounts
> of cash. It has been successful in spite of, or perhaps even because
> of, that lack.
>
> >
> > -Robert Rohde
> >
> > PS. I'm not saying ads are the only solution, but I consider them an
> > entirely reasonable option.
>
> For some websites, sure they are. For this one, it's one of the most
> divisive and destructive things we could do to the project. I would
> urge you to learn from the experience of the Spanish Wikipedia. It
> took them years to recover from that. You know as well as I do that
> ads on the English Wikipedia (which I'm most familiar with, so I use
> it as an example) would cause drama beyond belief and contributors to
> leave in hordes. This is not for no good reason, -Wikipedia should not
> have ads-. Ever. The only thing I would come back to do is vote every
> board member who even makes a peep about instituting or keeping the
> ads out on their ass, and vote for everyone who advocates getting rid
> of them. And I am by no means alone in this view.
>
> The reason this project is worth anything at all, monetarily or
> otherwise, is because of the volunteers who worked to build it. Even
> setting aside the ethical question of alienating and ignoring the
> wishes of a large percentage of those, there is the practical
> question--we can always hold a fund drive, or at the worst slash
> costs, and things would keep kicking along, but could Wikimedia
> survive a mass exodus and major forking across the board? Maybe, but
> I'd like to not find out.
>
> I am not heartened by the silence of most of the Foundation board
> members. I would very much like to hear a resounding "ABSOLUTELY NOT",
> or at the very least "We considered the option but have already
> rejected it." I find the quiet on this issue to be worrisome. Our
> current Board is composed of some pretty smart people, but it would
> still be good to hear definitively that they do not intend to do this.
> And of course, if such an option is under ANY amount of consideration,
> the Board certainly must be aware that it would be most unwise to even
> begin deliberation on such a question without first seeking community
> input.
>
> P.S. Spare us the "children in Africa" bit. (That applies to everyone
> who is directly or indirectly using it.) It is Wikimedia's job to make
> knowledge available to the world, but better to fulfill that mission
> slowly and surely than never at all, by killing the project or
> tainting it with (real or perceived) bias. It's a despicable rhetoric
> tactic to make one's opponent appear as though (s)he is "against
> helping the poor (insert sympathetic cause here)", when in reality
> that's tangential to the discussion at best.
>
> --
> Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.
>
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