Get those ads on Wikipedia! Free and Open Culture needs funding too.
I’m in total agreement with Linksvayer’s post on how wikipedia should have textads. He makes some compelling arguments. Yesterday Mike and I looked at some graphs of statistics around this, but not around wikipedia. So, I did a lame alexa comparison of wikipedia with myspace, youtube, and facebook.
The main reason I have for supporting ads in wikipedia is to raise money for supporting free and open culture at large. We would not lose our souls over this, but would have real money to do real things. Yes, I realize now that you need money to do these things and might be another thing in 2007 I will learn even more about (which does’nt dilute my passion, involvement, nor promotion of free and open culture).
BTW, grants and fellowships are nice bits of money, but free and open culture projects need normal real money too. It will be great to figure out good ways to generate revenue to fund/hire up more open-minded people (sorry for the pun).
