Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-13/In the news

Wikipedia's tin-cup approach wears thin - With Wikipedia attracting about 300 million page views each day, it has been estimated that the Wikimedia Foundation could attract up to hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising, while all this time, it has been relying on small donations from the public and the occasional large donor. Ideas that could raise money include selling t-shirts and Wikipedia board games. However, actually selling advertising would cause an uproar amongst some editors who would not like to see the commercialisation of Wikipedia. There is conflict between the desire for growth and the desire to avoid conflicts that would arise from serving advertisements.

Other recent mentions in the online press include:

• More woes for Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales (see related story)
• The battle for Wikipedia's soul - The debate between inclusionists and deletionists is reviewed. Examples brought up include the biographies of various Pokémon, the Mzoli's controversy, the growing number of administrative policies and pages, and worries about making new articles "deletionist-proof".
• Critic sees danger in Wikipedia - Andrew Keen says that the free culture endangers academic work, but others counter that he overstates the issues by implying that Wikipedia is valueless because it is free.
• Wikipedia: A very modern encyclopedia - Wikipedia has become one of the most popular sites on the Internet, but it may be affected by its popularity by reporting the opinion of the day instead of facts about the subject matter.