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I am also a firm believer in quality over quantity. It is my opinion that one line, outsourced, inaccurate, and otherwise useless articles do in fact harm Wikipedia. While it can be argued that we are not paper, etc; having worthless articles, and particularly having inaccurate articles, and thousands of stubs that no one patrols allowing all sorts of gradual creeping vandalism, harms the credibility of Wikipedia. The harm caused to our publicly perceived quality because of such articles far outweighs, in my opinion, the value of having such articles. At a minimum, I believe we should find a way to shield such articles from the search engines; at the other end of the spectrum maybe we should go as far as moving them to a staging area. In no way do I advocate the wholesale deletion of such articles, just removing them, somewhat, from the public eye. (Of course I know the argument against that would be - well then no one would find them and improve them. To which I would reply, apparently no one is finding them and improving now as many are years old and yet to be expanded, so whats the difference? The vast majority of these articles will be improved by regular editors who will know just where to find them whenever they get around to it, not by random passers-by.) Another option would be to add a new quality rating of something comparable to "place-holder", for one and two line stubs, and articles with that rating could be shielded from search engines. Wikipedia:Article Incubator is a great start for a process like this. The truth of the matter is, the vast majority of our content is created and maintained by a relatively small number of editors, when compared to the cast number of articles. The additions of tens of thousands of one and two line stubs has in no measurable way increased activity on the Wikipedia in areas where it is most needed. In fact, recent trends show just the opposite, that ratios of editors of to articles is decreasing, ratio of admins to non-admins is decreasing, ratio of new users to old users is decreasing, and some articles that can be read off-wiki seem to cast us as a dying project. (I personally do not believe that we are dying, but the trends are discouraging.)

Wikipedia needs to become more mainstream if we are going attract a significant number of badly needed experts, a cadre of new dedicated editors and admins, and in helping with the likely need to expand the financing needed to continue our noble enterprise, if we are going to continue operating on charitable giving. This can only be accomplished, in my oh so humble opinion, by focusing on quality to improve our public image. I am somewhat pleased with our trending towards quality in recent months, as the ratio of high quality articles to low quality articles has been improving.

I have spent considerable time thinking about our projects funding, and advertising as a source of revenue. In weighing the pros and cons, I always end up back up at the same conclusion. My reasoning is partially moral; there are starving children in Africa, there are diseases that need cures, there are disasters where relief is needed, and those are all areas where charitable giving is very important, because without charity the people in those situations and the foundations that assist them would have no other means by which to access funds for their operations. If a save the orphans foundation suddenly discovered that by placing a billboard for advertisements in their parking lot, or found that placing advertisements on the sides of their cars would yield them an substantial income that would allow them to fund all their operations, not need outside support, and provide excellent assistance to their orphans, but choose not to peruse that course of action then I would consider them negligent in their duty. I believe that in such an instance, the charity would gladly take such a course of action and use their new-found income to further their noble aims. The previous benefactors would then be free to support other charities that are unable to support themselves.

I equate this to the Wikimedia Foundation. Right now we take millions of dollars annually through charity and use it to fund our operation. While Wikipedia is a noble and world changing (we hope) venture, it is not feeding starving people, it is not curing diseases, and it is not saving orphans. The money we take through charity could have very well went to other more deserving causes, or we could have accepted it and directed it through the foundation to such causes ourselves. We are one of the rare charitable entities that are perfectly capable of funding ourselves, and most likely we would end up with a large surplus depending on how it was done, and that is fact that cannot be disputed. If that be the case, how can we morally continue to accept outside charitable donations? I know the argument against this would probably be - there is no guarantee that the people who donate to us would give their money to an orphan saving cause just because we stop asking for money. To that I would reply, then keep collecting their money, or hold an annual charity drive, and let the foundation choose a deserving charity to receive the money.

The problem with all this of course is the possibility that the money from advertising could have a major negative impact on the foundation and its projects. Of course there are other concerns about advertising lowering our perceived quality, or that adds look tacky, or that capitalism is evil. Anyone who has read WP:Advertising must realize by now that there are ways to make revenue off adds that would put very few adds. in very few places, (like just on search results) and even by just redirecting users to google, or yahoo, or whatever search engine THEY CHOOSE and allowing them to serve the advertisements and provide us with the revenue with little to no impact on the foundation's websites whatsoever. The other only other argument made that gets any traction is that advertisers will have some control over the foundations, but this is just not born out after an examination of programs like google's adsense. There would never be any direct contact between advertisers and the foundation, it would all be done through third parties and no chance would develop for any advertiser to gain influence as some believe they would. So back to my original point, the sudden influx of significant amounts of money is what I see as the only real possible "problem". I say that because, as we all know, when a person suddenly becomes rich (like people who win the lottery) it can often change them in a negative way. When large sums of money are involved the risk of corruption on several different levels increases, and this could potentially alter the makeup of the foundation through an unintended or gradual change in the mission of our project, by beginning to make funding more important that our work. There are surely remedies that could be found for that problem, by enlarging the board to have more eyes on the situation, through increased transparency, by limiting our annual income to a certain amount annually based on a community approved budget and when said amount is reached advertising ceases for the year, there are other potential solutions too, like donating any money over the approved budget to other charities of the communities choosing, or the gradual creation of a trust fund that could be used to eventually provide revenue and eliminate the need for advertisements. But the advertisements would be the vehicle to get us to that point. Should a remedy be found for that potential problem, I do not see why we should not begin funding ourselves. I believe it is the moral decision, and I believe it is the best way we can secure an income stream and take our project to the next level.

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