On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Michael Snow <wikipe...@verizon.net> wrote: > geni wrote: >> 2009/12/15 Michael Snow <wikipe...@verizon.net>: >> >>> That's a strangely limited notion of who has the capability to help - >>> only people who are quantitatively more famous than us? For a project >>> that's built around lots and lots of individual contributions (whether >>> we're talking content, finances, or publicity), none of them especially >>> huge in the overall scheme of things, it seems completely backwards to >>> suggest that such things are useless if they don't dwarf what has >>> already been achieved. >>> >> The argument was that it was his fame that was helpful and that it >> rose to the level that we should overlook the obvious problem. If you >> wish to take my comments out of that context I can't stop you but you >> are attacking a strawman. >> > I don't see why it would be out of context, or attacking a straw man, to > challenge this understanding of what fame entails, or how much is needed > for it to be helpful. As it's been said about this interconnected age, > most of us end up being famous for perhaps 15 people, and sometimes to a > wider audience for 15 minutes. Clearly less than the overall fame of > Wikipedia, yet when it comes to endorsements or testimonials, that has > been a big part of achieving it, something marketers would call > word-of-mouth or buzz. Fame is highly context-dependent, so both the > magnitude and the usefulness vary with the circumstances. (That's part > of the reason to test different fundraising approaches against each other.)
Indeed; and arguably Craig Newmark is much, much more famous in San Francisco (where he's a local celeb) than he would be pretty much anywhere else. That might be part of the issue here. If you know who he is in the SF-tech-community-philanthropy context, it might strike you as more of a clear use of his good name to generously support a cool project. If you don't, it might look like more of a clear advertisement for Craigslist. Regardless this is basically the same debate we had over Virgin Unite -- the name of any commercial organization (and probably any other nonprofit organization, too, if we're honest with ourselves) being displayed on the site provokes intense dislike and debate among a large section of the community -- for various reasons, but mostly summarized as we don't want to use the resources of Wikipedia to advocate or advertise for another organization. -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com * _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l