Why Gerard doesn't support advertising, Only for drooling morons Options

[Peter Damian]

Here http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2011/01/05/...-drooling-moron

I didn't entirely follow the logic. It seemed to be: large corporations are homophobic, and if there were advertising on Wikipedia, this would disadvantage gay and lesbian people.

Does anyone follow that?

[thekohser]

The point is, we would all love to see what Google AdSense ads show up on the Wikipedia article for smotherbox.

[Somey]

I didn't entirely follow the logic. It seemed to be: large corporations are homophobic, and if there were advertising on Wikipedia, this would disadvantage gay and lesbian people. ... Does anyone follow that?

That appears to be precisely what he's saying, which to Dave (and, I'd imagine, only Dave and no one else) would seem completely logical in every way.

It might be more charitable to Dave, and perhaps to LGBT folks in general too, to interpret this more along the lines of "advertisers would insist on having Wikipedia restrict access to pages containing homosexuality-related content," and that this would be a bad thing. Of course, I'm not sure that's entirely true - after all, there are plenty of advertisers these days who actually target the LGBT market as a way to increase sales, rather than shun them, bigotry or no bigotry.

Even so, he's going with the Classic Dave Argument Strategy™ of assuming that if something happens once in one place, then it's going to happen everywhere else, every time. Moreover, TVTropes.org has hardly become unusable or worthless as the result of their allegedly restricting LGBT content, though it might have become less so for LGBT individuals if they've done that.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I was able to load this page in Firefox without having to register or get past an "adults only" warning. The content on that page is certainly not something you'd normally see on an unvandalized Wikipedia article, so if this is even marginally representative of the site in general, then comparing the TVTropes case to Wikipedia, advertising-wise, is just not a fair or even legitimate argument.

So it seems to me that Dave is just doing what he usually does here, namely showing exactly zero respect for facts and the truth, if that much.

[A User]

So it seems to me that Dave is just doing what he usually does here, namely showing exactly zero respect for facts and the truth, if that much.

I agree. I wouldn't trust anything Gerard says.

[Kelly Martin]

Gerard is a shock jockey. It should come as little surprise that he prefers to cast absolutely everything in the most lurid light possible, without regard to whether doing so sacrifices the truth. I would not accept anything he says on face value, and his assertions always have to be evaluated in the context of his personal desire to maximize drama.

[occono]

I didn't entirely follow the logic. It seemed to be: large corporations are homophobic, and if there were advertising on Wikipedia, this would disadvantage gay and lesbian people. ... Does anyone follow that?

That appears to be precisely what he's saying, which to Dave (and, I'd imagine, only Dave and no one else) would seem completely logical in every way.

It might be more charitable to Dave, and perhaps to LGBT folks in general too, to interpret this more along the lines of "advertisers would insist on having Wikipedia restrict access to pages containing homosexuality-related content," and that this would be a bad thing. Of course, I'm not sure that's entirely true - after all, there are plenty of advertisers these days who actually target the LGBT market as a way to increase sales, rather than shun them, bigotry or no bigotry.

Even so, he's going with the Classic Dave Argument Strategy™ of assuming that if something happens once in one place, then it's going to happen everywhere else, every time. Moreover, TVTropes.org has hardly become unusable or worthless as the result of their allegedly restricting LGBT content, though it might have become less so for LGBT individuals if they've done that.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I was able to load this page in Firefox without having to register or get past an "adults only" warning. The content on that page is certainly not something you'd normally see on an unvandalized Wikipedia article, so if this is even marginally representative of the site in general, then comparing the TVTropes case to Wikipedia, advertising-wise, is just not a fair or even legitimate argument.

So it seems to me that Dave is just doing what he usually does here, namely showing exactly zero respect for facts and the truth, if that much.

Gay TV Tropes poster here. We might have gone somewhat overboard back when pages got the warning slapped on them, we had no idea what exactly Google considered inappropriate content. I suppose some innocuous LGBT-trope pages maybe got censored in the initial panic, but I don't remember anybody advocating for it. I do think Google could be much clearer about what needs to be censored though, the TOS that got posted seemed very vague, so we put the warnings on basically any page about a Movie or TV Show or whatever that had any "mature" themes in it, no matter how harmless the page was to read.....