Coca Cola Fundraiser: Fill & Download for Free

Early ChildhoodDisappear from the house about 9 AM and not come home until after 8PM without anyone issuing an Amber Alert.Carry a BB gun with me everywhere at the age of ten with no law enforcement encountersAs a four year old, steer the car around a parking lot while sitting in Mom's lapRide in the bed of a moving pickup truckRide sitting anywhere (the floorboard, beneath the rear window, upside down in the front seat) in a moving car, sans seatbelt...Wait in the car for my parents to finish whatever errand they were on that I wasn't interested inClimb any tree that was thin enough to get my legs around or had a convenient low lying branch without any visible adult giving it a second thoughtBorrow the hatchet, saw, hammer and some nails from the garage and invade the forested area behind the house to build a fort (we never finished) and protect it with booby traps (for our numerous enemies)Drink Coca-Cola out of a glass bottle (I know they are still around but they are rare and super expensive for the whole 8oz of soda they hold – so that doesn't count)Sold things door to door, like girl scout cookies and wrapping paper for school fundraisers around Christmas timeWandered through anyone's yard, for any reason, without fear of reprisalWent to an actual arcade, not Chuck E. Cheese's or some other commercial variationRode my bike several miles and across several busy streets to get to the mall, all without a helmet onLater ChildhoodGetting yelled at for tying up the phone line, for either talking on the phone too long or signing on to AOL for hours at a time to IM my friendsFelt a thrill of excitement when, after 45 minutes of unsuccessful attempts, AOL finally found a line that wasn't busy and the computer emitted that obnoxious dial tone/walrus dying of Ebola sound that presaged the online experienceRode on a plane without first waiting in endless lines of security, and then having my bags searched while barefoot with a security guard waving a detector wand all around me.

The main difference is in conflict of interest.Wikipedia's annual fundraiser asks directly for money for Wikipedia, which is a not-for-profit organization. They're just interested in keeping Wikipedia going, and presumably you are, too. So they ask you to help pay for it.However, if they took ads, then they'd have a conflict of interest. For example, suppose Coca Cola were running $10m of ads per year on Wikipedia. Wikipedia would have an interest in keeping them happy, which might mean that if Coca Cola were to edit articles about Pepsi, Wikipedia might have a hard time saying no. Wikipedia's interest in serving you as a reader would conflict with their desire to keep getting the ad revenue.There are other differences. One is that a lot of Wikipedia editors want to keep Wikipedia philosophically pure, and avoiding commercial ads is part of it. (That's how I feel.) Another is that call for donations only runs during the end-of-year fundraising campaign. A third is that you can click the little close box and the fundraising messages will go away. And a fourth is that you can participate:http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/I agree that for those of us who hate ads it's a little annoying, but I think Wikipedia is important enough that I appreciate the reminder to contribute.

Or, my favorite...the Coca-Cola article, sponsored by Pepsi.More realistically, though, how do you write negatively about a company when you take their money. Would people think it bought influence?