Wikipedia is being pressured asked by AOL to consider the addition of a single leaderboard ad on the site that could potentially generated more than $100M/yr.

I sat next to Jimbo at a Wikipedia dinner over the summer. I begged him to put a leaderboard on Wikipedia and told him I would get AOL to sell it and host Wikipedia–for free. He declined saying there will never be ads on Wikipedia. I then explained to him in detail how that one leaderboard could make over $100M per year. I told him that they should take the $100M and give it to charity. They could help fund MediaWiki, the EFF, Firefox, and dozens of other open source projects.

I’m not a huge AOL fan but if the Wikipedia folks actually turned around and donated the vast profits from that single leaderboard ad they would certainly be able to help a lot of people. Sometimes playing nice with the “BIG UBER CORPS” is an effective way of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.