I can pretty much guarantee that this is the scariest thing you'll see this Halloween: an ad-infested wikipedia.

Alright, alright, so Jason Calacanis has twice revised his position on wikipedia advertising after an onslaught of virtual vitriol and even rescinded his claim of the unconscionability of failing to monetize everyone's favorite part of the internet (and no, he never suggested a graphic ad).

The funny thing is that I can completely see where he's coming from: Really, why should you turn down easy money that can be dedicated to a good cause? Think about it—the lack of ads on wikipedia has no chance of feeding starving people or rebuilding homes in New Orleans or putting books in schools that need them, but ad revenue certainly could. I wish it wasn't true, but it is.

And yet this image is completely horrifying and the very idea has created such a blogosphere backlash that even the irreverent, self-assured internet millionaire that everyone loves to hate is shaking in his boots a little and swallowing his words.

Why? Because Wikipedia is pretty much the Temple Mount of the internet. The Library of Alexandria or the Louvre any other great repository of human knowledge and creativity would probably make a better metaphor, but my point is that it's a sacred space. Tim Berners-Lee wrote that he dreamt the internet would be "less of a television channel and more of an interactive sea of shared knowledge," and wikipedia is, as far as I'm aware, the only part of the internet that truly realizes that. It's, quite simply, what the internet was made for—not for selling more Chevrolets (no matter how much of the money Chevrolet will fork over to potentially good causes get people to buy its trucks) or helping shrewd entrepreneurs get their little piece of the American dream (although it certainly does that too!), but for sharing, generating, accessing information, and the emergent beauty of wikipedia is pretty much unparalleled.

Wikipedia is information for information's sake, and our desire to keep it free from the commercial whirlwind that infuses every other moment of our being (even our reading of, ahem, kenspeckle.net) is selfish, maybe. After all, it's easy enough for us tech-savvy, educated, left-leaning wikipedia addicts who have AdSense scripts on our own narcissistic blogs to cry over the purity of our sanctuary from our warm apartments and our iBooks while the less fortunate dessicate in inhuman conditions. But the truth is that people have never stopped writing, learning, or making art to help the needy or cure diseases. And when we get over ourselves and realize just how much our contributions are needed, we should simply go contribute in some tangible way, rather than trying to scrounge up the fraction of money that corporations will donate for us to send them more customers and desecrating a valuable cultural achievement in the process. Just my $0.02.