Wikipedia fundraising 2016 and a purpose-driven life
6Early this AM, while I innocently checked out the Kierkegaard Wikipedia page for NSFW content (Hope against hope! There is always hope!), I got trolled for a financial contribution to that info-and-time-suckhole of goodness and light.
I thought they did this a few months ago. Gave then. Ok like whatever. Take some $.
I don’t want them to have ads. I want them to be all pure and special-snowflake.
Everyone trashes them for excessive fundraising and being annoying and all sorts of Internet Crimes:
https://www.google.com/search?q=wikipedia fundraising&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
So, in regard to this issue, I proclaim:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will.”
Thx and credit to Aleister Crowley for bringing that remark to my attention.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley
Personally, for this intrusion of $ into my time-wasting, I Blame The Goat. And Jerry Jones.
Back to Wikimedia $:
https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:FundraiserLandingPage&country=US&utm_medium=spontaneous&utm_source=fr-redir&utm_campaign=spontaneous
Do what Thou Wilt.
/giphy Wikipedia
- 6 comments, 9 replies
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You’re finally gonna have a reason to hate me but I would never give a cent to the clique-dumper-fire-fest that is Wikipedia. Article owners control that website and nature help you if you try to correct them. I remember trying to make articles on fish that haven’t already had any and was told to fuck off a few times because for whatever reason the clique at the time was against stubs. So much for collaborative efforts eh? I finally succeeded on getting the article to stick by stealing another journal entry word for word. And don’t get me started on the color of the portals in Portal. There will never be an I told you so statue big enough for me.
Oh and the fact that they consider news media a holy grail “source” pretty much converts half of Wiki into a news feed. Journalism is dead and a news article should carry the same weight as a tumblr blog.
@DrunkCat
Why would I hate you regarding these thoughts? Pretty much, “Oll Korrect”, to my uneducated eye.
(Assuming “Oll Korrect” is correct.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK
I have never tried to edit or create content. I know it’s all clubby in the worst way the “civilized” Internet can be oh-so-exclusive and superior. I know the sourcing is, well, don’t-wanna-see-how-it’s-done sometimes.
(“Civilized” internet as opposed to career haters, conspiracy theorists, trolls, gamergate-types and their ilk. There are things worst than Wikimedia out there.)
Wikipedia is deeply, profoundly flawed. Even dangerous. Sucked me right in, had me at the Search Box.
That or heroin.
What could I do?
Reprise:
@f00l It’s quite the sausage factory so I recommend sticking to never peaking under the hood. Ignorance is indeed bliss sometimes.
@DrunkCat Yeah I was an active editor for a time, about 8 years ago, and left for similar bullying. First they flagged things like company logos as needing to have a ‘free’ image substituted. Uhm, no, it’s a company logo. But the final kicker was when one of the articles I spent a lot of time improving had a troll/vandal come in and put a “citation needed” on literally every sentence in the article. I had already had citations on every paragraph and other important details. After getting into a revert war, I escalated it, and was told basically that the vandal was just trying to help" Meanwhile he’d put stuff in his revert comments like “try harder, asshole”.
Wasn’t worth my time.
I’ve given to Wikimedia and will also do so again. I think it’s because of Asimov’s Foundation series; in fact I wish Jimmy Wales was more like Hari Seldon. Maybe someday he’ll edit his wiki bio page to match that persona better.
@snapster
@mfladd
Meant to reply earlier to @snapster, and got distracted by the attempted destruction of my Fantasy Football season by one @mfladd (who is not even in my league!)
@mfladd, I have just this to say:
I will destroy my own Fantasy Football season far more effectively and completely than you your dreams could comprehend".
Back to biz:
@snapster
FWIW, I suspect that the necessary mathematical foundation (heh heh, “foundation”, yeah, Butthead) of psychohistory or its real-world correlatives are and always will be wildly insufficient, over any long period. And that this is provable, in a profound Fields Medal way. Tho I’m not gonna volunteer for the job at this time.
First, the Black Swan issue, which bedevils fairly simple and fairly contained systems. About all of them, if the system includes human conduct.
But take it beyond economics and the prevailing political accompaniment. Assume that biological change will proceed at a rate that’s not surprising. For additional constraints, possibly unsupportable constraints, assume that economic, political, social, and technological changes are not wildly out of bounds with current understandings of possible speed and trajectories.
Still, I suspect, no go. The deepest problem I see has to do with setting postulate- and definitional-driven boundaries on a system to make it manageable under any initial set of circumstances. Even if the system is infinitely scalable, can manage all sorts of infinities, can manage complexity and chaos. There’s still “what’s outside, underneath, and in between”. And that quandary is beyond scalability. Math and logic have their own sets of tripwires. As does any representation system.
On the map: Here, there be dragons.
Which is not to imply it’s not worth trying, depending on who or what has control of the processing, the code, the formulations, and the theories.
…
But, that’s just me and various personal delusions. Quoth the Raven, “Nevermind”.
None of this really touches on Hari Seldon and his universe. Apologies for going nuts. I love Asimov.
“There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio”
Always. For all of us. I hope.
@f00l I’m not saying I support wikimedia because of any validity to psychohistory. I’m saying I support a galactic encyclopedia run by a guy I can pretend is as cool as a real Hari Seldon would be or even maybe Isaac Asimov was. But that’s mostly for the joke. Reality is I support the principles of Wikimedia and so far I find it’s flaws acceptable outcome (or at least work-in-progress temporary issues)
@snapster
Re psychohistory. Was just babbling, off on a tangent. Sometimes family and friends put me on a timer.
Re wikimedia: “we are better with it than without it”, by far, to paraphrase Ann Landers. So I send $ and then feel justified when standing at the lip on the rabbit hole. Perhaps feeling justified is the point.
/image Alice in wonderland
@f00l Argh. Stupid Johnny Depp, spoiling all the good things.
@Shrdlu
Much thx for the fix. Forgot to check on how that image came in.
On the whole, I think Wikipedia is a good thing. I have a small automatic monthly donation set up.
I have been far enough down the rabbit hole for long enough that I feel I owe at least a little bit of rent.
Maybe two years ago, I set up an automagic $5 monthly donation to wikipedia primarily to make their whiny begging for money go away, though I figure I get more than 16 cents a day (on average) of value from it and thus I don’t consider the money wasted or misspent.
I’ve done similar things for other services I use that don’t take commercial ads. It only seem fair.
@baqui63 had a WTF?!! moment about five minutes ago… I write the above maybe seven hours ago, but apparently never clicked Say it… it was still in a window on my PC at work.
#Geekcred (this got a Jimmy RT)