A freely accessible collection of human knowledge? Of course authoritarians hate it. An informed populace is their enemy.
politics
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All under the guise of "free speech". Which, as we all know, means speech that align with Elon's currently held opinions.
Just made my donation to Wikipedia, never have before, this news is as good a prompt as I could have ever received
You inspired me. Let's keep it rolling.
Just donated
I donated last night. The Christmas spirit moved me
Do you want me to donate to Wikipedia? Because NOW I’m going to donate to Wikipedia
This news caused me to set up a recurring monthly donation, where I haven't actually donated to Wikipedia historically.
Actually thank you. Yep monthly I’ve have now set up
Thanks Elon.
Same. $5 a month is a small price to pay to ensure that Wikipedia remains free of this turd's influence.
I will join you
Fuck musk
Guess who's getting their first donation ever from me.
Wait, maybe that's what he wanted to have happen. Maybe?
I'm at the point now where I believe every possible thing he wants will be to the detriment of humanity.
He almost certainly does not want that
I think I'll do the same
Eh. He wants to be king of Mars. Making life as shit as possible on Earth would certainly help speed that process up.
King of Mars while living on earth. Do you really think he'd want to live there? He might visit once, but probably by VR.
We should speed that along and send him there soon.
Please do not assign reverse altruism to horrible actions being done by horrible people.
Could someone please take aim at Elon Musk?
Will no one rid me of this turbulent apartheidist?
Nice deep cut reference there. Well done
One can dream.
Reminds me to donate to Wikipedia ..... and download another updated copy of the entire Wikipedia database.
Got any links on how to do that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
Kiwix seems to be the most popular app to browse offline web pages like this.
I've only ever used Kiwix ... it's the easiest and most easily installable on different devices.
I've downloaded the entire database about six times now over the past few years. I keep a duplicated copy everywhere ... laptop, tablet, storage drive, portable drive, smartphone ... in multiple places at home / cottage / relatives place
My latest download will only be to have an updated copy as my last one is about a year old.
I don't like doomsday prepping and I don't really prepare for anything. I've been self sufficient all my life and if the world ends, I'll be able to make do on my own, I always have. But when it comes to knowledge and information, keeping a copy of Wikipedia is no-brainer for me.
I'm not the prepper person either, but I like to be self-sufficient and not be overly reliant on modern technology. My primary use case has been during travels.
Well, I'd been putting it off so I figured this was the push I needed to donate again
Wikipedia is a good cause, but I feel like archive.org is in dire need of fundings.
Then English wikipedia is only about 100GB (excluding videos), archive.org is in the TERABYTES with some report of it being in PETABYTES. They need funding to keep up the maintenance of their storage and backups, and for the bandwith for people to access it. They've been attacked by hackers a few months ago so they'll need better security and that might cost money. They are under constant lawsuits over alleged copyright issues, lawsuits cost a lot of money. They're gonna need more funding than wikipedia to survive. I think Wikipedia already has enough funding to survive for quite a while.
Edit: What I means is, for every $5 wikipedia needs, archive.org might need like $50
So if you want to help both, the ratio of donations should be at least 10 to 1 (ratio between archive.org and Wikipedia)
Just sent them $50 as well. Thanks for reminding me, Musk!
I have my issues with Wikipedia, and he’s not wrong about the concentration of power amongst editors. However, fuck Elon Musk. He’s just mad that he can’t control Wikipedia himself.
he’s not wrong about the concentration of power amongst editors
The classic problem of an open-edit document like Wikipedia is the manpower it takes to manage the project properly relative to the incentives to fuck with it by malicious actors. Elon's answer to this problem is to monetize the sinking ship to the hilt and then use the excess revenues to buy the next new thing. The Jimmy Wales approach is to build out a network of trusted administrators and semi-trusted volunteers to play wack-a-mole on this one single project forever.
Originally, the theory of Wikipedia was that you'd have far more good actors than bad. Therefore, the bulk of the encyclopedia would accumulate useful information that went largely unmolested and didn't need to be babysat by live humans. This... hasn't proven to be the case. So the costs of the website continue to expand as the content base does.
Automation of spammers, scammers, and malicious actors has made the problem even more difficult. And I have no doubt that Elon's own digital vandalism efforts have taken their toll as well. There's simply too much economic incentive to fuck with the public's understanding of the world for a project like Wikipedia to go ignored.
I'm afraid its days are ultimately numbered, precisely because too many people trust it.
I'm proud to downvote this screed of baseless doomsaying but I'm dismayed at the fact that I'm the only one doing so.
Just goes to show that you come to Lemmy because of the potential of a federated platform, not for the reality of its current community (which is absolute garbage.)
this screed of baseless doomsaying
If you think enshittification can't come for you, its only a matter of time before you're proven wrong.
If you think that enshittification of all platforms everywhere is completely inevitable and we should just throw up our hands and give up at the slightest threat then you're unfortunately in good company here.
this guy is really good at making enemies
He's a vulture capitalist. Very good at finding ways to cannibalize a nice public thing for the benefit of a handful of private malicious actors.
That's always going to make enemies. But so what? You're a vulture. You can always pick up and leave today, then find another wounded animal to prey on tomorrow.
Never donated to Wikipedia in my life, but now I do, and its monthly. It's not much, but it's honestly work.
Thank you Elon for reminding me to donate.
Leon Skum urges people not to donate? That's a good reason to donate.
He’s such a snowflake
Fuck you I'm gonna donate even harder
Leave it to wingnut trolls like Musk to politicize everything.
Musk is such a dumbass.