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submitted 1 year ago by wutamisposedtodo@lemmy.world to c/casualconversation@lemmy.world

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I feel like not enough people appreciate the simple fact that Wikipedia is essentially the most well-organized and complete collection of human knowledge in existence, and furthermore, it's available to everyone who has access to the internet for free in dozens of languages.

There are tens of thousands of individuals collaborating every hour of every day to collect knowledge and share it with the rest of the world purely out of the desire to document and teach, and millions of people spending hours in the Wikipedia rabbit hole learning about subjects that they would have had no opportunity to without it.

Wikipedia is amazing. It's the modern Library of Alexandria.

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[-] QubaXR@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

Wikipedia and Archive.org are two of the most fantastic projects in existence. Their contributions to humanity rival NASA imho.

[-] wutamisposedtodo@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Oh man, how could I have forgotten to mention archive.org??

My favorite thing on there is the Old Time Radio Researcher's Group who maintain a huge archive of radio shows produced between 1920 and the 1960s (and some from later years as well such as CBS Radio Mystery Theater).

I've been listening through the most well-known shows for about the last 10 years and I still haven't even listened to them all and there are dozens of other more obscure shows!

[-] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

I agree. And this makes me wonder: of they both disappeared due to some catastrophic event, would it be remembered through the ages in a similar way to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria?

[-] CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Wikipedia isn’t going anywhere unless most of humanity and our tech is gone. Tons of people take “backups” of it all the time. (Shout out to my fellow datahoarders). If you only get the text, it’s not very large at all.

It’ll easily fit on phones these days.

https://www.howtogeek.com/260023/how-to-download-wikipedia-for-offline-at-your-fingertips-reading/

[-] macintosh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Internet archive? Likely. It has an archive of a large portion of the beginnings of the internet, which will likely be a major historical source in the future.

Wikipedia? I’m unsure. It’s a collection of information obtained via various sources, most of which would still be extant. Not to put down the work of their project, it is very important. But it’s not impossible to replace like the way back machine.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Archive is already used as a historical source in some cases, including as the source of many citations on Wikipedia.

[-] venusenvy47@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Are the sites with other top level domains like archive.is the same company? I've seen requests to donate to various Archive sites but I can tell if they are all the same company.

[-] QubaXR@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Not sure about these. Archive.org is a depository of free music, videos, books, articles, games and many other cultural artifacts at risk of getting lost to time. One of their coolest projects is the Wayback Machine which backs up pretty much entire Internet. Want to see what first version of Amazon looked like, or browse an obscure geocities page no longer available? Yup, they most likely have it backed up.

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As an ex-contributor, what goes on behind the scenes is absolutely wild. If you're ever bored and want something to take over your life... Start editing Wikipedia.

[-] PugJesus@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago

Me when I check some minor article and I notice some questionable things, go into the talk page, and observe the fireworks behind the scenes

[-] Holodeck_Moriarty@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Thank you for your service

[-] FrickAndMortar@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago

Wikipedia is one of the few online orgs that I donate to every year. Even if I can only throw a couple of bucks their way, I usually try to gift at least $20 or something.

[-] wutamisposedtodo@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Same here! I have a monthly donation going, and the $2 is well worth the hundreds of hours I've spent on it.

[+] ShootBANGdang@sh.itjust.works -9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Don’t. I used to, until i found out that they have a ton of money and their begging and their pleading is a disingenuous emotional appeal to make people like me donate

[-] newtraditionalists@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago

This is a bad take to me. Them having a surplus of money is good. We want them to be operating as strongly as possible. Is it shitty to use an appeal to emotion like that? Absolutely. However, that shouldn't mean we all stop donating to them. For some people, the shitty appeal to emotion doesn't outweigh the importance of what wikipedia provides. Don't donate if you don't have it, but if someone still sees the value in what they do and it is easy for them to donate then they should do so. Personally, I put my money elsewhere, but discouraging people from donating at all is a weird stance to take.

[-] Kolrami@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The alternative is telling people that they shouldn't donate until Wikipedia is nearly bankrupt. If you want Wikipedia to exist, that doesn't sound like a wise plan.

[-] iAmTheTot@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

That site has some huge yikes material on it. They basically pride themselves on being contrarian, as well.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'd never heard that about Wikipedia before. What sorts of things are they contrarian about?

[-] iAmTheTot@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Not Wikipedia, the unherd site they linked lol

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Ahh makes much more sense! Thanks!

[-] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've never donated, but I don't mind seeing them ask. It really is all the information in history in your pocket. That's a great thing in my book, and has never been done before ever at the scale they make possible. I see zero problems with them having money in the bank.

Should contributors be paid? I think that's a valid question. But I'd want to know what actual contributors think on that subject.

[-] HipPriest@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

I don't mind contributing to a service I use pretty much daily. That seems a fair thing to do regardless of their financial state.

[-] arcrust@lemmy.fmhy.ml 29 points 1 year ago

If i found a genie, one of my 3 wishes would be that reddit was viewed like Wikipedia. It should be a non-profit. I'd gladly donate to keep the servers up. I do that for Lemmy now.

If I want to know something, I'm either looking at Wikipedia for general information, or reddit for specific. The odds that someone else has asked the same question on reddit it weirdly high. Even Google acknowledged that there search results went to shit because of the blackouts. How did we let such a wealth of knowledge get caught up in profits.

I love Wikipedia. Even if it has flaws, it's by far one of the best things we've created a humanity.

[-] venusenvy47@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would like to see Jimmy Wales run Twitter and Reddit clones. If there is anyone that you can trust to not turn a website into a commercial entity, it's the guy running one of the world's most visited site with no advertising.

Maybe Wikimedia can host Mastodon and Lemmy server.

Either him or the guy who runs Craigslist, with no obvious intentions of trying to wring money out his site

[-] loz@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Isn't the wiki media foundation planning a reddit like site?

[-] fidodo@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

When it first came out people ridiculed it and thought it would fail and never reach the quality of encyclopedias.

[-] beefbaby182@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Can we all just take a moment to stop and appreciate just how much content Wikipedia delivers to us completely ad-fucking-free???

Oftentimes, I find myself just skipping a search engine entirely and going straight to Wikipedia first.

[-] MossBear@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

The power of community driven projects! Tis' a beautiful thing.

[-] AB7ORH7D@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Have you heard of Obsidian? It's basically a note-taking/journaling app that allows you to link entries to other entries similar to Wikipedia. Overtime you create a wiki of your mind and experiences. It's also free and saves your files in markdown.