A Personal Appeal To Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales | Hacker News Reader

A Personal Appeal To Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

techcrunch.com

26 pointssamikc11 comments

This article doesn't cover the pros and cons of having the advertisement, nor does it present insight into how the advertisement could be improved. As is often the case with TechCrunch articles, this serves no useful purpose at all.

I disagree. While certainly not an in-depth analysis, it provides a succinct complaint: the left alignment of Wales' mugshot on the donation banner makes it look like Wales is the subject of each article. The article further supports this assertion by including screenshots of a bunch of tweets that say the same thing.

I didn't really find it funny, but it does talk about a real issue for Wikipedia readers. It even suggests an alternative -- right-align the image.

The word succinct means "Briefly and clearly expressed." There's nothing succinct about six screenshots that take half the height of my 15" laptop's screen.

Readers of HN must be completely miserable people to downvote comments like this.

If you would consider downvoting the above comment, look at your own life first and ask yourself why you're so unhappy.

The best part is the twitter quotes in the special frames - how else can we convey and support the idea if not by quoting random strangers from 160 character-limited message service?

Right, it provides a succinct complaint in that mass of silly editorial.

Wikipedia's decision to left-align Wales' picture has been tremendously effective at spreading the news that Wikipedia is running a funding drive.

So far I've read about here, the Register, Reddit, Techcrunch and a couple of other blogs who couldn't help pointing out the hilarity.

Money could buy that amount of publicity, but by gum it would be expensive. Congratulations to all involved.

"especially the 20 bucks I’m about to throw at you". This is very cheap on the writer's part. I agree, Jimmy Wales' face showing up is super irritating, but I personally did not like the tone.

Sorry Techcrunch, The Oatmeal already beat you to the joke:

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales

Usability and design considerations aside, I find it more worrying that this year's campaign seems to be entirely centered around him and that in general Wales is acting more as the face of Wikipedia than he used to. All that can lead to is making the project more vulnerable through personal critique on Wales, like happened with WikiLeaks/Assange.

After reddit submits, now HN article and more coverage this is transforming into an epic example of usability fail. I cannot think of any precedent or similar mistake.

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