I'm planning to not donate at all this year, (instead to Internet Archive) based largely on discussions I have read here at HN. But I thought the request to suddenly increase my typical donation five-fold was pretty outrageous.
"Struck by the immensity of the task being undertaken and achieved: to store and index everything that was on the Web, Kahle states: 'I was standing there, looking at this machine that was the size of five or six Coke machines, and there was an 'aha' moment that said, 'You can do everything.'"
"Knowledge lives in lots of different forms over time," Kahle said in 2011. "First it was in people's memories, then it was in manuscripts, then printed books, then microfilm, CD-ROMs, now on the digital internet. Each one of these generations is very important."
"It's not that expensive. For the cost of 60 miles of highway, we can have a 10 million-book digital library available to a generation that is growing up reading on-screen. Our job is to put the best works of humankind within reach of that generation."
A small favor to ask: can you avoid using the word "wiki" as casual shorthand to refer to Wikipedia? It falls in the same territory (or nearby, at least) as someone who doesn't know better saying "Java" to refer to JS (JavaScript).
NB: I have tried to word this as politely and non-derisively as I can think to. If you have any improvements, please let me know.
PS: Thank you for 1. your support of Wikipedia, 2. your support of the Internet Archive, and 3. the signal that you send by pulling back from #1 right now, when it makes a lot of sense to do so.
sure wikipedia is one wiki, but there's nothing ambiguous about "look it up on the wiki"
edit: lol ok fine I'm wrong, let me amend to, "wiki is an easily disambiguated term depending on the context of the subject, and if the subject is not your internal work project or self hosted fan site, you probably want to look it up on wikipedia.org"
When someone says "look it up on the wiki" I assume they refer to a wiki specific to the topic at hand.
If you have a physical set and it's the only encyclopedia in the house, it might be fair. I've never heard anyone generically refer to Encyclopedia Britannica as simply "the encyclopedia" outside of this circumstance.
> sure wikipedia is one wiki, but there's nothing ambiguous about "look it up on the wiki"
Hard disagree. With thousands of specialized wikis and in-house corporate wikis, it can never really be assumed to mean Wikipedia specifically, unless you're already on Wikipedia.
That is ambiguous. I would assume you were running a personal wiki project, and you meant that, or you meant the wiki at your place of work. This isn't like "flexing on the Gram" -- most people don't run a personal Instagram, so if you're flexing on the gram, as the rap lyrics say, then I can guess what you mean. But most of us use wikis at work, so we all deal with a large number of wikis, so simply saying "wiki" is ambiguous.
If you Google things that don’t have their own wiki, though, you do tend to get Wikipedia.
I don't mean to offend you, but this is a poor analogy. Java and JavaScript are hardly related, the former a programming language developed by Sun employees and first implemented by Sun, and while the latter did involve collaboration with Sun by Netscape and used Java-like syntax, the JS name is more marketing than having any relation to Java. But more importantly, neither is a type of the other.
"Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia, and Wikipedia is, in fact, both of these things and the most well known, the largest and by far the most used implementation of wiki[1] ever.
> can you avoid using the word "wiki" as casual shorthand to refer to Wikipedia?
It's really ok that nearly everyone does this, and what you're asking is like asking New York Times employees to stop calling nytimes.com "the website." I would not be surprised if 99.9% of all wiki implementation ever is actually Wikipedia, iow, there are lots of wikis, but most of them, by volume, are Wikipedia.
"Tree's leaves are turning pretty colors. I think Tree looks nice today."
What you just wrote is a decent argument against anyone taking issue with someone saying "the wiki" or even "my/our wiki" where it makes sense to. With respect to the topic at hand, however, that makes it a total strawman, because no one is taking issue with those things. Shortening "Wikipedia" to "wiki" is nothing like exercising the grammar of the English language to construct ordinary sentences involving "the bus" or "my truck".
Please don't make bad faith arguments like this. It stands out especially when it comes from someone who's first remarks were an objection to the Java/JS example on the grounds of category error.
Shortening "Wikipedia" to "wiki" would be like shortening "Burger King" to "burger".* It shouldn't be done, and it shouldn't be controversial to bring it up. It was a polite request, after all.
* or if that example bothers you, shortening "Taco Shack" to "shack", to use an example that will withstand any criticism that Burger King is not a burger, whereas Wikipedia is a wiki—which (again) doesn't even matter in this case, since we're not claiming any faux pas over the appropriate use of "a wiki" or "the wiki" or "our wiki" or "some wiki", etc.
Please demonstrate any false equivalence that I employed and demonstrate how my reasoning is flawed in claiming equivalence. Using wiki for Wikipedia, specifically because Wikipedia is a wiki, is the same kind of substitution as using plane for Boeing 737, because examples like these replace the specific with the general, which is incredibly common.
> What you just wrote is a decent argument against anyone taking issue with someone saying "the wiki" or even "my/our wiki" where it makes sense to. With respect to the topic at hand, however, that makes it a total strawman, because no one is taking issue with those things. Shortening "Wikipedia" to "wiki" is nothing like exercising the grammar of the English language to construct ordinary sentences involving "the bus" or "my truck".
Whether a definite or indefinite article is used makes no difference here, they merely indicate whether identity is known, and when missing they are assumed: "(the) wiki is not a proper citation." In English, we often use the general group in which the object belongs to replace the object, such as "vehicle" for "truck," and "truck" for "Ford," or "Internet" for "website" and "website" for "reddit." I have not, in fact, invented any argument to attack, which is necessary for a straw man.
> Please don't make bad faith arguments like this. It stands out especially when it comes from someone who's first remarks were an objection to the Java/JS example on the grounds of category error.
Here is your straw man. I have not made any bad faith arguments, so you've invented one to attack instead.
> Shortening "Wikipedia" to "wiki" would be like shortening "Burger King" to "burger".* It shouldn't be done, and it shouldn't be controversial to bring it up. It was a polite request, after all. or if that example bothers you, shortening "Taco Shack" to "shack", to use an example that will withstand any criticism that Burger King is not a burger,
Burger King is not a burger and Taco Shack is not a shack. You are suggesting that wiki is an abbreviation of Wikipedia, but because Wikipedia is a wiki your argument fails. And because these types of substitutions are common, the request was unreasonable.
For all the reasons that I just said. If you dispute that, then any response by me (or anyone else) is already guaranteed to be futile.
> Burger King is not a burger
Gee, it's almost as if I already covered that.
> Taco Shack is not a shack
Bizarre claim, and a clear example of the futility involved here.
Your accusation was vague and your reply here equally unsupportive. You may claim anything you like, but if your claim is unsupported then it is unconvincing.
Likewise, your defense that it's fine to arbitrarily omit "a"/"an" or "the" is what's truly unconvincing. To say, "I took a bus here" is acceptable. To say, "I took the bus here" would also be acceptable. Saying, "I took bus here", however, is definitely not a reasonable way to construct a sentence, despite your unsupported claims to the contrary. At best, it's a forgivable mistake that you might encounter from a non-native speaker, but in no way is it standard English. To argue otherwise (again, as you have done here) is bonkers and, like the Taco Shack example, suggests a commitment to never admitting to being wrong and a prioritization of that commitment over the truth.
* I suppose if we were operating under the rules that you insist exist, this could have been worded as "Taco Shack is not taco"
I wonder what, in your estimation, makes a specific cause a "woke" one?
In any case the surrounding threads have copious examples.
I don't think that is accurate. "Woke" still retains its original meaning of "aware of racial discrimination," and its subsequent generalized meaning of "aware of social inequalities." What happened was very similar to what happened with the word "liberal," which also retains its original meaning, namely, "tolerant," in that those threatened by equality or inexplicably opposed to awareness of inequality inscrutably use it as a pejorative. This doesn't make a lot of sense because "woke" used pejoratively strongly signals, "I am a racist and/or sexist and/or opposed to equality and/or opposed to awareness of inequality."
You're confusion is imagining that we care that's what it signals.
Honest question - I've heard people using that line in all of those contexts.
The way I use it, it means "alert to injustice in society, especially racism". But I suspect a lot of people on a certain political team use it to mean "liberal and stupid". There's a wide range of uses of the term, which is why I asked.
Not meant pejoratively outside of how poorly this current example speaks of the movement.
If it's the same, why did you choose only to call out that "side" of the spectrum?
For anyone considering donating, read this first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611094
The BLM scandal and all the mansions is just one of the most recent examples that come to mind.
All of these huge companies and thousands of individual donors giving money to what they believed to be a just cause - only to end up buying mansions and sports cars for the organization leaders.
Another older example was the Red Cross shinanigans in Haiti.
These sort of things erode trust in opaque charitable organizations.
That has nothing to do with 'woke'ness though.
Wounded Warrior Project[1] or any other charity with poor ratings, can be candidates for this, including conservative and similar leaning groups. But your comment and examples at least imply, if not necessarily intentional, that this is a trait of 'woke causes', and not an issue across the entire spectrum.
[1] at least before they were forced to do a wholesale housecleaning after having one of the lowest percentages of funds donated to a 501(c)3 that reached or helped their designated recipients.
I think it's a science of manipulation, and would hope that eventually it will bite them... but these sciences of manipulation are very effective. And pioneered by the industries that many of us work in, with all the A/B testing and funnel management etc. So if we want to point the finger...
There are organizations that I like and appreicate, but stopped donating to after they started spamming with me with 5-10 emails a week asking for increased donations, when I was already donating to them! I stopped. Even though I like the organization and think they do good work. but I bet they have correct reason to believe this spam will net them increased donations over all.
See https://www.charitynavigator.org/ or https://www.charitywatch.org/
Charity Navigator can be overly generous with their composite scores, but you can drill down to the specifics.
E.g. that WMF takes 25% of donations off the top for admin/advertising expenses: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703
As opposed to, say, the Atlanta Community Food Bank, which operates with <5% overhead: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/581376648
If you're going to donate, make sure they're actually going to the cause.
Having always donated to EFF, OpenBSD and FreeBSD but i completely forgot IA, will do that this year too.
Samesame ;)
Authors cannot stop libraries from buying their books and putting them on the shelf.
Or are you talking about ebooks?
In the USA, if any library pays more for a "library" price, that's voluntary. They have the complete legal right to buy an ordinary copy from any consumer channel that will sell ot them (new or used re-sold) and lend it out. And this is not a special right of things classed as libraries, it's a right anyone has. Traditionally, when it comes to physical copies, anyway.
In other countries, the "first-sale doctrine" does not exist, and this may not be true. I think in Europe libraries do pay "licensing" fees to be able to loan out books, that get redistributed to copyright holders based on use statistics, sort of how music playing licensing does work in the USA too. So argument here about whether libraries really do this or not may just be confusion over the fact that things really do work differently in different countries.
I suppose that gives us the opportunity to compare... has the right to loan out legally purchased books without licenses damaged the incentive to write books in the USA compared to Europe? Like even back in pre-ebook days? I suspect not.
But if libraries choose to pay more for a better binding, that is because of their determination that the value is worth it to them, not because there is any law that says they must to give more compensation to copyright holders. Nor is it proportionate to how many times they lend out the book or anything.
In the USA libraries are completely legally allowed to take a copy they bought legally anywhere at all, including a used booksale from someone else, and loan it out as many times as they want, without needing a license or to make any additional payments to original copyright holder. I am so so positive of this (although I am not a lawyer).
Had they not done that, the publishers knew they faced an uphill battle because of the first-sale doctrine. But once Pandora's box was opened, the publishers saw their chance to stamp out the whole thing by arguing "well they did it once, what's to stop them from doing it again?"
IA made a well-intentioned but ill-advised decision.
Perhaps you're thinking of e-books.
This comment thread gets to be part of today's lucky 10,000. :) (https://xkcd.com/1053/)
The point is that authors' revenue from books sold to libraries is the same as what they get from a retail sale.
>If people worked long and hard on something, they deserve the right to prevent it from being given away for free.
So FreeSoftware/OSS people don't work hard?
I think Ricard Stallman made a really good presentation why today's copyright is unfair for small authors but really good for the "harry potter".
That's not a fair conclusion from the parent comment at all. Software developers _do_ have the right to prevent their work from being given away for free. Them _choosing_ to develop FOSS is them voluntarily waiving that right.
But yeah its not a completely fair comparison.