Wikipedia will be leaving GoDaddy

Thanks for the link!

> Journalists will love it.

This is probably the most important point. Boycotts of SOPA-supporting companies, as many have pointed out, do very little to stop the bill from passing. What they do succeed in doing is making sure opposition to the bill stays high in the news cycle and enters public consciousness.

hell of a username. do it justice.

Personally I think one should be deeply ashamed of backing away from an issue because it may be seen as "political".

Fact is that I doubt Wikipedia would have been possible in an environment where censorship and action without due process is seen as acceptable. Actually, access to wikipedia has been limited in the past by regimes that we consider totalitarian, or near-totalitarian, and the very action of censoring the web has been pointed out as a concrete manifestation of lack of democracy.

Democracy in the west has been weakened gradually over the past years. To a large degree because the population is helpless when it comes to influencing policy; we don't know how to act.

So when a clear opportunity to be heard presents itself I find it disgraceful that thoughtless and unprincipled people promote apathy and inaction. They should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

I think they are looking at this from the wrong perspective (although it's easy to do). An overly political stance from GoDaddy has forced Wikipedia to make a decision.

It's the same reason why I think Google and other big tech platforms shouldn't use their service to promote anti-SOPA initiatives... once you go down that track, your service is seen as divisive and political.

There is a significant section of the wikipedia community that thrives on inertia (just try contributing to an article there and see for yourself) for these people even a modicum of change is completely unacceptable. Heck if tomorrow wikipedia discovered a way to feed all the hungry children in the world by adding one article to the site you'd have people voting to delete that article for some reason.

It is a political decision, but it is directly related to an issue that could spell doom for wikipedia. Non-profits still get to have a say in issues that relate to their own survival.

Political indeed! SOPA isn't just a practical issue (although, it is this too), it's an ethical issue. It's important for organizations like Wikipedia (and universities! ) to take a stand.

And who's to say that negative comment isn't the work of an astro-turfing lobbyist.

They've certainly got means, motivation and opportunity.

Neutrality is important to their culture, and it could be difficult for some to separate "we don't want to support harmful practices and products" from the politics of those practices and products.

For a sufficiently large organization, no decision will make everyone happy, therefore all decisions are controversial.

Neither the Wikimedia Foundation nor the Wikipedia editors participating in the linked discussion seem to think that domain name supplier is a community matter.

As far as I can tell, this was a decision of the Wikimedia Foundation, and the resulting action will be taken by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Because they care?

That would be great. Maybe there should be a new open source software license featuring total denial of rights to use to the MPAA/RIAA member companies too.

There is a difference between registering your domain with GoDaddy, and using GoDaddy's DNS servers. The wikipedia.org domain is (currently) registered with GoDaddy. Wikipedia run their own DNS servers.

Neutrality does not require passivity and inaction. In fact, it requires that you actively distance yourself from politicized parties so that your neutrality is not called into question. GoDaddy has, of their own accord, become a politicized party in the SOPA debate. It is altogether reasonable for Wikipedia to choose not to be involved with them.

  > It shows that they are willing to sacrifice
  > their cultural values, particularly neutrality

Are you sure you did not get it backwards?

OR

It shows that they do care about their users, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to make them comfortable. A few Redditors started a cause to donate money to Wikimedia in return to ask them if they would acknowledge the fact that GoDaddy is/was Pro-SOPA and they should plan on switching their domain over somewhere else.

Jim is also a Anti-SOPA guy, he had the idea to move the domain once the news was out about GoDaddy supporting SOPA. Wikipedia saw an opportunity from their users that were encouraging them to switch.

Along with many others, I also agree with the choice WikiMedia recently made.

>> It shows that they are willing to sacrifice their cultural values, particularly neutrality, for other impromptu values that Jimmy sees fit to promote

Opposing SOPA is a must for wikipedia to maintain neutrality. Else, soon you will see that most of the so called controversial articles on wikipedia are no longer available because it will make it mandatory on the part of wikipedia to remove them.

And moving their domain from Godaddy is the right thing to do.