[/rant mode ON]
For the TL:DNR crowd: Um, no offense, but you guys trashing Wikipedia are retards. Tnx, no re, gg.
For people who actually read stuff:
Many more people in developing countries view the Web than you think. They do it in Internet cafes, or through PDAs- if you go look at the markets for wireless devices, you'll understand. Moreover, where the hell do you think all of America's used computers eventually end up? In China, they have a whole
industry employing lots of people, tearing apart electronics and often refurbishing them...
Wikipedia is one of the better things on the Internet. It's what the Internet was like when I was slightly older than most of you retards are now- it consisted of patchy access to the Smithsonian, and random FTP servers, BBS's that provided UseNet, and Gopher stuff. You had to be fairly smart to use it, and it was mainly used to move
information around, when we weren't trading pirated software (the most ancient of computer crimes, I'm pretty sure).
Then came the first porn sites, and AOL. Good for the growth of the Internet, spur of bandwidth. Ok, so it wasn't all porn and people taking baby-steps with their first PCs, but still... it was an important moment. Because things became less and less about information, and more and more about visuals. It was, to my mind, a huge step in a bad direction, but almost certainly inevitable.
In the process, we've created a monster of a generation, you Gen-Z people, who actually have a FUCKING ACRONYM STATING THAT YOU'RE TOO STUPID, IGNORANT AND INTELLECTUALLY LAZY TO READ THINGS ANY MORE. TL:DNR- it's like a feeling in the Force... millions of minds shriveling from self-induced cavitation...
Hopefully, that is a temporary phenomenon. Or maybe it's just that most people are really just ignorant and lazy, and it's only over the last few years that the process of getting online, and interacting with people like me has gotten easy enough for people like you
I hate to come across as ancient and cranky, but most of you ARE TOO DAMN YOUNG TO REMEMBER WHEN THE INTERNET DID NOT EXIST, and you do not understand what something like Wikipedia means, outside of your privileged, college-bound or in-college little worlds!
If I was living in some backwards hellhole like the Sudan, I'd be teaching myself how to program websites, or something that could be done remotely for First World white-collar retards, like most of you will become someday. And I'd be chuckling, because the $10/hr. you paid would be real money, in Sudan, and would be less like killing, back-breaking labor.
Wikipedia is a godsend to people like me, who hated college but love to learn stuff. I don't have to ask some constipated, arrogant ass of a teacher questions, I don't have to pass exams that have nothing to do with the real world, I don't have to worry about whether the Wikipedia people like my politics. I just go there, and learn things.
It's not a perfect system, but it's frequently better than a Web search, for specific knowledge in a small area of human knowledge, or broad knowledge of a large subject area-
I can look up Carthage, for example, and learn about the Carthaginians, and wander the links, and end up learning a lot of history. Moreover, due to the way it works, the history I'm likely to encounter is likely to have been reviewed by multiple "peers", so while it may not be perfect (after all, information there is only as good as the people who post) it's certainly better than nothing.
Ask a bright 11-year-old in America how they'd learn about Carthage. They're going to reply, "I'll look it up on the Internet".
When I was 11, it was, "I will talk to Mommy, and see if I can get her to drive me to a library, and maybe we'll get there before I forgot I was interested in that".
Ask a kid in Egypt. Betcha the answer's the same as the American kid's- however, it costs real money, more than BBS's used to, back when connecting to the Internet was very expensive (they had per-minute charges, to cover long-distance fees, for example... again, you guys make me lol with half-hearted rage, because in half a generation, everybody has forgotten what things were like, before bandwidth was cheap). And, as most intelligent people know, a lot of places like the Middle East, for obvious reasons are a bit... reluctant... to semi-adopt English as their second language of choice.
Therefore, whether or not human knowledge is in a compact, easily-searched destination, and in a culturally-acceptable language, has multiple implications.
It is not an accident that most of our posters are from Europe, mainly Western Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as Canada and the USA... where are all of the smarties from Japan, for example? Please tell me that those guys don't want to make awesome video games, and I'll betcha that there are communities there that are doing some of the same stuff Spring is- but the language barrier is such a problem, we don't talk to them, they don't talk to us, making our collective here weaker than it could be
Wikipedia's attempt to address this, by providing translations by human beings, would be extremely useful, especially in the Middle East, where most people do not have access to accurate history about their own countries, let alone the rest of the world. They live in dictatorships of various flavors, they've never experienced our way of life, they're told many lies about us, on a daily basis (please, check out Egyptian TV sometime, if you can find a translation, it's funny stuff)...
And we wonder why they seem to be emotionally retarded and want to kill us. I'd kill us, too, if I was constantly told that everybody in this country was a sexual pervert of some kind, flagrantly wasted money, and was out to get me...
Wikipedia is one of the few things from the First World that is delivered to the rest of the world... that might actually counter that. Instead of showing the worst of the First World (giant bonanzas of porn, violence, and sleazy commercial excess)... it shows us at our best. The First World cultural phenomenon, and the reason why we effectively conquered the world, has more to do with our viewpoint on knowledge than with anything else.
Any asshat can fire a gun. Only an advanced, technically sophisticated society can build a decent army and train it properly.
Any asshat can sell shit on a street corner. Only an advanced, technically sophisticated society can build stock markets and set up rules that allow corporations to thrive without destroying the economy.
Do we want more asshats on Planet Earth, or more people who know that advanced, technically sophisticated societies exist, and came about in large part because of how they integrated new discoveries, increasingly-accurate history, and real science into their worldview? I think that Wikipedia, and other sites like it, are the best propaganda that the First World could ever deliver, because it's so powerful and so insidious. We humans are curious beasts... feed children to the Wiki, and they won't want to become suicide bombers, because they'll know there really
are alternative outcomes. And that we here in the First World aren't just horny monsters who want to rape and pillage them.
I don't give a shit about Wales, as a person, and I think his salesmanship sucks. His video was poorly edited, and made his sales points badly- I could've done a better job, filming my own shots, without a script, frankly.
That doesn't actually matter, though.
Wikipedia isn't just a moneyhole for Wales, as any review of their statements as a non-profit will show you (public record, please review before stating stupid stuff). And their actual contribution to the distribution of knowledge is incredible. Whether you wanna look up Carthage or
Cartoon Network or
Camilla Bowles or even
Cavitation is irrelevant... humans finally have a good collective place to store all of the wonderful things they know, in a way that isn't as patchy as personal websites, and provides mechanisms for review. Perfect, no. Better than the library, for all but the most serious study... hell, yes.
This thread is a perfect example of stupid, elitist, mainly white kids making themselves into ignorant asshats. And you're planning to run the world someday
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