That Time of Year, Pt. 1: Donate to Wikipedia Already

Apparently, seeing as the notices have disappeared, I am too late with this article. In my defense: at the time it seemed like a great idea. I was going to exhort in beautiful and compelling language everyone to donate. What could be more important, I would ask, than free information? Better yet: often factual free information that is peer edited, reviewed, and verified. Sure, now and then people get in and make stupid edits and ridiculous joke pages, but that is life.

It's the #5 website in the world, and probably one of the better and more neutral top-5 websites. They know they deserve it. Like PBS or NPR. The naysayers know not what they say, as is so often the case. In 2005 and beyond (and probably before) citing Wikipedia became a constant struggle. Professors would treat it like a cancerous lump: we all knew they were frightened because their death grip on knowledge might be broken. It was the dawn of collaborative knowledge. Myths would be dispelled, and the layman might know what lies within the mysteries of nature.

Or so we thought. Mostly, intelligent stoners spend hours drifting aimlessly down the infinite isles of Wikipedia, following insane paths. Students use it as a fateful start to research. The populace visits it to figure out what things are. Most uses are heavily similar. Yet, the stoners. It was not unheard of for an unfortunate, intoxicated in mind and feverish in pursuit of information, to start out with a mundane consumer product and end up in the Cretaceous or even Carboniferous era, trying to piece together the start of life. Caught, often, in mysteries far beyond their purview.

There is a moral somewhere in that story. Lazy students would straight-up cite Wikipedia. Snobs and profs would spit on it and declaim it. The masses didn't give a shit and were confirmed in their ignorance by the political and oligarch classes. Whatever. Business as usual. Wikileaks made a huge spash, by comparison, but then again, the crux of all of this was Wikipedia. The faithful, the peer-edited, the generally honest and neutral and balanced.

Yes, it was the start of everything, and possibly the only beautiful thing to come out of Web 2.0. I would sooner have something to read than a coffee. I was going to write in support for their cause. The upshot of my tardiness is that it is clear that Wikipedia has many supporters already. You have to see the value and comfort in that.