Hi all,
tl;dr: huh, this is weird.
I'm amazed at the muted reception to this. Even prodding David Gerard on
Facebook (who even wrote a book about the badness of Blockchain) didn't
go very far.
The concept of NFT seems to go against the very principles of Wikipedia.
On one hand, we share our work freely, both in terms of access and by
using a copyleft license. On the other hand, this NFT takes something
that was shared freely, and then restricts it so that it can be sold.
Copyright-wise, it actually looks OK: presumably the edit was released
under the GFDL (if that was even applied back then), and I think that
Jimmy owns all of the copyright here (maybe not some of the MediaWiki
interface?). So, while it's weird, it seems OK?
On the other hand, I'd have loved to see an email thread here about
"Auction at Christie's" that would have seen Christie's releasing
text/media of the items they were selling under CC licenses, so that
they could be used on the Wikimedia projects.
Or even better: we work with museums a lot, why not donate memorable
moments/equipment to them? Or perhaps we've already done that with
servers or later edits?
Thanks,
Mike
On 3/12/21 13:03:40, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> *Hi all,
>
> I am writing to let you know that I am doing an auction with Christie’s
> auction house, commencing today and closing on December 15th.
>
> We’re auctioning two things - the original Strawberry iMac that I used
> during the founding time period of Wikipedia, and an NFT artwork that I
> created to commemorate the earliest moment of Wikipedia.
>
> A bit of Q&A...
>
> **What is an NFT?**
>
> NFT stands for ‘non fungible token’, there is a fairly thorough article
> about it on English Wikipedia
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token>.
>
> **What is this NFT exactly?**
>
> I saw earlier in the year that Tim Berners-Lee did an NFT of “the
> original source code of the web”. In his own words: “"I’m selling a
> picture that I made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what
> the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed
> by me.”
>
> I thought I should try to push forward from that and so instead of just
> doing a picture (screenshot) of what Wikipedia looked like when I first
> installed the Usemod software and typed “Hello, World!” I would prefer
> to do something interactive.
>
> The artistic concept is not just to see what Wikipedia looked like to me
> in that moment, but to relive the experience: here is this incredible
> vulnerable thing, a wiki, and you dream of it becoming an encyclopedia
> for the whole world, but will it? Will it be taken over by vandals and
> trolls instantly? What policies will you need? What kind of community
> can you attract?
>
> **Will any portion of the proceeds go to the WMF?**
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation board has explicitly asked that I not pledge
> any funds to Wikimedia. (They aren’t asking me not to donate, just not
> to pledge to do so up front.) I am pledging to donate to “help support
> a variety of charities working in the free culture world.” I’ll decide
> after we see how it goes in terms of what exactly I’ll do! (Advice
> welcome! I’d be interested in a community process to help choose.)
>
> I’ve worked with the WMF per the board’s instructions on getting
> approval on all the marketing materials to make sure that it’s clear
> that this is a personal project of mine and not a WMF thing at all. I
> believe the WMF will also post about that.
>
> **What about the environmental costs of creating an NFT?**
>
> Ethereum is moving from 'Proof of Work' to 'Proof of Stake', which
> requires a lot less energy per NFT - I’m happy to see that and hope it
> happens soon.
>
> In the meantime, I’ve looked for the highest estimate of the amount of
> electricity consumed to mint an NFT. I’ve found an estimate that the
> average NFT minting consumes 340kWh. For scale, my friend has a Tesla
> Model X, and 340kWh would charge it about 3 ½ times. This is roughly
> 81.6 kg of CO2. For further comparison an economy-class ticket to NYC
> from London generates about 1800 kilograms of CO2. (Citation needed, and
> very happy for anyone with expertise to help me improve these calculations.)
>
> While I generally think it is better not to generate emissions than to
> generate and offset, I also think that generating withOUT offsetting is
> much worse. So I’ll be finding the most pessimistic estimate of the CO2
> that I’ve generated and offset it by 5x.
>
> ** What is the estimate for the auction? **
>
> Christie’s was unable to offer any public estimate for either the
> computer or the NFT. I can sincerely say that I have absolutely no idea
> what to expect. Given the current state of the NFT market, I’m very
> hopeful that some crypto whale will find this irresistible, who knows
> though?
>
> I’ll be around for the next 8 hours or so to answer any questions but to
> keep it all centralized, let’s keep it on my English wikipedia talk
> page,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales>
>
> Article at Christie’s website here:
>
>
https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-1…
>
<https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11983-1.aspx>
>
>
>
>
> *
>
>
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