Hi Jimmy:
Go for it! Any time in life when, as individuals, we have something to
give that can better the life of others, we should make the most of the
opportunity. No matter where you decide to donate the proceeds from the
auction, it will be of benefit to the recipient(s).
It surely seems you have checked all the "legal boxes" beyond that, I would
always go with "follow your heart". Life is too short to be overthinking
everything.
*Take care, Amy*
*Amy Vossbrinck (she/her)*
*Executive Assistant*
*Chief Financial Officer*
*We are not in a post fact world
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ4ba28-oGs>*
On Fri, Dec 3, 2021 at 7:58 AM Jimmy Wales <jimmywales(a)wikitribune.com>
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>
<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>
<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>
<https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11983-1.aspx>
<https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11983-1.aspx>
*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org