Aaron Swartz is dead - Wikimedia-l

Fae

12 Jan 12 Jan

9:37 p.m.

On 12 January 2013 12:04, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Killed himself. http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html

Awful news. -- Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) FaeWCA(a)gmail.com Wikimedia Chapters Association Chair http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae

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Ziko van Dijk

13 Jan 13 Jan

midnight

Sorry, I don't know better - in what way was A. S. related to the Wikimedia movement? Kind regards Ziko 2013/1/12 Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

I never met Aaron, nut this is very, very sad news. On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Fae <faewca(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 12 January 2013 12:04, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Killed himself. http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html

Awful news. -- Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) FaeWCA(a)gmail.com Wikimedia Chapters Association Chair http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

-- ----------------------------------------------------------- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht -----------------------------------------------------------

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David Gerard

12:07 a.m.

On 12 January 2013 15:01, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

He was an author (user:aaronsw) and developer, among others.

Also came up with the study showing that most content contribution is done by drive-by editors: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia So a few hundred people do the curation work - but the original writing is done by lots and lots of people. - d.

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Everton Zanella Alvarenga

12:03 a.m.

I just created an article for him on Portuguese Wikipedia. I want to improve about this "On July 19, 2011, he was arrested for harvesting academic journal articles from JSTOR." Very sad. Tom On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:00 PM, Ziko van Dijk <vandijk(a)wmnederland.nl> wrote:

...

Sorry, I don't know better - in what way was A. S. related to the Wikimedia movement? Kind regards Ziko 2013/1/12 Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com>om>:

I never met Aaron, nut this is very, very sad news. On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 1:37 PM, Fae <faewca(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 12 January 2013 12:04, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Killed himself. http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html

Awful news. -- Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) FaeWCA(a)gmail.com Wikimedia Chapters Association Chair http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

-- ----------------------------------------------------------- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht ----------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

-- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

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Sumana Harihareswara

12:18 a.m.

It's shocking, horrible news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AaronSw/Election - he ran for the Board in 2006. See http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morewikipedians "Making More Wikipedians". Some more links and memories at http://www.metafilter.com/123777/Open-access-open-internet-closed-book . -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation

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Everton Zanella Alvarenga

2:06 a.m.

[...] "The first site I built was called get.info. The idea was to have a free, online encyclopedia that anyone could edit or add things to or reorganize, right through their web browser. I built the whole thing, added lots of cool features, tested it on all sorts of browsers, and was very proud of it. It actually won even a prize for one of the best new web applications that year. Unfortunately, the only people I knew at the time were other kids in my school, so I didn't really have anyone writing a lot of encyclopedia articles. (Luckily, several years later, my mother pointed me to this new site called "Wikipedia" that was doing the same thing.)" [...]

...

From "How to Get a Job Like Mine" <https://aaronsw.jottit.com/howtoget>.

Thanks for the links bellow. This was a really horrible lost for all of us. Tom On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 2:09 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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As has been noted, Aaron (User:AaronSw) was a prolific Wikipedian since 2003 and a candidate in the 2006 Board election. His writings during his election campaign are worth re-reading: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whorunswikipedia http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morewikipedians http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morewikipedias http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikicodeislaw He was also described as "one of the early architects of Creative Commons" by Larry Lessig [1], and founded infogami which merged into Reddit, so he's sometimes called a Reddit co-founder as well. Since then he's turned to activism and co-founded Demand Progress which has been rallying opposition to bad Internet law, including SOPA/PIPA. Cory Doctorow's obituary is a very personal goodbye and includes a video of Aaron's talk "How we stopped SOPA". http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html Aaron was an intense, passionate and focused intellectual who dedicated his life to changing the world for the better - and he did. It's a shocking loss and deeply sad that he left us so early, that he saw no other way. May he rest in peace. Erik [1] http://www.lessig.org/2006/09/if-i-could-vote-on-the-wikiped/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

-- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

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Gregory Varnum

2:21 a.m.

Condolences to all that knew him - very tragic - especially at such a young age. If my memory is correct (and that's a gamble) I seem to recall knowing about him more from his work on early RSS around the age of 13. I was in college doing websites at the time and recall being rather impressed with someone so young making such a widespread impact on the core of the web. -greg aka varnent On 12 Jan, 2013, at 12:10 PM, Ziko van Dijk <vandijk(a)wmnederland.nl> wrote:

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Thanks for the information, and my condoleances to those who knew him. Sounds like a very, very interesting person. Kind regards Ziko 2013/1/12 Everton Zanella Alvarenga <ezalvarenga(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:

[...] "The first site I built was called get.info. The idea was to have a free, online encyclopedia that anyone could edit or add things to or reorganize, right through their web browser. I built the whole thing, added lots of cool features, tested it on all sorts of browsers, and was very proud of it. It actually won even a prize for one of the best new web applications that year. Unfortunately, the only people I knew at the time were other kids in my school, so I didn't really have anyone writing a lot of encyclopedia articles. (Luckily, several years later, my mother pointed me to this new site called "Wikipedia" that was doing the same thing.)" [...] From "How to Get a Job Like Mine" <https://aaronsw.jottit.com/howtoget>. Thanks for the links bellow. This was a really horrible lost for all of us. Tom On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 2:09 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

As has been noted, Aaron (User:AaronSw) was a prolific Wikipedian since 2003 and a candidate in the 2006 Board election. His writings during his election campaign are worth re-reading: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whorunswikipedia http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morewikipedians http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morewikipedias http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikicodeislaw He was also described as "one of the early architects of Creative Commons" by Larry Lessig [1], and founded infogami which merged into Reddit, so he's sometimes called a Reddit co-founder as well. Since then he's turned to activism and co-founded Demand Progress which has been rallying opposition to bad Internet law, including SOPA/PIPA. Cory Doctorow's obituary is a very personal goodbye and includes a video of Aaron's talk "How we stopped SOPA". http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html Aaron was an intense, passionate and focused intellectual who dedicated his life to changing the world for the better - and he did. It's a shocking loss and deeply sad that he left us so early, that he saw no other way. May he rest in peace. Erik [1] http://www.lessig.org/2006/09/if-i-could-vote-on-the-wikiped/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

-- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

-- ----------------------------------------------------------- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht ----------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

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FT2

4:37 a.m.

A few posts if anyone here's not aware of Aaron (see also his Wikipedia bio) - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist… - http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/verysick - Aaron's blog post on himself - http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully - by Lawrence Lessig - http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/01/academic-libraries/many-jstor-journal-… 3 days ago FT2 On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 5:27 PM, Kat Walsh <kat(a)mindspillage.org> wrote:

...

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 4:04 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Killed himself. http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html - d.

Oh, Aaron. I remember meeting him, after reading some of his writing, and being surprised to find the person behind the mental voice, introverted and thoughtful and a little awkward, in contrast to the boldness of his blog. I considered him a friend, though I wish I'd known him better; I remember talking to him, often in a smaller gathering of nerds after some conference or event, about copyright, the open web, Wikipedia, social structures, and usually about some problem or another that existed in the world. And unlike almost anyone else, a short time later Aaron would have founded an organization or taken on some big project or pulled some crazy stunt to try to fix that problem, because that's just what he did. And sometimes he succeeded. What a huge loss. -Kat

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David Gerard

6:50 a.m.

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activis… - d.

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Federico Leva (Nemo)

8 a.m.

This is the worst news of last year for Wikimedia, Aaron has been a genial and precious member of our community. But nothing really meaningful can be said or done now... Nemo

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