This is a good opportunity for us to take a look at the new conflict of interest policies [1], in light of preventing this sort of email in the future. In my opinion, the WMF Board had the right idea—this is a personal project, and broadcasting to a movement list gives a strong sense of capitalizing on fame and networks, at the expense of nudging us towards venal boosterism.
I'm sure this was an innocent idea and something good will be done with the money, but that's beside the point, we're not a forum for major donor press releases. Thank you for sharing some of the thought process behind your post.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_policy/2021_updates
On Fri, Dec 3, 2021 at 3:10 PM Jimmy Wales jimmywales@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-11... 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
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Thanks for the post; I appreciate finding out from an internal list before social media / the news.
Adam, agreed this list isn't a good place for general discussion about it, bit a heads-up seems fine (and a longer thread on wiki appropriate)
🌍🌏🌎🌑
*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*
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Cheers,
P
From: Adam Wight [mailto:adam.m.wight@gmail.com] Sent: 03 December 2021 17:32 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Marketing Mail] [Wikimedia-l] Re: Auction at Christie's
This is a good opportunity for us to take a look at the new conflict of interest policies [1], in light of preventing this sort of email in the future. In my opinion, the WMF Board had the right idea—this is a personal project, and broadcasting to a movement list gives a strong sense of capitalizing on fame and networks, at the expense of nudging us towards venal boosterism.
I'm sure this was an innocent idea and something good will be done with the money, but that's beside the point, we're not a forum for major donor press releases. Thank you for sharing some of the thought process behind your post.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest_policy/2021_updates
On Fri, Dec 3, 2021 at 3:10 PM Jimmy Wales jimmywales@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
Article at Christie’s website here:
https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11... 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
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On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 07:36, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Quite. As Jimmy notes in the WP:AN discussion which has already been linked to:
I was instructed to inform the community by the Board of the WMF and advised by the Foundation comms and legal staff that a post to wikimedia-l and to my talk page would be the right way to do it... I can equally imagine that if I had defied the board and refused to communicate with the community about it, someone would be getting inflamed over that.
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 13:34, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
Jimmy
As an aside, it would be good if Jimmy, or someone in contact with Christie's on his behalf, could ask them to correctly attribute the open-licensed images they've used.
"Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons" doesn't cut it.
https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11...
Maybe they could release their images of the iMac under open licence, too, in the spirit of the subject matter.
Cue extended rant by somebody that the board, Foundation comms and/or legal staff have no authority and/or are not competent to advise on this in 1, 2, 3 ... Cheers, P
-----Original Message----- From: Andy Mabbett [mailto:andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk] Sent: 06 December 2021 15:35 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Marketing Mail] [Wikimedia-l] Re: [Marketing Mail] Re: Auction at Christie's
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 07:36, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Quite. As Jimmy notes in the WP:AN discussion which has already been linked to:
I was instructed to inform the community by the Board of the WMF and advised by the Foundation comms and legal staff that a post to wikimedia-l and to my talk page would be the right way to do it... I can equally imagine that if I had defied the board and refused to communicate with the community about it, someone would be getting inflamed over that.
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@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-11... 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
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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-11... https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11983-1.aspx
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Well, all the sturm und drang on this one is on Facebook, in the Wikipedia Weekly group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/posts/4534171036630692/
Other than that, there was a bit of drama on Jimmy Wales' talk page, where an admin removed the talk page section Jimmy had created about this as self-promotional, and Smiley on Wikipediocracy found bits of the long-lost, original Bomis test wiki in the Internet archive.
And Joseph Reagle wrote a blog post:
https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/wikipedias-wiped-edit.html
Andreas
On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:26 PM Mike Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
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-11...
<
https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11...
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I missed this. Link to the on-wiki discussions? (Presumably on meta, since this isn’t just enwiki-specific?)
Thanks, Mike
On 5 Dec 2021, at 22:51, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Well, all the sturm und drang on this one is on Facebook, in the Wikipedia Weekly group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/posts/4534171036630692/
Other than that, there was a bit of drama on Jimmy Wales' talk page, where an admin removed the talk page section Jimmy had created about this as self-promotional, and Smiley on Wikipediocracy found bits of the long-lost, original Bomis test wiki in the Internet archive.
And Joseph Reagle wrote a blog post:
https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/wikipedias-wiped-edit.html
Andreas
On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:26 PM Mike Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote: 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-11... https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11983-1.aspx
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Hi Mike,
No, not on Meta – on English Wikipedia. You had best go through the page history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&action=...
The final section removal (there was a bit of back and forth) was here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=10...
As mentioned in the edit summary, there was a discussion at an Administrators' Noticeboard (AN/I) as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notic...
So, muted reaction here, not so muted elsewhere. :)
Best, Andreas
On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:57 PM Mike Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
I missed this. Link to the on-wiki discussions? (Presumably on meta, since this isn’t just enwiki-specific?)
Thanks, Mike
On 5 Dec 2021, at 22:51, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Well, all the sturm und drang on this one is on Facebook, in the Wikipedia Weekly group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/posts/4534171036630692/
Other than that, there was a bit of drama on Jimmy Wales' talk page, where an admin removed the talk page section Jimmy had created about this as self-promotional, and Smiley on Wikipediocracy found bits of the long-lost, original Bomis test wiki in the Internet archive.
And Joseph Reagle wrote a blog post:
https://reagle.org/joseph/pelican/social/wikipedias-wiped-edit.html
Andreas
On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 10:26 PM Mike Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
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-11...
<
https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11...
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I too expected a stronger reaction from the rigid idealogues and the attention-seekers (although I see that did indeed occur on-wiki, courtesy of the same old grandstanding admins), and thought the minimal response was perhaps a sign of progress!
Might just be disinterest and the ever-shrinking profile of Wikimedia-L.
I don't understand how a Wikimedia trustee using Wikimedia websites, Wikimedia branding, and this Wikimedia supported email list to promote a funding event for their own commercial project, i.e. "WT:Social", fits with the bylaws which include: "The property of this Foundation is irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes and no part of the net income or assets of this Foundation shall ever inure to the benefit of any Trustee or officer thereof or to the benefit of any private individual other than compensation in a reasonable amount to its officers, employees, and contractors for services rendered." https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws
Could someone explain why the Wikimedia Foundation gave permission to one of their trustees to do this in contravention of their own bylaws?
Hopefully asking questions does not automatically get you branded as an "idealogue" or "attention-seeker".
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 00:20, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I too expected a stronger reaction from the rigid idealogues and the attention-seekers (although I see that did indeed occur on-wiki, courtesy of the same old grandstanding admins), and thought the minimal response was perhaps a sign of progress!
Might just be disinterest and the ever-shrinking profile of Wikimedia-L.
Hoi, When Jimmy wants to sell his pc, he can. When he sells something intangible like the "first edit of Wikipedia" even that has nothing to do with us. Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 13:49, Lane Chance zinkloss@gmail.com wrote:
I don't understand how a Wikimedia trustee using Wikimedia websites, Wikimedia branding, and this Wikimedia supported email list to promote a funding event for their own commercial project, i.e. "WT:Social", fits with the bylaws which include: "The property of this Foundation is irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes and no part of the net income or assets of this Foundation shall ever inure to the benefit of any Trustee or officer thereof or to the benefit of any private individual other than compensation in a reasonable amount to its officers, employees, and contractors for services rendered." https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws
Could someone explain why the Wikimedia Foundation gave permission to one of their trustees to do this in contravention of their own bylaws?
Hopefully asking questions does not automatically get you branded as an "idealogue" or "attention-seeker".
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 00:20, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I too expected a stronger reaction from the rigid idealogues and the attention-seekers (although I see that did indeed occur on-wiki, courtesy of the same old grandstanding admins), and thought the minimal response was perhaps a sign of progress!
Might just be disinterest and the ever-shrinking profile of Wikimedia-L.
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@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@lists.wikimedia.org
Hi all,
As regards the use of the proceeds from this auction, Jimmy Wales posted the following rather non-committal statement on his English Wikipedia talk page:[1]
"I'm planning to donate a significant portion and use a significant portion for wt.social. I haven't made any final decisions. I offered to pledge to donate to the WMF, but they (the board) preferred that I not do that."
The way this is phrased could mean 95% for WT.Social and 5% for charity, or vice versa.
WT.Social (current Alexa rank around 120,000) is Jimmy Wales' commercial enterprise and the successor to the failed Wikitribune site established in April 2017. Wikitribune Ltd.'s filing history (incl. financial statements), as linked on WT.Social's "About" page, is here:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10713170/...
Reading the above pledge, I was reminded of a previous pledge Jimmy Wales had made to support worthy causes.
When he and Berners-Lee (who, incidentally, also auctioned an NFT recently) shared a controversial[2] $1M award from the United Arab Emirates (each receiving $500K) in 2014, he told the Daily Dot that he "never planned to keep the money and will use the funds to start his own foundation dedicated to furthering human rights."[3]
Could Jimmy Wales or the WMF board provide further information, beyond what is below, on what became of this promise?
And in the meantime, could readers help me with a crowdsourcing effort to survey what publicly available information there is on how this money was used, and whether its use matched the public pledge?
Looking at this over the weekend, I found that a Twitter account for the Jimmy Wales Foundation (@JWalesF) was set up in January 2015, soon after the Daily Dot report.
Two-and-a-half years later, in September 2017, Jimmy Wales incorporated a "Jimmy Wales Foundation". Its filing history is here:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10950000/...
According to its certificate of incorporation, available in the filing history, the "Jimmy Wales Foundation" is a "private company limited by guarantee". This is quite different from the sort of charitable foundation the Wikimedia Foundation is. A search of the UK Register of Charities for the Jimmy Wales Foundation accordingly draws a blank:
https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/resu...
Section 24 of the certificate of incorporation states that the Jimmy Wales Foundation's "directors are entitled to such remuneration as the directors determine". This remuneration may "take any form." Jimmy Wales is the only director listed in the document.
The foundation's first financial statement after incorporation lists assets of £25,319 (around $30,000). More recent statements show a negative balance. I am left wondering: Where did the other $470,000 go?
Looking into what the Jimmy Wales Foundation has achieved since its inception, I found that it had made 1,267 tweets, with the last one of these occurring in February 2019. A Google News search finds 9 mentions of the Jimmy Wales Foundation in the media.
A number of these are mentions of Orit Kopel, the co-founder of WT.Social, who also describes herself as the Ex-CEO of the Jimmy Wales Foundation on Twitter.[4]
Given the size of the original award, this seems on the face of it remarkably modest value for money in terms of the fight for human rights.
As the Daily Dot[3] reported, Wales promised that "every penny of the money will be used to combat human rights abuses worldwide with a specific focus on the Middle East and with a specific focus of freedom of speech/access to knowledge issues."
Of course – and I hope this is the case – there may have been other activities consistent with this pledge that I am unaware of. Any information shedding light on this would be very welcome.
Best,
Andreas
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&diff=... – see also statement on proceeds at https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/birth-wikipedia/jimmy-wales-b-1966-2001/1...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20191107063546/https://www.middleeastmonitor.com...
[3] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/jimmy-wales-uae-prize-money/
[4] https://archive.md/wip/C2rxY
On Mon, Dec 6, 2021 at 12:56 PM Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When Jimmy wants to sell his pc, he can. When he sells something intangible like the "first edit of Wikipedia" even that has nothing to do with us. Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 13:49, Lane Chance zinkloss@gmail.com wrote:
I don't understand how a Wikimedia trustee using Wikimedia websites, Wikimedia branding, and this Wikimedia supported email list to promote a funding event for their own commercial project, i.e. "WT:Social", fits with the bylaws which include: "The property of this Foundation is irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes and no part of the net income or assets of this Foundation shall ever inure to the benefit of any Trustee or officer thereof or to the benefit of any private individual other than compensation in a reasonable amount to its officers, employees, and contractors for services rendered." https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws
Could someone explain why the Wikimedia Foundation gave permission to one of their trustees to do this in contravention of their own bylaws?
Hopefully asking questions does not automatically get you branded as an "idealogue" or "attention-seeker".
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 00:20, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I too expected a stronger reaction from the rigid idealogues and the attention-seekers (although I see that did indeed occur on-wiki, courtesy of the same old grandstanding admins), and thought the minimal response was perhaps a sign of progress!
Might just be disinterest and the ever-shrinking profile of Wikimedia-L.
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@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@lists.wikimedia.org
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On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 14:30, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
According to its certificate of incorporation, available in the filing history, the "Jimmy Wales Foundation" is a "private company limited by guarantee". This is quite different from the sort of charitable foundation the Wikimedia Foundation is.
The WMF is a 501(c)(3) organization a concept that doesn't really exist under UK law (registered charity is rather narrower). If you wanted to create a rough 501(c)(3) analogue under uk law (although differences in tax law mean its going to be very rough) then your options would be a Community Interest Company (but that results in a much tighter restriction on political activities than 501(c)(3) see https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1788/part/2/made ) or a private company limited by guarantee.
Since this discussion of UK company law is largely irrelivant to foundation issues I suggest there is little point in continuing things on this mailing list.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org