[Wikimedia-l] Aaron Swartz is dead

[Gregory Varnum]

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 at wmnederland.nl> wrote:

> 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 at wikimedia.org>:
>> [...]
>> 
>> "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 at 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/
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> 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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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
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