I thought this might be a good point in the conversation to share some of the comments we have received from donors over the past day and a half. I think they really appreciate all of your work:
Wikipedia has provided an unfathomable outlet for the inexhaustible chorus of "why? why? why?" that has run through my brain since I was old enough to think. I also believe its a factor in why I am currently in the eligible Jeopardy! contestant pool. In short, thanks Wikipedia.
Wikipedia helps me almost daily, I cannot count the number of times me and friends have been debating the answer to life, the universe and everything (42, in case you were wondering!) and Wikipedia has dispelled the discrepancies in one or more of our arguments. Thanks to wiki, we have been able to convince each other we were wrong, and educate on topics we have never considered. Wiki is very important, and for this I will continue to donate as long as I can afford to. The more the world has open access to information for free, the sooner mankind will get along. Wikipedia is making the world a better place one article at a time. Thank you.
I've had a roadrunner and wild turkey with poults in my yard and I've used Wiki to obtain information about them.
There was a time I used to get embarrassed due to lack of general knowledge. Wikipedia gave me confidence. Thank you.
well, over time, using it became a reflex, like breathing but when i pause to think about it, it is one of the source of knowledge I use most and I am the better for it.
It's one of a tiny number of fund raising calls that I respond to. The charter or quest of Wikipedia , I think is among the highest ideals that humans can aspire to.
Wikipedia is the first point of call for any research i am performing, especially on a new subject. It has been a life-saver on more than one occasions
Wikipedia is part of my information ecosystem. It's like a road map for new intellectual territory.
There was (more than) one time when I needed to know if some dumb obscure TV actor from the 70s was still alive and Wikipedia was there for me. Plus all the other times when I just need a quick bit of info: size of a country's population, name of a president, details about a math function; it's endless.
Helped me with my uni degree, gave me medical information on health problems, let me learn new things about animals that I like :D Helps me answer questions from my kid about the world that I want to give her, but don't know the answers to
I think you're the only organisation that can fundraise that way and you deserve it.
My older sister doesn't have a computer (she's 82), so we talk on the phone and I look up stuff for her. It's a nice way to spend time with her, and it brings us together
As a journalist and travel writer, this online research is often my first port of call. For a quick scan of even just the most basic information about a topic, I used to have to walk down to the basement of the national television building I worked in to ask the archivist to dig out a series of reference books that applied to my topic. Sometimes the books were already in use by someone else, which meant I had to wait even longer or beg the person to share the book with me. Now, I just Google it and often end up on Wikipedia. While I always still double check everything I read on these pages and use other sources for my actual fact finding, it no longer takes hours or days to get started with my research
I've lost many bets because of wikipedia. So because of you I have looked stupider than if you didn't exist
Wikipedia is the first step in any student's research. When it comes to education, Wikipedia is the real MVP!
As a student, Wikipedia is a goldmine. I love you guys.
I use it for everything from government and politics to celebrities and tv shows to authors and books. There's a facebook group I'm a part of called "Cool Freaks' Wikipedia Club." People post weird, strange, interesting wikipedia pages they've found. Basically, wikipedia is awesome! (I'd really love there to be an accuracy scale though, since I usually end up researching stuff after I read the wikipedia page, just to make sure it's correct.)
I'm an engineer. I was not the smartest nor the dumbest in uni. I was average and over the years I forget concepts/theories/formulae all the time and I use Wikipedia to give my memory the nudge it needs to get back on track. Thank you.
It is my main source of information.
Taking AP Physics in high school I would constantly get confused with all of the unites and what they actually measured. Joules, watts, newton's, difference between power and work. Lucky wiki saved that day with wonderful articles that explained what everything meant. It helped me solidify my foundation in physics, helping me to conquer a college level class at the age of 16.
Keeps Me from lying awake at night wondering about past events & historical data
it is just just always super handy
I see Wikipedia as my knowledgeable friend which knows everything on every topic. For example, once I was really confused about red giants in astronomy, but Wikipedia saved me.
life is better with it than without it.
One of the nicest things about Wikipedia is the explicit information about local places -- especially for off-the-beaten-track places in the U.S. which are overlooked by guide books. For example, when I had some spare time in the SF Bay Area, I having a delightful adventure, finding an obscure wine-tasting area and great descriptions of museums which match my offbeat tastes, such as The Museum of Computer History in Mountain View, California. It is also a great way to find public domain pictures for lectures and to find out where my students are starting, as a baseline.
It is my "Encyclopedia"
Writing this I've just turned 28. I was perhaps among the first schoolchildren to hear "Don't cite Wikipedia; it's unreliable as a source!" by their teachers. Even back then in high school I knew that Wikipedia was important. Before I had left for college I had started my own axiom - "Wikipedia LEADS to the source!" I use Wikipedia every day of my life. I've taken it as a natural given, like it is a simple fact of our daily lives now. If I want to understand any subject with more clarity or depth (which I almost always do) I type it into Wikipedia. I am continually using it throughout the day to learn and re-learn and enrich my life. -but this is just me. I fully believe that Wikipedia will be how the younger generations will grow up in the future. In the past, kids would ask embarrassing questions of their friends or family, or maybe not at all - questions of sex and medical issues would torture young minds and could even lead to trauma and great frustration...but now any child can access Wikipedia and have the Whole of Human Knowledge at their fingertips to learn at their own pace. With Wikipedia, we've become our own parents, teaching each other all that we know; information is shared globally, and freely, in an unending and beautiful cycle. Truly, as romantically tragic as it may sound, Wikipedia is one of the few things that gives me hope for the future; as it shows people coming together in such a glorious way.
On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Trillium, in the "administrative set", I think you'll find that almost all of us produced content prior to our involvement in organizational matters. Those of us who have formal roles wouldn't be trusted with keys to the kingdom if we lacked track records of positive contributions to the encyclopedia. The exceptions are for WMF staff and affiliate staff who weren't hired from within the community; an ongoing issue is the need to acculturate these staff into the ways of the Wiki and to educate them about our (often complex) ways, while leveraging the value that they can bring to Wikimedia organizations in areas like legal advocacy, visual design, press communications, tech ops, etc.
Viewers, content contributors, funders, volunteer tech and organizational leaders, and paid staff are all necessary parts of the Wikimedia ecosystem. These groups and individuals interact in complex and intricate ways, and changes to the ecosystem are always in motion.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe