I pay Weight Watchers $8 a month, just in case I decide to start dieting again. I haven’t used it in a year, but cancelling my subscription would mean admitting defeat.
I pay Hulu $7.99 a month for Hulu Plus even though it forces me to watch ads between my favorite shows. I yell at the screen every time, but whatever.
[#contributor: /contributors/590954a8d8c8646f38eef443]|||Emily Dreyfuss is the online news and opinion editor at Wired. She spends a lot of time exploring Wikipedia rabbit holes.|||
I pay Netflix $8.99 a month mostly to watch Law and Order episodes I have on a USB stick my brother gave me for Christmas five years ago.
I pay The New York Times $15 a month, because I value the role its top-notch reporting plays in maintaining the checks and balances of our society.
I pay the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, about $35 a month for lazy parking practices that result in tickets. (Hey, the street signs here are ridiculous.)
So why not pay to maintain the greatest trove of human knowledge in the history of our species?
Wikipedia, like public radio, has been begging for money a few times each year since forever. Or so it seems. I remember the first time I saw co-founder Jimmy Wales’ face staring at me from the top of every. Single. Article. It was 2011. Jesus, I thought. Enough! I get it! You need money! Stop following me to articles about the island of Socotra or the demographics of Idaho! I don’t need your hungry eyes glaring at me as I’m reading up on 17th century body snatchers!
“Give me money, Emily,” Wales begged, “then go back to researching Beyonce lyrics.”
“Excuse me, Jimmy,” I wanted to say, “I don’t appreciate being watched as I read about how her song "Baby Boy" includes a lyrical interpolation of "No Fear" by O.G.C.”
Later, Wikipedia replaced Wales with other employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, which maintains Wikipedia with grants and donations. They moved me about as much as Wales did, which is to say not at all.
Today, while scanning my third Wikipedia article in as many hours, I saw the beggi.... er, note was back. It's at the bottom now, without the pleading visage of a Wikipedian, and now includes an option to pay monthly.
I was annoyed, again. That's the first instinct of anyone who spends time on the Internet and is constantly bombarded by pleas for money. But then I realized something: My annoyance was a symptom of my dependence on Wikipedia. I rely on it utterly. I take it completely for granted.
I use Wikipedia to settle arguments at dinner (Patrick Swayze DID write and sing "She's Like the Wind" from * Dirty Dancing*). I double-check memories using it (the epicenter of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake was actually Reseda). I fact check TV (huh, * Sons of Anarchy* isn't lying about Irish gun-running in America). When I want to know when exactly the 1918 influenza outbreak started, I go to Wikipedia. Last week, when I was searching for a comprehensive history of the modern public health system, I was stunned to find The New York Times and The Economist and even Ezra Klein hadn't written one. I despaired, wondering how it could be possible that so important an article did not exist. I briefly contemplated writing one, but the daunting research it would require nearly choked me, even if the Ebola outbreak makes such an article immensely necessary.
But of course the article exists. It has been written and edited and updated by hundreds of people who have engaged in endless debates over its accuracy. I am, of course, referring to a comprehensive page on Wikipedia.
Yes, Wikipedia has famous hoaxes. Some articles are incomplete, or contain questionable facts. It’s not acceptable to cite it in academic papers. But I'll bet you lunch at Hungry Mother that half the people writing term papers these days find primary sources in the bibliography listed at the bottom of every Wikipedia articles. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
Think of the immensity that is Wikipedia. It has 4.6 million pages in English alone (and 33.9 million worldwide). Artist Joe Davis is encoding that data into the genome of an apple to approximate the fruit of knowledge, that fruit that held all the secrets to life and reportedly got Adam and Eve tossed out of paradise. And Davis is not far off---Wikipedia is the best approximation of a complete account of knowledge we've ever seen.
It’s also the most robust. The most easily accessed. And the safest. It exists on servers around the world so, unlike the library at Alexandria, it can’t be burned down.
But it could be cached. It could be left to stagnate, neglected and forgotten. Worse, it could become the rarefied domain of the monied elite, like so much information before it. I'd hate to see that, and hate it even more if I'd been part of it. So, fine, Jimmy Wales. I will do my part.
I have decided to give Wikipedia six bucks a month to help keep it humming along, and free of advertising. That’s $1.99 less than I pay each month to watch Connie Britton croon in Nashville. You can read about her on Wikipedia. I did.
