In the Dark

It seems that Donald Trump’s owner, Elon Musk, does not approve of Wikipedia. Apparently he particularly dislikes the fact that the organizers are dedicated to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion whereas white supremacists like Musk prefer prefer Monotony, Unfairness and Exclusion of everyone who is not like them. I would imagine if he were in charge it would turn into another Conservapedia. Anything that Musk hates has to be worth supporting so today I made a donation to Wikipedia, which is a non-profit organization.

I don’t remember the launch of Wikipedia in January 2001, but I do recall when students started using Wikipedia links in project reports and the like. Unfortunately, at the beginning, many of the articles on scientific topics were very poor – often laughably so – and I discouraged students from using them. Now, over twenty years and the efforts of many volunteer editors later, they are generally very good. I now encourage students to use Wikipedia as a resource, but I still discourage them from including references to it in formal reports. The best way to use it is to get an overview but then dig down into the references which most articles lists.

I find Wikipedia an excellent resource for things outside science of course, especially music, and link to articles there very often from this blog.

Somewhere along the line somebody even set up a Wikipedia page about me. It began as “just a stub” but has been updated from time to time. I don’t know who set it up or who has updated it. I just looked and it still says I am Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Astronomical Society, when I resigned from both organizations earlier this year. I’ve edited a few articles there myself, actually, mostly on cosmology but also on jazz. Some of my blog posts are linked from there too but it would seem inappropriate for me to edit my own Wikipedia page.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of Wikipedia and/or despise Elon Musk then please consider making a donation.

This entry was posted on December 26, 2024 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Biographical with tags Elon Musk, wikipedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.