4 ms·
I think that's a great idea. The vast majority of people do nothing until it hits them personally, that's why there's so much apathy. Cut Wikipedia for a week,
by dendory 15y ago
I think that's a great idea. The vast majority of people do nothing until it hits them personally, that's why there's so much apathy. Cut Wikipedia for a week, something used by so many people, and then normal people will start caring. Show Americans what it can look like to be behind a firewall by having many popular sites blank out for a week, and by the end of the week the whole country will be in an uproar.
There's nothing more powerful to make people move and contact their representatives than blocking them from their farmville, celebrity news, homework help (wikipedia) and so on.
- pnathan 15y agoAgreed. If Wikipedia is locked out for a week, it will make mainstream international news in no time flat. I think it needs to happen.
- cpeterso 15y agoI don't think the mainstream news media cares about Wikipedia. Plus, the site's process and product are a direct challenge to the legacy news oligarchy.
- doktrin 15y agoThat is cynical to the point of being shortsighted. Even assuming the "news oligarchy" really operates as something resembling a unified entity, and regardless of said unified entity's feelings vis a vis Wikipedia - an outage would make headlines. I am not saying all editorial coverage would be uniformly supportive, but it would certainly be newsworthy.
- pak 15y agoEh, I would say (sadly) that the mainstream news media practically depends on Wikipedia to fill in background info for half of their stories. Gaffes by TV reporters have occasionally been traced back to Wikipedia vandalism. Sometimes Wikipedians then cite the misguided journalist(s) when adding the falsehood into the article [1], a circular phenomenon of "fact-creation" that has been lampooned by xkcd [2]. [1] http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/10/2211220/false-fact-on-wikipedia-proves-itself http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/10/2211220/false-fact-o... [2] http://xkcd.com/978/ http://xkcd.com/978/
- Adolph_Jobs 15y agoThat's not even the main impact. Think about all of the people accessing Wikipedia every day - students, teachers, randoms - who don't read or watch the news. Ever. All of these people who will probably never hear about SOPA, even if it's passed, will suddenly realise that their First Amendment rights are under threat and will hopefully be incredibly, incredibly angry.
- city41 15y agoI'm not sure the type of people who don't read or watch any news are the type of people to care about their first amendment rights.
- andrewflnr 15y agoTrue, but mainly because they take their rights for granted. They would definitely notice if they were taken away.
- bad_user 15y agoConsidering the junk that's flying in this age as news, I don't blame them for not watching TV or not reading newspapers.
- verisimilitude 15y agoThis study showed that people who DO watch (one particular) channel of news are LESS informed than those who don't watch or read news at all: http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/21/fairleigh_dickinson_publicmind_poll_shows_fox_news_viewers_less_informed_on_major_news_stories.html http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/21/fairleigh_dickinso...
- reinhardt 15y agoThis would be the ideal outcome but if meatspace strikes are any indication, affected people often resent or openly turn against the strikers, not those that force them to strike. It won't be hard to spin it as "Internet paralyzed after Wikipedia's attempt for political blackmail" or somesuch.
- rmc 15y agoAgreed. Block it for the americans, let the rest of the world get it fine. Let Americans see what its like when big copyright cartels don't want to allow a certain piece of work to shown in their country. Let them learn that this could be the future of the internet for them.