Another Personal Appleal

[Kött]

Probably most of you have already noticed it: Wikipedia is "blacked out" for the entire day due to a protest action.

When I first noticed it I just thought it was another shabby attempt by Jimmy to get my nazi gold and refreshed the page a couple of times, hoping the ad would vanish but apparently it's a different issue this time.

To cut a long story short, Wikipedia admins have decided to shut down the English Wikipedia for today in order to raise awareness for a protest campaign against two prospectively planned bills called SOPA ("Stop Online Piracy Act") and PIPA ("PROTECT IP Act" aka "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act").
It may seem a little drastic and I'm pretty sure some individuals who have to finish school projects or similar work due tomorrow will be pissed but at least I am pretty sure that the message actually will reach people this way. I personally don't care because the German Wiki-Sites are working fine, merely hinting at the protest action on their frontpage but for most of you folks this seems to be a more relevant issue...

[rtil]

you can bypass it you know but most internet savvy americans have been aware of blackout day for weeks now. wikipedia is not the only site that is participating.

[Philip K Dick]

i will happily sacrifice my use of wikipedia and other sites for one day
if it means raising awareness about sopa

[ExistingViolation]

There are students that depend on wikipedia for theri reports? 

Ya know back in my day, we had librarians who did all the research for you. All you needed was a wide eyed expression of dismay and off they went to gather all the books for you.

[Sef]

You mean they dont have those now?

[cipher]

There are students that depend on wikipedia for theri reports? 

Yeah seriously, if you write reports relying on wikipedia (the day before they are due no less), you probably deserve to be kind of screwed over. And of course if you had just educated yourself even a little on the topic, or watched/read the news (as these protests were reported), then you would be aware of what was going to happen today. Not that it isn't old news, but tons of websites are down in protest, or have made some alteration to their site to show their support. Totally worth having a day like this than having sopa/pipa pass and having the internet just permanently suck.

[zhicago]

if only there was like, an engine
that searched and you could put queries in
and it'd find relevant information to your assignment

[Sef]

You can say that for a lot of places on the internet

[rtil]

kind of strange to think that back when i was in high school, wikipedia wasn't a thing. i mean it existed but nobody knew about it, at least in my high school. google just started getting popular, too.

[Kött]

I just noticed that the most appropriate smiley for this occasion has vanished in my absence...
But I agree. It is indeed an effective way to raise awareness. It's just the first time that I've heard of it and that I didn't think it was that much of a big deal.
Nevertheless, I think its kinda funny how the US is trying to be the grand inquisitor of the internet once again.

Concerning Wikipedia as a source, I rather use it as a pool of inspiration and I can understand why no (university) teacher would ever accept it as a valid source in a presentation or research paper but the problem is that most academics completely condemn the entire internet as a source and even though I actually don't have any problems with non digital written literature, those book nazis drive me mad.

[cipher]

Yeah, don't get me wrong, wikipedia is good for getting ideas, but if you're getting the bulk of your information from there then you're doing it wrong.

[Sinitron]

what y'all need is some good, old-fashioned discipline... that's what you need

[ZennyPLUS]

I like the idea, people who don't know already aren't really plugged into the news or happenings on the Internet, which is odd considering they use it all the time.

[Casey Pixmintro]

I wrote my congressmen like a fag

[rtil]

pipa lost 13 co-sponsors today, sopa lost 3

[sev]

this thread's title says appleal

[redmongoose]

^lmfao

[Kött]

this thread's title says appleal

I demand the Imgay smiley back

pipa lost 13 co-sponsors today, sopa lost 3

That's pretty neat I guess

[sev]

apparently megaupload was shut down by the fbi because of SOPA protests? what is going aawwwn

[naturally]

stop that america