Wikipedia talk:You don't own Wikipedia

Good essay

Aye, Have mörser, will travel (talk) 14:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Just simply not true. Who makes a contribution, owns it. This is how licensing works. Audriusa (talk) 13:00, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

You own the copyright on your contributions. You do not own "Wikipedia". You do not own the project, the communities, the trademark, the website, etc. There is more to Wikipedia than the copyrights. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Paradox exemplified

I just realized that the guy community-banned for writing sonnets, User:Proofreader77, is listed as one of the sustaining donors on the benefactors page. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 15:33, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Another amusing example [1]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:16, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Idiotic

How on earth could anyone focus on the millions of dollars in WMF budget while ignoring the billions of hours in editor time contributed? This entirely misses what open wikis are about. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:54, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you are missing what ownership is about in the real world. You can contribute all your waking hours to a charity, but you won't own any bit of it that way. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

WMF owns the servers bought with those donations. The content and most of the code is owned by the contributors and is used by WMF under license (GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0) as described at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use. But of course, you already knew that, didn't you? So as a matter of fact, yes, we do own Wikipedia. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

We don't own "Wikipedia". We own the content of Wikipedia, but not Wikipedia (the project) itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with User:LeadSongDog, that this essay seems to undervalue the value of volunteers' contributions. The high-tech economy is awash with funds. Last year investors plunked down what, $40,000,000,000 to buy a share of facebook. Lots of high-tech start-ups have rallied billions, went they went public -- even though, like the WMF projects they had yet to generate one red-cent of revenue. Yes, I know as non-profits, the wikipedia can not be an investment target for venture capitalists.

But, if it were, would it be valued at $40,000,000,000 like facebook?

How much has the entire WMF operating budget been, since day 1, to today?

Let's say, if the WMF could be bought by venture capitalists it would be worth $40,000,000,000. I don't know the WMF's entire expenditures, to date. $4,000,000? $40,000,000? $400,000,000? If donors invested $400,000,000 in keeping the WMF's servers running, and doors open, doesn't that mean 99% of the value of the wikipedia and its sibling projects was generated through the time commitment of its volunteers?

I think the authors of this essay, and anyone else who undervalues the contributions of volunteers, should bear this in mind. Geo Swan (talk) 18:44, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

his...or her?

Francophone&Androphilie linked me here. I was going to edit it but I don't know if that's really appropriate since it's not my essay. I just have a simple suggestion - what about "her"?

Finally, the power user seeks to have his ruffled feathers smoothed.

blackmailing the threatening people into caving into his demands

ego-soothing messages from his toadies

reinforce his special status

the affront to his self-esteem is an important community concern

although he will probably not be able to stop reading the page

He may seek out a group of similarly offended power users

Gender equality only goes one way? Charles35 (talk) 04:00, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are predominantly male (~85% for the English Wikipedia, 91% for all languages combined), and the editors who engage in these behaviors (i.e., fussing because the devs changed something in the user interface) seem to be exclusively male in my experience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The typical male narcissist, eh? He has mysteriously become so prevalent in today's society... Just to entertain the thought, do you have any theories as to why that is? Those are some interesting stats. Oh, and - the overwhelming majority of police officers are men, yet it is required that women are paid the same amount. Do you think this is any different? Charles35 (talk) 06:09, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

There are some reasons for Wikipedia having more men than women. For one thing, we have more people on the autistic spectrum than the general population, and that skews our user base towards men. Men generally spend more time online, and that skews our user base towards men (since people not online aren't editing Wikipedia, naturally).

We also have a predominance of people age about 15 to 30. Narcissism is higher in that age range than it used to be. We therefore probably have more than our fair share of narcissists, too. Having said that, anyone can suffer a narcissistic injury. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Why do you think men generally spend more time online?

My theory for the narcissism epidemic is that the amount of people that can be classified as having NPD is not actually any greater than it ever was (note: I mean people that can potentially be classified meeting the diagnostic requirements, not ones that actually are by a psychiatrist). I see it as more of a sociological issue. The word "narcissism" is being used much, much more, unlike other related labels that are just as prevalent (in biology) such as borderline, antisocial, schizoid, dependent, avoidant, etc.

I believe it has to do with the simultaneous increase in divorce rates. More people are breaking up than ever before. Thus, more people have strong negative feelings than ever before towards other people that they once knew extremely well. When people are vulnerable in such a negative context, they are quick to use the term "narcissist" as a way of spiting their ex-spouse. Most of the narcissism articles I've read are typically talking about relationships and how to "protect yourself" and end relationships with "narcissists". As you'd expect, most of these people referred to as narcissists have not been diagnosed by a physician. Thus, I theorize that the amount of NPDs is no greater than ever before. But that's not to say that narcissism paradigms (like injury) cannot be applied to anyone, as you said. After all, everyone has an ego. Charles35 (talk) 20:39, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Why do you think men generally spend more time online?

Because reliable sources like this and this say so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Gender neutral language

To re-open the above discussion, this essay should be edited to change the language so it is gender neutral. If this article were using "she" instead of "he", I'm sure there would be much clamouring. Who is allowed to edit an essay? If anyone is, then perhaps I shall do it when I have time. DesertPipeline (talk) 15:08, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

@DesertPipeline: Done per MOS:GNL. XYZt (talk) 19:07, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Much appreciated. DesertPipeline (talk) 19:34, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

MOS:GNL is about the mainspace. It also doesn't encourage the use of the singular they (because it is unencyclopedically informal), and full pluralization isn't appropriate for this content (which is about a single individual and group responses to that individual).

Desert, you're right: Since "generic she" isn't a thing in English, and since the behaviors described overlap substantially with what some people call "toxic masculinity", I suspect that it would feel doubly strange if we used "she" generically here. Also, I suspect that if we asked a few of long-time editors to name past examples of this pattern at the English Wikipedia, that nearly all of those examples would happen to involve men. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Oh, what a great opportunity! Since MOS:GNL is about the mainspace, its non-encouragement of the singular they can be completely ignored, and the writer (or an editor) of the essay is free to use it liberally (see what I did there?) to reflect the fact that these behaviors could be practiced by people of any gender, that gender isn't pertinent to the topic anyway, and that choosing one gender over another as the "generic" is in itself toxic. Awesome! ЄlєvєN єvєN||иэvэ иэvэlэ 00:14, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

My original post is two years old and the article was changed, but curiosity killed the cat: What do you mean by "the singular they is non-encouraged by the MOS?"

Also, I don't see why it's necessary to bring up the topics that have been mentioned. They don't have anything to do with this. "Him", "he", etc, as well as "man", were previously used in language to mean "anyone", despite the appearance that they refer to male persons only. Really, it's only about being more clear and obvious in language, which is certainly a noble goal. People would find "she" etc doubly strange because that has never been the convention - those terms have always been exclusively used for referring to women, not because of the reasons proposed above. DesertPipeline (talk) 03:59, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

The proposal for Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language in Wikipedia policies failed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Can we just use "they"? Generally when the gender of the subject is hypothetical, we use singular they. Not only does the community not own Wikipedia, but I think I'm going to be bold and make the change. -- Rockstone^{[Send me a message!]} 21:29, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

The gender of the subject is not really "hypothetical". This is a power-and-control behavior that is aligned with and supported by patriarchal structures. The people who do this are men. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 27 February 2022 (UTC)