People Freaking Out Over The Wikipedia Blackout



By now, I'm sure you have all heard about SOPA and PIPA being as how every blog in the world has been talking about them as of late. Even those that are usually apolitical (like Neatorama) have taken a stand against the legislation, but despite all the talk and Wikipedia's many messages warning about their upcoming blackout, some people still didn't get the memo.

That's where Herpderpedia comes in... chronicling the Tweets of people freaking out over the Wikipedia blackout despite the many warnings on the site and the fact that its blackout message clearly describes what's going on.

Sure the Twitter account will only have one good day, but it's certain to bring endless enjoyment for the internet snobs around the country.

Link Via Laughing Squid

I'm fascinated by the entitlement of it all. "Some web site that I have never made the slightest contribution to, or even offered so much as a thank you, but was very useful to me for years isn't there for 24 hours, and the people that run it are now total pricks!"
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Not sure where i read it, not that it matters at this point in the day, but if you really need to look at a page on wikipedia all you have to do is: while the page is loading hit escape before the 'black out' comes on. youll have to do this on every page.
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What's even more sad/hilarious are the replies from those sad/hilarious tweets. Many of them reply with "OMG ITS A JOKE!" or "SARCASM! IT WAS SARCASM GUYS" after being told what was truly happening.

Makes me wonder what they even need an encyclopedia for, anyway.
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You can also disable Javascript or add en.wikipedia.org to your IE Restricted Sites (for which Javascript is off) and you can put the code $("#content").show();_$("#mw-sopaOverlay").hide(); into your browser. You have to use Ctrl + Shift + K in firefox.
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The secret, of course, is SPEED reading. There's a noticeable lag of about half a second or so before the Wikipedia page blacks out. That should be enough to read the whole page once you've mastered speed reading.
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God are these people stupid? If you read what Wiki put on their site it explains why and how long its blacked out.
I would think these same people don't even know what SOPA is.
I do feel that WIKI just got people pissed at SOPA AND Wikipedia.
At least Google was functional and their black censor strip was enough.
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At my son's high school, apparently some teachers were less than observant about the SOPA blackout day. 1st period, teacher headed to computer center with students to research topics using... Wikipedia. And no, it wasn't an attempt to make a point about SOPA, but it ended up being the topic of the day in most classes.
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Woah! You're telling me that there are teachers who encourage students to use Wikipedia as a research tool? How about teaching them to do some real research? Oh wait, that would require some real teaching.

Wikipedia is not a reliable source and many eductational establishments will no longer accept it as a source. One lecturer I know cites the issue of it's cyclic citations. That is to say the citations which refer to other documents which themselves refer back to Wikipedia. Others are simply critical of the number of errors. My personal view is that you have to fact check everything you get from Wikipedia, as such you are doing the research anyway and may as well bypass the Wikipedia stage.
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I LOL'd hard at all the complaints while I read all the wikipedia articles on my phone. apparently they didn't cover the mobile version because i used it quite a bit that day
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