The bulk of the responses are saying she’s been “Israeled”. Though she did throw in a funny comment. Someone asked if she went George Costanza on them, but she says she went Jerry Seinfeld, letting it happen but complaining to everyone.
“They had a meeting?”
- “A meeting.”
“At your table?”
- “At. My. Table.”
And then her following Tweet is about how bizarre it is when a Tweet goes viral.
Having a tweet go viral is such whiplash—can’t believe I’m fielding replies from complete strangers calling me a “doormat ass bitch” with a “weak aura” because I decided not to publicly fight a hostile weirdo over a small table!!
I mean, I do find the Wikimedia sales pitch quite offputting. It feels so artificial. And I’ve complained before that they used to imply that they were barely keeping the lights on. (They’ve gotten better about that.)
But obviously they have decently high costs. And they run without any ads. They don’t have premium users, or need to float around having people pay to use the site. And they quite effectively deal with spammers and bots.
I actually wonder if Musk might actually help them raise a bit more money with this.
If I were in charge of Wikipedia I’d call his stupid bluff. Fuck it, sure we’ll call ourselves Dickipedia you unfunny dipshit. Give us a billion dollars.
It’d go exactly the same way the Twitter buyout did, except maybe this time he’d be smart enough to not sign any paperwork.
I didn’t see anything in his offer for a specific duration either. I’d put out a comment say "We accept your generous offer, and confirm we will be switching the name. As you didn’t specify a duration, we will generously make the duration of the name change exactly the same as the time between your acquisition of Twitter and the Re-Name to X. "
So approximately 10 months. No one can argue that isn’t fair.
I’m not as intimately involved with Wikipedia as I used to be (and I don’t think I know anyone personally who are directly involved anymore), but generally the people in charge care a lot more about branding and usability than money. That’s why the Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit charity.
I figured as much, Wikipedia remains one of the few bastions of un-enshittified internet left. A billion-dollar endowment would probably go a long way to securing Wikipedia’s financial future indefinitely but not at the cost of even pretending Elon Musk has anything you want. Just further evidence that the Wikimedia Foundation was right to never even consider putting me in charge.
Meh, I was generous enough to suggest 10 months (Duration of Twitter → X) to be fair, 2 more months is nothing, especially with @Sage_Rat’s or my version of a pre-name tagline.
ETA - a thought that further amuses my inner 12 year old (which is all Musk is after all) is whether all sub-cyclopedias that have grown up since and we generally call “wikis” would join suit and briefly be called “Dickies” or the like.
"
