Wikipedia is one of the most important sites to exist

“Wikipedia is unreliable and you can never use it for your papers,” scolded the high school teacher to young Raven.

“Anyone can edit anything,” they said.

Fast forward to college…

“You wanna know a cool trick?” said the college professor.

“You can look at Wikipedia as jumping off point. Look at the references quoted there and go to those sources. See if those sources will be good for your papers.”

For a long time, Wikipedia had been villainized as a place of misinfo or unreliability when in reality it is very reliable.

I grew up with a set of old encyclopedias on the built-in bookcase in my childhood home, and by the time I was old enough to read them (perhaps by the time they were even released) they were out of date.

Wikipedia is in its very essence what makes the Internet important; beyond the horribleness of the Internet: cyberbullying, the countless ads, mass surveillance, alt-right pipelines—one source above them all contains what could reasonably approximate the entire truth and knowledge of human understanding and history.

The Wikimedia commons itself containing so much art, and Wikisource containing currently 646,767 public domain texts in English.

Wikipedia also uses the CC-BY-SA license by default, making sure that all works from it and derived of it are available to everyone.

Additionally, The Wikimedia Foundation hosts https mirrors for Debian, Ubuntu, and TAILS.

Wikipedia, The EFF, and The Internet Archive, are the 3 most most important sites on the Internet. Not just for their content, but for what they do.

Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons, and all the other amazing Wikimedia associated projects keep content up-to-date and digestable, The EFF defends free speech, internet freedoms, and right-to-repair through the legal process, and The Internet Archive keeps everything forever (because, you gotta have the receipts).

Without these sites and organizations, the right would take over and knowledge that should be known and free would be hidden and paywalled, if allowed at all.

There are ways around these censors to be sure, but when any queer kid can read about Stonewall on Wikipedia and the incredible rabbit-holes to queer history, then there is hope. Hope of a new generation of leaders, activists, and educated people who will lead people out of the darkness of superstition, religious brainwashing, and right-wing propaganda.

Not only is it a bastion against tyranny, it is where one can go to get a basic understanding of a subject for free at any time.

Internet down?

You can even host your own mirror of Wikipedia offline.

They aren’t in this for the money, they have a beautiful and functional site that has an uncomplicated aesthetic and aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. They are a place where anyone (yes anyone, even you) can contribute to human knowledge.

Ever since my divorce I had wondered what to do with the beneficiary section on retirement/life-insurance/etc. and I learned that I could leave that money to the Wikimedia foundation. That’s where it’s going. To the people, technologies, and networks that keep that vast amount information where it belongs: to the people.

You can do it too.

The Wikimedia foundation has a whole page dedicated to understanding the process.

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online repository for human knowledge, made freely accessible to anyone in the world. Our core belief is that knowledge is a human right.

Help ensure the future is filled with curiosity and wonder by remembering Wikipedia in your will, through a beneficiary designation, or in other estate plans. By doing so, you will become a member of the Wikipedia Legacy Society, a group of exceptional donors who are committed to making Wikipedia available to everyone, forever.

Only with access to knowledge like Wikipedia can people see for themselves the history and jumping-off points for making this world a better place.