Watching ‘wtf Wikipedia’ as SOPA/PIPA blackout begins

January 17, 2012

Topic

Network Visualization  /  , , ,

While SOPA and PIPA are no laughing matter (join the strike), the reaction from those on Twitter who don’t know what’s going on is great entertainment. Do a search on ‘wtf wikipedia‘ for tweets from confused individuals who are trying to find information on stuff. I’m just going to leave Twitter trackers Revisit and Spot, by Moritz Stefaner and Jeff Clark, respectively, open all day. “OMG I’m doing homework and Wikipedia is blacked out wtf !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

7 Comments

  • Al — January 18, 2012 at 3:21 am

    Unfortunately searching ‘wtf wikipedia’ now mostly gives a load of smug people talking about the ‘wtf wikipedia’ twitter trend and sneering at the masses who don’t read tech news…

    In all the 1000s of twitter analysis tools people have done, has anyone ever estimated what % of tweets are about tweets?

    Or the average time it takes for a controversy to drift from people on twitter talking about the issue, to people on twitter talking about people on twitter talking about the issue?

    • Bruce P. Henry — January 18, 2012 at 5:38 pm

      Shhh… If you listen closely your can hear the clickety of the keyboards of the guys over at Simply Measured doing the analysis on that right now. Clickety, clickety… clickety.

  • Steve — January 18, 2012 at 7:46 am

    If the college students (and others who need wikipedia today) are crafty, they’ll use the mobile version. Just insert the ‘m’ in the url: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_visualization

    • o — January 18, 2012 at 8:36 am

      Just disable javascript and you can still get through.

      Or just click the “Stop” button after the page content has loaded but before the javascript blackout has kicked in…if you miss it the first time, just hit refresh and click stop until you get it timed right.

      Of course if you can figure that out, you can probably also figure out how to do your homework without relying solely on wikipedia.

  • Austin Hoffman — January 18, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    This is just terrible….SOPA is the equivalent of curing a headache with a guillotine. It may stop piracy, but it would shut down our economy and unconstitutionally erode our most basic freedoms in the process.

    I just hope that everyone realizes how important this is and does their part to save the internet & our economy! …here is another good video that explains the consequences of SOPA pretty well:
    http://www.peeje.com/peeje-goes-strike-stop-web-censorship-bills-congress-209/

    1,000s of more websites have joined the force and went dark today, we need EVERYONES help!!!!