Yet most of those who are coming online for the first time are doing so on mobile devices, which you can easily use to, say, make a spelling correction on a Wikipedia page, but not to contribute four paragraphs of text with 18 footnotes.
.. Wales told me that the Chinese government is presently blocking Wikipedia in its entirety, in part because of the encyclopedia’s recent move to an encrypted “HTTPS” protocol that makes it harder for the government to determine what people are reading and to selectively filter sensitive pages, as Chinese censors had done in the past.
.. “Part of the reason why Wikipedia is not the immediate kind of thing that people want to block is it’s not a wide-open free-speech message board and people aren’t getting on Wikipedia to plan a protest at a certain date, at a certain time,” Wales said.
.. What’s his pitch to Chinese authorities? “An argument that doesn’t really work very well is to sound like some kind of crazy American talking about the First Amendment. They just don’t care,” Wales said. He argues that access to knowledge is a human right, but he doesn’t dwell on that point. “The main [argument to the Chinese] is that Wikipedia is incredibly useful for economic growth, they do care about that, for education, they do care about that. For people in technology, for example, if you ask any programmer, ‘How do you keep up to date with new technology? How do you hear about some new programming language?’ They go to Wikipedia.”
.. Graham and his colleagues theorized that one of Wikipedia’s greatest strengths—its strict editorial standards, particularly with regard to sourcing—might also be one of its greatest impediments to expansion.
.. more edits originated in Hong Kong than in all of Africa combined
Richard Rohr: Participation: Week 2
most of religious and church history has been largely preoccupied with religious ideas, about which you could be wrong or right. When faith is all about ideas, you do not have to be part of it; you just need to talk correctly about it. You never have to dive in and illustrate that spiritual proof is only in the pudding.The spiritual question is this: Does one’s life give any evidence of an encounter with God? Does this encounter bring about in you any of the things that Paul describes as the “fruits” of the spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22)? Are you different from your surroundings, or do you reflect the predictable cultural values and biases of your group?
Richard Rohr: Turning toward Participation
It constantly recognizes that we are a part of something, more than we are observing something or “believing” in something.
.. Today each autonomous individual is on his or her own, especially progressive academic types, making for a very neurotic world.
.. The Bible documented the salvation of history itself, which is why we have to endure all those “unholy” historical books. Both the loving and the accusatory language in the Bible is not addressed primarily to individuals, but to Israel as a whole. Yahweh’s concern is first of all societal; the covenant is with the people of Israel, much more than with individual personalities. It is amazing that we have forgotten or ignored this, making salvation all about private persons going to heaven or hell, which is surely a regression from the historical and even cosmic notion of salvation.
.. This allowed Jesus to speak of true union at all levels: with oneself, with the neighbor, with the outsider, with the enemy, with nature, and–through all of these–with the Divine. The net and sweep of participation was total. Given this, it is so sad and strange that we created a Christian religion with many separate denominations–often known for elitism, boundary keeping, and exclusion.