Wikia is lovely for what it is, and Uncyclopedia still loves Sannse, but “it’s not me, it’s you” is still about right.

I do worry the new team have underestimated costs and overestimated funding – hosting a moderately popular MediaWiki is not so cheap. There’s a reason Wikia has all those ads. But we shall see.

Rock on.

As for a suitable memorial activity, I have become disgusted with various economic libertarians who have been trying to exploit Aaron’s death. I have my own plans to honor his memory.

“I think we annoyed everyone else with our repeated insistence that reducing economic inequality was somehow always the appropriate solution to each of the many social ills the group identified.”

If I’m going to take Wikileaks seriously, there’s basically two ways that could happen: either its approach is convincingly justified in terms of the longstanding code of journalism ethics, or a clearly laid out alternative is presented in a convincing way.

What I understand of Wikileaks as of now relies pretty heavily on trusting the individual judgment of people whose audience has no means of holding them accountable. If my understanding is inaccurate, I’d like to know. If not, I’d like to know what principles guide their judgment, and how they may be held accountable if they stray from their principles.

I disagree about the term “journalists” though, and am happy to have an evidence-based discussion around that. Certainly Wikileaks has aspired to something like journalism, but I think a system built around widely accepted notions of journalistic ethics is key. Anonymous sources should not be the norm in anything properly called journalism, they should be used in special circumstances after careful deliberation, and in deference to clearly articulated principles. Building a publishing project on a core of anonymity is, in my view, antithetical to the concept of journalism.

And then, there’s tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/292504975865692160 If you DO use anonymous sources, you’re supposed to protect their identity.

If you have a more specific objection, I would certainly be interested in hearing and (if I sensibly can) addressing it.

I find your claim of “cowardly” on the part of Wikileaks ridiculous and completely lacking in evidence, however, speaking as someone deeply familiar with the topic.

This movement has taken a pretty unusual path to political clout, but it has arrived. I’d say a bit of internal learning and efforts to figure out how to speak with a unified voice (not necessarily a loud voice) is of utmost importance.