Italian Wikipedia

It's not like anyone important ever used it anyway.

During much of 2011, the internet witnessed kids rev up their LOIC's thinking they'll change the world doing it, fighting for the freedom of sub-par script kiddies, and to top it all off, attempting to disrupt a major financial institution. Jimbo Wales, being the attention hungry cunt he is, decided to jump on the protest bandwagon much like when he purchased Uncyclopedia in a meek attempt to combat ED as top lulz wiki. This is when he decided to shut down the Italian Wikipedia to protest some sort of libel bullshit that he decided to blow way out of context. Immediately Wikipedos across the globe shat their pants at the thought of Wikipedia being censored for once the five thousandth time.

What most fail to realize is, it was all part of the biggest publicity stunt ever.

What happened

Wiki's closed. For real this time.

The saga begins when Italy proposed a law to make it a little bit easier for people to remove defamatory content off of the internet, mean a site like say, ED, wouldn't exist in Italy. Now we are all well aware that some people take Wikipedia entries a bit too personally and have previously launched e-campaigns in order to have images, articles, etc removed from the site. The "DDL intercettazioni" would only enable this kind of retaliation against Wikipedia content some crybabies may find to be "unfair". Now keep in mind, all of MediaWiki's servers are hosted in San Francisco, meaning Wikipedia is under American jurisdiction, along with the fact that the content in question would have to be found as "slander".

Suddenly, Jimbo got an idea. What if he was able to give Wikipedia a cool and edgy appeal by protesting some stupid shit like the kids on 4chan do?

The protest

The message itself, in all its USI glory.

	“	Today the volunteers of the Italian Wikipedia community made the decision to replace all of Italian Wikipedia with a message to readers about a law (PDF in Italian) being discussed before the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament. The message outlines the viewpoints of the Italian Wikipedia community, and provides details about the proposed bill, and how it threatens the ability to openly collaborate in the sharing of knowledge. This is certainly a decision the Italian Wikipedia community did not take lightly.	„

You can get 13 year olds to rally for your website! Great job Jimbo!

For a few days, every page on the Italian Wikipedia redirected to one of Jimbo's tl;dr essays about why Wikipedia is such a great community driven vat of free speech. Thousands of Wikipedos then light up Twitter, gaining the support of 1337 Anons while King Jimbo sat on his throne and laughed at his success.

Reactions from rational Wikipedia users

	“	It’s utterly ridiculous what the “italian editors” are doing. Wikimedia has to be neutral and wikipedia cannot be used to protests. The volunteers in Italy (or vandals – to be more exact) decides nobody can access and read articles because wikipedia has to be free…	„

	“	I agree that wikipedia shouldn’t interfere in politics	„

	“	Why is it so scandalous for people to be able to defend themselves against views they do not agree with?	„

	“	I think the hiding action of Italian Wikipedia should be undone and the man that decided that \italian Wikipedia should be hidden be blocked for vandalism. I know, this law is ridiculous, but people shold be able to read Wikipedia Normally. Thye should only put that message on Main Page	„

In the end

The website was brought back to normal within two days after several mainstream media outlets picked up on the story and gave plenty of attention to Jimmy. We can only assume he will boast about his "great victory" in this year's donation drive.

External links

• Back to normal thanks to press coverage
• They make sure to document every news story about the situation - how cute
• Warning: tl;dr
• WikiMedia blog on the subject

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