Buondì.
A decades-old computer programer habit, when packaging up multiple files together in a folder, is to add a very simple .txt file named ‘read me’ or similar.
Anything the buyer or user needs to know, in order to make the software function, i.e. which of the other enclosed files to click on first, is explained in the read me.txt file.
Simple, but effective. Assuming people read the ‘read me’ file, which I’m guessing that most of us don’t.
Incidentally, the file to click on first is probably the one ending in .exe, which is a file format that will actually DO something, rather than, say, contain graphic elements or styling information.
Wikipedia puts it like this “.exe is a common filename extension denoting an executable file (the main execution point of a computer program) for Microsoft Windows.”
And not so incidentally, whenever I visit Wikipedia these days I get a message like this one:
We ask you, humbly: don’t scroll away.
Hi reader, this Friday, for the 8th time recently, we ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. Thanks to the 2% of readers who donate, Wikipedia remains open to all. If Wikipedia has given you €2 worth of knowledge, take a minute to donate to keep it thriving for years. Show the editors that their work matters. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.
For the eighth time? Oh wow. They keep asking me for money, yet I manage to ignore them, despite actually thinking that Wikipedia is a great cause, and even having access to a company credit card so not having to dig deep into my own pocket.
Either I am extremely lazy, then, very mean (though as it wouldn’t be my money, it’s probably not that), rather busy, or… and it probably IS this, it’s the ‘humbly’ in the title that is putting me off. Along with the paltry €2 being asked for. I betcha Donald Trump would never ask for $2, and certainly not humbly. I betcha also that he gets more donations than Wikipedia does, poverini. Is there justice in the world? OF COURSE NOT.
OK, here’s what we’ll do.
For every club member that leaves a comment on this article saying how Wikipedia has helped or informed them, I’ll send a €5 donation, up to a maxiumum of €100, or £, or whatever.
If none of you can be bothered to leave a comment (visit the website, find this article, scroll down to the end, your email address is required but won’t be published), then I’ll make no donation, on the grounds that you guys are just as lazy as I am. At least until the Wikipedia people get themselves a copywriter with some balls, anyway.
And in the unlikely event that there are more than 20 comments (from different club members, mind) I’ll consider upping the maximum donation. It’s the club’s money, and probably tax-deductible.
N.b. Emailing me doesn’t count. I get enough emails already. I want COMMENTS on the website, in return for the donation (visit the website, find this article, scroll down to the end, your email address is required but won’t be published). OK?
Why? Because comments show the world that the club website is still alive, that there are people who value it, whereas emails to me simply add to the pile of stuff I have to get through today, or over the weekend.
Where were we? Ah yes, ‘read me’.
So anyway, I was short of ideas this morning and thought I’d try out something that I’ve been mulling over for a while. That I occasionally, or perhaps regularly, post a link to something on another website, and suggest that club members have a go at reading it (in Italian, obviously).
Why? Because many of you won’t, otherwise. But if I can encourage just a few of you to give reading authentic articles a try, who knows, you might make it a habit. And then your learning will be accelerated, and then we will all feel good.
Here we go then: one of the websites I look at on my phone before getting out of bed in the morning is RaiNews.it. It’s free, with no registration required, and is reasonably reliable and unbiased, unlike most of Italy’s ‘proper’ newspaper sites, which are over-expensive and often hard to make head or tail of.
There are lots of articles on RaiNews.it that I’d read if I had time today, and so may or may not have suggested that you do, too. However, because I am rather pushed this morning, I’ve gone for something short, with pictures:
Benvenuta Priscilla, la cammellina appena nata al Bioparco di Roma.
Read me. Or at least look at the pictures.
Animal mums with their spring newborns – what’s not to like?
A lunedì, allora.
P.S.
On Wednesday I was so busy ranting I completely forgot to try to flog this week’s half-price ‘eBook of the Week’ offer. Sorry. Here’s a cut and paste from Monday’s article, to make ammends:
Giacomo works as an electrician for the municipality in a small Italian city. He had dreamed of becoming an astronomer but is now happy to devote himself to his family and especially to his young son, Tommaso. Then one day, the boy asks his father why there are so few stars to be seen in the night sky…
Customer reviews, unfortunately everyone seems to have loved it, are here.
Buy Cielo libero, just £3.99 | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Catalog
N.b. If anyone’s studying another European language besides Italian, we have half-price versions of this story also in German, Spanish and French. But only until Sunday night!
P.P.S.
Thursday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news should also be on your ‘read me’ list today.
While I haven’t had time for this one yet, I suspect there are probably no baby camels.
Zsuzsanna Snarey says
Ciao Daniel,
I use Wikipedia a lot and have contributed to them quite a few times I have also tried to contribute to a page about my famous Hungarian grandmother who was a popular writer about 80-90 years ago.
.Zsuzsanna
Sarah Rattee says
Thanks Daniel for the prompt to comment. As you mentioned its all too easy to read and never reply and express thanks, appreciation, what works what doesn’t plus even harder to contribute financially when asked.
I use Wikipedia periodically usually because its the first thing that crops up when I’m researching a name, a place etc etc.I think for the level of research I need it generally fits the bill but for anything complex, science based I’d used an academic website.
Thank you for your regular emails, they are great for making me think a little more about my language learning progress. I love the e=readers and my 1-1 lessons.
Catherine says
As ever, I do read your emails Daniel. Sometime infuriatingly long, but always friendly and most helpful.
I almost never write, but thank you, your efforts are appreciated. I don’t have to refer to Wiki very often in the normal course of my life, but I’d be sad if it disappeared. So well done all round!
Martha says
Ciao, Daniel! Thanks for all your great work!
I use Wikipedia frequently because the choice of languages is so helpful when doing research or at least background reading. I freqiuently check it even while watching tv in order to find out about places or people referenced in shows.
Elaine Kelly says
Hi Daniel, thanks for the link to RaiNews.it, my squeeing at the “Benvenuta Priscilla” article was so high-pitched I set all the dogs in my village barking!
Where would we be without Wikipedia? I’ve donated in the past, so thanks for the nudge to do so again.
ANNALINDA RAGAZZO says
I use Wikipedia daily. First I Google the topic and Google brings up a Wikipedia entry. Some are just “stubs”, but Wikipedia tells you that the entry needs more information. I wouldn’t rely on it for academic, scholarly and/or scientific research but it works for me in my everyday life.
Karen Graham says
I see you have made the donation anyway, but as I’d decided to reply I will carry on. We discovered your website through a recommendation from a friend and have since used many of the listening exercises and bought a set of ebooks in the recent sale. We are regular users of, and donators to, Wikipedia. Many thanks.
Jen says
I’ve used Wikipedia for so many things- schoolwork, personal interest, random boredom….While I sometimes find false information in some articles, quite often it’s decent and gives me the chance to explore new topics and learn a thing or two. While I’d love to donate to everything I feel is worthy, being unemployed makes that difficult sometimes unfortunately. Since we’re well beyond the amount of comments you were asking for don’t feel obliged to donate on my behalf, I just wanted to help contribute to the activity here and share some support. 🙂
Lara says
As a professional translator, Wikipedia is invaluable. The way it links languages with well researched definitions makes it way more powerful than any multilingual dictionary. It is also useful for the collocation of words. It’s only downside at its contributors are predominantly male and we females need to correct this!!
Lech says
Pay up Daniel! Hope my comment doesn’t go to waste and will add few pennies to Wikipedia”s budget.
Btw I really appreciate your rants with my morning coffee. A lunedì!
Helen says
Just to let you know your email has been read and that your ‘rants’. are appreciated and enjoyed.
I frequently use Wikipedia when I can’t remember the name of an actor or ‘personality’ ( who usually turns out to be Alastair McGowan ).
Allan B says
Ciao Daniel e grazie per tutti il emails. A volte non ho tempo a leggero, ma per lo più ho leggero e godere.
Grazie per la contributo a Wikipedia e i tuoi suggerimenti per imparare l’italiano.
Caro Collins says
Ciao Daniel,
Io uso Wikipedia quasi tutti i giorni e negli ultimi anni ho donato 25 franchi all’anno. Penso che il loro lavoro sia inestimabile. Buon consiglio sulla RAI. Mi piace ascoltare Forrest alla Rai Uno mentre faccio colazione. E grazie per il Easy Italian News. E tanto utile.
Cordiali saluti, Carol
Richard Harris says
I use Wikipedia almost every day. Every so often, as with Easy Italian News, I make a donation. If something is worth using, it’s worth paying for. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
John Dixie says
Good idea Daniel. I have found Wikipedia very useful, and send them the requested couple of quid every so often. John D.
Tim Huggins says
Personally I don’t find the ‘humbly’ in Wikipedia’s request too irritating. It is the American way of asking nicely perhaps? I am one of the 2% of Wiki users who donates and I feel the modest sum they request emphasises how little people need to give to keep them running ad free. I am not easily duped and feel the Wiki approach to be genuine, I therefore give them a bit more than they ask. I think many of us are amazed that, years on, we are still getting Wiki in the form it originally set out with, only modified by a vast increase in information. Long may it be so.
Bob Skinner says
Wikipedia is not always my first choice when doing research, however, I am always amazed by the volume of information that it contains. It would be a real shame if we were to lose it.
Marion Kilgannon says
This is a good idea.I use Wkipedia on a regular basis and always mean to donate but never seem to get round to it.
So thanks for the push….this first time “donation” will hopefully make me appreciate the resource and get into the habit of donating
regularly.Tomorrow’s challenge to download the app you recommend and read some Italian newspapers in bed!!
Thanks for all your good ideas re language learning….
B. Fabrizio says
Wikipedia is indispensable in this day and age, although I miss having to walk to the library to look something up in a book. Thank you for offering to donate and for getting us thinking about how much effort it takes to make Wikipedia free to the public. It truly is an awesome concept.
Tom. says
I don’t use Wikipedia regularly but value as a resource when needed.
Matthew says
Wikipedia is a great resource! I probably use it at least once a week. I have contributed as well.
Verity says
Yes, Wikipedia is useful, and has improved a lot over the years. I use it for all sorts of things, sometimes just as a pointer to more academic information, sometimes I read all the article rather than just glance. I certainly wouldn’t go and look anything up in a paper encyclopedia these days. I remember shelves full of volumes of the Encylopedia Britannica!
Colleen says
I LOVE wikipedia in Italian- especially when we had the book club and also the history of Rome. You have reminded me to use the Italian version more often. Thanks to you and the onlineitalianclub I can read and understand Italian! I am continuing to find books in Italian to read thanks to the Book Club. I was very pleased to be able to finish il Nome Della Rosa and I Promessi Sposi- quite challenging , but so enjoyable. I looked up several things on Wikipedia as iIread. Next step- writing and speaking THANK YOU for all you send!
Miguel Ramirez says
I’m a teacher and always a student. I once had to learn a lot about electricity for this class I was co-teaching. I dove into Wikipedia to start off. Hanno tutto su quel site.
Rob Spence says
I read the original post and Daniel’s follow-up today (12th April) with great interest. You take a swipe at those with access to paid-for databases and sources of information, for example in academic communities, and suggest that Wikipedia is the only alternative for those without such access. Well, up to a point. As an ex-academic, I have experience of both sides of the divide. My views are these: Wikipedia is generally a good thing if you want a quick reference to something, especially in popular culture. So if you really want to know who came seventh in the 1985 Eurovision Song Contest, absolutely go to Wikipedia. Where it falls down is in verifiable, factual, expert coverage, especially in academic areas. That’s not to say there aren’t some great academic articles on Wiki – there are, thousands of them. I even wrote some myself. But the great advantage of Wikipedia is also its great disadvantage: anyone can edit it. That means that it’s not a reliable source. I used to illustrate this to my students by doing “live” editing of a Wikipedia page in a lecture, with the screen displaying the web page. First, many students were amazed that you *could* edit it – they saw it like people of my generation might see a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. Once over that shock, we began. I would ask for a topic relevant to our English Literature course, and someone would suggest, say, Charles Dickens. So we would display the Dickens page of Wikipedia, and then the fun would begin. I would go into edit mode, and change stuff – sometimes subtly, like moving his date of birth back a few years, and sometimes ridiculously, like adding a sentence or two about Dickens as a committed rugby league fan. We would finish with an entry that was full of errors. And yes, on a page that many would use, those errors would be corrected soon enough. But someone coming across the page that day may well have imported a lot of mistakes into their English homework. The longest time an egregious error I added to a page lasted was eight months, so if you ever see a reference to a particular writer winning the prestigious Ferrero-Rocher award, I’m afraid that was my doing. So what are the alternatives for the non-academic? Well, if you have a local library subscription, you might be surprised at what is available. My local library service in Manchester offers me Press Reader (invaluable for Italian newspapers, as well as material in many other languages), access to the Oxford Reference Online series, which gives me authoritative articles on virtually any subject (though probably not the Eurovision song contest) plus the online Britannica and volumes such as Who’s Who. All online, all free (well, I pay my rates). It’s literally a couple of clicks away on my computer. And this is verified content, produced by the leading experts. In my view, it beats Wikipedia hands down.
Daniel says
Great, so you deliberately add errors to teach your students, and the rest of us, a lesson?
Way to go, Rob.
Never thought about tidying up your vandalism after you’ve illustrated the collaborative editing process, I suppose?
Rob Spence says
It may surprise you to hear that there are many bad actors who deliberately mess up Wikipedia pages, especially those on contentious political topics. My very minor messing about was normally corrected within hours, and in any case were so ludicrous that anyone with half a brain would see that the new material was incorrect. So yes, I did add errors to teach my students a lesson, the lesson being that you should be wary of using sources that are not verifiable, which I hope you would agree is an important consideration in any field of study. My point in doing this is to show how Wikipedia as currently constituted is not an authoritative source. Your starting point was that, if you don’t have credentials for academic access to information, you are forced to rely on Wikipedia. My response was to point out that a) Wikipedia is not reliable and b) reliable sources are generally available to anyone who joins a public library.
Daniel says
Public libraries with paid subscriptions to such sites are not available in vast swathes of the world, Rob. Some are privileged, others less so. In Italy, for example, families spend an absolute fortune on the set books for each school subject, that’s multiple hundreds of euros each year, for each child. Public libraries exist, but are not resourced in the way you describe. Wikipedia is without a doubt the best, and often only option for people who are curious to learn.
And yes, I’m aware that people vandalise other people’s articles, usually for political reasons. I just don’t think that it’s very responsible for a professional educator to do so, and certainly not when you leave some other poor bugger to clear up.
In my original article I used the word ‘disdain’. This is why.
Rob Spence says
OK, that’s me told off. Let me try again. My point about Wikipedia is that, if you are going to rely on it, it’s dangerous, because anyone can edit it, which was the point of my little experiment. I don’t “disdain” it: as I said, it’s a great resource for pop culture information, and I would hardly have taken the time and effort to write articles for it if I disdained it. I take the point about Italian public libraries not being as well resourced as ours, though Bologna’s seemed very up to date when I visited it in 2018. I have just read with interest this article which suggests that the adaptations forced upon libraries in Italy by the pandemic might be leading to a move towards better provision of digital resources. I hope so.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0955749021997788
In the meantime, if Wikipedia wants to progress, it needs to avoid debacles like this:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia
Wikipedia will continue as a go-to source for lots of people, clearly. I just think they need to be careful.
Daniel says
Your point was 100% clear, and your method of illustrating it to your university students is surely memorable and effective. Just rather selfish, given that not everyone in the world has access to a £9000 p.a. Britsh university course, indeed not everyone is a student or academic. In the world of ‘real people’, and in this I include children and young adults, as well as non-graduates, Wikipedia is trusted. Urinating in the well is immature, even for the best reasons.
Francesca says
Ciao a tutti!
Aaah la cara vecchia Wiki! Quando andavo alle superiori (high school) in molte occasioni studiavo su Wikipedia perché era più chiara dei libri di testo (e a volte anche dei professori). In viaggio è un’ottima guida turistica e spesso è un buon dizionario, come diceva Lara..
A volte non è aggiornata o mancano i riferimenti bibliografici ma… Nessuno è perfetto, giusto? Beh, adesso vado a donare i miei due euro!
Francesca
Janet Russell says
Most of us use Wikipedia at some point. I would never cite it as an academic source but it’s still useful.
jan says
Thank you, Daniel. What an excellent idea of yours. I use Wiki a lot, and always think how fortunate we are to have all this information at our finger-tips. Recently, it complemented Barbara Bassi’s superb essay on Dante – this being his anniversary year. And, of course, it is always there to support your encouraging emails and news bulletins. I, too, donate annually.
Martha says
Better late than never, lol. You’ve reached your goal, as I thought you would, but I still took the time to come here (even if I was sleepy and went to the easy reader site first, lol) and I will do my part. I’m not the biggest user of Wikipedia but I definitely use it (it’s great for quick research).
Martha
Hilary Temple says
I did email you a couple of times, Daniel, sorry! But you made me feel as if we were having a real conversation.
I take the point about the use of websites being properly recorded and will endeavour to do so, even though lockdown seems to have left me with even less free time than before. And I had not noticed the products simplifying Italian classics, so will make a Note to Self to look at the list.
Rob Spence says
It seems I can’t directly reply to your comment, Daniel, so I will write here. Your conclusion after telling me off is “Wikipedia is trusted. Urinating in the well is immature, even for the best reasons.” OK, I think I have pointed out at length why trusting Wikipedia is problematic. If my jokey edits, done four or five times, and nearly all corrected within hours are “urinating in the well” then I don’t know what you’ll make of the people posting terrabytes of misinformation on the site. If being a former academic makes me not a “real person” I’m not sure what I am. I know I did try to engage with Wikipedia properly, and wrote some material about a subject that I know a lot about. Inevitably, my work was edited by others, some of whom clearly knew nothing about that subject. I got tired of correcting it, and I’ve no idea what state that material is now in. I’m off now to reflect on being called “immature” and “not a real person” at the age of 66. Buona giornata!