I wonder who's made the funniest one of these?
Mike
ADDENDUM: This seems to have confused a few people. Wikipedia is in the throes of its regular PBS-like fundraising drive. Lately, doubtless driven by research that says people are more willing to give aid when the the needy organization is given a face, it's been featuring a face at the top of the page—the face of the person that is supposedly making the pitch. The problem is that then, whenever you look up anything, the title of the article appears directly below the random imploring face, as if it were the caption of an illustration. Being visual by nature, I find it disorienting and irritating. I'd rather they put a flashing ad on every page and be done with it.
I'm just sayin'...
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This guy made a few: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales
Posted by: Sam S | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 01:23 PM
This one would be my nomination.
Posted by: Kevin Schoenmakers | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 01:23 PM
The Oatmeal made a few recently. They're rather sophomoric, which of course is naturally in the vein of the rest of the Oatmeal's stuff...
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales
Posted by: Cab Treadway | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 01:25 PM
Probably The Oatmeal?
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales
The comments to that post are pretty funny too, if you can get them to come up.
Posted by: infrar3d | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 01:32 PM
I still don't get it. Oliver Sacks is a wonderful writer, and someone put a young woman's face where his old face should be? The Oatmeal stuff is just bad, not funny, and seems unrelated. But I could be out of some loop. Maybe I should subscribe to Twitter.
Posted by: John Krumm | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 03:14 PM
"I wonder who's made the funniest one of these?"
I made a pretty funny one, but you'd never publish it...
Posted by: Will Whitaker | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 07:03 PM
Hey, this is fun!
http://wfwhitaker.com/snaps/WikiMJ.jpg
Posted by: Will Whitaker | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 09:22 PM
Will,
Very funny!
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Monday, 12 December 2011 at 10:51 PM
Wikipedia has become a joke, home to pranksters, sales types, con artists and those to aspire to being hackers but are not smart enough for the real thing.
When I was editing some tech stuff, I found it changed into commercial messages within hours. A guy we knew had his father's bio changed to say he was a FBI suspect in the Kennedy assassination.
The Onion or National Inquirer is more trustworthy.
Posted by: Jim | Tuesday, 13 December 2011 at 01:58 AM
Funny. I see his face on the top of the Wiki page and the words "expenses" and "scandal" spring to mind. Could be completely wrong but you know what they say about mud.
Paul Mc Cann
Posted by: Paul Mc Cann | Tuesday, 13 December 2011 at 02:27 AM
Funny as this is, I do wish they'd change the position of the picture. I've been caught out more than once now, thinking that those pictures are pictures of the person whose wikipedia page I'm on.
Posted by: Nico Burns | Tuesday, 13 December 2011 at 08:02 AM
"But I could be out of some loop."
You are John. Wikipedia att times is doing fund raising and puts little pleas for donations at the top of each page. The donation requests are accompanied by a picture which just happens to sit directly over whatever topic you've brought up on Wikipedia.
So that page is the Oliver Sacks Wikipedia entry, with a picture of a young lady asking for donations above it.
Likewise, the Oatmeal link is a page where a picture of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is sitting unrelated above a Wikipedia entry.
As far as why it's funny... well if you don't get it, I can't help you there.
Posted by: David Bostedo | Tuesday, 13 December 2011 at 08:38 AM
Now look up "streak camera" on Wikipedia, and see if that lady's face pops up. Yes, that coy smile, and "streak camera."
Posted by: Brian Miller | Tuesday, 13 December 2011 at 10:48 AM
I know it's late, but I just stumbled over this and thought you might get a chuckle out of it: http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/1111387_700b.jpg (excuse the poor image quality).
By the way, Wikimedia did test various methods for asking for donations, and the "Jimmy appeal" was vastly more effective than the others: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing (Scroll down to October 12, for instance).
Posted by: Friedrich | Sunday, 18 December 2011 at 12:07 PM