Remove Jimmy Wales’ Face From Wikipedia in Three Easy Steps
By Jared Newman | Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Wikipedia’s looking for donations again, which means co-founder Jimmy Wales’ “personal appeal”–and face–is back at the top of every Wikipedia page. The Jimmy Wales Mugshot Method (that’s what I’m calling it, at least) was apparently quite successful last year, helping the user-generated free encyclopedia set a fundraising record, so the revival is no surprise.
Still, you might be sick of seeing Jimmy Wales’ face by now, especially because the alignment of the image on the page can lead to some unfortunate misunderstandings. Fortunately, Taylor Buley has developed a simple way to hide Wales’ mug forever, in three easy steps:
- Go to Buley’s Github page.
- Drag the “De-jimmy” link into your browser’s bookmarks bar or Favorites bar.
- Click on the bookmark while browsing any Wikipedia page where Wales’ face appears.
Although you only click the bookmark on a single page, it applies throughout the site. After that, the only way to get Jimmy back is to clear your browser’s cookies and restart the browser.
Also, tuning out the pleas of a site that provides gobs of knowledge for free seems a little evil, but if you’ve gone this far, I’m going to assume you already got the message, and maybe even donated.
[This post republished from Techland.]
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10 Comments For This Post
November 22nd, 2011 at 5:28 pm
You could also just click the button in the top-right of the banner to do the same thing…
November 22nd, 2011 at 7:26 pm
That will work if you're a loyal Wikipedian who is signed into your Wikipedia user account, and you use the same browser from the same IP address. Not all of us are so dutiful as you are, Nihiltres.
November 23rd, 2011 at 2:45 am
I'm not logged in and I use the same browser in different places. Hitting the x button once was sufficient in my case.
November 23rd, 2011 at 6:29 am
It has nothing to do with IP address or registration status; it's a simple cookie. For most users, whether signed-in or not, it should be enough to click the banner once per browser per computer.
It has nothing to do with loyalty, either; work on that kind of stuff has stalled since RFC 3514. 😉
November 22nd, 2011 at 7:15 pm
There’s a very good reason not to donate — for every dollar given, 56 cents of it are NOT spent on the program services that the Wikimedia Foundation is chartered to uphold. That makes it one of the worst program efficiency ratios of any well-known non-profit. Instead, send them a note saying you’ll donate when they start using at least 70% of the money for what it’s supposed to be spent on.
November 23rd, 2011 at 3:00 am
So you claim Wikipedia is an unsuccessful charity based on that percentage? Half a billion users would probably beg to differ.
November 23rd, 2011 at 6:21 am
Ah, lies, damn lies, and statistics. Kohs’ figure is based off of program service expenses over revenue (program service expenses accounted for 46% of revenue on the last Form 990). This is a very idiosyncratic way to look at the expenses, particularly since the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) keeps an operating reserve and has been growing its budget significantly year-by-year for the past few years. The growth of the budget means that the operating reserve is grown accordingly, so the revenues are naturally higher than the expenses. If you use a rational statistic and look at program services expenses over total expenses, the WMF falls around 75% based on the last Form 990, which is fairly normal (the remainder consists generally of admin., financial, and fundraising costs).
In other words, don’t fall for this petty piece of misdirection.
November 22nd, 2011 at 10:07 pm
you could simply go to blogger.com or something and set up a page. or if you want a more personalized blog you could design your page and then post a blog code onto it from wordpress or fanupdate.
November 24th, 2011 at 3:01 am
If you use Wikipedia enough to get annoyed by the face of Jimmy Wales "every time you go there", I think you're in the right spot to open your wallet and support the site.
January 12th, 2012 at 10:17 pm
Wikipedia is a place to find and access knowledge. Parents can no more fault its "inappropriateness" than they can fault the existence of white supremacy literature or porn magazines.