An open letter to Elon Musk
- The following open letter to Elon Musk contains the opinions of its author Smallbones. These opinions do not necessarily reflect those of The Signpost, its editors or staff, or those of other Wikipedia editors or of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Dear Elon,
Try as I might to assume good faith, it's impossible to do so for your tweets of October 22: "I will give them a billion dollars if they (Wikipedia) change their name to Dickipedia" which was followed up by two tweets "(Please add that to the 🐄💩 on my wiki page)" and "In the interests of accuracy".
The only way to interpret those tweets is that they are intentional insults to all Wikipedians. You are effectively calling me and all Wikipedia editors "dicks" on a platform that you control where millions of people can view the insult within hours. Ten days later the tweets had been viewed 18.5 million times.
And you start with a reminder of your wealth "I will give them a billion dollars", letting us know that you are a big shot. In fact, you are now the richest man in the world, according to both Forbes and Bloomberg. Most people don't like it when some rich person insults them and uses their money to justify the insult.