So Ryan, thank you for this most valuable tool to bring people around the globe together in #DeSoc - creating (and curating, as you have) ***Bridgy_Fed is one of the very best things that the Fediverse has to offer people on both sides of the protocol divide, and I really don't think that there are enough Thank you's to go around for all of the selfless effort you've put into this service.
So as meek and perhaps insignificant as it may sound, THANK YOU!
Content from Socialhome boosted or quote-posted in Hubzilla looks really nice and the inline media of articles is preserved as presented in the original post as well - very nice!
This Should be *a huge conversation in the #Fediverse - really.
@jupiter_rowland certainly paraphrases much of the sentiment here in the Fediverse where many conversations are taking place, albeit briefly, and then dismissed, but why? Are people too busy to care? Are people too apathetic to take seriously anything that begins with the letters, masto...? Do those 5 letters really invoke such categorical dismissiveness that cuts into topics that would otherwise likely gain immediate traction were it not for mention of that corporate monolithic silo brand?
Probably; likely; perhaps - take your pick. There is indeed a general apathy amongst especially long term Fedizens and also Lemmy users who are refugees from Reddit, but it's okay to dismiss masto as the neo-corporate EEE platform conceivably threatening the UX for millions of Fedizens. And like it or not, there does need to be a viable shitposting platform, which is exactly what masto is, inhabited in very large ways by people who, as Jupiter raises the question, "are incapable of actually engaging in textual conversation. There's something to that.
Well, #A11Y is a very real concern, perhaps for the FEPs, considering there are projects that are very close in architecture to completely ignoring anything that isn't part of the W3's official specification, and that's okay.
It is, however, a misnomer that one must insert alt-text into media on the masto platform, at least at this juncture. Forcing the hand of refugees from the deprecated, #Privacy_Mining, monolithic silos is yet another complication that those poor souls need to be gently nudged into accepting - but even more importantly, ... "Why".
Some popular Android clients will complain if you try to post media without also including alt-text, some have no facilities at all for doing so. This is an adoption phenomenon, slowly being rolled out, as awareness increases (awareness of the WHY - not the HowTO) with respect to the reasons it is an important design consideration.
Do people actually get unceremoniously banned for not including alt-text for attached media on masto? Yes, On some instances they do, as if it will have any affect at all on the wider Fediverse - I have heard on several occasions that this does indeed happen - there aren't many things that piss people off more than having something that is important to them getting yanked out from underneath them in rug-pull fashion than that of an #instabanhammer, and yet childish, juvenile moderators and admins on several masto instances are truly guilty of such dystopian tyranny and abuse of privilege.
Those types of adversarial, clickish masto instances are much of the reason Fediverse gets a bad rap in some silo social networking circles, and it isn't a fair characterization, but the offensive behavior persists. More than an impetus for the deployment of #smolweb, single-user instances, it is indeed primarily a masto phenomenon.
Not a pretty thing, but masto always has been a caustic cauldron of cacophony of enmity and active vitriol, and that's just one more reason to expedite the outreach programs popping up all over the place to entice the good folks to ditch it in favor of many other good social networking platforms mentioned by Jupiter in his cw-LONG article (I wish he wouldn't bother catering to those mastoblasters with that sentiment, they should at least be smart enough to see that it's more substantive than their shitposting personas are capable of parsing).
@tallship Okay, let me explain this because it's obviously hard to understand unless you really know the Fediverse, its various projects and their cultures.
On Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams), people hate Mastodon because Mastodon is outdated, lacklustre and utterly, utterly underequipped intentionally by design.
For example, all three can produce full-blown long-form blog posts with absolutely all bells and whistles of long-form blogging. All kinds of text formatting, all kinds of lists, tables, any number of embedded in-line images, what-have-you. If you can do it on WordPress, you can do it on Friendica and Hubzilla and (streams).
And then comes Mastodon and staunchly, flat-out refuses to support anything that isn't old-school, original gangsta, Twitter-like, bare-bone, minimalistic microblogging. It uses an "HTML sanitiser" to completely mangle your precious posts before showing them. It even strips the embedded in-line images out.
If you want your images to make it to Mastodon, you have to automatically attach copies of them to your posts as file attachments because that's something that Mastodon understands. And what does Mastodon do? Only import a measly four of them and throw the others away anyway.
It's a wonder that Mastodon introduced support for a select few text formatting elements, including quotes, with version 4.0 last year. But I kid you not, there are Mastodon instance admins who stubbornly refuse to update to Mastodon 4.x because they reject even these features, because they're "un-Mastodon-like". Oh, and Mastodon 4.x still doesn't know things like strikethrough, text colour, text size, numbered lists or tables. And it still strips in-line images out.
This is not a case of "we'd like to, but unfortunately, our engine can't be made capable of that, sorry". It's a case of deliberate refusal. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) perceive this as Mastodon flipping them the bird. Like, "Fuck you bitches, what you want ain't no old-skool microblogging, we ain't gonna do that!"
On top of that come masses of ignorant and obnoxious Mastodon users. My estimation is that 50% of all Mastodon users think the Fediverse is only Mastodon, and so does everyone in their respective bubble. Most of the rest only knows the Fediverse outside of Mastodon by a bunch of names, but no more than that. Many of them actually believe that Gargron has invented the Fediverse, and everything that isn't Mastodon is bolted onto Mastodon as an add-on or actually only an alternate UI for Mastodon with some extra features. Like, whether you use Mitra or Hubzilla, or whether you use Mona or Tusky, it's all Mastodon underneath.
They don't know that there's stuff out there in the Fediverse that's nothing like Mastodon. And they don't really care. And they don't know either that this other stuff has its own culture that differs from Mastodon's. Many of those who do know that there's more to the Fediverse than Mastodon want to force Mastodon's culture upon all the Fediverse. And with that, I don't only mean that all posts that end up on someone's Mastodon timelines have to conform to Mastodon's culture, but that everything that happens on non-Mastodon instances has to conform to Mastodon's culture.
If Mastodon users don't like it, you shouldn't be allowed to do it on Mitra or Friendica or Hubzilla or wherever. For some Mastodon users, this includes limiting all posts and comments to no more than 500 characters. Even if what you use doesn't have a character limit. Oh, and no quote-posts and no text formatting etc. etc., even if your kin have done that since times when Eugen Rochko was still a school kid, six years before Mastodon was made.
At the same time, Mastodon users are fully convinced that the reason why Mastodon is the biggest is because Mastodon is the best Fediverse project, even feature-wise.
Now, if you want to discuss the whole Fediverse, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams), in spite of being amongst the best places in the Fediverse to discuss anything by underlying technology, you can't do that on either. The reason is because their users actually don't know that much about Mastodon and its culture. Most of them have never come into touch with it that much or at all. You first have to explain it all to them. Many won't even want to hear anything about it even then, and those who do still can't believe what you're telling them.
The case with Lemmy is a different one. Just like Mastodon almost entirely consists of former Twitter users who escaped when Musk bought Twitter, Lemmy almost entirely consists of former Redditors who escaped when Reddit was enshittified by trying to charge third-party frontends $20,000,000 to access the Reddit API.
However, all they really know is Reddit where they used to be and Lemmy where they are now. They haven't also been on Twitter, and thus, they haven't also fled to Mastodon.
There's a Lemmy community named "Fediverse". "Community" means "subreddit" on Lemmy. And this one is named "Fediverse". One should expect there to be people who are at least halfway competent about the Fediverse, right? People with whom you can discuss the Fediverse, and who know what you're talking about?
Hahahaha... no.
Nobody in that Lemmy community knows anything about the Fediverse outside Lemmy and maybe the rest of the Threadiverse. They know that Mastodon exists. They know the name Mastodon. But that's all. They absolutely don't know anything else about Mastodon. They literally don't even know what the default Mastodon Web interface looks like because literally not even a single one of them has ever even been bothered to go visit mastodon.social and take a look at it, not even only once.
If you want to discuss Mastodon matters with them, you first have to take a deeeeeeep breath. And then you have to explain everything to them, down to the very very basics. And you probably have to explain certain things several times over because they're too hard to grasp from a Reddit/Lemmy point of view.
If you want to discuss the Fediverse beyond Lemmy and the Threadiverse and Mastodon, forget it. You'd have to explain even more.
At least the Lemmy users don't try to force Lemmy's culture upon the rest of the Fediverse. For one, most of them know that the Fediverse is not only Lemmy. And besides, nonetheless, the idea of Lemmy connecting to something that isn't part of the Threadiverse is still alien to them.
So why is it impossible to discuss accessibility in Fediverse posts?
Because Mastodon users have the Mastodon way set in stone in their minds. Because they cannot imagine that it could possibly go any other way. Or why it should.
And everyone else either takes Mastodon's approach for another Mastodon-specific fad that they're going to ignore like all the other fads that came from Mastodon. Or they have never even heard of it. See Lemmy where the idea of adding alt-text to anything if you aren't a Web developer is completely out of this world and utterly unimaginable.
But what about those #MS_Windows users out there? How about a gzipped tarball, all nicely packaged up so you can distribute around, of a custom built #PuTTY client that will securely connect people to your #Synchronet_BBS over telnet?
Hehehe.... I suppose this is my opportunity to plug Joshua's free domain name service here that's been a trusted mainstay for over 20 years :p
Perhaps one of the best parts is that you can see how many days (years) the domain has been part of the service, to dissuade concerns over whether there's a likelihood of it suddenly disappearing :)
Aside from lotech #Sneakernet schemas, there's also several FOSS based community driven initiatives. There's been a lot of real-world, ad-hoc development since my years of participation in the IRTF/IRSG DTNRG. Full disclosure, I was also formerly employed by Semtech. The notion that there's a use case for communications that can take months, even decades to arrive (or never at all) is a valid concern for many practical applications.
More immediate, and relevant communications systems for most folks here on Terra Firma include projects like Lokinet, which has some great info HERE, and also aspires to the same level of, um... disconnectivity (sneakernet-like) or operability that @silverpill mentions above - the value of having a client/server architecture that is prepared to exploit this out of the box is much relevant that one might think.
Some of these semi-production or production ready real world initiatives and communities are:
CellSol - It is noteworthy to mention that Texas is the only state in the USA that sports an (actually only mostly) autonomous electricity grid (not dependent upon the national grid), although it's not publicly managed, and has been criticized as such due in part to nearly 1000 deaths occurring in the winter of 2021. The repo is HERE. Here's a PoC for one such use case from the PoV of a native Texan: Apologies for directly linking to an article in the monolithic silo space.
During my years living quite literally off-grid in the wilderness of the forested mountains in Northern California, I had the privilege of meeting and contracting for several farms and individuals deeply steeped in what is generally referred to as the prepper movement. These weren't cray cay militants (at least not most of them) or paranoiacs calling for revolution or believing the end is nigh, but rather, farmers and families who were, rightfully so, extremely concerned with security and safety for their small communities and loved ones. To survive in places like that, which exist all over the world, one must begin with self-sufficiency that covers 4 seasons; beyond that, protecting the 'me and mine' aspects of your assets and property are very real considerations.
The work I focused on led me to developing microwave surveillance systems using inexpensive, solar powered Ubiquiti Nanostations with ranges capable of exceeding 10KM, strategically placed in almost inaccessible locations overlooking entire valleys as well as within small perimeters of their farms and households. This included off the shelf PTZ cameras, many of which were capable of license plate and facial recognition, but more importantly, being able to determine the difference between things like Bears, Deer, and Humans - false positive intrusions detected are quite frustrating, lolz.
All of this was coupled together with Shinobi, which can be monitored and controlled from anywhere, on any device. The repo is here.
With the extreme threat levels of thievery and other concerns in those regions, and continuous incidents of such, a comprehensive #FOSS based, #solar powered communications and surveillance system is an in demand market. Internet access is of course, problematic in such regions, which creates the market for WISPs operating in the unlicensed microwave bands a high demand commodity as well.
This is merely demonstrative of the need for another niche type computing arena - community networks completely unconnected to the Internet:
All of these projects, protocols, and initiatives have solution based choices for the various kinds of Delay Tolerant Networking standards and communities actively developing for connectionless, intermittently connected systems, or autonomous networks that aren't neccessarily interdependant upon a classic, traditional, Internet connection.
Not sufficient to just eschew the deprecated, privacy disrespecting monolithic silos, it's also not prudent to depend upon clearnet aspects of the Internet either. In practice, it's possible to take pretty much any platform technology that listens for packets and fashion the ability to be accessible and available via I2P, Tor, IPFS Yggdrasil, and other IP routed constructs, yet moreover, the majority of people only consider intercommunication in terms of the IP routed packet switched network we call the Internet (powered almost entirely by Cisco IOS and the like), without due consideration given to the fact that this single common denominator is also a single choke point - kludgy platforms like masto that can't even keep up with the contemporary movements in the social networking landscape aren't going to fare well when it comes to the expanding horizons opening up with movements like those above, while others like Sreams, Mitra, and perhaps protocols such as Nostr that exhibit the ambitions to explore and exploit emerging technologies in communication will fare much better, adapting (and embracing layer 1 & 2 networking) along the way.
More great news on the #rPi front - remote access for #SOHO and Home based networks as simple as a single apt install command!
Give it a try today and let us all know what you think! I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences with this invaluable remote access tool.
#e2ee is a goal, not a promise. As far back as I can remember, forums like those supporting #Enigmail and #gpg were staffed with volunteers from the privacy community who repeatedly insisted on answering questions, like, "Is <this> (whatever this might be) totally secure?" with stock questions like, "What is it that you consider 'totally secure?" or answers such as, "Secure is a relative term, nothing is completely secure, how secure do you need your mission's communications to be?"
Phrases such as, reasonably secure should be indicators of how ridiculous it is to assume that any secure platform isEVERcompletely, and totally secure.
That begs the question, "Exactly how secure do you require your communications to be?" The answer is always, ... relative.
Which means that you should always believe Ellen Ripley when she says, "Be afraid. Be very afraid!"
My experience is that state actors won't even try to decrypt your communications. That's old school - and a horribly inefficient use of resources. They'll come after you with a keylogger or manufactured legal nightmares or torture - to either or both sides of the communication; depending on the perceived value of your secret.
It all comes down to 4 fundamental questions:
What is the value of your secret to you
What resources do you have available to protect it
What is the perceived value of your secret to your adversary
What resources do they have available to divulge it
I'm unable to pull this up and boost here. Was able to get the whole stream on a Glitch-soc box np, and I can follow the curator here too, but I'm too tired to try testing on Hubzilla or Friendica at the moment; so I'll just post the link then, which may be of interest to some, ... Actually, I suspect, many.
We've had some discussions about this over in the Fediverse-City Matrix room, Where Ryan is also a participant. It's apropos of the recent onboarding with respect to Flipboard curators and also the nacent interoperability we're experiencing with Bluesky's ATP.
After several years of warning after warning after advisory after advisory and calls to repeatedly update or remove andNOT USE CHROME by the Department of Homeland Security, it should be inconceivable that anyone does - but they do.
Sometimes these are patched with automatic updates before horrific and catastrophic results occur, sometimes not. To be frank, part of the problem stems from the fact that Chrome is the largest attack surface out there where browsers are concerned, but notwithstanding it being the fav target are also serious privacy concerns that aren't shared by other chromium based browsers.
To be fair, many exploits are indeed shared by other chromium based browsers, but not most, while some are related to other browser capabilities, like WebRTC, but it's still best to just ditch Chrome and never look back.
Here's more coverage on vulnerabilities issued less than a month ago. It took 3 seconds to bring this up, and no, not using Google, which didn't reveal this when I tried that search engine in a subsequent search, lolz. Why would they return SERPs that poo poo their own product?
There's truly only one way to ensure safety - unplug. But there's a lot of simple things you can do to exact a reasonable level of security, so why not observe some of those best practices? It's not like it will cramp your style.
Anyway, that's my two cents. h/t to @darnell for raising awareness of this latest brokewell. Make sure you take the time to visit the link he's provided for you too.
There are plenty of #Browsers that run on #Android (to name a few, alphabetized):
Brave Browser
Chromium
DuckDuckGo
Firefox
Kiwi
Vivaldi
IMO, No one should be running Chrome - Desktop or otherwise. It's a privacy nightmare even when there aren't CERT warnings circulating.
@tallship@thenexusofprivacy thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it? GoToSocial looks interesting and they don't have a central instance, you host your own even on a Pi.
Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.
No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?
Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably. mastodon.social is one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.
No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.
The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.
Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.
True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.
With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.
Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.
In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when their on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.
The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".
That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.
masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.
Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.
Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.
There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.
I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.
Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after @Gled archived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!
Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?
In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.
My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.
The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.
I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.
And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.
Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.
I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.
They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)
Okay it's one of those, "What's peculiar here?" kinda things.
Consider the source itself. And I certainly don't mean code of any sort. 'Why' would 'They' cite Wikipedia, as good a resource as anyone might think it to be?
Why not cite yourself? Instead of citing someone else - who will merely turn right around and cite you as the ultimate source reference?
A few dollars, even that little if that's all that you can, will be greatly appreciated and goes to a tangible cause with a finite timeline. I cannot speak to what will happen to the original archival material following digitizing, but paper does have an expiration date, so the sooner anyone is able to step up with anything the sooner Jason can get back to the business of preservation.