Now You’re Just Messing With Us Wikipedia

The good news is that Wikipedia has finally switched up that image of Jimmy Wales begging for money on its homepage. The bad news is that they’ve replaced it with another unfortunately left-aligned image of some random guy (Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris to be precise) who, according to my email inbox, looks like everything from Jesus, to Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger to a member of the Hell’s Angels.

And because Harris’ image is left aligned, the weird article title/image juxtaposition thing still stands; The last straw was when I was Wikipedia-ing actress Diane Keaton last night and up he came, inadvertently wearing the same outfit and in the same pose as the Annie Hall star.

Here is a particularly hilarious conversation I had about it with somebody on IM.

Person: damn some idiot biker is screaming at me to give me money today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra
Person: refresh the page
Person: he should ride in on a harley
Person: and then jack me with a switchblade
Me: Snort
Person: cut my face if i don’t drop some funds on wikipedia
Me: Should I do another post?
Person: I’ve heard Jesus
Me: seems necessary
Person: Is wikipedia run by a biker gang?
Person: Will they slit your tires if you don’t donate?
Person: i like how he has two different pics
Person: there’s the soft outside guy silently judging you and the intimidating dude who will jack your ass

“I donated to get Brandon Harris’ picture off the top. I didn’t mind Jimmy Wales’ piercing gaze but Brandon was just disturbing,” notes interaction designer Xianhang Zhang on Quora. Until Wikipedia finally figures it out, Jimmy Wales himself offers an alternative to donating (and complaining) for those of you still creeped out,”You can also just click the little ‘x’.”

To donate money to Wikipedia, WHICH YOU TOTALLY SHOULD IN CASE IT’S NOT CLEAR, follow this link.