wikiloops foolosophy - Richards thoughts on 14 years of wikiloops

Welcome to my wikiloops tale :)
I hope you will resonate with some of my words as you might when listening to some catchy track.
Thanks for being the audience here, here's my wikiloops story for you.

For those who may not know – my name is Richard, I am the owner, coder and administrator of the site wikiloops.com, which went live fourteen years ago.

I am by now 44 years old, married, father of one child and working as a senior backend programmer for some German company. wikiloops operations have been a side-gig for years.
I just realized that I have almost spent a third of my life operating wikiloops, and thinking about that, there's only playing drums and some bad habits that have been around longer than „the 'loops“.

I consider myself lucky, as I was born in one of the richest countries, raised in a working family, received a pretty good education and was offered lots of opportunities to widen my horizon.
I had the chance to live abroad, learn a second language fluently, and to experience first hand how different cultures may take very different views on the same things.
I have been exposed to culture clashes face first and right on the ground, quite often without the quick exit option.

Cultur clash experience

I remember those challenging moments, when I had to realize that I would need to somehow come to terms with things being very different to what I was accustomed to. That can be extremely challenging, especially when the different scenario one is exposed to triggers a negative emotional reaction. You don't want to be the European animal rights activist attending a ceremonial Islamic sheep slaughter, to give a vivid example, and if you happen to end up at one, do not be surprised you'll have a massive emotional response.
What I can tell you is this: There is a treasure to be discovered if you somehow manage to overcome that expect-able emotional shock. I am not saying you will end up liking the culturally strange things. If you can manage to keep an open mind, you will end up noticing that those people who do those really strange things are actually good people, who have something very lovable about them.
There is always that exemption from the rule, and sadly, that is what often gets the most attention, but I can tell you I eventually found love-able people where-ever I have been. It does take tolerance, and an open mind, both requiring some effort.

A little historical context

Besides our cultural context, all of us are stuck in a certain historic context.
To sum mine, I grew up with a grandfather who had fought in WW2 and who was raised & socialized during high times of the Nazi era. Grandma lived to beyond 90, but couldn't overcome the fear of foreigners that generation had been spoon-fed.
My parents belong to the post-war baby-boomer generation which (in parts) rebelled against their parents. They founded their family in a de-militarized and divided Germany, with the cold war on the horizon. Dad loves Hendrix, the Beatles and the Blues, all of which became accessible as Germany had strong military presence of American and British troops in my parents youth.
If I was to sum the overall position of the adults I grew up with, then these were pacifists that were wary of any military actions, quite ashamed of Nazi-germanys history and with some uprising ecological awareness, that lead them to question the use of atomic power and other practices. All whilst enjoying the merits of a skyrocketing German economy.
What I witnessed myself so far is probably the golden period of post WW2-Europe, where the Schengen-Treaty allowed anyone to travel all across Europe (including England at that time), without being stopped on any border.
I remember my dad remarking on that on some of our many holiday trips as a family, it felt free, and now that open borders are about to become history I realize how lucky I have been to have witnessed that period in time.
There would be no wikiloops today, had my parents not sent off their sixteen year old son to spend a year abroad as an exchange student. Me, the rebellious son of post-war-German teachers, ended up in the beautiful state of Tennessee, to spend a year at high-school and to live with an American family.
My host parents were in their mid-fifties at the time, and had settled in TN after the many re-locations U.S.-military people are accustomed to.
My host dad had served in Vietnam and Korea, been stationed in Europe for some years and seemed to enjoy running his little farm whilst continuing to serve with some civilians job on the local military base, doing maintenance on the 101st airborne divisions helicopters.
Me, who had never touched or even seen any privately owned guns got the room that also hosted his gun cabinet, while his veterans recognition were on display in the family living room.
I could go on stating the 1001 irritating things I was exposed to and had to wrap my head around, which was not all easy to me.

We all owe Jim and Donna thanks for having wikiloops today, as it was their tolerance and policy of open doors that allowed for the long-haired teenager to discover and understand some of the „American way“.
They let me have a Drumset in their garden shack, and helped me widen my horizon, and looking at 250k internationally collaborated tracks on wikiloops today, one may say they changed the planet a little by doing so.
Words like „ecology“ or „recycling“ clearly were not part of their vocabulary back then, which was indeed very disturbing to me, but – they are totally lovable people with their hearts at the right spot.
Last in my „historic context“ paragraph, let me mention I ended up studying social work in the Netherlands in the early 2000s.
A part of my view on societies, cultural diversity and group dynamics has clearly been influenced by these studies, which involved a good bit of psychology and group dynamics. The Netherlands also have a quite unique take on things and are culturally different to the Germans in many ways, so, once again I benefited from leaving my home territory. My degree in social work is the only academic title I ever achieved, and it was followed by roundabout ten years of working with elderly, disabled or chronically ill people, including psychiatric wards.
You definitely need an open-minded mindset and a skill in empathy to work that field, which did not feel too complicated to me.

Why invest a third of my life in wikiloops?

It was not planned like this, you know. In 2011, wikiloops was more of an experiment, aiming to make use of some recording material that was left after my first studio project failed.
I believed the internet would open doors to let people collaborate across any borders, and inspired by the collaborative efforts of the open source software scene and projects like the wikipedia, I took an entirely naive „let's try this“ approach and started hacking around to create this „web 2.0“ like site.
I clearly recall that „wohoo“-moment when one could suddenly upload music to the site.
Really, for the younger readers, that was something pretty new in 2011, Youtube and Facebook already existed, but the average website offered little more than a „guestbook“ page where one could leave a written comment.
I'll skip the book on how to become a DIY coder using internet resources prior to the AI age. Thanks again for those who shared their knowledge prior to AI, we all owe it to those nerds who spent time explaining how to solve coding issues online, for free. That knowledge is basically what AI is replicating nowadays.
Let me rather try to describe what came after the initial „Let's see if this works...“.
It obviously did work, technically, more or less, well, people came back and created music, so, yeah, that worked.
It did not work as a donation based wikipedia like entity, or I simply was not able to pull it off.
Maybe the niche of making music from ones home is too narrow to receive wide support, maybe I should have invested more into public relations.
One sad-yet-funny fact is that I'd be able to happily provide wikiloops for 1% of what wikipedia spends on winning/engaging donors each year...
either way, I had to eventually switch wikiloops from „free for all“ to „freemium“ (meaning we have paid membership upgrades), which is still not my preferred setup, but at least that setup pays the server bills and a small part of my work.

With my family background and the historic time window being as described above, I was always especially proud to see jams between people from the USA, Europe and Russia on wikiloops, as these felt like „look, we may not go back to cold war times if only enough people realize we all grove to the same music“.
I always wished we might gain some musicians from India who have such a rich musical tradition – too bad that never really got a foothold on the loops (so far), I'd still love to see it happening one day.
I am proud to know that there have been wikiloops members traveling and visiting each other, that friendships have been made across borders and similarities have been discovered and celebrated.
I also had to learn the slow and hard way that -whilst my motivation may have been to bring people closer together and to contribute to a colorful world which celebrates its rich set of flavors (I find myself dodging the „diversity“ word) – that this is just my motivation, which is not necessarily shared or cherished by all who use wikiloops as a service.

It would be naive to think everyone had my cosmopolitan world view and similar life experience, and, well, open a website and you get all sorts of people, including some who feel the internet was made to dump their negative emotions on others.
So, yeah, it worked, I ended up working a 9-5 job to support my family, and my attempts to unite the worlds musicians kinda failed with some individuals.
wikiloops is still here. Why?

You hopefully know, we have a „no politics, no religion“ rule on wikiloops, and that has been established for reasons:
It is not like I was not a political and religious person, I am.
We (the moderation team of wikiloops) just learned the hard way that many people lack the ability to communicate about these topics in a way that is not unnecessarily offensive to others, and to pull a plug on that (after attempting to moderate it for some years), we ended up installing these no-no rules.

I do not have any plans to revoke these rules, and I do not consider myself above the rules of this community. Still, if we want to talk about MY motivation of doing this for 14 years, allow me to offer my answer – which should hopefully not offend anyone.

Open minded, not woke

I would like to speak about the „woke“ phenomenon for a few sentences, which probably has already seen its peak and is now seemingly rolled back on a large scale.
As a social worker, and as a traveler & cultural mingler, I guess I have developed a mindful, diplomatic and respectful inner state long before the „woke“ term started trending.
I am quite tolerant, and my friends include people from all kinds of cultures, sexual orientations and religions, simply because I found these people likeable, not because I am super-woke.
I never felt a need to display any rainbow flags on wikiloops or feature some minority group for any reason, neither would I deny people from Russia to display a Russian flag on their wikiloops profile.
I did also not promote that all of wikiloops „stands with Ukraine“ - compared to the Olympic Comittee or even the ever-so-neutral Switzerland, wikiloops has kept a truly neutral position and the doors open to everyone who wants to make some music, and that was a deliberate decision.

Since wikiloops does rely on being listed on Google search so people like you can find it, it was more of a prevention move to make sure certain terms do not appear on wikiloops too prominently, as we are constantly in danger of being de-listed by the constantly changing and highly political algorithm.

Ever since my son starts reading along on my screen some times, I feel sticking to the child-friendly policy on wikiloops was a really good idea.
The whole point of making mention of the woke phenomenon here is to conclude that – in my humble opinion – the woke movement did a bad service to making this world more tolerant and to bridge cultural or sociological canyons.
In these post-covid days of social diversion, the „woke“ movement made it even harder to me to position wikiloops, which is pro tolerance, pro awareness and mutual respect, pro diversity and con separation by its core,
but nowhere near the raised index-finger nonsense and forced-language-gendering madness the woke movement brought about.
If you do not have love for people (including the intolerant, homophobic ones and the queer ones), then that is an issue you might want to work on.
Rewriting children's books and cancelling mothers day to fight discrimination weren't the greatest ideas to begin with, and the current backlash is the result of pushing too hard IMHO.

wikiloops attempts of changing peoples perspectives were more subtle, and maybe less progressive. I do remember quite lot of situations on wikiloops where I was aware that some community incident had a potential of widening some peoples horizons – which is always equivalent to „oh shit, let's be on moderation alert before things go down the wrong way“.
I am aware people continue to find it challenging to accept this platform is operated by someone who has embraced Islam, and I remember well the day when some guy who is a well-remixed contributor to the loops informed the community that his male partner had sadly passed away.
Such moments may put some members tolerance to a test, as this very post will probably do, too.
In most cases, the quality of the music and the fun of mingling on wikiloops outweighs the irritation, and that is a good thing.
I had to manage the single individuals parting from wikiloops who could not overcome their frame of thinking, and those are not pleasant memories.
I have become more robust about that with time, but I do still feel a feeling of pity when it happens.
If you think about the history of the type of music we are engaging in here on wikiloops, then the whole spectrum from metal to jazz wouldn't possibly exist if music did not have that strength to overcome division.
If the best voice in town happens to be a gay guy, people can't help but acknowledge the voice, if the grooviest dance band happens to be people of color, well, let's have them in the white boys club on Saturday... history is full of that, and music often helped people to overcome prejudice, at least to some extent.
Maybe some tiny bit of that has happened via wikiloops, I do hope so.

The discovery of loneliness

Okay, so, if uniting the worlds musicians on wikiloops was the obvious and proclaimed aim, and if dealing with the expect-able amount of cross-cultural irritation turned out to be a major task, then now comes another aspect to wikiloops, which dawned on me some time later.
In our modern society, many people are incredibly lonely.
Check some mental health publications or studies, and you will find loneliness paired with depression on the top of the list of mental health issues in pretty much any digitalized society.

It took quite some time and a lot of messages by people who wanted to thank me for offering wikiloops, who confided to me that wikiloops was their ray of sunlight during dark and difficult life phases to make me realize that wikiloops is also providing a remedy to a significant group of people who would otherwise be isolated by some health condition.
I know that this is a taboo topic, and I do not expect anyone to comment on that publicly.
Since I am trying to answer why I have spent 30% of my lifetime on wikiloops, I take the liberty to state that I have „these people“ in mind. Depression is not an unknown thing to me, so, when making sure wikiloops does not put pressure on its participants by requiring constant action, creating competition or demanding public appearance, then there might be a bit more wisdom behind that than some may have noticed at first sight.
If I have spent a lot of my life worrying about wikiloops, then keeping that light on for those out there has definitely played a role.

Why I can not say nothing

As a German, I have spent plenty of time wondering why my grandparents did not object when their Jewish neighbours were deported to concentration camps. Now that I have grown into a families dad, I hold a job position and run a business, I guess I have a better understanding on why they didn't, still, that is no justification for looking away when things go dark around you.
The speed at which this world is changing lately is scary, things that seemed reliable for the past 44 years no longer seem to be reliable, and the pace at which the learnings from humanities previous mistakes are being replaced by new interpretations of the truth seems record breaking.

We have a lot of ruins around where I live that date back to the roman empire, which conquered parts of western Germany roundabout two thousand years ago.
These Romans weren't only militarized and well organized, they also built proper roads and sewing systems that prevented disease and provided good drinking water to the public.
However, a thousand years later, people considered the remaining structures as the devils work and had forgotten about these technical improvements, causing the infamous black pox outbreak to wipe away roughly one third of the cities populations.
That always puzzled me, as I had no idea how a civilization might take such a step backwards.
I guess I have toyed with the idea that something similar might happen if all computers ceased to work due to some incident today, but, to say it bluntly, I feel we are witnessing how it can happen as a man-made effort, without the need for some technical outside event.
Maybe I am all wrong, and what is happening are steps towards a brighter future. Maybe I am old school to believe that we need to find and establish ways of peaceful co-existence on the planet, without ruining it on our way.
That concept seems to go out of season these days, at least that is the impression I have when reading the news lately, and yes, it scares the shit out of me.
Look, I am not finger pointing at anyone, I am just stating my personal feelings. We do not need to discuss daily politics on wikiloops, I would not see any benefit in that at all.
But we might be well advised to allow for „uh, I'm feeling worried“ statements, before anyone chokes on them in silence.
As for myself, I feel the obligation to speak out, as I have the opportunity and the means to reach you (if you kept reading this far, that is).
What is my message?
You are not alone in this. If you are worried, so are quite a lot of other people, including Richard of wikiloops.com.
It's okay to be concerned, but we all need to watch that it does not turn into some „we are doomed“ hopelessness. That is dangerous, so, let's try to be the ones that keep some faith that things will correct themselves, even tho that might not be what dominates the media.
Mind, I am explicitly not calling for any action – that is up to each of us to decide and non of my business. I do not think a burning tesla will solve anything, what we'll need is kindness and reason. A bit of scientific proof is good in the mix as well.

Maybe we are all the fools of tomorrow, I most certainly am. That's not the bad part of being human, it has always been like that, and will most likely stay that way.
We should not fail to point out that there were a lot of really really nasty mistakes in human history, we Germans contributed to that list in heavy chunks, and so did a lot of other nations, religions and other groups of probably well-meaning people.

To eradicate these things from history books or to re-evaluate them to fit today's political agenda is dangerous, as it takes future generations the chance to avoid similar mistakes.
Guess what, this world is highly complicated and demanding, and we humans are lazy and like easy-to-comprehend catchy Holliwood stories with a clear good guy and a bad guy, that demand not more than 90 minutes before a happy end (90minutes is already way too long for the tiktok generation, btw).
Truth and tolerance demand more than a ten second attention span, and overcoming adversity and emotional reactions takes a strong will outside of pure pleasantry hunting.
When politicians start changing the history books, when the free arts are being put under control and when journalists are being discredited for reporting critically, then that should be strong warning signs.
Had I written the prior sentence two years ago, you may have thought I was referring to north Korea, well, seems everyone needs to look closely nowadays.

My call ends like this:

I would like to invite you to join me on a mission to preserve the spirit of post WW2 music, including the surrounding culture of open-mindednes.
If we leave our youth to their smartphone addiction and fail to win their attention and spark their love for the unifying experience of human-played music,
well, then that's pretty sad and smells like a giant waste of potential.

If we do not preserve what we know, some student may ask AI about music in 2050 and be informed that there were periods in history during which music mattered to a lot of people. It might present an image of some white-skinned person named „James Brown“ whom people called the godfather of funk for unknown reasons. We don't want that to happen, do we?

Will wikiloops be around for another 14 years?

In all honesty, I do not know. I might not be capable to continue at some point, and – sad but true – the project desperately needs some fool like me to stay operational.
At wikiloops current budget, I don't feel convinced I'll be able to find a successor that would value the core of what wikiloops is. It works thanks to your help, and we would definitely not be sitting here today had it not been for many donors and supporters,
but wikiloops still isn't some revenue gushing business that people would like to get their foot onto.
Paying five bucks a month to use wikiloops without limitations is one thing,
seeing the larger picture and supporting the guy who tries to shoulder that as a side gig is something else.
I hope I have proven that I can be trusted not to double down and go down commercial road with this project – if this was a 14-year-lasting make-believe, then that would have been the most stupid thing anyone ever did. It wasn't all roses, you know.
I have not given up hope that support will come in time, throw money at me and I'll do my best to keep the boat afloat and more. A wikiloops foundation? Sure, I'd hand over ownership and be happy I can stop worrying. Bringing people together on the ground for real meetings? I've pulled it off six times so far, imagine for a second what I'd do if I had proper financial backing instead of working a boring job to pay them bills ;)
Well, this has been a long „talk“ - and I thank you for taking the time to „hear me out“ today.
I hope you feel okay about what I stated, and about being part of this project called wikiloops.
Feel free to reach out, share this article with someone who might care or to send some words, some money or some spiritual support my way if you feel like it.
Please forgive the many words and my many mistakes during those fourteen years, all one can do is try, right?

Yours truly
Richard

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Wow great read Richard, and as I told you many times: you can be ducking proud of what you crated. Most people live a lifetime without touching so many peoples life as you did in 14 years and counting. It is obviously not as grand as my elephant enclosure project, but still fantastic :D . The only thing missing from your article was telling how your life was turned upside down when you met me ;). Joking aside my friend, long may it continue, and thank you for this great place <3

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A fascinating read. Thank you Richard for Wikiloops. May it live long and prosper.

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wow! what a great and mindful piece of writing.
things are tight here at the moment but if i win the lottery, its all going to you n the loops. i don't know what i'd do without the connections i have made, and will make through this amazing project.
i wonder if you realise what a wonderful musical world you have created here.
thanks dick.x

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Thoughtful, empathic and eloquent. More power to your elbow Richard.

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on behalf of my fellow Americans, apologies for any wrong-doing that could have occurred in Tennessee :)

although i cannot forgive you for the past 14 years, i can forgive you for 5 of those years :) (you see, i started in 2020, just a little humor my friend). long live WikiLoops!

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Thank you Richard for Wikiloops. It is not just site it is great musicians community!

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Continue to bring the spirit of Woodstock to life in a furious world, full of metal and despair is a beautiful utopia that you suffer perfectly for our greatest happiness.

A lot of respect also for the site that requested monstrous work can be at the expense of your personal life ...

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Happy 14th birthday, DickWikRicharLoops!
You're what we call "a beautiful person," and I had the pleasure of meeting you in person! <3
Proud to be part of this community that has lasted for 14 years... let's continue the adventure.:W
Maybe in 14 years, your son will take over the helm of the WL cruise ship ? :)

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Happy 14th Richard, and thanks for all of your work :) <3 And if that's a 'foolosophy', then I'll be a glad fool on that hill as well :)

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Let's celebrate Wikiloops' 14th with an older track by some fine musicians - could only happen here of course:

[wl]139824[/wl]

Enjoy, as I did a few minutes ago :)

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Or let's just swing it - bravo to these gentlemen as well!

[wl]139798[/wl]

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Thanks for keeping Wikiloops going Richard. The music and the friendly people are what keep me here.

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I think it takes a special kind of story and motivation to create and maintain something like Wikiloops. This is also reflected in the kind of people who are drawn here and contribute and create and inspire.

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There's no other website for musicians that even comes close to what you've created here so thanks to you Richard and everyone else who have helped make this the unique place it is over the past fourteen years. :W

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