Oh god, this is the funniest thing ever.*
Highlights:
“Fallout Boy and Panic! at the Disco need to be removed. They are NOT punk, and that is NOT opinion,” one poster goes.
To see what’s bugging people the most about Wikipedia’s “Oral sex” entry, start with the history page, which lists notations of edits, accompanied by terse explanations like “An encyclopedia is not to give advice… the purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts.”
The company that distributes shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is called “4Kids,” but the people attacking its Wikipedia entry are grown-ups with an axe to grind, and have been referred to by their opponents as “racist asshole Otakus” and “anime fundamentalists [who] just won’t give up their useless annoying crusade for cartoon riceballs.”
They have given Don Krieg Poison suction cups that make no sense in their delivery. They have given Monkey D. Luffy an annoying voice, as was done to Sanji and Usopp. Thay have given Luffty Dumbass jokes.
It’s “wholly filled, top-to-bottom, with SPAM-worship,” complains Gspawn.
*Meaning “today”, or maybe “this week”.
65 Responses to “When anal retentive nerds come together as one”
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I want to have your babies. I don’t know how that will work yet, but damnit, posting that link makes me want to figure out a way.
I think I got involved in a Wikipedia edit war once, over my high school many years ago. We wanted an entry for it, since we are one of the largest public high schools in the state/country, and people kept flagging us for deletion. Good times.
…Have you seen the talk page for your Wiki entry?
There’s a big debate over whether your article should be tagged “anti-catholicism” or not.
I am neither a narcissist nor a masochist, and so I haven’t done more but give a glance at my Wikipedia page. Getting involved would become this vortex of time.
There’s a big debate over whether your article should be tagged “anti-catholicism” or no
STAMP OF PRIDE!
Speedy Gonzales, OMFG, I actually got in to a conversation with a Mexican in Mexico city where he brought it up! I was joking around with him in the lunch line about the cops with bullhorns screaming “andale andale andale!” at every major intersection to urge the cars to speed through.
He told me that Speedy was actually popular in Mexico. I’m sure he was speaking for himself, but his coworkers were in agreement. Funny, given the Wikipedia furor!
Just because someone thinks band is shitty doesn’t mean that it’s not a punk rock group. Punk is a style of playing music, not a measure of quality.
That just needs to be laid out for everyone to know.
Anyone follow Something Awful’s occasional coverage of wikipedia?
The best is the 30 page (in printed worth) page on Shadow, the evil version of Sonic The Hedghog. (They shaved it down, but it’s still pretty long)
Too nerd, too strong
Too nerd, too strong
(cue the sample from Bring Tha Noize)
And it’s not even a worthwhile thing to argue about, like “just how full of shit is Quentin Tarantino?”
Articles like this make me very glad that I quit editing Wikipedia completely almost two years ago. I eventually gave up after a minor shitstorm over whether the defunct college athletics that included Texas, Baylor and Texas A&M was called the “Southwest Conference” or the “Southwest Athletic Conference.”
For the record: It was the Southwest Conference. It’s now listed properly, but it took a year and a half after the discussion I was involved in (January of 2006) for it to be moved to its proper place (which finally happened in July of 2007).
Not to hear so-called “true punk fans” talk about it. From what I can tell, punk isn’t a musical genre so much as it’s not having any money, albums, or fans. After all, popularity of any kind is “selling out” and “not REEEEEEEEAL punk”.
Fucking teenage bandwagon jumpers. Oh, Shigeru, how I hate them.
I am often tempted to go over and vandalize entries in Wikipedia. Nothing too serious, just stuff like “Ernest Borgnine once ate a baby, on a dare from Rosemary Clooney” or “Vladimir Putin is also an acknowledged master of the pan flute.”
Simple things amuse simple minds, I guess.
Lol Ahhh…nothing like pedantic uber-nerds at play. I don’t edit Wiki, but apparently my semi-Luddite boyfriend does-or I should say did, just once. Apparently in the entry for “cults” somone listed the state of Texas, and my Lubbock born bf had to right that grevious sin. I am thinking about going back in to change that just to annoy the hell out of him. Not that there is anything wrong with Texas. *Tips hat*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars
For even more Wikipedia stupidity.
I’m so glad you posted this comic. I got it in my head during the first prostitution thread, but couldn’t remember the name of that comic. If someone posts the link, there’s an extra punchline when you roll your mouse over it - “And if I go to bed, they’ll keep being wrong!”
I am amused to no end by the suggestion that quality has anything to do with what makes punk music punk music. Lou Reed would beat you to death with your own limbs.
Ha! I work in manga publishing, and when the entry for 4Kids Entertainment scrolled up, I said, “That is not surprisingly controversial.” There’s a popular online petition going around calling for the death of the head of 4Kids. Otaku are scary, scary folks, and I say that as their queen.
And they only quoted the complaints about One Piece! That’s just the tip of the iceberg!
Oh, I love Wikipedia, not least because it seems to have the ability to magically drain off so many of the pedantic, quibbling, self-interested assholes from the rest of the Internet, and gives them a place where they can endlessly go at each other’s throats. (Not true of all editors, of course… but then I don’t understand the type masochism that would want to deal with that either.)
It’s hard to pick favorites out of that list, there’s so much amazing goodness. “Pictures of oral sex are ok… but how dare you show interracial sex!!” is pretty amazing, as is the idea that oral sex doesn’t belong in an encylopedia. But then you’ve got Afrofuturism to consider, and the amazing assertion that there is no way to factually describe ANYTHING as “stereotypical.” This really is the kind of stuff that happens when you give a million monkeys a million typewriters.
Thank Gawd I did my flame war during the newsgroup age. I am not that uptight about wiki. (I did try to change major structure of an article. And I would have you know, it sticks … sort of.)
One thing I am wondering, why big academic institution doesn’t embrace wiki at all. (semi closed edit group?) Heavy and useless textbook should be abolished. What’s with the fetish over 5 pounds textbook? It’s a complete cultural crime.
Paper textbook should be banned period.
One thing I am wondering, why big academic institution doesn’t embrace wiki at all. (semi closed edit group?) Heavy and useless textbook should be abolished. What’s with the fetish over 5 pounds textbook? It’s a complete cultural crime.
That’s actually not the case; wikis are finding acceptance, to at least a limited extent, within some corners of the academy. but not as a substitute for textbooks.
Most academics I know have a serious problem with Wikipedia as a source for anything at all. I personally will use Wikipedia as a starting point when I have to research a topic I know nothing about. But most of the academics at my institution refuse to accept that it’s even an acceptable starting point, which I think is an unreasonable position.
My best guess as to why they feel this way is that the academic peer review process has trained them to view that process as the only valid way to generate knowledge, and that any piece of information that has not been vetted by anonymous Ph.D.s (who may or may not be using the peer review process to work through their own issues or grudges) simply has too weak a provenance to be taken seriously. But that’s just a guess, and even if it’s right, it’s probably not the whole story.
Scott:
I’m horrified! Everyone knows it’s the pan pipes that he has mastered, to devastating effect.
Wiki works when the subject matter is specific and esoteric. Many profs are embracing them for higher level and more specialized courses.
Five pound textbooks are usually the cheap ones because they cover the basic subjects. These are often resalable because 10000 students take the related courses each year in a typical Enormous State University.
It makes no sense to build a Wiki for Biology 101 because there is a text book that does a better job for a reasonable price. It makes a lot of sense to build a wiki for something like “Non-Parametric Regression Methods For Public Health Research” because any textbook - if there even is a text book - will run into the hundreds of dollars and not likely be kept up to date.
Oh, to clarify: I am talking about Wiki in general, not Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a specific example of a Wiki - it isn’t the only one by any stretch!
A private and closed or semi-closed edit group for a specific subject can use wiki to organize itself and collect information in a central space. I’ve seen profs use it to manage coursework - sometimes collaboratively with colleagues teaching the same subject at other universities. We set one up for an international research collaboration spread across every continent save Antarctica. Quite the handy way to manage a collective brain.
Doug S.
Thank you for wasting my lunchbreak.
Since I’ve been following the trials and tribulations of Wikipedia for some time now, it’s abundantly obvious to me that it’s basically, as a friend of mine characterized it, a role playing game where people can pretend to be Encyclopedia editors. That’s not to say it doesn’t contain interesting information but anyone who relies on Wikipedia for accuracy is going to be disappointed.
If the iPod can have a Wikipedia entry that respects Apple’s quirky capitalization, why can’t Canadian chanteuse k.d. lang get the same consideration?
They did the same thing to mc chris!
Apparently in the entry for “cults” somone listed the state of Texas, and my Lubbock born bf had to right that grevious sin.
That strikes me as fair. I can live with that.
Best part of the Lamest Edit Wars page, for my money:
The Nice Guys® are fucking everywhere, aren’t they? The feminist conspiracy for female domination has now won, since we got girls listed first somewhere at some point in time. Men might as well just not exist, now.
BAHAHAHAHA, this just made my morning worth waking up!
Wikipedia is fantastic, not because it’s the epitome of accuracy, not because the depth of articles varies widely, not because it’s subject to the predations of juevenile electronic graffiti - it great because it’s easily accessible, covers a very wide range of subjects, and (as mentioned above) typically forms a great starting point for all kinds of internet information gathering.
Nobody should expect to use Wikipedia as a primary source for research, citation, or anything of the like. But by being fairly consistent, and readily available, it often suffices to get an easily digestible overview of some topic.
I think it forms a great compliment to good internet search engines…
(I’m registered as an editor - I’m thinking of adding to some of the entries on the original Outer Limits TV show episodes - but I haven’t actually edited any entries yet…)
I agree with the peopple who say wikipedia is a great starting point for subjects you know nothing about, mainly because it requires people to cite sources. So then you go look at those sources, which lead to other sources, and so on. My academic background does train me that for something important, or that you want to publish with your name on it, be sure you track down original sources as much as possible. Failure to do so can lead to embarrassment.
The other thing I find Wikipedia extremely useful for is pop culture references. I watch very little TV and so would often have no idea what people are talking about without Wikipedia (e.g., “what’s a Tila Tequila? is that a drink?…..oh!”)
1. Lou Reed wrote and recorded the original dial tone you hear upon picking up a phone.
2. The furthest distance ever jumped by a Pope from a standing position is five feet eight and three quarter inches.
3. Though ruthless and fearless scavengers of the Serengeti, hyenas are pee-shy.
4. Quarters are made through a process that very much resembles the way ribbon candy is produced. Pennies, on the other hand, magically appear in a tin bucket underneath the statue in the Lincoln Memorial.
5. Albert Einstein ate a small bar of hand-soap every week of his adult life.
6. After the demise of the Talking Heads, David Byrne spent most of his time crafting felt wings for small rodents who felt inadequate around birds.
7. You can make a rhinoceros fart by rubbing its ears with lemon zest.
8. The first version of the Model T was powered by orphans.
9. A mole cricket can, in fact, burrow through a mole in less than 8 seconds.
10. When submerged in a glass of water, a sparrow sounds like it’s saying “Hello Larry, Hello Larry”.
11. If you coat a silver tablespoon with a mixture of butter and rosewater and leave it on a window ledge overnight, up to two bumblebees will land in it and dance for you.
12. A warthog can eat a pound of ceiling spackle faster than it can eat a pound of feathers.
13. As long as it has access to a knife, a pygmy marmoset can fend off an attack by an adult lion.
14. Cell Phone use can be prosecuted as witchcraft in some states.
15. A Rhesus monkey will always believe that the “spirit world” is communicating with it through a Ouija Board, even if it can clearly see you pushing the pointer.
Physics Journal May Reconsider Wikipedia Ban
“The flagship physics journal Physical Review Letters doesn’t allow authors to submit material to Wikipedia, or blogs, that is derived from their published work. Recently, the journal withdrew their acceptance of two articles by Jonathan Oppenheim and co-authors because the authors had asked for a rights agreement compatible with Wikipedia and the Quantum Wikipedia. Currently, many scientists ‘routinely do things which violate the transfer of copyright agreement of the journal.’ Thirty-eight physicists have written to the journal requesting changes in their copyright policies, saying ‘It is unreasonable and completely at odds with the practice in the field. Scientists want as broad an audience for their papers as possible.’ The protest may be having an effect. The editor-in-chief of the APS journals says the society plans to review its copyright policy at a meeting in May. ‘A group of excellent scientists has asked us to consider revising our copyright, and we take them seriously,’ he says.”
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/03/14/1425247.shtml
Ms Kate March 14, 2008 at 8:18 am
Five pound textbooks are usually the cheap ones because they cover the basic subjects. These are often resalable because 10000 students take the related courses each year in a typical Enormous State University.”
well. the thin, graduate level advance textbook even makes less sense distributed in printed form. $150 for 300pages? and which part can’t be published online+ print out?
My problem with “thick textbook”
a) the question/exercises. That can easily go online
b) It’s total waste of paper. A lot of sections are overlap with different courses (ie. it is not possible to sell textbook by section.) so we have enormous waste of paper.
c) 3rd edition, 4th edition, 5th edition… seriously. The difference are mostly minor for basic textbook. Online edit is so much more superior.
Of course then we talk about profit motive. (But wikipedia make gazillion bucks from donation and ad.)
Time to kill general textbook. Paying $90-200 bucks for tons of useless paper to support publishing industry is a crime. It’s pure business. A lot of classes uses copies anyway.
maybe pandagon should raise a bit of money and put on wiki textbook project.
It makes no sense to build a Wiki for Biology 101 because there is a text book that does a better job for a reasonable price. It makes a lot of sense to build a wiki for something like “Non-Parametric Regression Methods For Public Health Research” because any textbook - if there even is a text book - will run into the hundreds of dollars and not likely be kept up to date.
Does anyone else remember the “rogue” edits to Falwell’s Wikipedia page after he died? One nefarious villain replaced the entire bio with something like, “JERRY FALWELL CHOKED ON PAT ROBERTSON’S COCK TO DEATH. THE END. BOOYA.” Another person took a more subtle approach and, after the paragraph detailing Falwell’s last hours, appended, “This is of course a dirty lie. Jerry Falwell died by choking on Pat Robertson’s cock.”
I’m glad PRL is reconsidering their wiki policy. It’s not that big of a deal, since most scientists I know routinely violate the copyright policies of the journals they publish in, not least because those policies are batshit insane.
Science publication is some of the biggest scam there is on earth. (not the content, but the printing and distribution)
AAAS, ACS, etc. should be brought down. There is no reason whatsover these organizations should continue to exist. (doing what? selling few glossies and badly done T-shirt and calling it science society?)
Scott,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin#Early_years_and_KGB_career
Damn, gone already.
mothworm, I gotta get a Kleenex… MAAAAAAHVELOUS!
ROTFLAO! Thank you ever so much!
Mothworm (32) and Scott (13), thank you so much. I now know you can shoot a goldfish cracker out of your nose, given enough force.
Mothworm:
(16) Dogs can’t look up
(17) However, dogs are excellent editors if you look stuff up for them.
Montana is not technically part of the continental United States.
FDR did not suffer from polio. He rode in the wheelchair out of sheer laziness.
During an autopsy of Augusto Pinochet, an examination of his stomach turned up two buttons, the spring from a ballpoint pen, half a ticket stub from the 1934 World’s Fair, and what appeared to be the contents of his glove box.
Marcel Duchamp coined the phrase “to coin a phrase”.
Both gorillas and dolphins have been taught to talk, but dolphins are
more likely to lie to you.
Orson Welles snuck the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniosis into three different background conversations that take place during Citizen Kane.
When not busy writing Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust won acclaim for his exquisitely carved rice grains.
It required an act of Congress to make the 1970’s end.
Only one alternate universe exists. In it, everything is precisely the same except that you have slightly better furniture.
There is no bluebird of happiness. Sadly, there is a rhino of mediocrity.
“9. A mole cricket can, in fact, burrow through a mole in less than 8 seconds.”
I laughed so hard over this one, the other people in my office thought I had completely gone over the edge.
Thank you!…
:)
Six little know facts:
i, Under the Canadian health system, downer cattle are provided with wheelchairs when they can no longer stand up. Not only does this allow them to get around, it also prevents the spread of CJD, since slaughterhouses don’t have wheelchair access.
ii, The actor, David Boreanaz, is opera trained.
iii, Andrew Johnson was crowned Emperor of Haiti in 1870 in sincere, if somewhat confused admiration of his role in ending the slave trade. The post was largely ceremonial by then, and he never set foot in the nation.
iv, Chelsea Clinton appears in one of the crowd scenes in “Notting Hill”. She can be seen slightly out of focus to the left of Hugh Grant’s head exactly 47 minutes into the film, speaking on a cell phone.
v, The Chicago Public School system is the only one ion the country to ban cabbage in the school cafeterias.
vi, In an upset, the fourteenth Mornington Crescent tournament was won by a Frenchwoman who, apparently, had never even set foot in London. She was disqualified when it was found she had a small map of the subway system concealed in her purse.
I always thought the alternative universe was where all of the missing socks and toys went… hmmm…
moldworm, please let me sit at your feet and learn from a true master of silliness forever!
Using only a hammer and data gathered from a Marie-Claire “Are You a Flirt?” quiz, Jean-Jacques Rousseau invented a method of predicting the romantic preferences of lab rats. Today we call it the metric system.
Scientists recently discovered a species of deep-sea lobster that can snap its claws in time with the “Welcome Back Kotter” theme song.
On average, ugly people have two less bones than attractive people.
Cats and cephalopods are mortal enemies, but rarely come into contact.
President Grover Cleveland had an unusually high and pure singing voice. He closed every session of Congress with a lulling rendition of the then popular music hall tune “Let’s Put the Stoat to Sleep, My Darling Cissy”. Members of Congress had to mime falling asleep with their heads on their desks while making “Zzzzzzz” noises before he would leave.
A bear is four parts cow, one part rat.
Polar bears do not hibernate, but in fact cocoon in silken pods spun from their inner mandibles. They are, however, willing to skip a winter every now and then and trade their cocoons for apple wedges dipped in peanut butter. Teased apart and dyed with the secretions of a rare Spanish snail, the silk is made into the finest quality hairpieces known to man. They are sold exclusively to nightly news anchors around the world.
The Zeppelin was originally created as a contraceptive device.
To celebrate it’s completion in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was harnessed to half a billion butterflies that gently lifted the tower from its moorings and flew it around the city twice so that everyone was afforded a good view of the monument. Coincidentally, 1889 was also the worst year on record for hurricanes in North America.
On Gary Oldman’s left foot—and visible only under ultra-violet light—is every cheat code for every Sega Genesis game ever made.
Shit, I concede completely.
Mothworm, you truly have a gift.
I woke Mr. Counsel up with my laughing.
A motion, we have a motion on the floor… yes… there is a motion to nominate Mothworm as “Most Excellent and Noble Grand High Poohbah Ad Absurdum”.
Additions, admendments or seconds to said motion?
Hey, I was that guy arguing about adding Amanda’s article to Category:Anti-Catholicism. But then, if I weren’t arguing about things there, I’d just be mocking creationists somewhere else.
During his tenure as president, George H.W. Bush’s prehensile nipples were kept a closely guarded state secret.
For reasons scientists don’t fully understand, every man who has been to the Moon now has John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” stuck in their heads.
An exposition at the 1964 world’s fair introduced “poppin’ and lockin’” to New York City.
David Bowie runs a successful side business constructing hyperbaric sleep chambers for housecats.
Archaeologists surmise that Aztecs built their cities on rock, but would have included roll if they had known about the wheel.
Gary Numan’s Tubeway Army provided security in London’s subways for three years in the early 80’s.
The earliest Susan B. Anthony coins-withdrawn after a series of choking incidents-were mint flavored.
Donald Trump’s hair, which feeds by filtering impurities out of the air, has reduced New York’s pollution levels by .0005%.
Louise,
Thank you. I’m glad to finally have something to contribute, even if it’s just amusing stupidity.
I noticed that grendelkhan. I was impressed with your persistence and patience.
I saw that, too, grendelkhan. I don’t know how you have the patience. I’m also amazed at the inexhaustable supply of people (presumably men) who jump at any opportunity to bring up the Duke Lacrosse team, even if it’s totally unrelated to the topic at hand.
Careful, Oh Noble One; there is a one particular troll who positively salivates whenever that topic is brought up- like a shark smelling blood on the waters… and you are very welcome. Thank YOU for the wonderful levity!
I am tempted to mess around with Amanda’s wiki entry. (heck why not start a wiki revert battle. …heee….)
I need to create a clean disposable wiki account tho’ hmm…
Incidentally anybody notice this?
I hate inconsistent sub category!
Is French feminism another wave? Outside the wave? Is the entire feminism US centric?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#First-wave_feminism
History of feminism
* 1.1 First-wave feminism
* 1.2 Second-wave feminism
o 1.2.1 Women’s Liberation in the USA
+ 1.2.1.1 The Feminine Mystique
* 1.3 Third-wave feminism
o 1.3.1 Post-feminism
* 1.4 French feminism
o 1.4.1 Simone de Beauvoir
o 1.4.2 1970s–present
————-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_theory
# 1 History
# 2 Feminist disciplines
* 2.1 Feminist psychoanalysis
* 2.2 Feminist literary theory
* 2.3 Feminist film theory
* 2.4 Feminist art history
* 2.5 Feminist history
* 2.6 Feminist geography
* 2.7 Feminist philosophy
* 2.8 Feminist sexology
* 2.9 Feminist economics
* 2.10 Feminist legal theory
uhm…woot?
For squashed:
Amanda Marcotte is a chain-smoking goth safe-cracker with the power to see death.
Amanda Marcotte is the subject of several Lifetime Original Movies.
Amanda Marcotte wrote the line “I’ll leave graffiti where you’ve never been kissed” for Beck.
Amanda Marcotte once snored at a man just for killing too loud.
Amanda Marcotte has been called the “feel-good hit of the summer” in more than one major American newspaper.
Amanda Marcotte can seize control of any Fortune 500 company with the awesome power of her cigar-box-guitar playing.
Time and space mean nothing to Amanda Marcotte. Yesterday, she envisioned the tomorrow you’ll remember next week.
Amanda Marcotte once jumped her bike nearly six feet from a home-made ramp.
here is the wiki entry. It definitely read like a bad internet explosion rather than a person. come on… this entry begs for major restructuring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Marcotte
Well, then restructure it. Please don’t vandalize or introduce dubious information. It’s like shitting on the floor of a public restroom. Some innocent janitor has to clean up after you.
okie mister wiki patrol man.
hey, anybody has pandagon unique readership number? after moving out location, alexa is showing flatliner.
what was the number before and after? (eg. the only reason why there is a wiki, because of noteable blog. no blog, no wiki entry.)
The page can be labeled as spam entry.
I’m not playing patrolman today. I’m playing the ex-con who gives a speech at the high school auditorium. I do know some of the janitors and I feel sorry for them.
It’s not a spam page. Amanda meets Wikipedia’s notability guideline — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people) — by her TIME magazine coverage for instance.