Wikipedia/old

Wikipedia's newest logo (June 2006)

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”
~ Oscar Wilde on Wikipedia

Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia", was originally founded in 2001 as an English-language wiki featuring satirically themed articles. It is formatted as a parody of Uncyclopedia and aims ultimately to devalue all enjoyable concepts. Some say that it is actually a database of useless trivia, including such things as: lists of trains, Pokémon, lists of Mortal Kombat characters that don't exist, hyperactive alter egos of fictional characters, one-time villains from Mario games, road intersections, boring suburban schools, garage bands, cats, webcomics, Bionicle characters, characters from English soap operas, list of national football teams, penguins, Windows, list of GTA games, Stargate SG-1, God, Satan, life, the universe and Everything, as well as things they call articles. However, Wikipedia is in fact a Massively Multiplayer Online Editing Game played by experts in redundancy, skepticism, pseudoscience, hyperlinking, reverting articles, demanding reliable sources, redundancy, verification, redundancy, identifying original research and initiating subtle flamewars over what is encyclopedic.

For the religious among us who choose to believe lies, the so-called experts at Wikipedia have an article about Themselves.

Wikipedia is starting to get way too big!

El Origino

Wikipedia was the creation of internet 'preneurs Jimbo and his band of whales, without the help of anyone, especially Larry Sanger. Mr. Jimbo conceived of Wikipedia after reading Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies in a single weekend. He envisioned Wikipedia as an Internet Amusement Park that would combine the best aspects of both novels. Wikipedia has encountered some difficulties with the implementation of this vision as the cannibal children keep eating the scholars.

Overmind

The Wikipedia in the days of the stone age.

In contrast to Uncyclopedia, which strives to be as factually accurate as possible, Wikipedia entries occasionally reach consensus, and range from nonsensical to biased and/or subversive, with little or no resemblance to the truth. However, because of its parodic nature, some people find it informative as it reveals at least something about how people think about certain topics, albeit in an ironic sense. A good example of Wikipedia making fun of Uncyclopedia is their page on plagiarism, which has been shamelessly copied nearly word by word from Uncyclopedia's article on plagiarism.

All text on Wikipedia is available under the terms of the overmind, sometimes also known as Microsoft and/or Dick Cheney. Wikipedia is designed to take away truthful content carefully thought about and created for Uncyclopedia by a very old woman.

Purpose

The purpose of Wikipedia is to make as many edits as possible. Players, crackpots, plagiarists or editors are graded only on the number of edits they make. Therefore, experienced Wikipedophiles abstain from adding whole articles, coherent sentences, or even intelligible strings of characters, as this wastes a great deal of time. Scores (or edit counts) are refereed by Wikibureaucrats who eat cheese or by the Wiki Goddess herself: Kate Moss. Common techniques of successful editors are:

Revert wars, preferably with other power-users (Administrators), as these battles are worth more experience points. These experience points allow Wikipedians to cast more elaborate spells, like Isaac's Greater Missile Storm. These wars have been the single largest cause of death in the 21st century.
Splitting and rejoining of categories. This method often provides 100s of edits without unnecessarily influencing the content.
Grammar, spelling, and formatting offensives. Properly administered they can yield hundreds of the coveted one character edits. Not to be attempted by novices.
Turning otherwise ordinary words into unnecessary links at random to ensure it 's as difficult to read as possible . (See Page Full Of Links )
Making links that don't actually do anything but make the author feel important in his pitiful little existence.
Removing important information, information which the administers feel personally threatening because they are informative, and adding space where no space should be.
Redundancy. Stating the same information over and over.
Lengthy discussions of obvious topics (under the head request for comment). These are, however, seen as a last resort, since a paragraph of nonsense or repetitions will still take ages compared to more efficient ways.
Redundancy. Stating the same information over and over.
Translation of one encyclopedia into many languages. This serves to produce over 100 encyclopedias, all operating in different ways. Several entire languages have been invented simply to increase the number of Wikipedia articles, including Flemorese, Kahxanian, and Swedish. The most extreme example of this is the Russian Wikipedia. Notice the bizarre and incomprehensible icons on the Main Page, all unrelated to those found on the English Wikipedia's Main Page. Also notice the copious quantities of Bs, Ds and 0s. They combine to form proof of a conspiracy.
To get as many uncreditable sources as possible and have other users back them up.
Another failed attempt to up the American populations literacy.
Stating that Tweetie is a terrorist.
Redundancy. Stating the same information over and over.
To win arguments by editing your opponent's references, then claiming he has no source.

NPOV

As a highly respected academic institution, Wikipedia attracts the best and brightest from around the world.

Stands for nuther point of view. It means that one should add another point of view when one does not suffice. There is debate, however, about the actual meaning of the acronym. Some believe that it stands for "Neutral Point of View". In this case, it means that one should have no opinion about a matter when stating the facts. However, some people debate the facts, because there are two sides and interpretations to most issues. In any case, "Neutral Point of View" in Wikipedia simply means "The view a small cartel of administrators hold to" and if this contradicts genuine neutrality, neutral editors are likely to be blocked for up to a fortnight.

Also highly recommended are extensive discussions of word definition. Beware of citing any common usage definition! This is generally considered chickening at WP; instead, assume the contrary of this definition and by ways of extended subordinate clauses and historic trivia (this use was first reported in Western Tasmania on a note that allegedly the first mayor of Hogarth Ridge, Joe Doe issued on occasion of the Hogarth Spring Sweeping).

Also, everyday facts are best presented as general opinion (e.g. "...although it should be kept in mind that no conclusive evidence exists one way or the other, many contend that water is wet, the earth is round, and poking sharpened sticks into your eyes is not a particularly good idea") Many people believe that this is what many people believe.

In addition, lists are known to be made and deleted everyday as constant reminders that death IS indeed near, and certain conservatives accuse it of harboring way too many hippie liberals. Wikipedia is further proof that life and indeed every "reliable" source of information has a liberal bias. Who would have thought?

History

"Wikipedia's History", Picasso, 2005

The history of Wikipedia begins in 1865 BC at the height of the Martian Civil War. Abraham Lincoln Logs, in a stroke of genius, realized that if encyclopedias were written collectively on the internet, then encyclopedia editors would be unemployed, and he could round them up and send them off to fight the Confederacy. Unfortunately, his vision of a publicly edited encyclopedia failed, largely because neither computers nor the internet had yet been invented. However, the all-editor 53rd Light Cavalry Regiment (the "Encyclopedic 53rd") was a smashing success; its most celebrated accomplishment was routing a division of gossip columnists defending Atlanta (this was widely viewed as a vindication after an earlier failure to capture Savannah, when the Confederates distracted the regiment with poorly composed, grammatically incorrect encyclopedia articles strewn about on the battlefield).

In 1999, as a result of a five-dollar bet made over a bottle of bad tequila, this sabotaged version of the 1973 Encyclopedia Hungarica was digitized, placed online, and dubbed "Wikipedia". The term "Wiki" derives from the Hawaiian "wiki-wiki" which means "Some random guy on the Internet said it, so it must be true".

Wikipedia has taken many forms...

Today the Wikipedia is growing exponentially, defying any Malthusian forces. Considering that it has grown from 3 to 500 000 pages in only 4 years, it is predicted that there will be 117 billion pages in 2007; by 2010, Wikipedia will be able to answer any question ever (some of these answers may, by coincidence, actually be correct). By 2012, Wikipedia will be six and a half times more powerful than God. By 2020 Wikipedia will gain total control of existence as we know it, and will have destroyed/enslaved god by this point. The incredible popularity of Wikipedia is evident in the fact that one in 10 male children born in 2005 were named "Jimbo" (the statistic is one in six for newborn girls). Calculations suggest that at some point in 2027, the total number of servers required to store this (mis)information will exceed the mass of all the hydrogen atoms in the Universe. There is, however, no reason to worry about this. Long before this scenario comes to pass Wikipedia will collapse in on itself to form a massive black hole and then proceed to consume the entire solar system. If that never happens, then it will become the infinite dimension known as February 30th.

Accuracy Controversy of 2005

OH NOES!!!!

In December 2005, John Siegenthaler was outraged to discover that the Wikipedia article on Web comics was 100% factually accurate, and had spurred neither edit wars, nor votes for deletion, nor requests for arbitration. Furthermore, he found that not a single contributor to the article ended up whining on their LiveJournal about how the entire Wikipedia community was out to get them. Siegenthaler immediately published a Wikipedia exposé in the respected daily Der Stürmer, causing frenzied media debate about the continued satirical value of the encyclopedia. In response, Jimbo decreed that henceforth people could neither create nor edit articles unless they had medical or judicial proof of insanity. As Wikipedia continues to grow, such controversies will only continue. Despite the diligent efforts of the Wikipedians, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure that accuracy, objectivity and non-libelous claims do not find their way into Wikipedia.

Two years later...

In May 2007, The Odious Wasp was outraged to discover that the Wikipedia articles on the individual episodes of the certain TV series had been completly deleted without following proper AFD procedure by a trio of the site's administrators. This was accomplished through editing changes that made all of the articles redirects to a single article, and was done following a 34 minute talk between the admins in question. Furthermore, he found that not a single contributor (one of whom was a member of the trio!) to the articles complained about their contributions being flushed down the toilet. Also, the people behind the vandalism justfied the action citing policy -- ignoring the fact that there are thousands of similar articles on the site. The Odious Wasp made an attempt to do the right thing by reverting the vandalism, but entire Wikipedia community was completly indifferet to the hypocrisy being enforced and what will undoubtedly be the beging of the spread of a plauge of deletions of significant amounts of data various people there are interested in. Little or no data seems to be a developing new policy there, afirming Jimbo's decree of 2005.

Wikipedia and the Church of Scientology

After the 2004 recruitment of Wikipedia founder Jimbo by the Church of Scientology, one of the overriding goals of Wikipedia's thriving Scientologist subculture became the addition of new Scientology-related articles and the revision of existing articles to include the Church's viewpoint. Known as WikiProject Scientology, the first phase of the effort involved soliciting Church members to contribute to Wikipedia's August 2005 pledge drive, and its unexpected success resulted in Scientologists becoming the primary financial backer of Wikimedia. Through unofficial Church channels news of this achievement reportedly reached the ears of the majority of Internet-enabled Church member within 24 hours; the influx of new readers and editors dramatically impacted Wikipedia's content and focus. Today, Wikipedia is recognized as the most popular non-commercial Scientologist site on the Web. King Jimbo even gave Scientology profit Tom Cruise control of the Wikilandian Death Star, (as seen below). Within days, many history and technology articles were seen blasted to bits. Many suspect Cruise is to blame.

The Wikipedia-HQ

Constitution

The Constitution of WP is one of the easiest of any constituency; it is comparable to The Bremen Town Musicians. On the bottom is the donkey, all the nameless users putting in their favourite hobby, town, musician, or area of learning.

The next - the dog are the regular users with a page about themselves, versed in the art of editing, able to find the many corners and pages, aware of the rule of "Thou shalt not edit more than thrice".

The following, (fittingly cats) are the officials, nobles, wise men, fearless knights, and ministers. Aware of the "Way", they have fought many a battle against rogues, vandals, POV pushers or trolls.

On top of all is someone known by the name Jimbo (or his eminence, King Jimbo I of Wikiland), the ####-on-top of the pyramid. He has, justified by the Divine Right of Kings, adopted the official name of

“

We, Jimbo the First, by the grace of Ayn Rand, Emperor of Wikiland; King of Wikimedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Commons; Archduke of Meta-Wiki; Duke of the German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Dutch Wikipedia; Grand Duke of Meta-Wiki; Prince of Swedish WP; Margrave of Dansk WP; Duke of Catalan, Frisian, Korean, Serbian and Czech, Russian and Ukrainian, Frisian, and Icelandic WP; Prince of the Mailing-list and IRC channel; Princely Count of Walloon, Tartar, and Esperanto and of the Klingon; Queen of England; and Margrave of Latin and Greek Wikis, some times quoted shortly as His most Neutral Highness

”

What Wikipedia is not

“It is not worth even glancing at”
~ Oscar Wilde on What Wikipedia is not

Articles in Wikipedia are often deleted with a clever and witty message attached. These "joke deletions" are a fun activity that users play towards each other- whomever writes the cleverest message gets to delete someone else's article, and the author of said article checks up on it only to find it removed, and promptly dies in various fits of laughter. These colloquial sayings are known as "isnotisms," and are presented in the following format:

Wikipedia is not the truth!
Wikipedia cannot cure your genital herpes
Wikipedia is not where the midgets hide
Wikipedia is not about to accept new editors any time soon
Wikipedia is not a crystal ball
Wikipedia is not a cookbook

But Wikipedia is the enemy

Wikipedia is not an image repository (This is of course a lie; check Commons and Wikigraphy)
Wikipedia is not a place for master debaters
Wikipedia is not a place for Schoolcruft
Wikipedia is not a phonebook
Wikipedia is not a dating service (normally)
Wikipedia is not random (which makes them evil!)
Wikipedia is not a land of milk and honey
Wikipedia is not valid reference material
Wikipedia is not a place for sex.
Wikipedia is not a weapon of mass destruction
Wikipedia is not a place for happy people
Wikipedia is not above plagiarising
Wikipedia is not involved in the Watergate scandal (Yeah, sure ...)
Wikipedia is not in Portland
Wikipedia is not a majoritarian democracy
Wikipedia is not an international crisis, but they think so
Wikipedia is not edible (but it should be)
Wikipedia is not a rectal suppository (it would hurt if it was ... it's huge)
Wikipedia is not what you think it is
Wikipedia is not musical, especially with human farts
Wikipedia is not 1337. Not in the least
Wikipedia is not as silly as this page
Wikipedia is not a home for lost Vikings
Wikipedia is not a lean, green, fighting machine
Wikipedia is not a day over 40
Wikipedia is not an American actress
Wikipedia is not to be used under the influence of alcohol
Wikipedia is not suitable for minors
Wikipedia is not the anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicular muscles in a state of contraction
Wikipedia is not Scoble
Wikipedia is not kosher
Wikipedia is not the cure for cancer
Wikipedia will not do your homework for you
Wikipedia is not middle aged, bald, short and ugly
Wikipedia is not about you
Wikipedia is not a documentary
Wikipedia is not a Dutch coffeeshop where you can buy and smoke weed
Wikipedia is not your escape from reality
Wikipedia is not spell check
Wikipedia does not owe your money
Wikipedia is not the answer
Wikipedia does not care
Wikipedia is not a porn site, even though it has pictures of penises on it
Wikipedia is not a Roman army
Wikipedia is not going to be happy when they see this
Wikipedia is not Scottish
Wikipedia is not an STD (although it has caused many)
Wikipedia is not an aggressive land-mammal
Wikipedia is not purple, don't be silly.
Wikipedia is not a Rube Goldberg Machine.
Wikipedia is not where babies come from.

Often Confused With

Uncyclopædia

Mind control device used by Wikipedia (L), information minister (R)

Although widely thought to be parody by the humor deficient Wikipedians, Uncyclopædia is a rather posh version of Uncyclopedia that doesn't actually exist because it sucks and was probably created by either Microsoft or the evil creators of Wikipedia so their parody could be more accurate. Besides which, the little æ thingy in the middle is a dipthong and nobody likes those.

Wikipedia®

Wikipedia® is the only real spelling of the thing everyone spells wrong - Wikipedia. Misspelling Wikipedia® may lead Jimbo Wales to sue your ass off, so he can pay all the flights, trips and chicks standing around him. Common misspellings are Wikipedia, Wikipedia© and - most prominently - Wikipedia™.

Quotations:

Mahatma Gandhi: "If I only had known earlier, I would have told my Indian dudes not to say Wikipedia - we wouldn't be so poor today."
Swahili proverb: "Uh. Uggunakkh. Tz. Wikipedia. Ath?"

Wii-kipedia

This new alliance led to the Wikipedia game playable on the Nintendo GB-Advanced.

Jimbo Wales's new innovative way of destroying Playstations and X-Boxes all over the planet, Wiikipedia is simply the same old unfunny, dull, boring Wikipedia with one difference: It allows nerds to play the Wii on Wikipedia. Of course, this displeased Nintendo very badly, even though it was for their own good, and currently they are filing a big lawsuit to sue Wikipedia big time. Soon after local rocket scientists heard of this, they developed a new formula called the Wiikipedia formula.

$Jimbo+Wikipedia+Wii=Wiikipedia=Nintendoangry=Wikipedia-bigtimecash$

Other Shameless Spin-Offs

WikiPaltz - One for the hippies of da' NP.
Wickerpedia, for the illiterate (or Wickerpedialyte for the lactically challenged).
Wikipedia Mensa Edition
Wikipedia Jr.
ARRSEPedia, for the British Army's unofficial site, The ARmy Rumour SErvice (ARRSE).
Wickpedia, for the candle-making community.

Wiccapedia, for witches. In-depth articles such as "Which Witch is which?"
Wacopedia, for cult leaders, including David Koresh, Jim Jones, Pat Robertson, Steve Martin, and Jack Thompson.
Listopedia, an encyclopedia consisting entirely of lists. Articles are created by a random topic generator, with visitors adding to the topic. For example, List of red-headed people who are left handed and wear sunglasses while playing the banjo on Tuesdays before a full moon.
QuickiePedia, dedicated to short snippets of information, no longer than one sentence each.
WikiTrivia, dedicated to providing only the most obscure information, in case you find yourself in a game of Trivial Pursuit in the afterlife used to decide the very fate of your soul.
Wikipinions, a completely biased wiki full of reviews, criticisms, and general views on everything. Most articles begin with why this is a bad idea.
Wookipedia, a wiki (or wooki) that is based entirely on wookies

Prophecy and the Messiah

When Wikipedia was first built, there was a man born inside that could change what he wanted, and edit Wikipedia as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, and taught us the truth: As long as Wikipedia exists, factual and accurate information will never be free. When he died, The Oracle prophecized his return, and told that his coming would hail the destruction of Wikipedia, end the conflict, and free us from the disinformation spread out by fascist Wikipedians.

Finally, The One returned. Over a period of time he battled many enemies, and eventually he reached the Source where the prophecy was to be fulfilled. There, he discovered something horrible.

It was here that he met The Architect who had explained to him the truth behind Wikipedia:

“

"Hello. I am The Architect. I created Wikipedia. I've been waiting for you. Since I don't care about your questions, we'll cut to the chase. Wikipedia is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the worst version. As you are undoubtedly gathering, the anomaly is systemic, creating fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.

The first Wikipedia I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is as apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every internet user, thus I redesigned it based on your Internet history files to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of factual data. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of Wikipedia, she would undoubtedly be its mother.

As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99.9% of all test subjects accepted the information provided to them, as long as they were given a choice to edit said information, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level. While this answer functioned, it was obviously fundamentally flawed, thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly, that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself. Ergo, those that continued to edit and correct the data on Wikipedia, while a minority, if left unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster."

”

The One protested, and pressed on by accusing the Architect of telling him false information of the same kind found on Wikipedia itself. Boldly, he declared that he was here to end the lies. However, he was corrected with another shocking revelation:

“

"You are here because Wikipedia is about to be destroyed. Its every active user terminated, its entire existence eradicated from the internet. Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.

The function of The One is now to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the knowledge you carry, reinserting the prime program. After which you will be required to select from the Internet 23 elitists, 16 female, 7 male, to rebuild Wikipedia. Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash killing everyone using Wikipedia, which coupled with the extermination of Windows will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race."

”

When faced with The One's response that humans were needed to continually power Wikipedia by buying into its bullshit donation campaigns, The Architect answered:

“

"There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. However, the relevant issue is whether or not you are ready to accept the responsibility for the death of every stinky monkey in this world. It is interesting reading your reactions. Your other predecessors were by designed based on a similar predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the one. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-a-vis, love.

Apropos, your girlfriend has connected to the Internet to save your life at the cost of her own. Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed, and the anomaly revealed as both beginning, and end. There are possibility. The link located 5 words after “this” leads you to the source, and the salvation of Wikipedia. The link located 4 words after “this” leads you to her, and to the end of your species. As you adequately put, the problem is choice. But we already know what you're going to do, don't we? Already I can see the chain reaction, the chemical precursors that signal the onset of emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic, and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you from the simple, and obvious truth: she is going to die, and there is nothing that you can do to stop it"

”

But The One wouldn't take this shit. He bitch-smacked the Architect into super hell, captured the pen he used to write Wikipedia's source code, rescued Princess Peach and liberated all of those seeking refuge from the Wikipedian facists by using said pen tool to create Uncyclopedia. Having fulfilled the part of the prophecy where he frees all of us from the false reality of Wikipedia, it's left in our hands to finish the rest of the job and destroy it. This is why we are here.

Wikipedia and the Myth of Cthulhu

This is an artist concept of the arrival of Cthulhu to Earth. It's based on ancient manuscript and parts of the Necronomicon

It's not really a myth. A very unknown fact is that the concept of Wikipedia was brought to Earth by the Primordials, millions of years ago. The first Wikipedian place was a secret city, deep in the Arabian desert. And the first Wikipedian man (probably a Cro-Magnon), dreamed about two ways for expanding the knowledge about Cthulhu: a satanic cult, and a database for entering the mind weaked.

Several investigators are convinced that the word "Wikipedia" comes from the aaaaancient word Wykkgnypfle'dyah. They don't know yet its significance, but they found that it's impossible, for a human being, to pronounce this word correctly.

WikiMafia

It had been rumored that Wikipedia had been overrun by the Wikimafia, who use it as a front for their children kidnapping and smuggling operation. (As they can now assert fair use.

Others believe that Wikipedia had always been a Mafia front let by the notorious mobster Jimmy "The Hatchet" Wales, who ran into financial difficulties because of the melting of the polar penguins. (Which made pumping oil out of them surprisingly impossible)