[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia reaches 3 millionth article

[David Gerard]

2009/8/17 Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com>:

> The Christian Science Monitor reports/
> http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/08/17/wikipedia-blows-past-3-million-english-articles/


WIKIALITY, The Tenderloin, Saturday -- The online encyclopedia,
knowledge base, social networking site, essay repository, blog, search
engine, news aggregator, dessert wax and floor topping Wikipedia has
reached its three millionth article and ceased all editing.

Palo Alto Research Center reported that only 1% of edits by random
users were kept. "They were all unspeakable shit," said burnt-out
administrator WikiFiddler451. "All of them. No, I'm not exaggerating.
Go to Special:Newpages and read a day's entries some time. You'll
start by deleting the whole database, before you get onto plotting the
doom of humanity. Christ, why go on?"

Recent media coverage has highlighted the "inclusionist/deletionist"
wars of 2005, including enquiries from Endemol looking for a
"passionate deletionist" to join Big Brother 11, "preferably one with
big tits." It is thought that Wikipedia could have had ten million
articles by now had they not viciously abused their editorial powers
by deleting your valuable contributions about you, your teacher at
school, your garage band or your dog or the many cameraphone pictures
you uploaded of your penis.

"Everything's already been written," said WikiFiddler451, burning the
last of his Star Wars figurines before leaving for his rehabilitation
course in social interaction skills and basics of hygiene. "Do you
have any idea how big THREE MILLION articles is? A BILLION GODDAMN
WORDS! Are you going to read more than a droplet of that in your life?
No you aren't. You're following your goddamn Twitter.

"But hey, only two million articles are The Simpsons in popular
culture or Doctor Who in popular culture. No-one actually reads this
stuff, they just write it. We have LiveJournal for stuff people write
that no-one wants to read. 'Oh, I wandered lonely as a cheeseburger/
My passionate angst filling my Coke with darkness.' Or Knol. KNOL!
I'll just Bing that one."

Shell-shocked veterans of Wikipedia are at a loss now that it's all
over -- wandering the alleyways of the Internet, mumbling to
themselves about "ANI" and "we had to delete the village in order to
save it," threatening the policemen moving them on with "arbitration"
and bursting into tears when the policeman answers "citation needed."
Mere children, sent into the culture wars to save knowledge from
horrors they barely understood, and coming home as crippled wrecks. No
victory parades for these brave men and women. There is only so much
Citizendium, Uncyclopedia and 4chan can do for these child heroes.
With your help, we can build Potemkin wikis for these honorable
veterans, where they can safely ban and unban, revert and edit-war,
and correct the naming of Danzig^WGdansk^WDanzig^WGdansk without the
possibility of damage to actual human readers. Please donate so that
they may never bug you again.


(posted by me at http://is.gd/2opuE )


- d.