References to Wikipedia in popular culture have been widespread. Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with individuals vandalizing or modifying articles in nonconstructive ways. Others feature individuals using Wikipedia as a reference work, or positively comparing their intelligence to Wikipedia. In some cases, Wikipedia is not used as an encyclopedia at all, but instead serves more as a character trait or even as a game, such as Wikiracing. Wikipedia has also become culturally significant with many individuals seeing the presence of their own Wikipedia entry as a status symbol. [1]
In a July 2006 episode of the satirical comedy The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert announced the neologism "wikiality", a portmanteau of the words Wiki and reality, for his segment "The Wørd". Colbert defined wikiality as "truth by consensus" (rather than fact), modeled after the approval-by-consensus format of Wikipedia. He ironically praised Wikipedia for following his philosophy of truthiness in which intuition and consensus is a better reflection of reality than fact:
You see, any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true. ... If only the entire body of human knowledge worked this way. And it can, thanks to tonight's word: Wikiality. Now, folks, I'm no fan of reality, and I'm no fan of encyclopedias. I've said it before. Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say he didn't, that's my right. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, it's also a fact. We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true. ... What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge. [2]
According to Stephen Colbert, together "we can all create a reality that we all can agree on; the reality that we just agreed on". During the segment, he joked: "I love Wikipedia... any site that's got a longer entry on truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight." Colbert also used the segment to satirize the more general issue of whether the repetition of statements in the media leads people to believe they are true. The piece was introduced with the tagline "The Revolution Will Not Be Verified", a play on the song title "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" referencing how the mainstream establishment that Wikipedia cites as Reliable Sources will not support significant change, throwing doubt on the idea that Wikipedia is truthful.
Colbert suggested that viewers change the elephant page to state that the number of African elephants has tripled in the last six months. [3] The suggestion resulted in numerous incorrect changes to Wikipedia articles related to elephants and Africa. [lower-alpha 1] Wikipedia administrators subsequently restricted edits to the pages by anonymous and newly created user accounts.
Colbert went on to type on a laptop facing away from the camera, claiming to be making the edits to the pages himself. Because initial edits to Wikipedia corresponding to these claimed "facts" were made by a user named Stephencolbert, many believe Colbert himself vandalized several Wikipedia pages at the time he was encouraging other users to do the same. The account, whether it was Stephen Colbert himself or someone posing as him, has been blocked from Wikipedia indefinitely. [4] Wikipedia blocked the account for violating Wikipedia's username policies (which state that using the names of celebrities as login names without permission is inappropriate), not for the vandalism, as believed.
The Wikipedia Monument , located in Słubice, Poland, is a statue designed by Armenian sculptor Mihran Hakobyan honoring Wikipedia contributors. It was unveiled in Frankfurt Square (Plac Frankfurcki) on 22 October 2014 in a ceremony that included representatives from both local Wikimedia chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation. [5] [6]
A scene in the 2006 music video for the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "White & Nerdy", show Yankovic vandalizing the Wikipedia page for Atlantic Records, replacing it with the words "YOU SUCK!", referencing recent trouble he had had with the company in getting permissions. [7]
Ukrainian composer Andriy Bondarenko wrote a musical piece, "Anthem of Wikipedia", which was performed in a concert devoted to the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia in Kyiv in 2016. [8] [9]
References to Wikipedia have been made several times in the webcomic xkcd . A facsimile of a made-up Wikipedia entry for "malamanteau" (a stunt word created by Munroe to poke fun at Wikipedia's writing style) provoked a controversy. [10] [11]
During the Russo-Ukrainian war, a meme titled Battle of Techno House 2022, which features footage of a Russian soldier's failed effort at opening a door, went viral and was reposted millions of times. [12] Media coverage included discussion of an initial Wikipedia page for the incident/meme, which lampooned the event by using Wikipedia formatting generally used only for actual battles, making it seem like a real battle. The belligerents in the "battle" were humorously listed as "Russian Soldier" and "store door" with the battle results referred to as a "decisive door victory" and "pride" referred to as one of the Russian casualties. [13] [14] [15] The humorous content was later removed from the Wikipedia page. [16]
Wikipedia is not always referenced in the same way. The ways described below are some of the ways it has been mentioned.
Redactle is a game in which the player must identify a Wikipedia article (chosen from the 10,000 vital articles) after it appears with most of its words redacted. Prepositions, articles, the verb "to be", punctuation and word lengths are shown. Players guess words, which are revealed if present in the article. As of June 2024 [update] there have been over 800 daily games. [37] [38] [39]
Andrew Keen's 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture asserted the proliferation of user-generated content on Wikipedia obscured and devalued traditional, higher-quality information outlets. [40]
A wiki is a form of online hypertext publication that is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.
The Chinese Wikipedia is the written vernacular Chinese edition of Wikipedia. It is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Started on 11 May 2001, the Chinese Wikipedia currently has 1,428,177 articles and 3,540,211 registered users, of whom 65 have administrative privileges.
Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.
Baidu Baike is a semi-regulated Chinese-language collaborative online encyclopedia owned by the Chinese technology company Baidu. The beta version was launched on 20 April 2006, and the official version was launched on 21 April 2008. In November 2019, it had more than 16 million articles and 6.9 million editors. As of February 2022, it has more than 25.54 million entries and 7.5 million editors. It has the largest number of entries in the world of any Chinese-language online encyclopedia.
The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias. Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Further concerns include the vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing, clique behavior, social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, edit warring, and uneven policy application.
The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors, who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
"White & Nerdy" is the second single from "Weird Al" Yankovic's album Straight Outta Lynwood, which was released on September 26, 2006. It parodies the song "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone. The song both satirizes and celebrates nerd culture, as recited by the subject, who cannot "roll with the gangstas" because he is "just too white and nerdy". It includes many references to activities stereotypically associated with nerds and/or white people, such as collecting comic books and action figures, being fluent in JavaScript and Klingon, editing Wikipedia, and playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).
Conservapedia is an English-language, wiki-based, online encyclopedia written from a self-described American conservative and fundamentalist Christian point of view. The website was established in 2006 by American homeschool teacher and attorney Andrew Schlafly, son of the conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, to counter what he perceived as a liberal bias on Wikipedia. It uses editorials and a wiki-based system for content generation.
Uncyclopedia is the name of several forks of satirical online encyclopedias that parody Wikipedia. Its logo, a hollow "puzzle potato", parodies Wikipedia's globe puzzle logo, and it styles itself as "the content-free encyclopedia", parodying Wikipedia's slogan of "the free encyclopedia" and likely as a play the fact that Wikipedia is described as a "free-content" encyclopedia. Founded in 2005 as an English-language wiki, the project spans more than 75 languages as well as several subprojects parodying other wikis. Uncyclopedia's name is a portmanteau of the prefix un- and the word encyclopedia.
Star Wars Kid is a viral video made in 2002 by Ghyslain Raza in which he wields a golf ball retriever in imitation of Darth Maul's lightsaber moves from the film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. At the time, Raza was a 15-year-old high school student from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada. He had not intended for the video to become public, but its subsequent release led to ridicule, during which Raza chose to distance himself from the video. Raza has since affirmed his identity and has used the video to help to speak on the effects of bullying and harassment.
Circular reporting, or false confirmation, is a situation in source criticism where a piece of information appears to come from multiple independent sources, but in reality comes from only one source. In many cases, the problem happens mistakenly through sloppy reporting or intelligence-gathering. However, the situation can also be intentionally contrived by the source or reporter as a way of reinforcing the widespread belief in its information.
On Wikimedia Foundation projects, an Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is a binding dispute resolution panel of editors. Each of Wikimedia's projects are editorially autonomous and independent, and some of them have established their own ArbComs who work according to rules developed by the project's editors and are usually annually elected by their communities. ArbComs generally address misconduct by administrators and editors with access to advanced tools, and a range of "real-world" issues related to harmful conduct that can arise in the context of Wikimedia projects. Rulings, policies and procedures differ between projects depending on local and cultural contexts. According to the Wikimedia Terms of Use, users are not obliged to have a dispute solved by an ArbCom.
The Colbert Report, which premiered in American cable television on October 17, 2005, has had a massive cultural impact since its inception. Issues in and references to American and world culture are attributed to the character played by Stephen Colbert, who calls his followers the Colbert Nation. The Colbert Report is a late-night talk and satirical news program hosted by Stephen Colbert that aired on Comedy Central from October 17, 2005, to December 18, 2014, for 1,447 episodes. The show focused on a fictional anchorman character named Stephen Colbert, played by his real-life namesake. The character, described by Colbert as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot," is a caricature of televised political pundits. The show satirized conservative personality-driven political talk programs, particularly Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor. The Colbert Report is a spin-off of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, where Colbert was a correspondent from 1997 to 2005.
La Frikipedia was a Spanish-language parody of Wikipedia. Frikipedia can be translated into English as The Geekpedia or The Freakypedia, since the title comes from the anglicism freak. It is also called "the extremely serious encyclopedia" or the "useless encyclopedia". It currently has more than 8,000 articles. The Frikipedia is under the GNU Free Documentation License. In early 2006, the head of the Frikipedia decided to close the site after a complaint by the SGAE. It reopened on October 20, 2007.
On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, offensive, libelous or degrading in any way.
Conflict-of-interest (COI) editing on Wikipedia occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. The type of COI editing that compromises Wikipedia the most is paid editing for public relations (PR) purposes. Several Wikipedia policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing, including Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.
The tag "[citation needed]" is added by Wikipedia editors to unsourced statements in articles requesting citations to be added. The phrase is reflective of the policies of verifiability and no original research on Wikipedia and has become a general Internet meme.
Coverage of American politics in Wikipedia is a subject that has received substantial attention from the media. Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia has provided coverage of five United States presidential elections, and six mid-term elections at the federal level, as well as numerous "off-year" state elections and special elections.