Thursday, July 27, 2006

Wikipedia Owned by The Onion

I have some personal hostility towards Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, lately and that's primarily due to what I view as blatant elitism and hypocrisy. They claim to want to collect the entire world's information and post it on the internet. Fair enough, and that remains a noble goal to boot.

Yet in their collection of the world's knowledge the editors can apparently delete entries at their personal whim. Again, fair enough because if it's privately owned then they can do with it as they please. What I view as blatantly hypocritical is when they earmark Gaming Trend for deletion, give no reason as to why, yet continue to leave other lesser topics alone. Were this over the history of cancer I might have a bigger problem as that actually is a worthy and relevant topic to have as much data on as possible.

So why then does the Dark Phoenix saga have so much data it actually causes your brain to melt from too much nerd? And how the hell is that even remotely important, let alone merit an entry while a gaming website with a 38K Alexa count does not?

But my complaints were rendered irrelevant today when I came across The Onion's absolutely stellar beatdown of Wikipedia and the hilarity is start to finish. For example:
The commemorative page is one of the most detailed on the site, rivaling entries for Firefly and the Treaty Of Algeron for sheer length. Subheadings include "Origins Of Colonial Discontent," "Some Famous Guys In Wigs And Three-Cornered Hats," and "Christmastime In Gettysburg." It also features detailed maps of the original colonies—including Narnia, the central ice deserts, and Westeros—as well as profiles of famous American historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Special Agent Jack Bauer, and Samuel Adams who is also a defensive tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals.
God bless The Onion. By all means please check out the full smackdown right here.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home