Wikipedia in culture



References to Wikipedia in culture have increased as more people learn about and use the online encyclopedia project. Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with characters vandalising or modifying articles. Still others feature characters using the references as a source, or positively comparing a character's intelligence to Wikipedia. Also, the encyclopedia many times is not used as an encyclopedia at all, but instead serves more as a character trait or even as a game. Wikipedia has also become culturally significant with many individuals seeing the presence of a Wikipedia entry as a status symbol.

Wikiality
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.

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", referencing the lack of objective verification seen in some articles.

Colbert suggested that viewers change the elephant page to state that the number of African elephants has tripled in the last six months. The suggestion resulted in numerous incorrect changes to Wikipedia articles related to elephants and Africa. 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. In addition, initial edits to Wikipedia corresponding to these claimed "facts" were made by a user named Stephencolbert. Thus, 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. The account was blocked for violating Wikipedia's username policies, not the vandalism as believed, which state that using the names of celebrities as login names without permission is inappropriate. The account will be reopened if and when Colbert or Comedy Central confirms its identity.

Citations of Wikipedia in culture
In the Homestar Runner cartoon No Hands On Deck!, Homestar Runner mentions that "'Kipedia said vulcanized was the way to go" in reference to the type of nails used to build a deck. At the time the cartoon was released, the Wikipedia article on decks made no reference to nails or vulcanization.

The cartoon FoxTrot features Peter being criticized by his teacher for copying a homework assignment directly from Wikipedia. Peter replies, "Who's to say I didn't write the Wikipedia entry myself?"

During a debate on Quebec sovereignty in the Canadian House of Commons on November 27, 2006, Conservative Member of Parliament Scott Reid mentioned Wikipedia.

In the July 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine, an article on swarm intelligence, both in nature and as a method used by humans, mentions Wikipedia as an example.

The British satirical magazine Private Eye has a section entitled "Wikipedia Whispers", which uncovers stories about how Wikipedia entries are altered. Stories include examples of how people have altered their own articles to make themselves look better, and vandalism on Wikipedia that becomes reported as fact.

Hip hop artist Pharoahe Monch mentions Wikipedia in the song "Welcome to the Terrordome" from his 2007 album, Desire. The lyrics are: "Take a walk through all this misplaced media / They got my name spelled wrong on Wikipedia."

Inaccuracies on Wikipedia in culture
Wikipedia was satirized in The Onion with a front-page article ("Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence", July 2006), alluding to perceptions that the publicly editable site is an unreliable source of information.

Various people including Jeremy Clarkson, Sir Ian McKellen, Patrick Stump, Mitch Albom and Marcus Brigstocke have criticized Wikipedia's articles about themselves.

In the 2007 Lyttle Lytton Contest, in which the object is to come up with an opening sentence for a novel, a phrase from the article on Fukutsuru ("Fukutsuru died in 2005 but his frozen sperm lived on for people's benefit") won the prize in Found category.

The CollegeHumor staff posted the video "Professor Wikipedia" as part of the CollegeHumor original videos on September 16, 2008; the video satirized many aspects of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia as a character trait
In 2006, commenting to The New York Times on the demands on Central Intelligence Agency analysts to produce instant information, John E. McLaughlin, former acting U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, stated, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington".

An altmuslim.com review of a new television series, Sleeper Cell, about terrorists noted that the characters routinely gave detailed background of events in the history of Islam and stated, "no one, and I assume even terrorists, talks like a walking Wikipedia."

Miscellaneous
Wikipedia is parodied at several websites, including Uncyclopedia.

In the July 2006 issue of Mad, in the Fundalini pages section there was a short joke with a mock picture of Wikipedia called "WonkyPedia". WonkyPedia featured its own logo, in which the letters on the puzzle globe were replaced with MAD characters and the letters M A D. The article shown was on Lincoln's assassination. The URL followed the appropriate pattern: " http://en.wonkypedia.org/wonky/ ". The same parody returned in the next issue as "Wakipedia". The phrase it advertised was "The Free Encyclopedia (you get what you pay for!)".

Likewise, CRACKED.com, the online publication affiliated with former Mad rival Cracked, has satirized Wikipedia's maintenance templates.

In the American version of the video game Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, Wikipedia is a selectable mantra, equippable by the game's characters to learn skills. However, it appears it was only a mistranslation made by the translators since the name is not present in the Japanese version.

On the TV show The Loop, Wikipedia was mentioned on one episode.

On the June 5, 2006 episode of The Howard Stern Show, wack packer Eric the Midget called in and complained that his parents had read about a stunt that he did for the show, that involved him measuring his penis, on Wikipedia (which he called "Wackipedia"). Stern read the section of the article regarding penis measuring on the air. Also, Gary Dell'Abate commented on the air he and the Stern Show staff enjoy the picture of Lynch in this article.

In May 2006, British chat show host Paul O'Grady received an inquiry from a viewer regarding information given on his Wikipedia page, to which he responded, "Wikipedia? Sounds like a skin disease."

On the show X-Play, Morgan Webb looked at the Wikipedia article of Point Blank DS, and then looked at the article on their show. After reading it, the logo in the top left corner of the page spoke to Morgan in typical X-Play fashion. It also pointed out that since the show's inception, they have made 337 fart jokes. When asked why it could talk the logo stated that Wikipedia had become self aware in 2004 due to the massive amounts of information provided by the public.

On the E! network program The Soup, during the "Reality Show Clip Time!" segment a clip of Flavor of Love 2 was shown in which someone mentioned Google as a point of research on September 8, 2006, to make fun of this, host Joel McHale said "Well at least it's better than saying 'Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia'" Another time he said he looked up something on Wikipedia and saw a dance.

Something Awful once featured Wikipedia's article on Knuckles the Echidna as an ALOD (Awful Link of the Day), satirizing the amount of detail that sometimes goes into seemingly irrelevant topics. The link description adds that the article at the time was longer than each of the articles about Echidnas, the Internet, the internal combustion engine, William Shakespeare and Western Culture. The topic was also satirized in the front page, which featured a fake Wikipedia style article about Albert "Al" Calavicci from the TV series Quantum Leap written by Something Awful contributor David Thorpe. Thorpe elsewhere linked the existence of such articles to Asperger syndrome, stating "Don't make fun of Aspergers. If it weren't for Aspergers, we wouldn't have 20-page Wikipedia articles about Knuckles the Echidna." Wikipedia was also mocked in a December 4, 2006 update on Something Awful. The update detailed the life of a talk page on Wikipedia, and mocked the neutrality, copyright, naming, quality, and personal disputes that the pages are beholden to. The update also linked Wikipedia usage to Asperger syndrome once more, with one fictional editor claiming to have a case of the syndrome twice as powerful as that of another fictional editor. In a 2007 Awful Link of the Day, a Wikipedia article was featured again, this time on the villains of Codename: Kids Next Door. Once again, it calls out the detail put onto seemingly irrelevant topics, citing a discussion in said article's talk page about the subjectiveness of the speed of certain characters. Something Awful founder Richard Kyanka then mockingly offered to write up a speed comparison of the KND characters Big Badolescent and Cheese Shogun Roquefort, citing a fake episode called "episode 35, 'I Am a 38-Year Old Man With Several Obese Cats and an Empty Life I Futilely Try to Fill With Childrens' Cartoons'".

The comic strip Sally Forth has mentioned Wikipedia a few times.

Comedian Zach Galifianakis claimed to look himself up on Wikipedia in an interview with The Badger Herald, stating about himself, "...I'm looking at Wikipedia right now. Half Greek, half redneck, around 6-foot-4. And that's about it... The 6-foot-4 thing may be a little bit off. Actually, it's 4-foot-6."

In his "pickoff" in which he makes predictions on the winners of NFL games, Peter King said of the Thanksgiving night game between Indianapolis and Atlanta in 2007 "The sleep-inducing qualities of turkey are overrated, as I learned this week on Wikipedia. There is more tryptophan in cheddar cheese than turkey."

The December 3, 2007 episode of Jeopardy! had a category entitled "'ick'-ipedia", where all correct responses contained the letters "ick".

British comedian Eddie Izzard referenced Wikipedia in his 2008 show Stripped, remarking that nobody would join a library in order to find out how to make spoons.

In the film National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Riley uses an online source called Find On-Line, which appears to be a modified Wikipedia page.

In the Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol, a character cites a fictional Wikipedia entry on the character Peter Solomon.

In the James Patterson novel The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, the eponymous character "the contents of Wikipedia" to his classmates

Wikipedia in web comics


On May 7, 2005, the comic strip FoxTrot showed one character appending his older sister to unflattering Wikipedia articles. In a similar joke, the web comic Penny Arcade also satirized Wikipedia with a comic strip depicting Skeletor vandalizing the He-Man article. The web comic PvP featured a similar gag with the character Marcy adding embarrassing information about Francis, though she denies it's vandalism, claiming truth.

On December 12, 2005 comic of UserFriendly, Greg, who is first defending Wikipedia against criticism, is seen about to vandalize Wikipedia after finding out he is listed under "hairy dork".

The November 8, 2006 installment of Dinosaur Comics features T-Rex presenting a solution to Wikipedia's vandalism problems; the article about chickens would be designated for vandalism, leaving all other articles intact.

A Bunny strip which features Wikipedia includes a tombstone which reads: "RIP Jeph Jacques" with the bottom caption: "The Moral of the story is you cannot always trust what you read on Wikipedia."

Questionable Content references Wikipedia several times. Hannelore, a character who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, cut most of her hair off after reading Wikipedia's article on head lice. Wikipedia was also referenced when Penelope, a character who is bitter against romance, stated that her edits to the De Beers entry kept getting reverted (she attempted to add a conspiracy theory to the article suggesting that the company had subverted humanity's mating drive in order to sell more diamonds). Wikipedia was also parodied, taking the form of a mock product similar to SpaghettiOs.

The webcomic Applegeeks has jokingly referred to Wikipedia as a replacement for traditional education twice.

On July 4, 2007, xkcd published a comic showing a protester holding up a sign during a political rally that says "[ CITATION NEEDED ]", a tag often used on Wikipedia to indicate unverified statements. The tooltip of the comic, often part of the joke, shows the additional comment "SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION".

Another issue which showed Randall Munroe's Google search history following the AOL search data scandal revealed that Munroe searched the Wikipedia domain for "surviving a raptor attack". xkcd comic #333, entitled "Getting Out of Hand," shows a couple in bed together, with one of the two stick figures reading the Wikipedia article on foreplay on a laptop. Returning to the Wikipedia theme, xkcd #446 depicted a fictional "In popular culture" section in the Wood article, riffing on the tendency to include minor pop culture trivia in articles, with tooltip text theorizing that "the blogosphere will implode" if the tooltip text is mentioned in an "in popular culture" section for an article on the "In Popular Culture" sections. xkcd comic #545 also references Wikipedia, by attempting to start an edit war over Wikipedia neutrality.

The webcomic PartiallyClips criticised Wikipedia's supposed policy of deleting many articles on webcomics.

Roadkill Bill has a comic mocking Wikipedia.

Ethan in Shortpacked! often describes edit wars he is involved in regarding the Transformers articles on Wikipedia.

George of Bob and George once used Wikipedia to research the The First Annual Robot Tournament (a plot element from Mega Man 6) after being told his brother, Bob, was killed during it, but found no information. Later, however, Mega Man researches the subject and finds detailed information has been added. This article is then used as a plot device in following comics as the characters read about the events being depicted.

Diesel Sweeties comic #1831 shows the Red Robot swearing "on the Wikipedia's entry for 'Honor'" to not kill anyone, and then later editing the page.

Claims of negative impact on culture
Wikipedia has also been criticized for encouraging what Andrew Keen called the "Cult of the Amateur", resulting in toleration and enjoyment of lowerbrow culture.

References and footnotes
fr:Wikipédia:Wikipédia dans la culture