Wiki Wednesday (This Week's is Whack, Yo)

It's the middle of the work week and that means Wiki Wednesday, the poorly conceived and grass growingly dull weekly Kneecapped feature. The last few Wiki Wednesday's have succeeded in detailing the ludicrousness of some Wikipedia entries. Why for example should Earth Worm Jim be immortalized by a 1,000 word Wikipedia entry? The answer is, simply, some people have too much time on their hands, unlike us bloggers. So I mock these people by hitting the "random article" feature five times in a row to see what pointlessness I encounter. This week, however, Wikipedia won the day with several useful entries. On to this weeks articles:

Smoke Not the movie featuring Harvey Keitel, but the actual, "suspension in air (aerosol) of small particles resulting from incomplete combustion of a fuel," kind of smoke. Did you know smoke is sometimes used as a flavor enhancer? Me too. How about that smoke inhalation is the leading cause of death in fires? Me too. So you may not learn much from this entry, but at least it's there in case you forget what that strange ghostlike substance that dangles and dances at the end of a cigarette is.

Helmet Airport Zzzzzzzzz....sorry but I don't care about Canadian airports. This one seems to service an oil field in British Columbia.

Jacqueline Simpson The matriarch of the Texas/Pop Star/Hollywood/Bimbo Simpson family and a part time researcher of folk lore and legend.

Olivett Nazerine University A small liberal arts college in Illinois. I've never heard of it, but Wiki says it’s recognized by U.S. News as a top college, which is why I've probably never heard of it. My school ranked in the top ten on Princeton Review's party colleges list in the categories of pot smoking, beer drinking, students (almost) never study, and ugliest campus. But did the Pixies write a song about your school? Didn't think so, bitches.

And lastly

Danny Kelly He seems like an interesting English media and sports personality, as well as an entrepreneur.

Wiki-Wednesday

It's Wiki Wednesday where I catalog five consecutive "random article" searches on Wikipedia to see what turns up. Last Week, I ended up getting three articles that could fall into the category of "geekdom" A comic book character, a full description of an item found in a role playing vampire game, and 1,000 words on Earthworm Jim of videogame fame. Leading to the question, who enters stuff on Wikipedia anyway? Also, although this feature first appeared on a Thursday post for the sake of alliteration I moved it to Wednesday. Here are this week's five:

Explodingdog - You don't understand how great it is when you're doing a random article search and the first article you get is "explodingdog" especially when this line is written next to it, "For dogs used as anti-tank weapons, see anti-tank dog." "Explodingdog" is a website that has to do with drawing on demand and sounds pretty cool, check out the link. The definition of "anti-tank dog" is too horrible to mention, but I recommend clicking on it as well.

Three places came up next, they are:

Choptank, Maryland Founded in the 17th Century!

Salon High School, Ohio Someone loves their high school; there are about 730 words here. Fun Fact: Salon High's three notable alumni are all football players. I checked to see if my high school was on Wikipedia and of course it was. There were no "notable alumni" listed, but I think Matt Leblanc went there. Or, did "Joey" knock him off the notable list?

Decatur, Michigan One more place in Michigan I'll never visit.

And lastly:

Buffalo Bob Smith The host of "Howdy Doody" and apparently, according to Wikipedia, that's all he ever did.

That's it we only do five random articles here on Wiki-Wednesday. But I'll leave you with pneumatic weapon. Tune in next Wednesday for more Wikipedia fun! Better yet, play at home and save me the time. Just kidding, I love Wiki-Wednesday! I invented the damn thing.

Fun with Wikipedia "Random Article"

Wikipedia is amazing, a wonder. So what if some of the information is suspect? It's still fascinating what people take the time to enter into this online encyclopedia. My friend recently opened my eyes to the "random article" feature. It's a good way to see what's out there in WikiWorld. Here are the first five results when I hit "random article" this morning.

1) Pied Piper (Comics) 625 words on a DC comics supervillian that you have never heard of. Why would someone ever search for this information? I don't know, but is was kind of interesting.

2) Seal's Rock The author must live here because who cares?

3) Barry Yelverton, 5th Viscount Avonmore - Sadly, of all the Barrys I could have gotten, I didn't get Barry Lyndon, Barry White, or Barry Williams.

4) Ordo Dracul - "The Ordo Dracul is one of the five covenants in the World of Darkness role-playing game Vampire: The Requiem published by White Wolf." Got that?

5) Earthworm Jim - 1000 words on a video game and cartoon character of minor importance from the mid 90's.

So what do we have? Out of the five random articles I got one comic book supervillan, one "covenant" from a vampire role playing game, and one video game character. Not exactly the hard hitting historical figures in most reference books. What does this tell us of the folks who enter information in Wikipedia? Exactly, they're geeks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, without geeks we wouldn't have the internet, it's just an observation.