alt title(s): That Other Wiki; The Other Wiki; Other Wiki; TOW
"At three in the morning I looked at my clock and thought, 'Good god! What on earth have I been doing for four hours?!' I looked at my screen. 'Plot summaries of Power Rangers episodes.' Damn."
—Anonymous Wikipedia addict
"Information wants to be WRONG!"
The Other Wiki. The wiki that most people are familiar with.
The one that isn't us.
Wikipedia is the most famous wiki out there, and is mostly responsible for inspiring the creation of other wikis (
although it was not the first) It presents its information as an encyclopedia (though by definition anyone can edit it) and focuses mainly on real-life information.
Over time, Wikipedia developed two major schools of thought. On one side were the Inclusionists, who argued that Wikipedia's electronic nature made it okay to have articles that paper-based encyclopedias would ignore. On the other side were Deletionists, who resisted anything they considered "non-notable" or "non-encyclopedic" ... which turned out to be quite a lot. Because of this, Wikipedia has attracted controversy for deleting what Wikipedians find non-notable, which has turned off a number of would-be contributors. Nonetheless, it has a vast range of subjects and has shown a steady rate of growth as time has gone on.
Here at
TV Tropes, we only care about history to the extent that it applies to fiction, and we're
cool with that.
Don't just tell us the facts; tell us the memes, tell us the archetypes, tell us the catchy ideas and symbolic roles that get planted in people's heads. Got the kernel of an idea bouncing about your head? Throw it down here and see what grows. If we're lucky, our
neologism for it will catch on.
Wikipedia has
an entry on itself
and its history, for further reading.
Due to its nature as being open for editing by anyone at any time, Wikipedia has incurred a significant amount of
Hype Backlash. If you've ever had a professor forbid using Wikipedia for research, you know how extensive this backlash is. The bickering between Wikipedia's supporters and detractors can get pretty intense, both online and offline (
and not just between inclusionists and exclusionists).
Whether or not calling Wikipedia "
The Other Wiki" is related to
Oxford's habit of referring to Cambridge as "the Other Place" and vice-versa is a tale lost to history. Another explanation may come from a convention in Westminister-style bicameral parliaments where members do not refer to the other chamber by name. The House of Commons and the House of Lords in Britain use the phrase, 'the other place' to refer to each other, as do members of the House of Commons of Canada and the Senate.
Wikipedia provides examples of:
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Wikipe-tan, specifically Moe Anthropomorphism.
- Archive Binge: Occurs as per the page quote, and referenced by xkcd.
- Archive Panic: Its goal is to be an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are often upwards of twenty volumes. Most encyclopedias don't have over three million articles, many of them very, very, very long. Current estimates put wikipedia at a bit over 1000 volumes.
- Bias Steamroller: Many academics still dismiss the validity of Wikipedia entirely, regardless of the fact that most of the information on the site is verifiable and peer reviewed. Most of the disdain that many academics have for the site comes from the fact that it can be changed at any time by any person with an Internet connection, and particularly clever Wiki Vandals can subtly sow misinformation in articles that aren't caught for months.
- Book Of Shadows
- Bluenose Bowdlerizer: Correctness sometimes is sacrificed, even if that's against their policy (see Distracted By The Sexy).
- Browser Narcotic: Losing time and opening way too many tabs is awfully common.
- Conversation In The Main Page: Averted hard and fast - this usually survives minutes, at most.
- Cowboy Bebop At His Computer: Anyone can add anything, whether it's correct or not. Depending on the subject it may be corrected within minutes or it may stay for quite a while before it's noticed and corrected.
- Defictionalization: Wikipedia has proven itself correct at least once.
- Distracted By The Sexy: Some pages are decidedly Not Safe For Work.
- Drive By Updater: In an odd twist, even useful drive-by-edits are sometimes reverted.
- Dr Pedia And Mr Trope
- Edit War: Due to its size, these are just as likely to occur between administrators as between regular users.
- Encyclopedia Exposita
- Fancruft: Referenced by XKCD (again), and occurs in reality on some pages. The page for Earth used to have "DO NOT REPLACE THIS PAGE WITH 'Mostly harmless.' EVER." hidden in the markup.
- Fannage: They have, for instance, plot summaries of every single Star Trek episode - all series. Their coverage of The Simpsons is also impressive, with about the half of the articles on that series rated either "good article" or "featured article".
- Fauxtivational Poster: Here you go◊.
- Follow The Leader: The wiki craze started here, but this was not the first wiki.
- Home Page: In many languages.
- Hype Aversion
- Iconic Logo
- Internet Backdraft
- Locked Pages: Several forms, often involving different levels of user access required to edit.
- Meido: The various maintenance bots are sometimes personified as such.
- Memetic Mutation: [Citation Needed]
- Moe Anthropomorphism: Yes, they have their own one. In this case: Wikipe-tan.
- Orwellian Editor
- Our Super Strict Language Policy: Very similar, minus funny being acceptable.
- Pot Hole: Sometimes taken to ludicrous extremes - at least early in an article about a complex topic.
- Serious Business: The major two factions on Wikipedia are the Inclusionists and the Deletionists, as mentioned in the introduction. Deletionism has taken over as the primary school of thought of Wikipedia—even against the wishes of its founders. Just look at the flame war that kicked up when Jimbo Wales tried to start an article about a South African restaurant, only to have it deleted almost immediately. Reading discussion pages on any topic is likely to result in a lot of Serious Business.
- Unfortunately, besides the serial deletors, there's also a phenomenon of 'page hoarders' who will sit on a certain page and revert and delete any changes made to it, and will spend all day arguing about it until the admins give in to them. Forget Wiki Vandals, these guys are Wikipedia's biggest problem. Counter-Vandalism Unit, seriously, just... take a look at what they made up.
- Small Name Big Ego: Notably, the "sole founder of Wikipedia", Jimbo Wales.
- Sock Puppet
- Someday This Will Come In Handy: Has been known to cause attempts to invoke this trope.
- Take It To The Forums: Averted - Wikipedia has no official forums. At best, discussion pages can be used.
- The Internet Is For Porn: Look up any of their "anatomy" pages.
- The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness
- The Wiki Rule: Tries to follow this for "encyclopedia", but is known to fail (often per Fannage).
- There Is No Such Thing As Notability: Utterly inverted.
- Thread Mode: Averted hard, per Conversation In The Main Page.
- Trope Overdosed
- TV Tropes In Other Wikis: We have a page.
- Troll: Some people put either totally irrelevant things on the page or mess it up by doing the summary wrong. This troper has seen people write crap like "I like neopets" on pages.
- Wiki Magic: Sometimes played straight, sometimes inverted with an editor's pet page. Inversions of this have rapidly become a common criticism as Wikipedia's tendency to focus on cutting as much content as possible, instead of adding new content, has increased.
- Wiki Vandal: Overt vandalization is reverted rapidly - but subtle vandalization has been known to last months on less-travelled pages. One of the common complaints about accuracy aimed at Wikipedia.
- Wiki Walk: xkcd sums it up very well
- Wikipedia Syntaxer: The original and trope namer.
- Wikipedia Updater
- Wikipedia Will Ruin Your Life
