Wikipedia - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): That Other Wiki; The Other Wiki; Other Wiki

"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!"

—Bluster Blaster, Sam & Max: Moai Better Blues

TOW. The Other Wiki. The wiki that most people are familiar with. The one that isn't us.

Wikipedia is probably 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. Because of this, it has attracted a bit of controversy for deleting what they find non-notable, which has turned a few people off of contributing. Nonetheless, it has a vast range of subjects, which has shown a steady rate of growth as time has gone on.

As a consequence of Wikipedia's fame and scale, it's where people put knowledge when they don't know where it should go. This perception is actually at odds with the project's goals: to create a tertiary reference for information and viewpoints published elsewhere (The Wiki Rule, for "encyclopedia"). Problem is, they've ended up with more information on subjects such as Star Trek than, say, linguistics or finance — and that's not how they wanted it.

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, Wikipedia has spawned a rather large camp of people who swear on their lives that absolutely every piece of information in Wikipedia is wrong. There are quite frequently flame wars (on both the Internet and in real life) between this camp and the fans of Wikipedia.

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.
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 only from the fact that non-academics can contribute to the site.
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
Dude, Where's My Changes?: One of the common complaints.
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.
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 Encyclopedists. Inclusionists will spend tens of thousands of hours to create, say, the most comprehensive and verifiable set of articles ever written on (say) Penguin Racing, while the Encylopedists will spend two weeks to get enough "delete" votes into an Article For Deletion to delete all their work summaraially. Then the Inclusionists will just get back to creating it again.
- Reading discussion pages on any topic is likely to result in a lot of Serious Business.
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.
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 Will Ruin Your Life