From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Humorous Wikipedia essay
To paraphrase
Brooks Hatlen
:
the world has got itself in a big damn hurry
. But no matter how quickly you can make a million, order a pizza through your TV or die of
swine flu
, achieving
notability
is still usually a process, rarely an event.
An encyclopedia should not begin to move at lightning speed to keep up with the rat race. Indeed, as a record of history it must necessarily be a few steps behind current events, watching, listening, pondering, arguing, digesting the output of humanity. Even when a subject's notability is not in question, our policies on
original research
require us to wait for reliable secondary sources to come to full fruition before we even get our boots on. As one editor put it, Wikipedia should generally be "behind the ball?that is: we don't lead, we follow".
[1]
Of course, some topics attract instant or rapid notability and extensive secondary analysis, for example a new royal birth or the
Islam vs. Denmark cartoon controversy
. But these are exceptions and anyone or anything whose rise to fame was not marked with a story on the Nine O'Clock News should be prepared to wait, to ease into being notable.
In short,
the world will not end tomorrow
. If it does, we don't need Wikipedia. If it doesn't, and if Wikipedia is to be a long-term, respected and reliably informative entity?perhaps even "the Encyclopedia of the Future"?then we can afford to take our time when deciding on what is allowed in, and when we open the door.
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- Adminitis
- Akin's Laws of Article Writing
- Alternatives to edit warring
- ANI flu
- Anti-Wikipedian
- Anti-Wikipedianism
- Articlecountitis
- Asshole John rule
- Assume bad faith
- Assume faith
- Assume good wraith
- Assume stupidity
- Assume that everyone's assuming good faith, assuming that you are assuming good faith
- Avoid using preview button
- Avoid using wikilinks
- Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense
- Barnstaritis
- Before they were notable
- BOLD, revert, revert, revert
- Boston Tea Party
- Butterfly effect
- CaPiTaLiZaTiOn MuCh?
- Complete bollocks
- Counting forks
- Counting juntas
- Crap
- Don't stuff beans up your nose
- Don't-give-a-fuckism
- Don't abbreviate "Wikipedia" as "Wiki"!
- Don't delete the main page
- Editcountitis
- Edits Per Day
- Editsummarisis
- Editing Under the Influence
- Embrace Stop Signs
- Emerson
- Fart
- Five Fs of Wikipedia
- Seven Ages of Editor, by Will E. Spear-Shake
- Go ahead, vandalize
- How many Wikipedians does it take to change a lightbulb?
- How to get away with UPE
- How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle
- How to vandalize correctly
- How to win a citation war
- Ignore all essays
- Ignore every single rule
- Is that even an essay?
- Mess with the templates
- My local pond
- Newcomers are delicious, so go ahead and bite them
- Legal vandalism
- List of jokes about Wikipedia
- LTTAUTMAOK
- No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
- No one cares about your garage band
- No one really cares
- No, really
- No sorcery threats
- Notability is not eternal
- Oops Defense
- Play the game
- Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you
- Please bite the newbies
- Please do not murder the newcomers
- Pledge of Tranquility
- R-e-s-p-e-c-t
- Requests for medication
- Requirements for adminship
- Rouge admin
- Rouge editor
- Sarcasm is really helpful
- Sausages for tasting
- The Night Before Wikimas
- The first rule of Wikipedia
- The Five Pillars of Untruth
- Things that should not be surprising
- The WikiBible
- Watchlistitis
- Wikipedia is an MMORPG
- WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!
- What Wikipedia is not/Outtakes
- Why not create an account?
- Yes legal threats
- You don't have to be mad to work here, but
- You should not write meaningless lists
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