Wikigroaning

n.

The practice of locating two similar Wikipedia articles, one useful and the other relatively frivolous, where the frivolous article is substantially longer and more involved than the useful article. Also: wikigroaning, Wiki-groaning.

Example Citations:

There's a new sport on the Internet: competing to come up with the best examples of how Wikipedia, the Web's home-grown reference source, is skewed towards pop-culture topics. For instance, the West Wing of the White House merits a 1,100-word entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_wing on Wikipedia, while "The West Wing," the Aaron Sorkin TV drama, has an 6,800-word write-up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_West_Wing_%28TV_series%29. This game already has a name: "Wiki-groaning."

—Jamin Brophy-Warren, "Oh, That John Locke," The Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2007

There was once an Englishman named John Locke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke, who had some interesting thoughts about political theory. There is also a character named John Locke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke_%28Lost%29 on the TV show Lost.

Which one has the longer entry on Wikipedia?

To the surprise of nobody, it's not the enlightenment philosopher. This is what we call "wikigroaning": the art of highlighting Wikipedia's bias toward things that don't matter.

—Ivor Tossell, "Duality of Wikipedia," The Globe and Mail, June 15, 2007

Earliest Citation:

The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah. Yeeaaah, we know, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. (We're calling it Wikigroaning for a reason.)

—Jon Hendren, " The Art of Wikigroaning: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning.php," Something Awful, June 5, 2007

Notes:

For more Wikigroaning fun than is probably good for your day job, see the WikiGroaning: http://www.wikigroaning.com/ site.

Related Words:

wiki

wikiality

wikification

Categories:

Internet

Culture (General)

The older material has had more thought and so fewer words?

"I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter." --Pascal.