Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence » Dammit, People, I Said It Was The Last Word

Dammit, People, I Said It Was The Last Word

Kris Straub, as usual, kicks asses that need kicking. More to the point, as an experiment, he engineerined a call for deleting his own webcomic, complete with fake users arguing the point on invalid grounds:

I started the vote to delete Starslip Crisis using a freshly-registered user with no other edits under his belt.

I also used faulty logic to initiate the discussion: I said www.starslip.com has no Alexa data, and isnâ€™t notable as a result. (www.starslip.com is just a redirect: the comicâ€™s URL is www.starslipcrisis.com and has an Alexa rank.)

Then I registered ten more fake users to stuff the original delete vote. This is called â€œsock puppetryâ€? in Wikipedia terminology, and is frowned upon. The names of the fake users I used in the AfD are: Salby, Incredulous, Banalzebub, Hammerabbi, LKeith30, Repromancer, Expiwikist, Floxman, YothSog, and 66.27.212.63.

Gaming the system like that is strictly verboten at Wikipedia, and yet Straub was not surprised at the outcome:

What I tried to do was take the popular point of view among Wikipediaâ€™s editors â€” â€œdelete webcomicsâ€? â€” and then prove that it would be accepted even under fallacious/suspicious circumstances. And it looks like I was successful.

Starslip Crisis is gone from Wikipedia for made-up reasons championed by my team of ten grudge-carrying fakes.

As it turns out, itâ€™s not hard to get something deleted from Wikipedia, especially if itâ€™s on some ice-blasted, barren frontier land on the internet like webcomics, where no one really knows whatâ€™s important and what isnâ€™t, and no one really cares to make sure. Thatâ€™s pretty goddamn weak.

I believe that my future response for all Wikipedia/webcomics interactions will be That’s pretty goddamn weak. And I’m in agreement with Straub when he derives an Important Lesson from all of this: No playing ball in the house! No, wait, that was The Brady Bunch; Straub’s lesson is (in so many words) Screw you Wikipedia guys, I’m going home to make better webcomics!

And that’s pretty goddamn strong.

Insane and Awesome.

Now that is the last word.

I applaud Straub’s actions on this so hard that I might break my hands. In all honestly, the man’s managed to once again slap the internet across the face and restore sanity to the land.

Or at least make a good point, I don’t know about sanity ever being on the internet in the first place.

Brillance. Kris Straub is more awesome than a basket of ninja kittens.

This is why I’m marrying that man.

If I had to choose between huggin Jeff Lowrey and hugging Mr. Straub, I would hug Mr. Straub in a heartbeat (Sorry Jeff).

I can’t speak to the issue of sanity as related to the internet in general, but there was never any sanity involved in Wikipedia. The basic premise is flawed. By Wikilogic, I should be able to ask 10 people on the street when World War II started, take the average, and call it fact.

Again, more proof it would do the webcomic community better to donate time and possibly money to comixpedia.com

Hell, why not tranfer all the webcomics entries over and delete them all from wiki? A final F.U. to the wiki editors.

The proper plural is “wikipediots”.

By Wikilogic, I should be able to ask 10 people on the street when World War II started, take the average, and call it fact.

By Mary Roth on 02.15.07 5:05 pm

Why not go one better? Nominate the main WWII article for deletion, stating there is no credible sources covering it. Then nominate the History Channel article for deletion to cut off the main defense. In WikiWorld, that’s just how it works.

Well, it looks like after I blew the whistle on myself, they decided that Starslip Crisis needed to be undeleted so they could re-try it for the same crime in a new courtroom. But you know, I don’t really want my strip at Wikipedia anymore. It’s kind of embarrassing.

The only thing that came to my attention was this:

How about you do your job correctly? Itâ€™s not my responsibility to come fix things for everyone who wants to do something but isnâ€™t capable of doing it right.

Iâ€™m sorry that came out bitchy, but itâ€™s true. Itâ€™s also a complaint I had with the WCCAs.

These aren’t jobs. They’re volunteer organizations. And volunteer organizations live and die on the strengths of the volunteers.

But trust me, I know: Complaining is easier on the pride than trying to bring change and running the very real risk of falling flat on your face.

[…] …any “encyclopedia” that’ll let a cat post an entry about his own urine is pretty dodgy to start with, don’t you think? (Okay, I couldn’t resist one illustration. Excerpt from Wednesday’s episode of Achewood, ©2007 Chris Onstad; first link via Gary Tyrrell.) […]

William, I wish I could say “then let’s do it — change the way Wikipedia works for webcomics.” Because I’d do it, not just to show people up but to make it work better. But I don’t have time. Most people don’t. A lot of us don’t have time to fix the WCCAs either.

The William, you can’t use “of course it’s half-assed, it’s run by volunteers” as an excuse. There are tons of websites — webcomics and others — which are entirely run by volunteers which look very professional.

“Complaining is easier on the pride than trying to bring change and running the very real risk of falling flat on your face.” — It also takes less time. See, if a ship is sinking, you either get out or start bailing. If you don’t have time to start bailing, your only choice is to get out. If you then tell the people still on the ship, “By the way, it’s sinking, so you need to start bailing or get out” then you run the risk of somebody named “The William G” griping about your bad attitude.

Wikipedia is sinking. I don’t have time to start bailing. Lots of us don’t. Don’t whine and call us quitters because of that.

FYI, the last time I tried to do what you suggested — get involved in the webcomics editing on Wikipedia — I was labelled a sockpuppet and told my opinions don’t count. So, WTF.

Wikipedia is “sinking?” I’m not sure what that means. According to Alexa it’s been in the top 20 site on THE ENTIRE INTERNET for years.

The fact that they aren’t perfectly servicing middle-echelon artists working in a broadly unknown medium means they’re “sinking?”

I love webcomics, and the community at large, but why do we always get in a huff over all this? I’ve had my wiki article deleted at LEAST twice. I’m sure it’ll get deleted a few times more. I don’t give a SHIT. Why should I? I don’t get any traffic out of it. If I need to masturbate, I don’t have to do it with my mind. That’s why God invented the penis.

Wouldn’t it be better to spend your energy achieving their pre-existing notoriety standards than to complain that they’re inadequate to us?

I’ll refrain from pointing out the irony of creating 10 fake characters and having them talk to each other on Wikipedia, then pointing out that you lack for time.

SHIT.

It is a truism in American life, especially the last six years, that nobody likes to live under the tyranny of the masses.

Wikipedia is merely illustrating that for the rest of y’all.

I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been fictionalising important parts of history on Wikipedia for some time now. And I’ve mostly succeeded. It’s such a joke, unless you are making things up about, say, Charmeleon.

What?! No time?

Kris, that’s bull, and you know it. You had the time to pull this little publicity stunt off, and you had the time to draw the awards ceremony for the WCCAs last year.

Unless you meant “I only have time for the spotlight”?

Webcomics has a wiki. It’s widely ignored, but it strives to be all inclusive, and really needs the community’s support. Even the support of people with no time for anything but getting high-fives from their pals.

I can draw a ceremony for the WCCAs in one day, if that’s what you mean. I can spend 10 hours on Wikipedia, yes. No, I don’t have three weeks to spend on the WCCAs. I don’t want to argue with you, man, honest.

And I linked comixpedia.org from my publicity stunt. It’s the webcomics wiki worth editing.

The upsetting thing is that I would actually say “hand over the WCCAs. I will do it right,” if only to be able to say “see, William G? I do care.”

You know what, Kristofer Straub and William G running the WCCAs would probably be the most interesting year the awards have ever had. We want people to care, right?

RE: “Iâ€™ve had my wiki article deleted at LEAST twice. Iâ€™m sure itâ€™ll get deleted a few times more. I donâ€™t give a SHIT. Why should I?”

Here’s a question for you, Zach: Why should I waste my time editing articles on Wikipedia when all my work gets erased and all my opinions are ignored?

Right, Wikipedia isn’t sinking. It’s simply created a novel way of serving large quantities of seawater to its thirsty guests.

Coming to Kris with the WCCAs and saying “If you don’t like it then you should work to make it better.” is like a waiter bringing me a hot soda and telling me that the 7-11 across the street has ice.

[…] Dammit, People, I Said It Was The Last Word You know you’ve made it when someone creates a Wikipedia page for you and then you get popular enough to have someone else systematically delete you. […]

[…] Gary More commentary on the latest webcomics/Wikipedia interaction, from Rich Stevens this time: Tonight’s comic is a shout out to all the people in webcomics who have been targeted for deletion on Wikipedia recently. There seems to be a pretty big bias over there against the legitimacy and relevance of web-based strips, which strikes me as pretty goony for a non-official encyclopedia with enough room to include every obscure topic in the universe. […]

I complained about the policy, and got a nice generic response. When I replied, and referred to their amateur editors as “WikiNazis,” the correspondence abruptly ended. Oh, well, eff ’em if they can’t take a joke.

[…] Speaking of disappearing comics, for those of you wondering how much it takes to get rid of a webcomic from Wikipedia, the answer is two votes out of three. To quote the eminently quotable Kris Straub, That’s pretty goddamn weak. […]

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