History Website / Wikipedia

* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: In 2020, the administrators of the Scots Wikipedia discovered that their site had silently been undermined for years, by an editor who meant well but unfortunately didn't know what the hell he was doing. User [=AmaryllisGardener=], a self-described teenage '[[Useful Notes/Myers–Briggs INTP]] [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Brony]]' (paraphrased) from North Carolina, had contributed the vast majority of the site's articles, but had done so in a mixture of horrendously mangled Scots, Standard English, and complete gibberish. His ''modus operandi'' was to write articles in English, finger through a Scots language dictionary and replace choice words with the first one he could find that was a match - regardless of context or current usage, and when he couldn't find a word he thought worked, he'd simply make one up. The damage to the Scots Wiki done by this one teenager over the course of seven years is nothing short of disastrous; [=AmaryllisGardener=] had contributed ''over 20,000 articles'' to the site in this mangled style, averaging out at about 9 edits every day. With his work described as '[[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wikipedia-boy-butchers-scots-language-with-years-of-errors-m7fl29w0t cultural vandalism]]', the very existence of the website was brought into question, as some felt it better to simply tear the Scots Wikipedia down and start again. Fortunately, it survived, and is now subject to an ongoing cleanup effort.

* {{Fannage}}: They have, for instance, plot summaries of every single ''Franchise/StarTrek'' episode. Their coverage of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' is also impressive, with about half the articles on that series are either good or featured articles. It's the same with ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' and ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''. Cases like this, as well as what was once extensive articles of each ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' species, drew much criticism from both those who regarded these as mere fancruft or as examples of Wikipedia's unequal treatment of notability.

* WikiVandal: Overt vandalism is reverted rapidly, but more subtle vandalism has been known to last months or ''years'', particularly on less-traveled pages. As such, this is one of the common complaints about Wikipedia. Some really outrageous claims in articles are often supported by nothing but the "citation needed" tag.[-[[superscript:[''[[SelfDemonstratingArticle citation needed]]''[=]=]]]-] In fact, the longest time a hoax article stayed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia#Extant_for_10+_years was 14 years]].

* DriveByUpdater: There are those who either only make a couple of edits or edit very infrequently. In an odd twist, even useful drive-by-edits are sometimes reverted.

* OrwellianEditor: The Oversight feature was used to erase the nastiest of all edits, even from the page history. This was {{subverted|Trope}} when the Oversight feature was replaced with the Suppression feature, which still removes the edit from view even from the admins, but its existence can be still be hinted at in the page history.

* WikiMagic: Sometimes played straight, sometimes ''inverted'' with an [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content editor's pet page]]. These "page hoarders" 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. These cases have rapidly become a common criticism as Wikipedia's tendency to [[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism focus on cutting as much content as possible]], instead of adding new content, has increased.

** Unregistered users were even allowed to create new articles until the 2005 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Seigenthaler_biography_incident Siegenthaler incident]] resulted in article creation being restricted to registered users only.

* AbridgedForChildren: The [[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Simple English Wikipedia]] has shorter articles with simpler language for children, people with learning and cognitive disabilities, and people learning English as a second language.

* ColbertBump: After Creator/StephenColbert noted dryly that Wikipedia's article on the lightsaber was longer than its article on the printing press, the printing press article was massively expanded, and today that is no longer true.

** Wikipedia has had several infamous cases of this causing purges of articles dealing with various forms of new media. The late 2000s saw this primarily happen with webcomics, as was covered [[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_community%27s_frustration_with_Wikipedia_guidelines by Wikinews]] and [[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet an editorial]] at The Guardian. Articles on games, gaming history and culture [[https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/05/losing-mud-history/ are also]] common targets. The 2010s saw this happen more commonly with Website/YouTube personalities and their channels. It's ''especially'' been the case with video game and anime/manga characters, which are likely to be deleted if they don't have several sources discussing the characters themselves in detail, ideally full-page articles on them.

* DeadpanSnarker: Although most such examples get deleted sooner or later by a humorless editor, a few instances manage to survive:
** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(wine) page]] for "plonk" features a picture of two covered clear plastic cups with straws filled with wine captioned "Wine (a White Zinfandel) in drinkware befitting plonk."

** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Semple_tank page]] for the [[UsefulNotes/KiwisWithCarbines Bob Semple]] [[TanksForNothing tank]] refers to it as a [[ScareQuotes "tank"]] within the text.

[-[[caption-width-right:260:[[ThatsNoMoon We can't repel information of that magnitude!]]]]-]

** A few topics can end up blacklisted to the point searching gives no results, and the names become triggers for the spam filter. Some websites, notably theexaminer.com, are considered so toxic that the site will automatically prevent you from using it as a source.

* TakeAThirdOption: Most deletion discussions are closed as "keep" or "delete". There is, however, a third option: merging; taking the information in an article and moving it to a subsection of a larger article on the same subject. The introduction of subsection linking has meant that despite claims that Deletionists rule Wikipedia, in many ways it was the Mergists who won. Some deletion discussions can end up closed for other reasons: either the page qualifies for a speedy deletion, so a discussion is redundant; the nominator withdraws without objection for others; no clear consensus in either direction is formed after several weeks; or the nomination is obvious {{Troll}}ing.

* WeaselWords: They[-[[superscript:[''[[SelfDemonstratingArticle Who?]]''[=]=]]]-] hate it when it shows up.
* WikiCurator: On some pages, you will find ''very'' zealous curators. One minor, innocuous edit to a page and it's reverted ''fast''.
* WikiMagic: Sometimes played straight, sometimes ''inverted'' with an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OWN editor's pet page]]. These "page hoarders" 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. These cases have rapidly become a common criticism as Wikipedia's tendency to [[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism focus on cutting as much content as possible]], instead of adding new content, has increased.
* WikiVandal: Overt vandalism is reverted rapidly, but more subtle vandalism has been known to last months or ''years'', particularly on less-traveled pages. One of the common complaints about accuracy aimed at Wikipedia. Some really outrageous claims in articles are often supported by nothing but the "citation" tag.[-[[superscript:[''[[SelfDemonstratingArticle citation needed]]''[=]=]]]-] In fact, the longest time a hoax article stayed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia#Extant_for_10+_years was 14 years]].

* WikiVandal: Overt vandalism is reverted rapidly, but more subtle vandalism has been known to last months or ''years'', particularly on less-traveled pages. One of the common complaints about accuracy aimed at Wikipedia. Some really outrageous claims in articles are often supported by nothing but the "citation" tag.[-[[superscript:[''[[SelfDemonstratingArticle citation needed]]''[=]=]]]-] In fact, the longest time a hoax article stayed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia#Extant_for_10+_years was 13 years]].

* DriveByUpdater: In an odd twist, even useful drive-by-edits are sometimes reverted if certain editors .

* DistractedByTheSexy: There are a lot of things Wikipedia considers to be not notable. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saugeen-Maitland_Hall#The_Saugeen_stripper The Saugeen stripper]] is not one of them.

* MoeAnthropomorphism: Yes, they have their own one. In this case: Wikipe-tan, as seen on the image for the {{Visual Novel|s}} page.

* {{Irony}}: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Deletion The Deletion page was deleted by the deletion project.]]

* OrwellianEditor: The Oversight feature was used to erase the nastiest of all edits, even from the page history. {{Subverted}} when the Oversight feature was replaced with the Suppression feature, which still removes the edit from view even from the admins, but its existence can be still be hinted at in the page history.

* PotHole: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sometimes Sometimes]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taken taken]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To to]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludicrous ludicrous]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremes extremes]] - at least early in an article about a complex topic. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Piped_link They call it a "piped link" or "piping"]], after the | character in the Usemod-inspired syntax that potholes on [=MediaWiki=] use.

** Wikipedians have long battled over notability and the appropriate range of topics Wikipedia should cover, resulting in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia two schools of thought]] called Inclusionism and Deletionism. Deletionism is usually the dominant philosophy in Wikipedia, even against the wishes of its founders. Just look at the flame war that erupted when founder Jimbo Wales [[https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-webscout30sep30-story.html tried to start an article about a South African restaurant]], only to have it deleted almost immediately.

* SmallReferencePools: One of the major underlying causes for conflict between Inclusionists and Deletionists, as well as systemic bias. If a Deletionist hasn't heard of something, it's ''obviously'' non-notable:
** Wikipedia has had several infamous cases of this causing purges of articles dealing with various forms of new media. The late 2000's saw this primarily happen with webcomics, as was covered [[https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_community%27s_frustration_with_Wikipedia_guidelines by Wikinews]] and [[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet an editorial]] at The Guardian. Articles on games, gaming history and culture [[https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/05/losing-mud-history/ are also]] common targets. The 2010s have been seeing this happen more commonly with Website/YouTube personalities and their channels. It's ''especially'' been the case with video game and anime/manga characters, which are likely to be deleted if they don't have several sources discussing the characters themselves in detail, ideally full-page articles on them.
** In 2017, a long-time and major Wikipedia contributor lamented the ongoing prevalence of deletionism, stating that the site was devolving [[https://boingboing.net/2017/02/14/watching-wikipedias-extincti.html "like a dying coral reef."]] According to the author, it's now affecting scientific articles, with the fate of an article on the blood protein hemovanadin cited as an example. The author blamed the "bleaching of Wikipedia" on auto-flagging bots and people abusing speedy deletion rules without bothering to inspect flagged articles.

''Wikipedia'' is [[TropeCodifier the most famous wiki out there]], and is mostly responsible for inspiring the creation of other wikis ([[OlderThanTheyThink although it was not the first]]). It presents its information as an encyclopedia and focuses mainly on real-life information.

!!! Wikipedia is the {{Trope Namer|s}} for:
* WikipediaSyntaxer
* WikipediaUpdater

-->''The Strange titles are rarely added to Wikipedia under the guise of real encyclopedia articles. Occasionally Wikipedians lose their minds (especially on April Fool's Day) and if their posts are good they wind up here. Silliness can come in the form of creativity, insanity, or just boredom. As with other "silly things", often it seems a shame to delete the best of this humor which has been submitted to us.''

* AprilFoolsDay: Since the very beginning, April Fools' pranks have run rampant on Wikipedia, even by established editors. See a list of them [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:APRIL here]].

* BreadEggsBreadedEggs: Many of the category schemes can become this. For instance, there are "American singers", "American female singers", "American country singers", and "American female country singers".

** The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(wine) page]] for "plonk" features a picture of two covered clear plastic cups with straws filled with wine captioned "Wine (a White Zinfandel) in drinkware befitting plonk."

* DigitalPiracyIsEvil: Apparently [[http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/FBI_asks_Wikimedia_Foundation_to_remove_seal_from_websites,_Wikimedia_declines the FBI threatened to sue Wikipedia for using its logo]].
* DistractedByTheSexy: There are a lot of things that Wikipedia considers to be un-noteworthy. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saugeen-Maitland_Hall#The_Saugeen_stripper The Saugeen stripper]] is not one of those things.
%%* DontExplainTheJoke: Often guilty of this, sometimes in excruciating detail, frequently when it's not necessary.

%%* DriveByUpdater: In an odd twist, even useful drive-by-edits are sometimes reverted.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: This can often be seen by checking the edit history of an older article. Early Wikipedia articles didn't have wikilinks, categories, images, or footnotes. ''Very'' early articles (dating back to 2001) actually used a CamelCase wikilink style akin to what TV Tropes uses instead of the now-widespread markup used on nearly every other wiki.
** Trivia sections were ubiquitous in Wikipedia articles until approximately 2008, when the site started cracking down hard on indiscriminate lists of facts in articles.
** Early articles often contain non-standard formated lists, and contain links (to at least redirects, if not remaining articles), that would never be created now due to lack of "notability".
* {{Fancruft}}: [[http://xkcd.com/446/ Referenced]] by ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' (again), and occurs in reality on some pages. The page for Earth used to have "DO NOT REPLACE THIS PAGE WITH '[[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Mostly harmless]]' EVER." hidden in the markup. It still has "[[SeriousBusiness Humorous references to the Douglas Adams novel 'Mostly harmless' as inappropriate content for this article]]" on the talk page, and is semi-protected so that only registered users can edit it (for several reasons).
* {{Fannage}}: They have, for instance, plot summaries of every single ''Franchise/StarTrek'' episode--''all'' series. Their coverage of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' is also impressive, with about half the articles on that series rated either "good article" or "featured article." It's the same with ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' and ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''. Cases like this (as well as what was once extensive articles of each ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' species) drew much criticism (from both those who regarded these as mere fancruft or as examples of Wikipedia's unequal treatment of notability).
* FauxtivationalPoster: [[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Findyoursources.jpg WIKIPEDIA / Find your own damn sources]].

* {{Irony}}: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Deletion The page for 'deletion' was deleted by the deletion project.]]
* JennysNumber: The Wikipedia entry for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste_(Unix) Unix command 'paste']] includes 867-5309 as a number for "Jenny Igotit" ("I got it", a reference to the Tommy Tutone song).
* LostInTranslation: The Wikipedia Project has become so ubiquitous that fans have made their own wikis for specific subjects. Sites such as Teletraan 1 (which then became Wiki/TFWikiDotNet) for ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' , Wookieepedia for ''Franchise/StarWars'' or Memory Alpha for ''Franchise/StarTrek'' have become the go-to places for specifics on those shows. Some cultures have even devoted entire wikis to a ''single person''. In fact, the Japanese equivalent to "Google it" roughly means "check out its wiki".

* MoeAnthropomorphism: Yes, they have their own one. In this case: Wikipe-tan, as seen on the image for the VisualNovel page.

* SelfDemonstratingArticle: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disambiguation_(disambiguation) Disambiguation (disambiguation)]]
* SeriousBusiness: Wikipedians have long battled over notability and the appropriate range of topics Wikipedia should cover, resulting in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia two schools of thought]] called Inclusionism and Deletionism. Deletionism is usually the dominant philosophy in Wikipedia--even against the wishes of its founders. Just look at the flame war that kicked up when founder Jimbo Wales [[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-webscout30sep30,0,2828599.story tried to start an article about a South African restaurant]], only to have it deleted almost immediately. In a more general light, reading discussion pages on ''any'' topic is likely to result in a lot of serious business.

* SmallReferencePools: One of the major underlying causes for conflict between Inclusionists and Deletionists, as well as systemic bias (see WeAllLiveInAmerica below and SeriousBusiness above). If a Deletionist hasn't heard of something, it's ''obviously'' non-notable.
** Wikipedia has had several infamous cases of this causing purges of articles dealing with various forms of new media. The late 2000's saw this primarily happen with webcomics, as was covered [[http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_fundraiser_highlights_webcomic_community%27s_frustration_with_Wikipedia_guidelines by Wikinews]] and [[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet an editorial]] at The Guardian. Articles on games, gaming history and culture [[http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/05/losing-mud-history/ are also]] common targets. The 2010's have been seeing this happen more commonly with Website/YouTube personalities and their channels. It's ''especially'' been the case with video game and anime/manga characters, which are likely to be deleted if they don't have several sources discussing the characters themselves in detail, ideally full-page articles on them.
** In 2017, a long-time and major Wikipedia contributor lamented the ongoing prevalence of deletionism--stating that the site is devolving [[http://boingboing.net/2017/02/14/watching-wikipedias-extincti.html "like a dying coral reef."]] According to the author, it's now affecting scientific articles, with the fate of an article on the blood protein hemovanadin cited as an example. The author blames the "bleaching of Wikipedia" on auto-flagging bots and people abusing speedy deletion rules without bothering to inspect flagged articles.

* TakeAThirdOption: Most deletion discussions are closed as "keep" or "delete". There is however, a third option: merging; taking the information in an article and moving it to a subsection of a larger article on the same subject. The introduction of subsection linking has meant that despite claims that Deletionists rule Wikipedia, in many ways it was the Mergists who won. Some deletion discussions can end up closed for other reasons: either the page qualifies for a "speedy" deletion, so a discussion is redundant; the nominator withdraws without objection for others; no clear consensus in either direction is formed after several weeks; or the nomination is obvious {{Troll}}ing.

** The site's notability guidelines have resulted in several popular internet phenomena being barred from having articles for being "non-notable", with internet favorites ''WebVideo/TheTourettesGuy'' (which prompted the creators to ''put up a petition'' protesting the blacklist) and ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' (the latter of which has ''every single'' variation of the title locked from recreation) being infamous examples. WebAnimation/YouTubePoop was also blacklisted for years until the mid 2010's, when slews of news reports and analysis of the trend led to Wikipedia admins finally relenting.

* WikiCurator: On some pages you will find VERY zealous curators. One minor, innocuous edit to a page and zoom - it's reverted FAST.

* WikiVandal: Overt vandalism is reverted rapidly, but more subtle vandalism has been known to last months or years, particularly on less-traveled pages. One of the common complaints about accuracy aimed at Wikipedia. Some really outrageous claims in articles are often supported by nothing but the "citation" tag.[-[[superscript:[''[[SelfDemonstratingArticle citation needed]]''[=]=]]]-] In fact, the longest time a hoax article stayed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia#Extant_for_10+_years was 13 years]].

* WikipediaSyntaxer: The original and Trope Namer.

** The site's notability guidelines have resulted in several popular internet phenomena being barred from having articles for being "non-notable", with internet favorites ''WebVideo/TheTourettesGuy'' (which [[CreatorBacklash even displeased the creators]]) and ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' (the latter of which has ''every single'' variation of the title locked from recreation) being infamous examples. WebAnimation/YouTubePoop was also blacklisted for years until the mid 2010's, when slews of news reports and analysis of the trend led to Wikipedia admins finally relenting.