the Lottery Party: Ineffable Law

December 3, 2008 by Richard Caldwell
Filed under Columns

by Richard Caldwell

Ello ello, poppets.

In recent weeks, I have been pulled into an ongoing controversy involving the wonderous Wikipedia and the booming niche of web-comix.

Not that I get pulled often into ongoing controversies, but to my credit I only throw the first punch when they are bigger than me, excepting the one time which is neither here nor there. Apparently, this problem involves the standards of the god Wiki with regards to web-comix, and a seeming conspiracy to keep the digital strips from having entries therein.

Now granted, any of you who have read more than one of my columns will know that I myself am not the biggest fan of the admittedly niche medium, but by the Living Tribunal do I believe that they deserve their shot as much as any other form of art. My own distaste is a personal reflection, but as vast as is the number of web-comix being produced regularly, there is a growing percentage which demand far more respect than what has been issued by the Wiki admins in the past years. Though I myself have contributed to Wikipedia periodically, I know I do not have the power to inflict any change to this system per se. However, I can and shall use this here article to present some manner of summation of the issue, with the hopes that somebody reading may feel the need to aid the cause. If knowledge is power, then spread the word. So what if my geek is showing.

Essentially, I have found through very simple browsings a long history of Wikipedia openly contradicting itself regarding what exactly validates validation for perspective entries to its site.

Wikipedia, for those who listen to rap, is owned and operated by the Wikipedia Foundation; and aims to be the definitive online archive for human knowledge. Unlike its more traditional yet finite print counterparts, Wikipedia is a massive and ever-expanding virtual encyclopedic resource with entries on almost any topic one can imagine. It is a living thing unto itself at times, with countless mods and admins and a painstakingly detailed system for checks and balances so as to oversee the near-endless stream of constant revisions and updates.

While web-comix themselves have an arguably twenty-year long history, the media has only bloomed in the past decade, and only exploded in more recent years.

Despite numerous web-strips that receive tens of thousands of hits per day, and multi-media coverage enough to warrant certain creators garnering everything from contracts with print media comic publishers to book deals to animated series to toys and games, etc. Wikipedia powers that be have proven themselves biased galore for deleting dozens of valid web-comic entries at a time. Reasons cited are often assorted and self-contradictory and just plain asinine, and by no means are these in any way singular incidents.

This is in fact widescale enough for there to be a plethora of forums debating Wikipedia’s ever-changing policies (as evidenced by this excellent past blog from Terrence Marks- http://comixtalk.com/terrence_markswikipedia_and_you); and with even Wiki itself hosting a page for the single purpose of flacidly weighing the rights of web-comix for admission:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Webcomics
Writer Len Kody, whose historical fiction epic “Chicago:1968″ entry recently suffered deletion at the calloused hands of Wikipedia admins- who I personally feel were rather drunk on power and full of themselves- had a couple of amusingly inane reasons for citation thrown in his path.

First, the oft employed reason that any entry for a web-comic would be little more than an advert for said strip. One could also easily make the argument that any entry for any existing work or extant creator is naught more than an advertisement for deeds done, and so by this logic they should really remove all movies, books, etc. from their hallowed halls.

Second, that not enough viable coverage had been previously given to his strip by print media. This as an example while Wikipedia itself takes great pride in being an evolved form of anything so confiningly limited as mere print media.

Read the very recent debate for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Chicago:1968
More interestingly still is the following excerpt, taken directly from Wikipedia’s own guidelines found via it homepage, and which clearly contradicts a large majority of excuses given for past deletions of different web-comic entries:

Wikipedia is not governed by statute
Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive. They represent an evolving community consensus for how to improve the encyclopedia and are not a code of law. Editors and administrators alike should seek to uphold these rules only when doing so would produce a better result for the encyclopedia, never simply because they are “rules”. Insisting that something must (or cannot) be done simply because of policy is a form of wikilawyering.
Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy
Wikipedia is not a moot court, and rules are not the purpose of the community. Instruction creep should be avoided. A perceived procedural error made in posting anything, such as an idea or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post. Follow the spirit, not the letter, of any rules, policies and guidelines if you feel they conflict. If the rules prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, you should ignore them. Disagreements should be resolved through consensus-based discussion, rather than through tightly sticking to rules and procedures.

It takes very little research to back me up on this. And after all is said and done, where the hell is the harm? Of course there are plenty of web-strips that have no place bearing entries for an otherwise respectable site like the grand Wikipedia. There are many though, such as Len’s case, which had every damn right to a seat at the table. Should this really be such a complicated thing to gage? Realistically, web-comix in general are simply evolving much too fast for any definition to rightfully apply completely. Wikipedia should evolve to match.

Curiously, just prior to the final drafting of this column, two of my better sources backed out, each explaining that they are currently jobhunting and would not care for the blog’d rants that I was to quote getting anymore linkage. People should not be afraid to speak their mind, dammit.
Not ever.

How else can changing the status quo dogma ever be instigated?

and miscellany redux:
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