Somebody Edited the Invertebrate Wikipedia Page to Include Paul Ryan

[L. Coyote]

http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/01/wikipedia-invertebrate-page-edited-to-include-paul-ryan.html

Link to tweet

[Lucinda]

1. That is awesome!

Shame it's been edited back out again!

[L. Coyote]

2. You have to wonder if trump did it.

[Lucinda]

4. LOL Beyond his skill set for hands on....but he does have toadies who could have!

[PJMcK]

3. Now, that's the kind of hacking I like! (n/t)

[Jim Lane]

5. This is horseshit and should not be encouraged.

Ooooh, really funny, we changed Wikipedia to say Ryan's an invertebrate! Let's go edit the article on turtles to add McConnell! This is fun!

Wait, what happened? Some right-winger changed the photo of Hillary to show her in an orange jumpsuit and behind bars? That's outrageous! We'll revert that vandalism promptly!

Now let's edit the Trump bio to say he has really tiny hands. That'll tick off the wingnuts.

The serious point here is that inserting juvenilia like this does not advance the progressive cause -- in fact, it makes us look juvenile -- and it hurts Wikipedia, which is a valuable online resource.

Do you complain about the corporate media? Wikipedia accepts no advertising. It charges no fee to anyone who wants to use it. Content is created by unpaid volunteers who idealistically believe in the mission of making all the world's knowledge available to everyone for free.

If you think that's a crazy mission statement, then don't volunteer, but at least respect the work of the people who do volunteer.

(Incidentally, it is a crazy mission statement. Truthfully has it been said that the problem with Wikipedia is that it works only in practice. In theory, it can't work.)

I know, I know, this is just a joke and I have no sense of humor. If you think this silliness is funny, you'll just have to dismiss me as an old curmudgeon. I've been editing Wikipedia for more than a decade and I've seen so much of this crap - from the left, from the right, and from people just randomly inserting "penis" into serious articles -- that my appreciation for such brilliant "humor" is completely gone.