I twittered tonight that I was going to watch a movie because the Internet was sucking, but then it (it being the Internet) distracted me again. I know right!

A while back I also twittered–god damn, I hate the Internet sometimes–anyway: I wrote a post on the Web site twitter.com:

I’ve stopped bothering to remember things. Not immediate little things like get milk. Wikipedia has everything I need to know now. It’s official.

Well it’s true, I believe. If someone asks me what I know about NAFTA (who wouldn’t ask me what I know about NAFTA?), I don’t even bother thinking about what I actually know about NAFTA. I just look it up on Wikipedia. NAFTA. Hell, the Wikipedia page for NAFTA is the first page to come up in a Google search for NAFTA. Take that USDA!

Shit, there’s an entire generation of students out there who rely entirely on Wikipedia as a starting point (and oftentimes ending point) for their C-grade papers. The ‘C’ stands for consensus, or decision by committee or most commonly, crap.

Back on topic: Wikipedia contains all knowledge. Or at least approaches containing all knowledge (kinda like .999 repeating approaches zero). So tonight I set off to prove it using completely arbitrary arguments and irrational thought processes.

Here are the rules, arbitrary and irrational as they may be:

• Start at Knowledge because that makes the most sense
• Follow the first link in the article
• Don’t include the disambiguation links, dummy
• Or the links to Wikipedia policies
• Or the links to pronunciations
• Just click the first legitimate link
• Repeat until you can’t go any further

Easy enough.

Knowledge starts out with a definition of knowledge from the Oxford English Dictionary, which, as it turns out, is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press.

Dictionaries, if you didn’t know (because you are stupid or of stupid-descent), are also known as a lexicons, as well as being books “of alphabetically listed words in a specific language, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and other information.”

You get where this is going. Lexicon begets linguistics begets science begets knowledge.

Shit. Now what? I think we’ve run into a Wikipedia circle. Now, ‘Wikipedia circle’ doesn’t have an entry on Wikipedia, because ‘Wikipedia circle’ isn’t Knowledge according to Wikipedia (yet). I’d add the entry myself, but those snobs over at Wikipedia would delete the page instantly.

Ugh. Sometimes I hate the Internet.

Back on topic: Wikipedia contains all knowledge. Maybe I’m just starting at the wrong point. If Wikipedia contains all knowledge then Wikipedia itself is all knowledge.

So, let’s start at Wikipedia:

• Multilingualism
• Monolingual
• Greek
• Language
• Phenomenon
• Event
• Festival
• Religion
• Prayer
• Deity
• Preternatural
• Natural
• Phenomena

Again. Notice that it’s not a complete circle. Wikipedia takes us on a fun journey, then we get stuck in the phenomena Wikipedia circle phenomenon.

Phenomena are everywhere.

But to the keen eye, you’ll notice that this completely arbitrary system I came up with (not unlike tech bloggers using compete.com for stats comparisons) shows that the Wikipedia path is longer than the Knowledge path.

If I know anything–not that I’d need to know anything anymore. If I know anything, longer is always better.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it tonight.

Now, time for that movie.

One of the first things I do when I discover something interesting is look it up on Wikipedia. I don’t know why, because Wikipedia truly is home to the C-grade high school paper, but I just do.

I guess Wikipedia quells my existential paranoia by showing me that other people believe something exists.

But ever since launch day, the Justin.tv article has been constantly deleted from Wikipedia by rogue admin (though he is a rouge admin, too) Chris Griswold. Here’s his excuse in the comments, finally posted today after days of silence:

I am tired of having to delete this article. Please show that the subject is notable so that the article does not qualify for a speedy deletion. Please see WP:WEB for information on how to do this. Additionally, you will need to work on the article either on this page or in userspace before I will again remove protection. –Chris Griswold (☎☓) 13:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

After much complaint from people talking to him in his discussion page, he decided to unlock the article on the 25th, asking people to cite “reliable sources” in the entry, but then locked the page again today, hours before G4TV plans to have a piece on Attack of the Show.

So here it is folks. The site that gives Start Trek’s fictional Rules of Acquisition 1,450 words (not including references) credence, won’t give an interesting new business, with a groundbreaking mobile Webcam (at least compared to jennicam, which has an article here), a wiki page, because it’s not notable.

The privacy issues alone should warrant a Wikipedia article. But that’s not enough for Wikipedia and the lone, surly admin, Chris Griswold.

Let’s do a Google fight of “Justin.tv” vs. “Rules of Acquisition,” shall we?

Griswold doesn’t feel that something already covered by San Fransisco Chronicle, Wired, BusinessWire, the Associated Press, TechCrunch, CNET, blogged about by hundreds, and dugg by thousands more is in any way notable.

Honestly, I think Griswold has something against the guys at Justin.tv. He’s also marked the artlicle for the Web calendar, Kiko, for deletion. Kiko was created by many of the same group involved in Justin.tv.

This is the kind of wikiality Stephen Colbert dreams about at night.