I was fiddling with some blank Illuminati cards the other day, and the idea occurred to me that a conspiratorial view of Wikipedia is quite common around WR. So, I figured, why not fiddle with Wikipedia Illuminati?

So, you guys a bit more up on the conspiracy theories, both discarded and current. What are the names of some of the Wikipedia cabals? (The idea is that there are multiple secret cabals vying for control of Wikipedia.) I've already got the Vast Zionist Conspiracy (both the "Wikipedia Jews" thing I've seen in many a rambling screed as well as the traditional "You're a tool of the Zionist conspiracy!" as a placeholder sweeping accusation of bias in essays) and the Rouge Admin Cabal, but I need more.

The goal of the game is to control groups in the original game, which are split into organizations and people. I was thinking a good split for WI would be people (which includes individuals and groups) and pages (which includes articles and policies).

I need ideas for people who aren't active, either on Wikipedia or criticizing it. I've got Pelican Shit, Willy on Wheels, Lir, RickK, and Essjay, but I need more ideas. I also need some ideas for policy pages that are important or funny; NPOV, V, Notability, LAME, the Pokemon test, DICK are some I have down already. Likewise for articles.

While I was going to use real names for articles and policies, I was planning to use some sort of evasion for people who edit Wikipedia or criticize Wikipedia. Feel free to suggest nicknames for people you like, as I really don't want insulting nicknames. If I can corral someone artistically minded, all of the illustrations of people will have black boxes over their faces (with some cards that would out someone showing that box being pulled away or broken. I'm thinking "Wikipedia-editing cat" might be a good one for that...)

Groups in Illuminati have alignments, which typically come in opposing pairs which are mutually exclusive. (For example, in Illuminati there's Straight/Weird, Liberal/Conservative, Violent/Peaceful, and so on.) I had some ideas, like Admin/Banned, Inclusionist/Deletionist, and Vandal/something. I could use some help with more alignments.


Anyone who has played Illuminati can feel free to chime in with ideas. I was thinking of going the INWO style of action tokens instead of money, since nobody on Wikipedia has any money anyway, and it's simpler.

Interesting idea, but the fact is, very few of us are really interested in conspiracies or in advancing a conspiratorial view of Wikipedia these days. It's just that the few who are interested in them are perhaps a little more vocal than most. Also, apparently we're making an effort to switch to the word "cliques"...

So, you've actually played this "Illuminati" game? I saw the name "Steve Jackson" on the website - for some reason he seems familiar... He's got his own WP article, so maybe he came up on Special:Random one day when I was bored. Or else it's just some sort of weird deja vu thing. Unless, of course, it's all part of the vast international communist Steve Jackson conspiracy...

Anyway, if you printed up a bunch of cards like that, how many people would buy them?

"Wikipedia Cat is watching you edit"

naaah, doesn't sound quite like ceiling cat.

I think that there are a few things that we've agreed on:

- Deliberate or not, Wikipedia is top of a lot of Google hits on practically every topic, which is good for Wikipedia and good for Google, and good for both of their back pockets. Google pushes Wikipedia pages ahead of all others, and Wikipedia uses Google for sourcing more than any other source.

- Wikipedia is changing history. Wikipedia is being used as a source, and in cases where their view of the truth is vastly different to the accepted view of the truth, Wikipedia is creating a new truth.

- Wikipedia does have a lot of articles that are controlled, sometimes by individuals, sometimes by a group of individuals. In these cases, it is impossible to change the articles, even if they are grossly inaccurate, and if you try to you might get banned. SlimVirgin seems to be the worst culprit for owning articles, and one of her worst cases is the Lockerbie Bombing article.

- Wikipedia does have an environment that means that people can make money from sneakily changing articles to promote their products, or their friends products, and so forth. It can also defame people and products really easily. Similarly, it can do this by less obvious means, to help to win elections for candidates and so forth.

- Some of Wikipedia's administrators and editors are granted far more freedom than other administrators and editors, and they are permitted to do things that for anyone else would see them censored and banned. Some of these people include MONGO, SlimVirgin, Snowspinner, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, Adam Carr, Antaeus Feldspar, Raul654, and a number of others. We call this group "the cabal". They secretly control Wikipedia, or at least large sections of it.

- The CIA, amongst other government agencies from countries all over the world certainly do use Wikipedia to research cases. They also certainly do use Wikipedia to add disinformation about certain key topics that they wish the public not to be correctly informed about. This is not in dispute. If the CIA wasn't doing this, then they wouldn't be doing their job properly. But the big question is whether Jimbo is compliant with this, whether Jimbo is being forced to do some things that are otherwise unethical, or whether in fact Jimbo is doing deals with these agencies so that his version of truth can be added in places. By allowing anonymous editors, he has no power to prevent any government secret service from secretly manipulating articles. Anyone who suggests that they are not doing this is somewhat naive. And if any agency is not doing this, then they should be fired. It is their job to do things like this.

None of these are conspiracy theories.

The biggest conspiracy theory is the question as to why SlimVirgin behaves in the way she does, and whether Jayjg is being paid to edit, and if so, by who.

SlimVirgin, in my opinion, is not Jewish at all, but is an anti-semitic, who pretends to be Jewish so as to push hatred of Jews in all things. Many of the people that SlimVirgin has targetted have been Jews. Many of her friends have been arabs. She has in many cases joined with arabs to attack Jews. Of course, we haven't been completely able to prove this as of yet, so you could call this a conspiracy theory if you like.

Jayjg is probably paid to edit Wikipedia, and that is probably part of what his job is. Jayjg may well be employed by NSA or CIA or something of the like. I don't rightly know. I haven't studied him all that much.

Granted, but conspiratorial viewpoints are fun. Plus, it gives you opportunities to say things like, "Wikipedia Review will out Larry Sanger as...KARL MARX'S BRAIN IN A ROBOT BODY!"

That said, if there's no interest there's no interest.


Many times.


Actually, Steve Jackson Games was involved in a bunch of hacking-related government raids and seizures about 15 or so years ago. Apparently one of the suspects was working for SJG at the time, and among the projects that SJG was working on was a cyberpunk game that included (entirely fictionalized) rules for hacking computers, so the government seized pretty much all of SJG's computer equipment, along with the working files for a lot of their products. Nearly drove the whole company bankrupt. It was a big stink on the internet at the time.


Zero, I wouldn't sell them. Not only would that get me a nasty legal letter from SJG, but I wouldn't swipe their game even if it were legal.

Google would probably make a good main conspiracy to go with THE ZIONIST CONSPIRACY (I think all caps is best for that) and the Rouge Admins.


This is implicit in the premise (conspiracies are using Wikipedia to CONTROL THE WORLD), but I'm not sure it turns into any specific ideas.


Also implicit in the premise, although articles could also be controlled by policies, groups, or main conspiracies.

The way the game works is that you start with a central Main Conspiracy group that can't be harmed. That group takes control of other groups (or people or articles or policies), which takes control of other groups, and so on. The game ends when a player controls a certain number of groups, or accomplishes a goal matching their main conspiracy.


Implicit in the premise; everyone is struggling for control of other people, groups, policies, and articles.


You realize a lot of the people you listed there aren't friends, and don't even like each other, right?

The premise of the game is that various groups, people, policies, and articles are secretly the tools of various cabals (which I still need four more ideas for) who are attempting to control Wikipedia and thus the world.


Who else do you think does this, or who else would it be funny if they tried? (You're hitting on the premise of Illuminati, here; in Illuminati, one player who is playing the Bavarian Illuminati might have the CIA try to take control of the Boy Scouts, but is opposed by the AFL-CIO and Scientology.)


I don't really care about truth, here; I'm making a game. I'm looking for entertaining.


Apply such speculative, conspiratorial thinking to every person, group, policy, and article on Wikipedia, and you're in the mindset of the game.

I think you initiated this thread to illicit as much conspiratorial nonsense as possible. Fortunately your not getting anywhere. Either that or you really need some attention. Why would anybody want to play a "game" with a guy who feels the need to censor a satirical poem on a page that invited poems about his "leader."

Well, yeah, I did create the thread to elicit conspiracy theory ideas. I guess I made the mistake of thinking you guys could take yourselves unseriously.

There's the Man in Black cabal of course.

the Revolting Cocks cabal is pretty badass from what i hear.

Anyone with real power in this world either does not know about Wikipedia or could care less about it. The Man has staff members who go online for him. Anything he cares about is printed out and handed to him. If somebody writes about him on "the interweb," he may be the last to know. Besides, he hires a PR agency to keep such nuisances away from his desk.



What people here say is that various cliques of intolerant busybodies, meddlers and kooks make life difficult on Wikipedia. That's not really a conspiracy theory. If it sounds that way, it may be because people like to blow off steams, which is one reason this joint exists.

Referring to legitimate concern of Wikipedia as a conspiracy theory is a worrying trend.

I mean ultimately, if nobody was taking Wikipedia seriously, do you really think that we'd bother to have this website to criticise it? Perhaps a page, like my page criticising Wikinfo or my page criticising Citizendium, but that's about it. The problem is that Wikipedia is taken far too seriously, and it really doesn't deserve the level of seriousness.

If ther is a group of people who work together to support their POV or otherwise influence Wikipedia, that's not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy.