This is the funniest page I've seen in a long time. I didn't laugh, but I have taken a liking to Failblog, and this idea is a big WIN.

"The Great Wikipedia Dramaout"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The...ipedia_Dramaout

Aside from the fact that it will never work, I would imagine that if you looked at the percentage of "mainspace" edits for the person who started this page, Jayron (T-C-L-K-R-D) , well... let's just say I'd be surprised if it's higher than 10 percent. Meanwhile, various people are arguing on the proposal's talk page that specific WP non-article pages should be "exempt," and so on.

I'm surprised they haven't started an RfC on the people who are behind the idea. (Or maybe they have, and I just haven't bothered to look it up yet?)

For this to work you would have to block anyone who has posted to more than 1 ANI discussion.

I think come the 18th I'll get my bit back, block SV and Durova for gross cabalism, and then revel in the deathly silence at ANI.

The real AN/I regulars won't be signing this one, though, Kevin.

NOOO. This can't FAIL.

Why, I'd never thought of it quite that way before... Once again, Mr. Emesee, one of your brilliantly incisive and erudite posts has convinced me that my initial assumptions about this initiative were completely wrong!

Anyway, it might be worth pointing out that "drama" - a vague and amorphous concept at best, and a meaningless catch-all, beat-you-over-the-head buzzword at worst - is a symptom of Wikipedia's problems, not the cause. I can certainly understand how WP'ers, utterly and hopelessly frustrated with their user community's utter failure to address actual root causes of systemic problems, might decide that attacking a symptom (one of many, I might add) is a good idea, or at least the best thing they can manage on their own. But this isn't medicine, it's a website, and there's no "patient" involved, it's not something that can "heal" itself if you put it in a comfy bed for a week and inject it with sedatives and antibiotics. It's basically politics, and most Wikipedians don't like to think of themselves as politicians. But they are, of course - only most of them aren't very good at it. If they were, they'd know that problems fester because that's what problems do when you don't solve them. Ignoring disputes, controversies, or flamewars won't necessarily make them less heated or irrational, and it might make them worse. They'd also know that leadership is a valuable commodity, one that should be cultivated, rather than discouraged, attacked, or squandered. And so on, blah, blah, blah...

Then again, it might not be worth pointing that out. It's difficult to put values on these kinds of things.

My reason for signing up is as a silent protest against the drama-mongers.

It's more than a mere symptom. It's the dominant emergent feature of the evolved structure of the project.

Drama is a special case of chaos, which is to say Drama Theory is a special case of Chaos Theory. The difference between drama and general chaos is that drama is on the threshold of the ability of those in the audience to follow short sequences of causal chains without being able to foresee the long-term outcome (other than to label it brilliant comedy, tear-jerking tragedy, or banal soap opera).


There is some entertainment value in drama, which wanes over time. There is also some educational value in drama, which variously succeeds over time or fails miserably (see, for example, the Passion Story of the New Testament).

What one learns from attending to drama is that drama obeys a general model first suggested by Aristotle. Modern views of Drama Theory even explore some of the underlying mathematical structures found in well-crafted drama (see, for example, Clancy's Theorem).

Creating drama (disruption) is one of the most effective ways to get attention in Wikipedia there is; therefore, it's both a very valuable political tool as well as a popular pastime for attention whores.

As Somey points out, the reason there is so much Drama in Wikipedia is because Wikipedia has no effective governance, and so anybody who wants something fixed is pretty much forced to generate drama in order to get attention drawn to that issue. If Wikipedia had governance that strove to fix problems without requiring six months of "community discussion" first, and which didn't tell people that they need to fill out form sixty-seven stroke four and send the completed form to an email address that is only checked once a month by a syphilitic leper, then they'd get a lot less drama.

It amuses me to see jayvdb, who is clearly a drama-perpetuator himself (he actively works to maintain Wikipedia's leaderless culture, thereby perpetuating the need for drama) signing on to this initiative, which is itself also a drama perpetuator. (It serves to remind people that drama remains Wikipedia's primary political currency.)

New Userbox.

Actually, now that Jimbo's on board, this could be very amusing -- watching Jimbo trying to edit article space is always a bonzi, mzoli good time!

This "dramaout" would be more fun (dare we say "more dramatic") if those who sign on to it may be summarily blocked for the remainder of the "dramaout" in the event that they are discovered to be engaged in dramaturgy.

When I got bored with editing Wikipedia, the drama was fun. But then I got bored with the drama too; now what's left?

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Now playing: Stevie Nicks - Edge Of Seventeen
via FoxyTunes

I think that a more important point might be made if those us who create content took a "contentout", and left it to the drama-mongers to see what they can do. I'll be particularly interested to see what Jimbo comes up with.

Trolling on Wikipedia Review, obviously!

If you should get bored of that, there's always 75 meters.

The wikidrama queens have come up with the idea of, shock horror, actually wrting an article or two. I'd suggest that a far more effective reminder to those lost souls would be to consider the effect of a similar strike by the content builders they so habitually abuse.

If they're really dominated by Randroids (as some of you seem to think), then perhaps encouraging them to emulate John Galt would be in order.

I can't imagine that anything requiring Jimbo's involvement could possibly happen in 5 days...

Now THIS is a funny MfD!

Getting a life should surely go to #1




Yes, Greg.

You are EVIL.

The userbox OF DOOM!

Now that's a way to utterly destroy wikipedia!

I've never had one yet... why should I start now?

To their credit, he got mostly agreement with the small number of people commenting.

Dunno what happens now. Is it over, or does it go up for a vote among the The-Ones-Who-Forbid-Any-Badness-To-Be-Implied-About-the-Great-Pedia.?

Creative writing.

But don't take up writing song parodies. It's not a genre that is currently in vogue.