Some suggestions for works that explicate the inner workings of Wikipedia.

• 1984
• Animal Farm
• Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy
• How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World
• Lord of the Flies

Further contributions welcome.

Catch-22 certainly belongs there.

I'm not so sure about the Orwell ones. Orwell wrote about oppressive authority, not the total lack of authority that exists on Wikipedia. Lord of the Flies is much more apt. I'll have to think about Hitchhiker's Guide (though my gut reaction is that that's a good call), and I've never read Mumbo-Jumbo.

"The Twilight Zone Companion" -- I often think Rod Serling would be impressed with Wikipedia.

I put him in for the exercise of power by rewriting history.

Ugh. 1984 and Animal Farm were terrible. Seriously, Orwell can't write endings worth shit. They're much too organized to really mirror Wikipedia, to boot. Having two Parties wouldn't work in 1984, much less the many factions on WP.

I assume that with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy you're talking about the Guide itself, right? It's fun and a great read, but trying to get anything truly meaningful out of the book would be sorta' like squeezing an orange for lemonade. I suppose there's always the off chance it'd work, but...

Haven't read the other two, unfortunately. A good extrapolation might be something more along the lines of Neuromancer, though that was written before wiki "was a word".

Don't leave out Arthur Miller's The Crucible. There was a reason it was relevant in 1953, and relevant now. And required reading for anybody who finds themselves involved with a "revolution" that is in the habit of perpetually finding new enemies and eating its young. 1984 is most appropriate for that aspect. Of course it's better developed in Animal Farm, where also you get the important theme that there's always somebody waiting to exploit any power-vacuum. Didn't somebody complain here essentially that they'd recently seen Carcharoth practicing standing on his hind legs? Homo homini lupus, indeed, if true. *(N.B., I think Carch is a good guy, though-- if he turns to the dark side on WP, the site really will be beyond redemption).

Nah, if we are doing Arthur Miller, let's do a remake of "The Misfits" with Lara as Marilyn Monroe, Kohs as Clark Gable, SarcasticIdealist as Monty Clift and me as the wild horse.

HHGG: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what Wikipedia is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Only Lord of the Flies comes close. Maybe also beat poet and Rolling Stone journalist Ed Sanders' The Family. Not for Manson's violent menace but for getting people to abandon values and core beliefs. In a way sending followers out armed with knifes while convincing them you are both Jesus and Satan and singing to them "there is no death" is much like a Randoid getting others to work for free and stealing the work of others. Or convincing each other that pedophilia and bestiality are ok if done by the enlightened. oo-ee-oo.

Okay, so long as we're clear it's the last movie for all of you. If you know what I mean.

Believers in the universal wisdom of the collective should probably look at

• The Great Crash 1929, by J.K. Galbraith
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay

Galbraith is particularly good on the toxic effects of believing that the people who run the market are philanthropists.