Wikigroaning

	“	How can someone hate a site that thinks the lightsaber is more important than the printing press?	„
	—Stephen Colbert on Wikigroaning

Wikigroaning is both a summary of how Wikipedia works, and its secret method to unintentionally becoming the most lulz site on the fucking planet. It was discovered by Something Awful, and we were all so grateful that they were spared horrible deaths (for now). There are actually sites dedicated to this, but none of them are as lulz as just going onto Wikipedia and seeing for yourself.

What is Wikigroaning?

Knee-jerk Wikipædo reaction to Wikigroaning: Palpatine is notable!!1

	“	There's a new sport on the Internet: competing to come up with the best examples of how Wikipedia, the Web's home-grown reference source, is skewed towards pop-culture topics. For instance, the West Wing of the White House merits a 1,100-word entry on Wikipedia, while "The West Wing," the Aaron Sorkin TV drama, has an 6,800-word write-up. This game already has a name: "Wiki-groaning."	„
	——Jamin Brophy-Warren, "Oh, That John Locke," The Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2007

That pretty much says it!

How to Wikigroan

What were you expecting?

Well would you look at that!

A rare moment of correct priorities: actual whore before fictional.

Guess who reads this article and changed the above, lest catholics should bawwww their eyes out?

To Wikigroan, just take something important and relevant to the real world, and compare it to shit that no one cares about. Nine out of 10 times, the shit no one cares about will win in length, accuracy, sources, stubs, spin-off articles and how much the staff seems to care whether it stays or goes. Even if people who were butthurt about their precious fapdom being a Wikigroan shorten the hell out of it, it still wins because it's still more accurate, protected, contributed to and all that good shit.

Example:

Look up "Holy Roman Emperor", and you get about 1,200 words- kids in high school have to do at least over 9,000 in their semester reports, so this isn't even on par with high school students.

Compare it to Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars- he has over 7,000 words.

Example #2:

Sticking with historical themes, look up "Duke", as in the nobility rank. 3,900 words and 3 stubs. Not bad.

Now look up the Dukes of Hazzard; over 10,000 words, and 15 stubs before researchers got too depressed to carry on.

People think this is so fucking funny that they actually hold contests where the person who can come up with the best example of reality taking a backseat to pop culture on Wikipedia wins. There are only two standing rules for this game; anything else is just how the group doing that one round works:

• You can't compare anything to the article about reality, because everyone knows reality has no place on Wikipedia, and therefore just about any notable pop culture reference will pwn it. In fact, if it doesn't outdo reality on Wikipedia, then it's something no one cares about. Exploiting this is considered cheating... somehow.

• If both pages are being excessively vandalized, attacked and clusterfucked with total bullshit and the mods are only protecting the pop culture reference, it's instant win. No exceptions.

Example #3:

Sex: 3899 words.

World of Warcraft: 10827 words.

lulz

Rapper 50 Cent : 51,135 bytes

Half dollar (United States coin): 6,950 bytes

Full of lulz and fail

Example#4:

Article for Transformers: Universe, 2 pages

Article for THE UNIVERSE (defined as everything in existence) 1.5 pages

UPDATE FROM THE BATTLEFRONT!

Malcolm X actually has more words than Professor X!

Types of Wikigroaning

TOW stole my fucking Cloudsong!

Wikipedia gets the Shotacat seal of approval.

This just in from the Collier County Sheriff's Office.

There are three types of wikigroaning:

1) Science Fiction vs. Real Life: obvious.

Examples: Modern Warfare vs. Lightsaber Combat, Marine vs. Jedi, List of minor Star Wars characters (21,600 words) vs. History of Earth (10,500 words)

2) Fuckwits pwn Normal People: Something normal vs. the Basement Dwellers. Spoiler: The Basement Dwellers always win!

Examples: IRC Chat vs. Prom, Self-Confidence vs. Aspergers, Real Life (440 words) vs. Second Life (13,500 words), World (1,200 words) vs. World of Warcraft (7,100 words)''

3) Same Name: Something that would be useful to know, as opposed to a comic book/fap object that it's their code name... or a Porn Star that it's their last name.

Examples: Storm vs. Storm(X-Men), Civil War vs. Civil War (Comic),

It Just Got Worse

Swan - 1240 words,

Bella Swan - 1621 words

In popular culture variant

Another form of Wikigroaning is to instead find articles that have an "in popular culture" section and compare its size to the rest of the article. The tiers for the direness of this particular form of cancer comes in four tiers: existing at all, larger than any other section but the main description, largest section, and "this article was made just to talk about pop culture bullshit". For a truly cancerous example, see cunt.

Wikipedia's stance

For a site so steeped in retarded faggotry, Wikipedia never fails to get butthurt when you announce a wikigroan, and pointing them out is instant banhammer, followed by them breaking into your house and raping you with an AIDS-infected dildo. They actually consider it easier to just pick off people who talk about it than to do something like fix the fucking problem. The coincidence that most of the site mods only seem to give two shits about the sci-fi articles in the first place might have something to do with it.

"Wow, 300,000 hours have been put into the ninja turtles, and 45 minutes was put into the artists they're named for... could someone help me..."

(Butthurt Wikipedia mod bans them before they can finish typing that thought)

What were you expecting?

It should also be noted that the wikipedos who wail the loudest about wikigroans generally prefer to try and rape the pop culture article of content by waving WP:NOT around rather than do actual work improving an article.

Sightings

• SomethingAwful article including list of popular samples!
• And again!
• Part three!
• Media Comment from the Guardian
• Moar news on Wikigroaning
• Wall Street journal is on the case
• /V/idya Wikigroaning, unfortunately proving that Knuckles > God

Gallery of Groans

Gallery of Groans About missing Pics

• 
  Big swords pwn physics
• 
  Big swords pwn mythology
• 
  Lame jokes pwn economy

[Collapse GalleryExpand Gallery]

• 
  From God, to Kane, to Wikipedia.
• 
  Generic horror flicks pwn inventions
• 
  Mock bands pwn anatomy
• 
  Console FPS'es pwn Christianity
• 
  Videogames pwn chemistry
• 
  Stupid Batman villains pwn biology
• 
  Stupid anime pwns ships
• 
  Well he is the goddamn Batman
• 
  Ice Ice baby
• 
  comics pwn philosophy
• 
  Crappy Anime pwns Death itself
• 
  Instant fucking win- no exceptions!
• 
  It's never Wikigroaning.
• A fictional language for furries vs. the language that gave us opera.
  A fictional language for furries vs. the language that gave us opera.

On other wikis

Going through Wikipedia is all well and good, but wouldn't it be more interesting to what kinds of bullshit pop culture brain-starved netizens flock towards? Luckily, TV Tropes delivers on that front and it's just as bad as you'd imagine.

Before comparing individual articles, look at their "Trope Overdosed" page. Notice how everything in the 4000+ and 2000-4000 brackets are shitty anime, comics, video games and Joss Whedon shows? Even The Bible, with fewer than 2000 references, can't hold candle to these masterpieces.

This site is so easy, we'll let you create your own groans. Compare almost anything on Classic Literature (things with actual historical importance) to almost anything on "Noteworthy" Anime, "Notable" Webcomics, and JRPGs. You will cry.

See how it's done on Jewtube:

See also

• Wikipedia

[1] 5,343 words [2] 14,595 words, lol they care more about this game than themselves!!!

Other Games to Play on Wikis

• ED Porn Challenge
• Six Degrees of Adolf Hitler
• Wikipedia Hoaxes

Wikigroaning is part of a series on Wikipedia Visit the Wikipedia Portal for complete coverage.

Featured article July 7, 2008
Preceded by Cyndilovespiccolo	Wikigroaning	Succeeded by So cash