Wikipedia in culture
References to Wikipedia in western culture have increased as more people learn about and use the online encyclopedia project. Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with individuals vandalizing or modifying articles in nonconstructive ways. Still, others feature individuals using Wikipedia as a reference work, or positively comparing their intelligence to Wikipedia. In some cases, Wikipedia is not used as an encyclopedia at all, but instead serves more as a character trait or even. Wikipedia has also become culturally significant with many individuals seeing the presence of their own Wikipedia entry as a status symbol.
Wikiality
In a July 2006 episode of the satirical comedy The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert announced the neologism "wikiality", a portmanteau of the words Wiki and reality, for his segment "The Wørd". Colbert defined wikiality as "truth by consensus", modeled after the approval-by-consensus format of Wikipedia. He ironically praised Wikipedia for following his philosophy of truthiness in which intuition and consensus is a better reflection of reality than fact:You see, any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true.... If only the entire body of human knowledge worked this way. And it can, thanks to tonight's word: Wikiality. Now, folks, I'm no fan of reality, and I'm no fan of encyclopedias. I've said it before. Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say he didn't, that's my right. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, it's also a fact.
We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true.... What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge.
According to Stephen Colbert, together "we can all create a reality that we all can agree on; the reality that we just agreed on". During the segment, he joked: "I love Wikipedia... any site that's got a longer entry on truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight." Colbert also used the segment to satirize the more general issue of whether the repetition of statements in the media leads people to believe they are true. The piece was introduced with the tagline "The Revolution Will Not Be Verified", referencing the lack of objective verification seen in some articles.
Colbert suggested that viewers change the elephant page to state that the number of African elephants has tripled in the last six months. The suggestion resulted in numerous incorrect changes to Wikipedia articles related to elephants and Africa. Wikipedia administrators subsequently to the pages by anonymous and newly created user accounts.
Colbert went on to type on a laptop facing away from the camera, claiming to be making the edits to the pages himself. Because initial edits to Wikipedia corresponding to these claimed "facts" were made by a user named Stephencolbert, many believe Colbert himself vandalized several Wikipedia pages at the time he was encouraging other users to do the same. The account, whether it was Stephen Colbert himself or someone posing as him, has been blocked from Wikipedia indefinitely. Wikipedia blocked the account for violating , not for the vandalism, as believed.
Other instances
In art
- The Wikipedia Monument, located in Słubice, Poland, is a statue honoring Wikipedia contributors.
In comics
| Date | Title | Notes |
| Penny Arcade | Skeletor is vandalizing the Wikipedia article of his arch-enemy He-Man under the title of "I have the power". | |
| 52, Week 15 | Fictional "Ballostro" article. Clark Kent is told by his assistant that they can "wiki out the word rumoured" upon seeing it attack Metropolis. | |
| FoxTrot | Thomas Edison article. | |
| Get Fuzzy | Bucky Katt looks at a vanity article about himself and his fictitious album, and shows the "evidence" to Satchel Pooch. | |
| Non Sequitur | Danae introduces Lucy the horse to Wikipedia, by editing the site to note her fictitious win for "Most Brilliant and Beautious Girl". Lucy complains, but is satisfied when Danae adds a prize for "Most Beautious Horse". | |
| The Order #1 | The lead character mentions the Wikipedia as describing him as a "one-time actor". | |
| The Amazing Spider-Girl No. 12 | The title character mentions that she gained knowledge of Carnage and his weaknesses through Wikipedia. | |
| Thor No. 601 | The well-known Marvel super-villain called Doctor Doom appears to have utilized Wikipedia, commenting to the assembled Asgardians during the feast in Latveria that even he had not even known what a "winkle" was until he looked it up in Wikipedia. | |
| The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee | Edison Lee, the title character mentions that on Wikipedia US President Ronald Reagan was known as the Teflon President to his assistant Joules.. | |
| comic #1023 | Questionable Content | Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham and two anthro-PCs are watching television when a commercial comes on for "WikipediOs", which is a fictions project spoofing SpaghettiOs. |
| No. 1 | Ambush Bug says he used "Wokipedia" to look up Hugey Huge/Abdul Smith of the Green Team. | |
| Deadpool No. 900 | While in the middle of an assassination mission, Deadpool has a fourth wall-breaking conversation with his inner voices in which he discusses his own fanbase, noting that as of that writing, his own Wikipedia entry was longer than that of Spider-Man. | |
| Pearls Before Swine | Rat questions Stephan Pastis about past events in Stephan's life. When Stephan refutes these claims, Rat says he got them from Stephan's Wikipedia article. These changes were later mirrored in real life before being reverted. | |
| Sex Criminals #2 | Suzie looks up a porn actress on Wikipedia with whom Jon was obsessed as a child. She says the article does not say which of her uncles abused her because Wikipedia has "very high verification standards". |
In feature films
- In the 2009 film Bandslam Sa5m tells Will Burton, that another character, Charlotte Barnes, has her own Wikipedia page. Burton then reads the article.
- In the post credit sequence song dedicated to Rajinikanth in the Bollywood film Chennai Express, the protagonist suggests people read about him on Wikipedia.
- In a Pakistani movie of 2015 Karachi Se Lahore, the child's character 'Zeezo' who usually tells about the things going on in the film, when asked further about a thing, the fellow character Moti cracked a joke over him saying, "Is he Wikipedia that he would be knowing everything?"
- An excerpt from the article New York City can be seen in the 2014 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- In the 2011 film The Smurfs characters show the Blue moon article and one of them downloads a blue moon photograph.
- In the 2016 film Leo says, "Some one better update Wikipedia you know why because we're making history bro."
- In the 2017 film Thelma, Thelma accesses the Wikipedia article Psychogenic non-epileptic seizure.
- Wikipedia is one of hundreds of popular Internet sites that populate the digital landscape of 2018's Ralph Breaks the Internet; it is illustrated as a thick open book atop a classical order column.
In literature
The protagonist of Glass by Alex Christofi teaches himself about the world using Wikipedia, and the author claims in the acknowledgements that Wikipedia is 'the best answer we can give to profiteering, naysaying, ignorance, Ludditism and the cult of the individual'.
In The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan, the first book in The Trials of Apollo series, Emperor Nero, when discussing humans' knowledge of him, announces that he is "immortal on Wikipedia." The titular character, Apollo, then claims that his referencing Wikipedia is a sure sign of insanity, and that Wikipedia is always getting stuff wrong about him.
In John Green's Paper Towns, Marcus "Radar" Lincoln, one of the main character's best friends, is a dedicated editor of "Omnictionary", a clear stand in for Wikipedia. A key plot point revolves around noticing the username of someone who recently edited a specific page.
Timur Vermes published in 2012 the German bestseller Look Who's Back, a satirical novel about Adolf Hitler mysteriously returning to modern-day Germany. This fictional Hitler, introduced to the internet, is fascinated by Wikipedia. Its name, he analyses, reflects the "ingenuity of the Aryans", as it combines the -pedia from encyclopedia with the explorer blood of the "Wikinger". The books was made a movie in 2015.
The 24th section of Flights, which was published in 2017 in Polish and in the English translation, by Olga Tokarczuk, the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature, is titled Wikipedia. It is described positively, on the one hand, as a "wonder of the world," but the narrator also muses upon what an encyclopedia cannot do.
In music
Ukrainian composer :uk:Бондаренко Андрій Ігорович|Andriy Bondarenko wrote a musical piece, "Anthem of Wikipedia", which was performed in a concert devoted to the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia in Kiev.Israeli singer-songwriter Hanan Ben-Ari released a 2017 single named "Wikipedia".
On their 2017 album Goths, The Mountain Goats reference Wikipedia within one of the final stanzas of the song "Abandoned Flesh"
To be fair to Gene Loves Jezebel
Billy Corgan brought them on stage
It was in 2011
It's on their Wikipedia page
In PewDiePie’s 2019 song ‘Congratulations’, he references T-Series’ Wikipedia page.
Now you’re at number one, hope you did nothing wrong
Like starting your business by selling pirated songs
Oops! Didn’t think we’d see? It’s right there on Wikipedia
Get used to your past being held against you by the media
In postal items
On January 14, 2011, Israel Postal Company chose to commemorate Wikipedia's 10th anniversary by issuing a special postmark and a souvenir leaf. These were the world's first Wikipedia-related postal items. As is customary on Wikipedia, the souvenir leaf, the postmark, and the text on the back of the souvenir leaf were created by a collaboration of volunteers. The design of the postmark was based on the work of "MT0", a Wikipedia editor.In radio broadcasts
| Date | Title | Notes | Relevance |
| Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! | Jimmy Wales played the "Not My Job" game. He is asked three questions about Wikipedia trivia on the Banana Splits discography and Bob Marley, Constance of Sicily and Esera Tuaolo. Wales recalls the Banana Splits with fondness and then proceeds to get all three questions wrong. The show, in general, will often pull details for the show from Wikipedia, stating humorously, "If it's on Wikipedia, it must be true." | First reference to Wikipedia in a radio series. | |
| The News Quiz – BBC | Alan Coren referred to mistakes made on Wikipedia. He later said that he once saw a mistake on his article that stated he was a year younger than he was, but he liked the error as it made him look younger. As a result, he said that whenever someone corrects the article, he set the year wrong again to make him look younger again. As a result, the article was locked after the show was broadcast. | ||
| The Wikipedia Story – BBC | Clive Anderson asks whether Wikipedia is a valuable source of human knowledge or a symptom of the spread of mediocrity. This was also made into a podcast between July 27 and August 3 by the BBC. | ||
| The News Quiz – BBC | Carrie Quinlan gave out a lot of information which the other panellists did not understand. She later claimed that she got the information from Wikipedia. Jeremy Hardy and Andy Hamilton claimed that the word "Wikipedia" sounded rude, with Hamilton claiming that it was, "A sexual attraction to baskets." | ||
| The Party Line: Series 3, Episode 1 – BBC | In the episode, Duncan Stonebridge MP's laptop computer is stolen, which contains data relating to fishing quotas. Before he talks to an Icelandic fishing minister, Duncan's assistant Roger gives him some information copied from Wikipedia, which turns out to be wrong. The fishing minister comments that it sounds like Duncan just took the information from Wikipedia. | First known reference to Wikipedia in a radio sitcom. | |
| The Now Show: Series 25, Episode 2 – BBC | Jon Holmes talked about the lack of reliability of online surveys saying that not everything on the internet is true. He said that, "This is the same internet that hosts Wikipedia", and Holmes read some examples of vandalism that he discovered on the site. In the following two shows, fans emailed in other examples of Wikipedia vandalism. | ||
| Heresy: Series 5, Episode 6 – BBC Radio 4 | The show guest panel, Euan Ferguson, Clive James and David Mitchell tried to argue against the statement: "You can't trust what you read online." Wikipedia is covered by the panel and the host Victoria Coren reads out information from the guests' Wikipedia pages to see if it is true. |
In television episodes
In web comics
- The xkcd comic "" shows a protester at a political rally, holding up a placard mimicking Wikipedia's "" tag, used to request a citation for an unsupported statement. The tooltip of the comic adds the extra comment "SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION", referencing Wikipedia's.
- On May 7, 2005, the comic strip
Contexts
Wikipedia is not always referenced in the same way. The ways described below are some of the ways it has been mentioned.Citations of Wikipedia in culture
- People who are known to have used or recommended Wikipedia as a reference source include film critic Roger Ebert, comedian Rosie O'Donnell, University of Maryland physicist Robert L. Park, Rutgers University sociology professor Ted Goertzel and scientific skepticism promoter and investigator James Randi. Publications that have cited Wikipedia as a source include the American science magazine Skeptic.
- In the Homestar Runner cartoon , Homestar Runner mentions that "'Wikipedia said vulcanized was the way to go" in reference to the type of nails used to build a deck. The Wikipedia article on decks has never had a long-standing reference to nails or vulcanization.
- The cartoon FoxTrot features Peter being criticized by his teacher for copying a homework assignment directly from Wikipedia. Peter replies, "Who's to say I didn't write the Wikipedia entry myself?"
- During a debate on Quebec sovereignty in the House of Commons of Canada on November 27, 2006, Conservative Member of Parliament Scott Reid mentioned Wikipedia for its disambiguation of terms and individuals.
- In the July 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine, an article on swarm intelligence, both in nature and as a method used by humans, mentions Wikipedia as an example.
- The British satirical magazine Private Eye has a section entitled "Wikipedia Whispers", which uncovers stories about how Wikipedia entries are altered. Stories include examples of how people have altered their own articles to make themselves look better, and vandalism on Wikipedia that becomes reported as fact.
- Hip hop artist Pharoahe Monch mentions Wikipedia in the song "Welcome to the Terrordome" from his 2007 album, Desire. The lyrics are: "Take a walk through all this misplaced media / They got my name spelled wrong on Wikipedia."
- In Volume 6 of the Canadian comic book series Scott Pilgrim, after the main antagonists injures one of the principal characters, Ramona Flowers, a character in a crowd, wondering if Ramona had died, stated that he was updating her Wikipedia page at that moment.
- Various people including Jeremy Clarkson, Sir Ian McKellen, Patrick Stump, Mitch Albom and Marcus Brigstocke have criticized or commented about Wikipedia's articles about themselves.
Inaccuracies on Wikipedia as portrayed in culture
- Wikipedia was satirized in The Onion with a front-page article, alluding to perceptions that the publicly editable site is an unreliable source of information.
- The CollegeHumor staff posted the video "Professor Wikipedia" as part of the CollegeHumor original videos on September 16, 2008; the video satirized many aspects of Wikipedia.
In politics
- In June 2011, Wikipedia received attention for attempts by editors to change the "Paul Revere" article to fit Sarah Palin's accounting of events during a campaign bus tour. The New York Times reported that the article "had half a million page views" by June 10, and "after all the attention and arguments, the article is now much longer... and much better sourced... than before Palin's remarks."
- In a speech given on October 28, 2013 to support Ken Cuccinelli for the candidacy of the governor of Virginia, Senator Rand Paul appeared to include close paraphrasing of the Wikipedia entry on the film Gattaca in his comments on eugenics, as noted by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.
- In April 2015, The Guardian reported claims that British Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps or a person working under Shapps' orders had edited Wikipedia pages about Shapps and other members of British Parliament during the runup to the 2015 election, to which Shapps had denied involvement.
- In October 2018, Jackson A. Cosko, a former staff member for US Senator Maggie Hassan, misused Hassan's computers after he had been fired to edit Wikipedia to dox several Congresspersons, including Sen. Mitch McConnell. Cosko pleaded guilty in April 2019.
Wikipedia as a character trait
- In 2006, commenting to The New York Times on the demands on Central Intelligence Agency analysts to produce instant information, John E. McLaughlin, former acting U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, stated, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington".
- An altmuslim.com review of a new television series, Sleeper Cell, about terrorists noted that the characters routinely gave detailed background of events in the history of Islam and stated, "no one, and I assume even terrorists, talks like a walking Wikipedia."
Wikipedia as an award recipient
- In the 2007 Lyttle Lytton Contest, in which the object is to come up with an opening sentence for a novel, a phrase from the article on Fukutsuru won the prize in Found category.
Wikipedia as comedic material
- Wikipedia is parodied at several websites, including Uncyclopedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica.
- In the July 2006 issue of Mad, in the Fundalini pages section there was a short joke with a mock picture of Wikipedia called "WonkyPedia". WonkyPedia featured its own logo, in which the letters on the puzzle globe were replaced with MAD characters and the letters "M", "A", and "D:". The article shown was on Lincoln's assassination. The URL followed the appropriate pattern: "
http://en.wonkypedia.org/wonky/ ". The same parody returned in the next issue as "Wakipedia". The phrase it advertised was "The Free Encyclopedia ". - Likewise, CRACKED.com, the online publication affiliated with former Mad rival Cracked, has satirized Wikipedia's :Category:Wikipedia maintenance templates|maintenance templates.
- In May 2006, British chat show host Paul O'Grady received an inquiry from a viewer regarding information given on his Wikipedia page, to which he responded, "Wikipedia? Sounds like a skin disease."
- On the show X-Play, Morgan Webb looked at the Wikipedia article of Point Blank DS, and then looked at the article on their show. After reading it, the logo in the top left corner of the page spoke to Morgan in typical X-Play fashion. It also pointed out that since the show's inception, they have made 337 fart jokes. When asked why it could talk, the logo stated that Wikipedia had become self aware in 2004 due to the massive amounts of information provided by the public.
- On the E! network program The Soup, during the "Reality Show Clip Time!" segment a clip of Flavor of Love 2 was shown in which someone mentioned Google as a point of research on September 8, 2006, to make fun of this, host Joel McHale said "Well at least it's better than saying 'Wikipedia Wikipedia Wikipedia' ". Another time he said he looked up something on Wikipedia and saw a dance.
- Comedian Zach Galifianakis claimed to look himself up on Wikipedia in an interview with The Badger Herald, stating about himself, "...I'm looking at Wikipedia right now. Half Greek, half redneck, around 6-foot-4. And that's about it... The 6-foot-4 thing may be a little bit off. Actually, it's 4-foot-6."
- A front page parody news article in The Onion made fun of Wikipedia's tendency to quantify its page views and of its use as a reference source for long-past television series.
- The character Новицкий quotes the Russian language Wikipedia article on taxation in the Russian comedy film Тот ещё Карлосон!
Entertainment information source
- On the June 5, 2006 episode of The Howard Stern Show, wack packer Eric the Midget called in and complained that his parents had read about a stunt that he did for the show, that involved him measuring his penis, on Wikipedia. Stern read the section of the article regarding penis measuring on the air. Also, Gary Dell'Abate commented on the air he and the Stern Show staff enjoy the picture of Lynch in this article.
Food information source
- In his "pickoff" in which he makes predictions on the winners of NFL games, Peter King said of the Thanksgiving night game between Indianapolis and Atlanta in 2007 "The sleep-inducing qualities of turkey are overrated, as I learned this week on Wikipedia. There is more tryptophan in cheddar cheese than turkey."
General information source
- In Tim Minchin's poem Storm, when he criticizes the eponymous character for being excessively gullible and close-minded, he accuses her of being scared of spending an afternoon at "Wiki-fucking-pedia". It has been turned into an animated movie.
- Slate magazine compared Wikipedia to the fictional device The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the series of the same name by Douglas Adams. "The parallels between The Hitchhiker's Guide and Wikipedia are so striking, it's a wonder that the author's rabid fans don't think he invented time travel. Since its editor was perennially out to lunch, the Guide was amended 'by any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty offices on an afternoon and saw something worth doing.' This anonymous group effort ends up outselling Encyclopedia Galactica even though 'it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.'" This comparison of fictional documents in the series, is not unlike the mainstream comparisons between Wikipedia and professional Encyclopedias.
Game show category
- The December 3, 2007 episode of Jeopardy! had a category entitled "'ick'-ipedia", where all correct responses contained the letters "ick".
Criticism
- The comedy website Something Awful once featured Wikipedia's article on Knuckles the Echidna as an ALOD, satirizing the amount of detail that sometimes goes into seemingly irrelevant topics. The link description adds that the article is longer than each of the articles about Echidnas, the Internet, the internal combustion engine, William Shakespeare and Western culture. The topic was also satirized in the front page, which featured a fake Wikipedia style article about Albert "Al" Calavicci from the TV series Quantum Leap written by Something Awful contributor David Thorpe. Thorpe elsewhere linked the existence of such articles to Asperger syndrome, stating "Don't make fun of Aspergers. If it weren't for Aspergers, we wouldn't have 20-page Wikipedia articles about Knuckles the Echidna." Wikipedia was also mocked in a December 4, 2006 update on Something Awful. The update detailed the life of a talk page on Wikipedia, and mocked the neutrality, copyright, naming, quality, and personal disputes that the pages are beholden to. The update also linked Wikipedia usage to Asperger syndrome once more, with one fictional editor claiming to have a case of the syndrome twice as powerful as that of another fictional editor. In a 2007 Awful Link of the Day, a Wikipedia article was featured again, this time on the villains of . Once again, it calls out the detail put onto seemingly irrelevant topics, citing a discussion in said article's talk page about the subjectiveness of the speed of certain characters. Something Awful founder Richard Kyanka then mockingly offered to write up a speed comparison of the KND characters Big Badolescent and Cheese Shogun Roquefort, citing a fake episode called "episode 35, 'I Am a 38-Year Old Man With Several Obese Cats and an Empty Life I Futilely Try to Fill With Childrens' Cartoons'".
Claims of negative impact of Wikipedia on culture