What Wikipedia is

Article cluster:
What Wikipedia is, What Wikipedia thinks it is, Mention of wiki in articles, What Wikipedia claims to be, Mention of Wikipedia in articles

After various moves to meta and back to Wikipedia, etc, a more recent version can be found at What Wikipedia thinks it is. If you wish to add further self-references within Wikipedia, please edit that page.

We talk a lot about What Wikipedia is not. But we talk actually less about what it is. For laughs, I did a 'what links here' to Wikipedia and actually looked at the results. What it is according to itself seems to be a lot of things. It's apparently an example of, or useful to help explain:

Puff-ball
Simpson's paradox
Open source movement
MySQL
Principia Discordia
Collaborative tool
Dictionary - yes apparently it is some kind of a dictionary
Copyleft
Internet humor - no kidding, especially some of our history
Cyberspace
Pseudocode
Bomis
LMS had much to say on what it is:
- User:Larry Sanger/Old comments
- User:Larry Sanger/More old comments
- User:Larry Sanger/Yet more old comments
- User:Larry Sanger/Final comments archive, maybe
Camel case
Linus's Law
Doublespeak
User:AnonymousCoward
GNU Free Documentation License
Common Gateway Interface
Website - yup I can kind of see it's a website
Weekend - yup we have used up a lot of 'em here
Semantic network
User:The Cunctator/HomePage Vandalism - the same concept?
Volunteer e.g. Wikipedia:Volunteer fire department
Wikipedia talk:Warn readers about spoilers
Talk:Sleep - yup, I talk in my sleep, when I get any, and in NPOV too.
Wikipedia:Most common Wikipedia faux pas - make them all!
Talk:VANDALISM IN PROGRESS - our favorite file
User talk:Maveric149/archive 1 - our favorite sysop
Amateur - oh definitely
Biography - oh many
Talk:Confucius - wish I could
Wikipedia talk:Dewey Decimal System - no way!
Talk:Dyslexia - that's the wipikedia you're thinking of
Talk:Discordianism but write NPOV please
Talk:Deism - see LMS
Talk:Free Links - yup, many
Esoteric knowledge - oh, lots
Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia FAQ - but it IS a big FAQ
Talk:Perfect competition - that's an edit war
Talk:Recapitulation theory
Talk:Obfuscated code - plenty of that in here
Preview - who needs that when the whole thing's free?
Talk:Tragedy of the commons
Talk:Ursula K. Le Guin - did she write about wiki? or in it?
Wikipedia:WikiProject Encyclopedic Network as it evolved.
Wikipedia:WikiBiblion
Wikipedia:Wikipedia commentary/Best debates - worth reading
Wikipedia talk:Article a Day - still a good guideline
Wikipedia:Spoiler warning - please! more of these!
WikiPaedia - as in Wikipaedophile? please not.
Wikipedia:Publicity - for wackos, maybe.
Instructional capital - for Venture Communists|, maybe
Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines - yup, talk, policies, guidelines, more talk, more policies, more guidelines
Wikipedia:Adding Nupedia articles to Wikipedia and nupedia articles
Talk:Transcription of Chinese and stuff that used to be in Chinese
World Brain - already? Maybe by Wikipedia4|!
Wikipedia:Are You a Wikipediholic Test - authoring this = for sure
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view - authoring this = even more sure
Wikipedia:Wikipediholic
List of WikiWiki websites
Wikipedia talk:Category schemes
Scanner - one way to get articles
Toll road - shouldn't this be troll road|?
Wikipedia:Why on Earth would I want to contribute to a wiki - no idea
Music terminology - talking about music is like dancing about NPOV
Wikipedia:Wikipedia NEWS - see also Wikews|
Wikipedia:Disruption - Wikipedia *is* disruption, or *needs* disruption?
Wikipedia:More bad jokes and other deleted nonsense - finally an honest assessment of what it really is!
Wikipedia talk:Requested articles and what it could be
Powers of Ten - this would be yer exponential growth
Talk:Plagiarism but seek permission
Talk:Chinese fire drill but please actually put out the fires
Wikipedia:Size comparisons can be intimidating, keep it in your pants
Wikipedia:Readers' FAQ
List of walls - no idea
Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels - like Cole's notes
Wikipedia:TourBusStop - "On your left folks we have the Wikipedia - those homeless guys hanging around it used to have jobs, girlfriends, etc., so we aren't stopping. Throw them a beer if you appreciate wiki."
Wikipedia:Banners and buttons - see picket term
Free content
Group
Meta-Wikipedia - where this file will probably end up
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy did have a big encyclopedia in it, with wisecracking comments like this one. Well, it's mostly harmless.
Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica is indeed a big chunk of it
Toponymy
Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia - now I'm really intimidated...
Project Galactic Guide - that would be Wikipedia8 or something.
Wikipedia:Logos and slogans - again see picket term
Wikipedia:Adding Wikipedia articles to Nupedia - the infection spreads
User:TMC - better known as...
Wikipedia:The dark side of Wikipedia
Wikipedia:Overview FAQ
Reverting from vandalism - every page must experience this at least once
User:Larry Sanger/Larry's Text - sheesh is there ever a lot of this!
Wikipedia:How does Wikipedia relate to Nupedia - by marriage I hope
Wikipedia:Esperanto language links - can we impose that on the world
Internet censorship in China can't stop us!
Football - of a political nature maybe
Sales - dunno
Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines - yes
Geographic references - plenty
Anti-copyright
User talk:Nightfall isn't that where the sky gets dark and we see the stars for the first time and civilization collapses? That happens often here when we shut off our puters and turn on our TVs.
Talk:Down's syndrome - probably with the simplified Wikipedia, hm?
Talk:Main Page/Temp - is anything permanent about the main page?
Dewey Decimal Classification
Wikipedia:Dewey Decimal System
Talk:Pluralis Majestatis - always wanted to be this
GNU LilyPond this too
Wikipedia:Building Wikipedia membership - ah! that would be Sales
Consensus - idealists!
Wikipedia:WikiProject Encyclopedic Network didn't I see this before?
Talk:Buddhism - but don't reinvent the wheel
Monopoly on violence - that would be yer IP Death Squad
Talk:Figure of speech - I didn't really mean that
Wikipedia:Statistics - we got 'em! But no user logs|
Talk:Idiom dictionary but don't include any
Talk:EPR paradox
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Day sure
Eugenics Board of North Carolina would love our list of contributors
Free Links even for them!
List of encyclopedias - we publicize our competition! We love them!
Talk:Lost Dogs - yes we can find your lost dog, sell your car, etc., in the Wikipedia classified ads and all-purpose dating system - coming soon.
Wikipedia:Namespace - yes it has that - several of them
Wikipedia:Minimalist main page would likely not link to this one
Perl is hiding in there somewhere
Slashdot effect seems to be taking hold right in this list...
Style guide wanted!
Postmodernism deconstructed!
Machine learning from the Wikipedia? Imagine a robot monster that only knows about the world from Wikipedia - destroying what we say is bad. Hmm.
Wikipedia:Glossary of terms, and germs, and virus, and prions, etc.
List of compounds to take when you're up all night editing articles
Wiktionary used to be part of Wikipedia, despite attempts not to be
List of cocktails in a handy bartender printout size format - recommended to be printed on puke-proof paper
Anarchism rules, in this place
Wikipedia:Help - you can check out, but you can never leave
God1s Debris - see religion
Encyclopedia - see what Wikipedia is NOT|
Homepage - if Wikipedia is your homepage, see computer addiction
Wiki software
Everything2 - aw, we're better than that
1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica that too
January 15 passed 100,000 articles
Wikipedia:About approximately
Wikipedia:Announcements - see Lost Dogs
Request for comment - see passive-aggressive and verbal abuse
Wikipedia:Brilliant prose evades you!
Wikipedia:Manual of Style and endless source of bad examples
List of timelines all in their own unique and wonderful unformat
WikiWiki as such
Wikipedia:Can history be truly NPOV? Oh, no, probably not, yes, ok.
Root nameserver - hack it! Replace it with Wikipedia's namespace! Make Bill Gates come here to fight edit wars to retain name 'Microsoft'.
InterWiki
UseModWiki
Hierarchy - see IP Death Squad
Open Site - see IP Death Squad
List of newsgroups updated minutely to escape the copyright police
January 25 - million page view mark? 100,000 article mark? Etc?
Open content
Wikipedia:Mailing lists for making all the real decisions
GNU General Public License - the GNU that started it all
User:Maveric149
Peer review almost
Wikipedia:Libel daily
Wikipedia talk:Sv-pedia
Talk:Main Page because you can't change it! nyah nyah ne nyah nyah
Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers, please leave your life at the door
Wikipedia:Accountability optional - please leave your name at the door too.
Wikipedia:Volunteer Fire Department - see IP Death Squad
Wikipedia:How to edit a page and enrage many many other people - see above
Main Page - today is the first Main Page of the rest of your life
Persuasion technology perfected! Objectivity 'R' US!
Public domain when the GFDL runs out, anyway
Wikipedia:Embassy for when we get our own national sovereignty
Wikipedia:Wikipedians - that would be... US! *Soylent Green is people. And so, too, is Wikipedia!