<CPOV> XKCD and Wikipedia

[Famiglietti, Andrew F]

This morning, the widely read web-comic XKCD posted a joke about Wikipedia's love for Neologisms: 

http://xkcd.com/739/

The particular neologism this comic claims to be about did not actually exist as a Wikipedia article at the time. Of course someone immediately created such an article, and, of course, it was just as quickly deleted: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malamanteau

(as I typed up this e-mail, the article's status changed! it now exists as a page informing visitors of the ongoing debate, and suggesting a redirect to the article for the XKCD comic)

The ensuing debate over the article, its creation, Wikipedia's open-ness or lack thereof, etc is very interesting and can be found here: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Malamanteau

As of right now, the first feature on that page is a tag welcoming XKCD fans to the site, and attempting to re-direct their energies to work on a more "appropriate" article, which I think is a great example of the sort of very conscious management of labor-power that Wikipedia is always engaged in. 

More thoughts later, for now, I just thought I would let everyone know. 

- Andy

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Andrew Famiglietti 
Brittain Fellow 
School of Literature, Communication, and Culture 
Georgia Institute of Technology